Quirk of the Week: Looking back at the Quirk that got away

Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##Tree wells in front of Tributary Hotel used to hold shells of hazelnuts, now replaced by conventional plantings.

Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##It’s a university now, but a few “Linfield College” remnants exist, like this one on vacant land at Highways 99 and 18.

Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##Fermented miso, peppers, beans, carrots and more delectables were displayed in the cellar bar of the now-closed Okta.

Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##A Southeast Davis yard held a “Days to ...” Christmas countdown sign that did not make its appearance in 2024.

Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##Long-moldering mailbox and newspaper tubes stood until summer 2024 when ODOT updated sidewalks at Cumulus Avenue and Highway 18.

Kirby Neumann-Rea/News-Register##

This week we take up where Calendar of Quirk left off at the end of 2024.

We rebrand it Quirk of the Week (clever, that!) because, generally, we’ll look at just one Quirk at a time, or a few that are related.

(The Quirk will also return to its regular Wednesday slot, once the holiday deadline changes are done.)

There is much more Quirk to observe: all year and into the new one, sharp-eyed readers and staff members have supplied us with plenty of new examples. In general, weekly Quirk will be shorter than the calendar had been, but that will depend on the topic; Quirk of the Week will take on those particularly peculiar examples held in reserve in order to expand upon them. (Hopewell Hub, an Amity license plate wall, and the world’s most mysterious parking space numbers, to name just three.)

For this first week of the year, though, we take a look not at ones to come but Quirk past or are no more: in many cases they were on the list at the end of 2023 when we began planning Calendar of Quirk. Some disappeared before we started, others at some point in 2024; the result is that only one of the following got a mention in 2024.

Here, then, are the Quirk that are Gone:

- Grumblefish Music on Third Street closed in September 2023 but it sold old sheet music, as well as novelty ukuleles, bagpipes and more.

- Geraldi’s restaurant relocated to Southwest Baker Street but gone is the famous pizza-wings-and-halo mural on the outdoor back wall. (The space is now Abuela’s Nuestra Cucina.)

- Derelict wedge-shaped orange “CitiCar,” a two-seat electric vehicle from 1970s, sat for a long time next to a garage on Northeast Fifth, and was gone when a remodeling project started. (Historical note: Automotive company Sebring made 4,444 CitiCars from 1974-79 -- the most since 1945 for an electric car assembled in North America until surpassed in 2011 by Tesla.)

- On Second Street some may have seen the old orange traffic cone, turned brown after being buried for years. It was unearthed near Ford Street, in November 2022 when trees were cut down and removed, and the old sidewalk excavated and replaced. Yet the tarnished old cone remained there until early July 2023.

- On that same Ford block, removed with the trees, was a “No Parking” sign and pole that appeared to be three feet tall as the bulging root ball grew higher and higher over the years.

- Until mid-2024, an Oregonian newspaper box was in the Willamette Valley Medical Center lobby – holding papers from 2021. (The Oregonian rack display at Roth’s shows a front page from 2011.)

- Used golf clubs used to be for sale, $1 each, on the sidewalk outside of T and E Mercantile in Yamhill.

- Linfield University, after five years, still had one or two signs out there reading “College”, including the old NWS Conference banner in Ted Wilson gym and a (forgotten?) one behind foliage along the storage yard on Booth Bend Road. One hundred yards north, “No Parking” signs on school property on Southwest Baker still read “college.” Otherwise, virtually all use of the former designation have been purged -- but sighted in Ted Wilson Gymnasium in November was a single padded folding chair with “Linfield College” on it.

- Hazelnut shells used to fill the tree wells in front of Tributary Hotel (and, now closed, Okta restaurant) on Third Street between Ford and Galloway streets. As hazelnuts, the shells had a certain local charm, but they settled and the tree wells turned into ankle-busting hazards, and have been replaced by fill dirt and plantings.

- Oh, Okta? The restaurant did close in August and so did the glass-enclosed larders filled with fermented products, displayed next to the cellar bar.

- A particularly elegant “Quirk Gone,” for it was meant to be temporary: someone walking the Linfield wellness trail took the time to weave tall brown grass into symmetrical weaves about five feet in length: six of them in a row, flat on the ground.

- Gone in 2024 were the “‘Twere The Weeks Before Christmas” scratch cards issued by McMinnville Downtown Association ... replaced by the more grammatically-correct “Merry McMinnville” campaign.

And we’ll head to the finish line with a few more signs bearing Quirk:

- The elaborate hand-made “___ Shopping days Until Christmas” sign on Davis Street did not return for Christmas 2024. (At last view it seemed to be non-functional, but it was still cool.)

- “Propagate, baby!” read the sign in window of a Willamina storefront giving away plant starts (it’s now Skyhorse Coffee.)

- Signs on Highway 47 outside of Yamhill, promoting 2023 Derby Days stated it would run “July 15th – 14th. (Time flies, sometimes in reverse!)

- At El Primo on Southwest Baker, the sign remains but the long-standing message is gone: For over two years the letters were jumbled among the three rows and read:

WE

RE O

NE

Presumably, “We Are Open.” Now the sign is empty, but the restaurant is open.

Finally, updates to earlier-reported cases of Quirk that are, sort of, no more:

- First, in February we listed the 20-foot lighthouse on the former Old Time Gospel Lighthouse Church on Southwest Baker Street (property since sold to Abundant Life Fellowship.) What disappeared was the unique two-sided flag that flew on the property. A standard U.S. flag went up, replacing the banner with Stars and Stripes on one side stitched to the blue State of Oregon on the other.

- “Cupcake Couture” sign on Davis Street is still there but it’s a case of reverse Quirk in that something was ADDED to it: the side facing Third Street had been blank, we noted in January 2024; sometime last spring, the name was added to the other side.

- A signpost in a Northeast Fifth Street yard with small board held typewritten sheets of poetry. From 2022 to early 2024 the poems changed every few weeks; the board remained but then no more poetry; about the same time, the house was repainted. Now: just a post.

- Googly eyes: as noted earlier in Quirk, people putting adhesive eyes on all manner of things seems to be a nationwide thing, and they appear and disappear from the Second Street post office drop box. If the pattern holds, look for them to appear again.

Have you seen something that’s an example of quirk — an oddity that adds to the joy of life in Yamhill County? Email Kirby Neumann-Rea at kirby@newsregister.com.