Rose Festival memories
And the way things used to work at The Oregonian
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From the heart I hear From the heart I see From the heart I seek What I seek finds me.
Rose time
The Rose Festival is a peculiarly Portland icon. Some aspects are unique to Portland, like the Royal Rosarians, men (and eventually women) in identical ivory-colored suits and boater hats, ambassadors who keep the festival going. Local high schools provide a Rose Queen and a court of princesses.
For several weeks in June, the city is given over to parades: Grand Floral, Starlight, children’s. Festivities include milk-carton boat races in Westmoreland, dragon boats on the Willamette, a waterfront carnival, and serious competitions for the best roses in many categories.
The Rose Festival is mostly innocent fun; in other ways it’s a dinosaur. It started out more than a century ago as a civic celebration, a source of pride and boosterism, but mostly for citizens who happened to be white.
The biggest event, the Grand Floral Parade, commonly known as the Rose Parade, winds through East Portland next Saturday, June 10.
A big deal
It seems quaint now, but when I started working at The Oregonian in 1976, the Portland Rose Festival was such a big deal that nobody in newsroom was allowed to take vacation during the first few weeks of June.
All hands had to be on deck to cover the parades, the rose judging,* the creation of parade floats from millions of live flowers, milk-carton and dragon-boat races, and the arrival of U.S. Navy ships with thousands of sailor eager for shore leave.
*One of my early copy desk triumphs was figuring out what the reporter covering the rose competition meant by “floral bundles.” The category was “floribunda.”
Why roses?
Portland, Oregon, has a climate that’s made for roses. Mild, wet winters; sunny, dry summers; dense, acidic clay soil. Pretty flowers, pretty weather, pretty princesses—a floribunda of delight.
I was always on hand on parade day, either on the copy desk, reading stories and writing headlines, or in the graphics department, choosing which photos to run.
Sometimes, as a reporter, I walked the parade route (Grand Floral or Starlight), picking up local color amid the tens of thousands who turned out to watch. Like the family who always lugged a sofa the evening before the Grand Floral Parade to a prime spot downtown, sleeping on it overnight.
Up, up, up
But my favorite Rose Festival gig was riding in the cherry picker. Every year, Tice Electric provided a boom lift, parked at Southwest Second Avenue and Burnside.
From on high, a photographer could shoot the parade is as it came over the Burnside bridge from the east side.
Armed with a couple of camera bodies and various lenses, the photog had his (it was always a guy) hands full. That, and he had to avoid shots that would include the large banner sign for an adult bookstore that covered a wall on the opposite side of Burnside from where the cherry picker was parked.
Two people mounted the cherry picker: the photographer, and someone to take the notes. I had the second job.
The photographer took pictures of the approaching parade, dictating in rapid succession the contents of each shot. The stenographer, armed with the parade route lineup, took notes of the photos in order.
Motorcycle mail
Every few rolls, we would slip the film and notes into an envelope and drop it over the side of the bucket. Teams of runners on Vespas were waiting below to whisk the film back to The Oregonian building to be processed.
I wish I had some pictures of my time in the bucket, but that was a different era. I couldn’t carry a camera, because I was the notetaker, and besides, good cameras were bulky.
And of course, nobody had a cell phone.
Color comes to the front page
One big change I was involved with at The Oregonian was changing to color photography in the mid-1980s. Before that, maybe twice a year: a front page banner saying “Merry Christmas” with a few candles and holly, or “Happy Easter,” with the requisite lilies.
Due to rapid changes in technology, The Oregonian was able to move quickly to adding color photos on section fronts. We were a few years ahead of The New York Times, as I recall.
Even interior color was doable if there was a color ad on a page and the paper didn’t have to budget extra for the color ink.
All wrapped up
By the 90s, when I was riding the cherry picker, we were all set up to process color film in time to create a “wrapper” for the first edition of the tombstone-sized Sunday paper. It came off the presses early Saturday afternoon, and was widely distributed to newsstands and stores all over town.
The paper was so hefty because of all the classified ads, thousands of them. Real estate ads were a primary reason for snapping up the first edition rather than waiting for the fourth edition* to arrive on one’s doorstep Sunday morning.
The “wrapper” was four pages of extra Rose Festival photos: winning floats and bands, waving princesses, and of course the Queen, who had been chosen at a gala the evening before.
*Besides the first “street final” edition, The Oregonian created a second (two-star) edition to distribute far downstate, like Medford and Coos Bay, and a three-star for towns closer in, such as Salem. I can’t remember whether Eugene got the two-star or the three-star edition. Sports, especially, had to scramble to get scores and game highlights into each edition. The fourth, or “sunrise” edition, brought the most recent news to residents in and around Portland. The window of opportunity to add breaking news and sports scores to the sunrise edition closed around midnight.
Cherry picker logistics
Climbing into the boom lift took some flexibility. Once we were aloft, the bucket was positioned in such a way that the photographer could avoid the adult bookstore sign.
