Quirk of the Week: Off-the-wall in Willamina
Ready to rock ‘n’ rail?
Let’s head to Timbertown, USA. You’ll see what we mean …
Sheridan and Dundee had, well, dan-dee, moments in this column in recent weeks. (Lafayette, your turn is soon.)
This week, let’s say where there’s a Will-amina, there’s a way.
First stop is indoors in Wildwood Hotel, Lounge and Restaurant, distinguished in Willamina as a restaurant, bar, and music venue.
The main dining room and cafe are replete with cool old signage: there’s both “Customer Parking Only” and “Motorbike Parking Only,” a bus service sign old enough that the phone number is seven digits, and a small “Calf Manna” sign — “a nutrient-dense pelleted supplement for livestock,” according to the Google-ator. Another reads, and we quote, “U pick asparagus/By Permission Only”
But it’s the back hallway that provides a unique Timbertown tour, where the venerable venue’s historic charms are on display: a well-framed gallery of posters for rock, country and blues gigs that have graced the Wildwood over the years. Countryside Ride, Charlie Parr, Hillstomp and more, along with Wildwood Music Festival posters dating back 10 years or more.
Moving outside: across the highway from the hotel is a pair of unique attractions that, frankly, suffer from their location at the tricky triangle that is the Highway 18/South Main-North Main intersection.
They are the Galloping Goose train car on one side and “Rusty the Logger” metal sculpture on the other, at Garden Spot Park. Artist Walt Mendenhall was commissioned to create “Rusty” for the city’s centennial in 2003. The placard reads, “Perched above a giant Douglas-fir stump of gears, chains, tongs and sawblades, Rusty shoulders the tools of his trade: an ax and a ‘misery whip’ crosscut saw. Like all loggers, he has a healthy appetite, symbolized by his frying pan face and empty-skillet belly!”
The century-old train car was repainted a few months back, and the grounds of the small park refurbished, in a joint effort by the city and the Willamina Economic Improvement District board.
Adjoining the display is a covered kiosk with thorough historical information about Willamina, including that the Willamina-Grand Ronde train operated from 1923-28. Built in 1923, the “motor rail car” earned its nickname from the way it wobbled on the track, as well as the honk-like sound of its horn.
The city purchased the train and created the display in 2007. This winter, Ginny Wymore and other EID board members recommended repainting the train car, formerly maroon and gray, to orange and green. This motif matches the railroad colors of the time, and its descendant service, the existing Portland and Western Railroad.
Retained in the updates are the silhouettes in the train car windows, including town leaders from 20 years ago. (Following the project, the EID hosted a reception at city council thanking public works director Jeff Brown for his help on the project.)
Nearby and notable, a block away on permanent display outside Willamina Thrift Store, are the life-sized wooden cutouts of turn-of-19th-century figures. The woman has no face, and the man has a bored expression.
Meanwhile, Willamina is home to a variety of other singular oddities, including:
• The unique climbing structure, in the shape of a horse, at Lamson Park;
• At popular Huddleston Pond, a set of teeter-totters with adult-sized, tractor-style bucket seats;
• A pair of 2-foot tall wooden “googly eyes” stare out of shrubbery next to the Shell station on Northeast Main.
• It’s worth revisiting the horseshoe pit at Triangle Park on South Main, mentioned a few months ago in a county-wide tour of the sand-and-posts game locations. The city refurbished the pits last fall, and what’s cool is that the U-shaped horseshoes provided for users — the only local pits to do so — are still in place.
Next, the Quirk column returns to the former Willamina High School grounds, now home to the nonprofit West Valley Community Campus. Old signs, sculptures and horseshoe pits are among its enduring charms.
And so are:
• The flagpole, scoreboard and goalposts of the old WHS gridiron. (When asked about it last year, board members saw the removal of the U.S. flag that had inexplicably flown at half-staff, 24/7, for many months.)
• The “300” sign, as in feet from home plate, is still affixed to the baseball outfield sign, though the old WHS baseball field has been decommissioned for years.
• Softball home plate remains embedded in the ground on the equally-disused former diamond (where the dugouts have evidently served as camping shelters).
This is the perfect time to put in a pitch for the WVCC’s ongoing fundraiser “Save Our Stands,” for renovating the old grandstands once used for football games and these days providing seating for the annual July 4 fireworks show. Visit westvalleycommunitycampus.org for details.
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 neumann reakirby@gmail.com.
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