Gresham, Oregon

Gresham, Oregon, when I lived there was one of the neatest little towns.  Being able to walk to school, being able to ride my bike around town, being able to have a downtown that you can walk around and find something you cannot find in a gigantic-mega store.

There is a park in Gresham I used to go to all the time.  Either by bike, or car.  It was a great park that had a creek through it.  I used to take my shoes off and walk the bank, jump the bank, and try and catch things like crawdads.  I was never successful at that.  But, it was fresh water.

There was a downtown area that had a Rexall’s Drug with a soda fountain that you could order an ice cream at.  It was the neatest thing to me to sit there at the bar and get an ice cream.

Funny memory, it is the first place I remember seeing condoms and rubbers to buy.

The downtown area had all kinds of small stores – you know, small businesses that are the backbone of our economy – dress shops with clothes you couldn’t get at a brand store, a gourmet shop that had cooking classes and items that were few in quantity, a card shop full of stickers, it was the eighties collecting stickers was a popular thing to do.

The best movie theater I have ever been to.  The ceiling was painted with stars, there was a neon clock on the wall, and the lights were never off, but dimmed so if the movie was ever dull, you could look up and see the stars.

You could see movies in the summer for $1.

So many movies I saw there it would take me too long to write them all out.  It was an old-time theater full of character rather than new construction full of television screens.

When we moved there it was so far behind the times from where we had lived I wanted to leave as soon as we moved there.

However, there were wild strawberries and blackberries that would grow on the side of the road.

Oregon, has mountains, desert, or ocean within three or four hours in whichever direction you go.  So, there was always an opportunity to find a new adventure and land.

Downtown Portland was about an hour or so of a drive where you could find all kinds of great stores, art galleries, weekend markets, Powell’s Bookstore, schools, all kinds of neat niches.

Where else in the world do you think there is a Gresham?

I’ll let you figure that out on your own.

We had neighbors behind us that I did not realize until they visited us in Florida that they were a mixed-race married couple.  I just saw him as a tall man with curly hair and nothing more.  He is light-skinned – yet, still.

People were just accepted based on them being people – nothing else.

What else is there?