I enjoyed this Saturday duty for maybe four or five years. Once, Jim Vincent, the photographer, made sure to get a close-up of my daughter Lyza playing flute in the Wilson High School band.
But as the 90s proceeded and MS started to affect my gait, I couldn’t easily climb into the bucket. My cherry picking days were over.
It’s moot now, anyway. The parade route is entirely on the east side of the river, no bridges involved. And no cherry picker, either, these days.
News changes daily. So does the news business.
A card a day
I wrote last week about the Index Card a Day (ICAD) challenge from Daisy Yellow. I was reluctant to assume another daily task, but further correspondence with Tammy Garcia, who runs the site, convinced me to try it—as a writer, maybe as an artist.
What put me over the top on ICAD was Tammy’s mention of Rolodex cards. Yes!
Finally, I have a use for a packet of what I thought were 3-by-5 index cards that I bought at an office supply surplus or thrift store. They probably cost 35 cents. Only later did I realize that they were Rolodex cards, with little notches on the bottom edge.
Rolling technology
Rolodexes were common at The Oregonian before it became easy to keep everything in the computer, and then on a phone you could hold in your palm.
However, powering up the electronics to look up a business card isn’t appealing to everyone, which is why the Rolodex company, which rolled out its iconic product in 1958, is still in business. Yes, you can still buy Rolodexes and extra cards online, and probably at office supply stores, too.
At the paper, there were massive ones at the city desk, copy desk, sports, Living, editorial—every department.
One wag suggests that they were next to the glue pots and ash trays, both long gone.*
Reporters and editors had individual Rolodexes on their desks as well.
Sometimes it’s just easier to flip through this other round file than to open a database and search.
*Other newsroom artifacts were the pneumatic tubes that rushed copy from the copy desk to the backshop to be typeset, and the sharp spikes where discarded stories met their doom—the term for an unused story was “spiked.” Hands could also be easily spiked, making the banning of spikes an easy OSHA call.
On to frogs
Summer is here, and the frogs outside my window are still mating.
Frog chorus
They sing in waves, Trills, booms, croaks, croons— Is this really how they choose their mates? On sunny afternoons, they’re silent, But rain and dusk make them raucous. I visit the pond, but I can’t find the frogs. They are invisible— Heard but not seen. You know, “frogs” are many things: Fancy fasteners for coats and uniforms. Spiny gizmos that anchor flowers in vases. The weighted ends of violin bows, where the screws are. The amphibians are just an addendum. I’ve never heard the frogs’ night chorus Till now. In this spring as it smooths into summer. These frogs have good manners; Their croaking chorus falls silent at 10, After, only the occasional raspy ribbit As one lone frog still seeks, Is seeking Some form of eternity.
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Remember the resolution
In June, I remember it’s not about me. This is the month to stop running everything past the “me” filter, to move beyond assumptions.
Long ago, I told myself that being offended by little irritants and setbacks was a choice. I could choose not to be offended,.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that that is not easy. My tendency toward the critical, which made me a good editor, can be crippling when I choose to focus on some little detail that’s out of whack instead of the near perfection of the whole.
It’s worth remembering that the world was actually not set up with just me and my desires in mind.
Some people go easily with the flow. Not contrary me.*
*Yes, I know it should be “Not contrary I.” But we’re trying to go with the flow here.
The primrose path
I want to dig in and resist. Always swimming upstream, ignoring the current. As one of my favorite fictional characters, Francis Crawford of Lymond, once said (I did not note in which of Dame Dorothy Dunnett’s books this quotation appeared, but I’m betting it’s Checkmate.)
It is very sad; but no one with theological training is ever going to believe that nine times out of ten, what is best for one’s character is the primrose path, not the thicket of thorns.
Lymond, having had this crucial insight, ignores it time and again. Which, combined with Dunnett’s masterful writing style, makes for a terrific story.
I highly recommend Dunnett. Start with The Game of Kings for the Lymond saga, set in Tudor times, or Niccolo Rising for a series encompassing the Renaissance world. The final Niccolo book connects the characters from both sagas.
Dunnett, who died in 2001, was also an accomplished portrait painter, and her descriptions are heightened by her artist’s eye.
Her writing is highly addictive, so plan on spending some lengthy, quality time in her historical world.
Meanwhile
Keep on writing. Choose not to be offended. Pull away from “me” to focus on “us.” Continue to feast on life with all its many courses. Notice things.
Oh, and the Grand Floral Parade is at 10 am Saturday, June 10. You can watch it in person (no rain is forcast!) or on Channel 12.
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Whoo hooh! You’re doing ICAD and that’s a great card (and very timely, har har). Would you consider posting on IG with hashtags for ICAD? Love that your doing it on rolodex cards, they are so cool. Enjoy!
So wonderful to see you decided to do ICAD! Enjoyed the story of your days covering the parade.