Seeing the Future Through the Past

As a boy growing up in Astoria, I knew it to be a vibrant and active town. Thriving on the runs of Columbia River salmon, the seemingly endless stands of Douglas Fir and Western Hemlock, and the active shipping traffic through its port, Astoria was, if not quite at its heyday as it was in the 1950s, a place where hard-working people could make an honest living in a trade of which they could be proud and raise a family and hope for a better standard of living for each successive generation. By the time I left in the mid 1980s, it was a wasteland of unemployment, an idled fleet, closed canneries, and a derelict mill. The majority of my high school graduating class, many of us from families generations deep in the town to which our ancestors had come directly from the “old country,” left as soon as we graduated – not because we wanted to go but because we had to in order to make a living.

While the fishing and logging never recovered, Astoria is today a town that is growing again; albeit in a much different way. New hotels are attracting an ever-increasing flow of tourists, restaurants and cafes are serving up dishes of a variety and quality far beyond what could be found when I lived there as a boy, luxury condominiums (such as those seen through the old wheelhouse of this now beached Columbia River bowpicker fishing boat) are being erected along the waterfront, even the old movie theater has been renovated into a performing arts center that books performing artists of national and even international renown. Somewhat ironically, my wife and I now vacation in the very town in which we were raised – so different is it from the town we knew years ago. But the ghosts of the past, ghosts upon which the visitor’s bureau relies for its promotions and which gives the town its unique flavor, still can be found if one knows where to look.