The People:
Social/Cultural Perspectives of the Slough
by Summer 2000 PSU Capstones Class
While collecting oral histories, students in the Columbia Slough oral history class became aware of both how the people involved shape historical events and how those individuals' lives are influenced by their experiences.
Most of the narrators remember the richness of life along the slough during the first half of the 20th century.
We were always scared of it. It was dangerous. We respected it. It was always someplace we could go and fish or swim and have a good time. It was clear and nice, clean fun. That's what I remember of it. We used our boat to go back and forth through there. If we got too tired of rowing, and the wind was blowing, we'd take our shirts off and run them through the oars and hold them up in the air, and the other guy would take the other oar down here and till. We had three oars, [one] little short oar and then the one tiller oar back here, and [we would] hold it up in the air, and the wind would blow us up. We had good imagination as kids. Bill Miller, long-term St. Johns residents
We would use the slough as part of our science class in Vanport. We would study the life around the slough, catch tadpoles and watch them grow. Stuff like that, so it was not only a place to play, it was a place to learn about nature, and we did. Ed Washington, Portland Metro Councilman and former Vanport resident
[We used to]"Sleep overnight under a tree with just blankets and a pillow. It never occurred to us to be afraid of anything. I feel sorry for the kids nowadays. They don't have fun like we used to have. We dug caves, and we always had a softball game out in the lot in front of our house, and bigger kids would tell ghost stories and try and scare us and stuff like that. You don't see groups of kids together like that anymore. They are all the same age in the groups that you see, and they are not doing the kinds of things that we did. Elsie Norris, long-term St Johns resident
Once in a great while I'd see a kid with a fishing pole walking down the street. You never see that anymore, you know? You don't even see kids with a baseball and glove going up here with a bat, hitting the ball around. ...No, I don't think kids do anything like our childhood, but everything changes, you know? George Mitchoff, long-term Kenton resident
In addition to the images that childhood memories conjure, oral histories give us new perspectives of what it was like to live through distinct historical periods like Prohibition, The Great Depression, and World War II.
George Mitchoff provides memories of Prohibition that deviate from the gangster and bootlegger stories with which many are familiar.
[The person who formerly owned his family's farm] "...was a moonshiner. . . Underneath the livingroom, when you rolled the rug back there was a trapdoor and a crawl space...down, eighteen inches or so and they would hide their liquor down there. Oh man, he was like a hound dog. When we dug the basement out...Every now and then I would hear cussing. They [Mitchoff's father and uncle] would run into a bottle of liquor and it would break while they were digging. But there were a whole lot of neighbors out there were just...this guy, his name was Fisher, he was making the moonshine and giving it, or selling it, to the neighbors, who in turn were distributing it. The FBI, or whoever it was, caught them and he went to jail...But there were probably some old maids drinking as much as they were selling...they never were caught...There was quite a few families out there who were living off that booze. George Mitchoff
Tony Fazio, a farmer on Sauvie Island, tells us about what his family did to help others during The Great Depression of the 1930s.
. . .my dad built a place so they could come and live there and he'd get a lot of people come in and work for him for the food just to take home because everybody was hurtin'. Everybody didn't have any money and so he kept a bunch of guys fed, and their families. . . we fed them and they slept here. Tony Fazio, long-term farmer on the Columbia Slough and Sauvie Island resident
During World War II, many new jobs were created.
Yeah, I was, I forgot what you call them, but they went around at night and checked that the window blinds were all down and things like that. Block Warden, I believe they called it. And, during the price administration project, I would go around to the stores and check the prices to be sure that they were the proper ones. I remember we had a little blue button we wore to identify ourselves and some of the store workers didn't really appreciate us, thinking we were sticking our noses in, you know, but I guess it had to be done. -Elsie Norris
Other citizens found their lives entirely altered because of their ethnic background. Japanese-Americans were incarcerated by the U.S. government during the war years.
On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt declared 9066. That was the time that we knew we could no longer stay in our home or do business. We all had to evacuate. As time went on, things got more heated in the war, and so we had to leave. I was very bitter about the evacuation. Mae Ninomiya, long-term Kenton resident
During internment the government held Japanese Americans for several months in a temporary Assembly Center on Marine Drive near the Columbia Slough. Upon return to their homes, life did not get any easier:
That was a nightmare. While we were stocking the store, some people said that they might not patronize the store because many were anti-Japanese. So, we faced that and the job of stocking the store. Mae Ninomiya
People of many different backgrounds moved into the area drawn by wartime employment. This changed the racial composition of slough communities.
We played with all kids you know. I played with black kids, white kids, probably some Chinese. There was no Japanese kids, cause all Japanese were in internment camps [during World War II] at that time. But you had kids from German backgrounds, Swedish backgrounds, you know their parents all came to Vanport to work. They were all hurting after The Great Depression. I mean The Great Depression was, you know, ten years before, but they still hadn't got back on their feet. Ed Washington, Portland Metro Councilman and former Vanport resident
When the other wars came along, we had more Vietnamese people but we had never had them before. In fact a colored person had never lived anywhere near me when I was little, and now there are a number of them in our neighborhood. A lot of Mexican, and I believe one family is from India, and we never had that when I was little, just all white people and you knew all of them. Elsie Norris
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