Jo Brew Is A Northwest Author
Giving Voice to Oregon
Winter 2012 At my house winter activities are winding down and I’m not looking at plant catalogs yet. It’s good to have extra research and writing time before I tackle outside activities. U.S.Highway 99 was such a big part of my life and so familiar it seems odd I need to do a lot of research. I must either look without really seeing or I’ve taken things for granted. In spite of all my time walking on the highway, living along it, or driving it, I still need a map for each local area to fit the stories in the right place. I need another that shows the width of the valley floors, where the forests and creeks are and another that shows where the ferries went across the rivers. The list goes on. All the innovations that made Highway 99 the center of life for local travelers, business and visiting tourists are part of the experience. Airfields, neon lights, gasoline pumps, garages, mini markets, cafes, telephone booths, farm stands, motor cabins, resorts, hobos, farm workers, bridges, campgrounds, greyhound buses, troop movements and many more events and places play a part in the growth of the Oregon we know. Yesterday I was entering a story of a man who’d driven the highway to work and back between one town and the next every day for more than thirty years. He commented he felt like he’s lived his life on the highway. I smiled inside. I’ve felt like that for years, and a woman from Southern Oregon I’ve never met made the same comment in the story she sent me. Three different people, three locations and three different generations. |
I have made progress on even the toughest questions. There was evidently a Burma Shave sign series along the highway between Drain and Curtain but no memory of which wording. Now I do have a map which fills in the blank spaces between Creswell and Cottage Grove. Hard to fit the Walker Air Field in the right place without it. I’ve also discovered the location of a second painted barn advertising the Lithia Hotel in Ashland. We still have one on River Rd. but now I have a picture of another that was once on the highway through Creswell. Many of the small local museums that are so helpful close for part of the winter but a few are open again next month so I’ll be back on the road before long. Not as far as Southern Oregon yet, I won’t tackle Sexton Pass until no one is talking about winter storms any more. I’m not even fond of it during heavy rain. |
