Everybody Has a Story: It was raining, and a boy’s normal life washed away

I remember it was raining that day. My dad was driving, and we were on our way to see friends. I had just turned 8, and my brother was 6. It was May 30, 1948.

We had come to Oregon from Minnesota about two years before that. I was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, and my folks were told that the climate in Oregon would be better for me. It seemed to be providence, because my dad was out of work and there were jobs in the shipyards. I recall the two-day trip out here on the train.

We got to Portland and my dad got a shipyard job right away. We moved into Vanport.

Vanport was a strange place, I thought. The houses were not stucco like my grandfather’s or grand three-story places like my aunt’s. They were all stuck together, it seemed like eight or 10 in a row, with units upstairs and down.

There was a school and a movie theater and a store near us. I was shy at first but soon learned that would not get me anywhere. A kid named “Scoopy” became my best friend. We pretty much had free rein in the neighborhood. My mother got a job with the groundskeepers so I, like my pals, didn’t have much supervision during the day. But it didn’t seem to alarm anyone. We felt safe and we were pretty resourceful.

There was always something to do, and Scoopy and I could usually find it. It seemed that they were always tarring a roof somewhere. Cylinders of tar, maybe 1 foot across and 2 feet high, got melted down in a big cooker and hauled in buckets to the roof. Watching all that could occupy a guy for an hour or so, plus there were always chunks of tar that would break off, and we would chew these for hours, trying to get them down to chewing gum consistency. I have no idea what that might have done to my teeth or my health. Then, too, there was chasing the ice truck.

Everyone had an ice box. That was a small wooden cabinet, lined with metal on the inside, with a trap door on top. A man would come every few days and bring a big cube of ice, about a foot square, and put it in the trap door. Those chunks of ice were heavy, and the iceman always seemed very strong. He would use huge tongs to grip the ice, and in one motion he’d toss the ice block onto his back. He wore a leather hat and shawl that covered his neck, shoulders and back.

While he was delivering ice, we would snitch ice out of the back of his truck. If he caught us, he would yell and we would run off. I looked back once and saw him smiling. It was one of the games we all played. The braver of us would chase his moving truck and jump on the back. That was usually Scoopy, then me. If you snitched a piece of ice that way, that was something!

For the next couple of years, that was our life, Scoopy and me and sometimes my brother, and it was a good life.

Then everything changed. My parents had saved money to put down on a real house in Portland. We could take possession right after the first of May. “Another adventure,” my mom would say. We could come back to see our friends as soon as we were settled, she said.

That’s what we were doing that rainy day on May 30, 1948. Going back to see our friends. We never made it, though. Traffic was backed up. The trolley tracks on Water Street were underwater and soon our hubcaps were, too. My dad turned the car around and drove home.

On the radio, we heard that Vanport had flooded. I never saw my friend Scoopy again. I hope he got out.

Growing up at Vanport was “normal” for me. But I never hear anyone talk about that.

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