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Outer Limits
part I:
Commerce, industry and people survive and thrive on old Highway 99.
by Bobbie Willis
A lot of membrane connects the tender heart of our Emerald City
to that great, wide world out there: the capillaries of our own streets and avenues,
the aortic I-5, the far-reaching veins and arteries of the old highways: 58, 126,
99.
There is also something admiringly persistent about these outlying
areas, where our city becomes slightly fuzzy -- growing, seeping, defining and redefining
its sense of self. This isn't a push for urban sprawl or unfettered development and
growth. It's only to say that this place is growing -- all nose and arms,
as a friend of mine put it, in our adolescent disproportion. As much as we struggle
with issues of growth closer to town proper, we also find ourselves considering how
best to grow into these edges without steamrollering over their characteristic qualities,
how to feel the defining pulse of this city reverberating to our outer limits.
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Don Harney moves a
ton of Buddhas at Midway Gifts.
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As it is, life happens with vigorous tenacity at these limits. Take
the stretch of Highway 99 from the Big Y Shopping Center out to Airport Road. The
four-lane swathe of black asphalt with its double-hem of white sidewalk magnifies
the elements -- doubling the summer sun, quadrupling the sheets of winter rain, funneling
the winds of fall into the heart of town. Come wintertime, people walking or bicycling
along the highway hunch down under hoods of soggy sweatshirts or slick rubber raincoats.
In summer, fleshy women spill from halter-tops and cutoff shorts; men bare their
chests and faces, the skin gone leathery brown-red in the sunlight.
A working class neighborhood reveals itself along and beyond the
straight edges of pavement: restaurants and convenience stores where people go for
food, drink and cigarettes; motels and trailer parks where people sleep and eat and
shelter themselves against the rain or sun. Shops and businesses scuttle and prosper
in the exposure of the highway. West from 99 to Beltline and east to River Road are
pockets of neighborhoods thriving, people finding places to make a life in this town.
You probably travel this stretch periodically -- you know, "Better
head for Jerry's." And what about racing away to make that crack-of-dawn flight
out of town? Eugene is Saturday Market and Jo Fed's and organic produce. But it is
also The Embers and Brew & Cue. It is Highway 99, where the soundtrack is the
whistle and whoosh of automobiles tearing like arrows toward the bull's eye;
where the air smells of raw commerce and industry -- dirt and barkdust and diesel;
where our city stretches and strains and grows into itself.
Small Business,
Big Business
Businesses on 99 have names like "Paradise Oak Furniture"
and "Holiday Pools & Spas," names that find some ironic celebration
in the gravel-encrusted reality of the highway. Brian Cameron of Paradise Oak Furniture
smiles broadly, telling me the celebratory aspect he sees: "Between Beltline
and 99, we probably get 40,000 cars going by. And the Jerry's crowd -- we really
pick up a lot from that."
The closer in you get to these places, the more you see their odd,
triumphant beauty: Holiday Pools & Spas has the floral swimsuit-clad mannequin
lady and twisty pool slide on their roof. The store also has an oasis in front, a
curved pool with decorative white rocks along the edge and huge white boulders anchoring
two of the sides. It gives the impression of a cove or a secret swim hole, not 30
feet from the highway traffic racing by.
Midway Gifts and Lawn Statuary is an old standby -- Donald Harney
has run the place close to 40 years. "Pretty near 40 years, anyway," he
tells me. "Bought the building in 1967." If you ever needed anything decorative
-- absolutely anything -- made out of concrete, Midway is your place. There are fat,
round Buddhas of every size; regal renditions of the Virgin Mary and St. Francis
of Assisi; grizzly bear cubs in all manner of playful positions; cherubs and miniature
pagodas and decorative water fountain pedestals from here to the moon. Mr. Harney
and his wife, Helen, have set up a gazebo with a wishing well in the center as the
focal point of the outside display area. It's all fenced off from the highway; and
somehow, within those confines, that manic highway energy of coming and going seems
less.
Down the road, at 99 and Prairie Road, Ken Simons manages 28 employees
for B&R Pick and Pull Auto Wrecking: 30 acres of wrecked cars, chrome and glass
sparkling in the sunlight, all of it set neat and straight as a filbert or berry
farm. It smells like motor oil and rubber tires.
Simons tells me, "We realized a couple of years ago that Eugene
had a demand for used auto parts and a need to get abandoned cars off the streets."
B&R has filled these 30 acres in less than three years of business. Simons says
each mechanic can process about two cars a day, picking out and cleaning the reusable
parts, even the fluids. They have a gigantic heating unit in the corner of the mechanics'
garage that runs on recycled motor oil. The wrecking yard is hopping, people heading
out into the field of wrecks to find The Exact Right Thing.
I'm surprised that none of these business people has any complaints
about security or personal safety; shows my own closer-to-town assumptions of this
industrial and relatively isolated area. Simons says, "We don't really have
any more problems than any auto wrecking yard would have-- And we take care of problems
as soon as they happen, repairing holes in fences, cleaning up graffiti and posting
'No Trespassing' signs in the problem areas. It just lets people know we're keeping
an eye on things." I look at the way the yard hums with workers and customers,
a metaphor for the well-oiled machine, and tell him something must be going right.
He smiles and nods, says, "We're thriving."
The Good,
The Bad, The Beautification
According to the Summary of US Highway 99, by Patrick
R. Frank, founding member of the Route 99 Association of California, Highway 99 started
out as a horse and stagecoach trail extending from Canada to Mexico. It was designated
an official part of the U.S. road network in 1926 and enjoyed plenty of traffic in
the early heyday of the automobile. As traffic increased, tourism and commerce followed,
setting up shop along the highway, beckoning come hither to this new breed of traveler.
In the late 1960s, Highway 99 suffered a competitive blow from
the mighty I-5. Travelers used 99 less and less, until the West Coast states finally
began declassifying segments of the highway from national to state highway status.
In 1972, Oregon was the last of the states to declassify 99.
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UPS driver Tony Brown
gets a trim from barber Rafustus Sutton.
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In Eugene, Highway 99 has had its ups and downs. There are those along
the highway who feel that the social service organizations set up to address needs
of the homeless and impoverished are actually drawing a population of impermanent
and uncaring citizens to the area. The Whiteaker Public Safety Station 1998 Annual
Report indicates: "The area under the [Highway 99] overpass was littered
with bottles, syringes, human waste, camping materials and other miscellaneous garbage
-- Many known drug dealers had opened a 'drug store' at the location and were actively
selling and using illegal drugs. The location was also a haven for 'taggers.' To
deal with the problem, RDU [Rapid Deployment Units] did a sweep of the camps, then
the area was cleaned up, posted 'No Trespassing' and fenced off."
The area has undergone a slow transformation. In the 1990s, under
Mayor Ruth Bascom, the City Council made efforts to improve the highway with new
curbs and gutters, new medians, even some trees and landscaping to perk up the straightaway
a bit. The Bethel-Danebo area just west of the highway has undergone a growth spurt,
with the extension of Beltline and a crop of new shopping centers and housing developments.
More established homeowners and families nearby could mean a neighborhood boost by
association for Highway 99.
The Value
of Stuff
AAA-ACE-BUYERS-BUY-SELL-TRADE. This is the clamor of sign
on the orange awning of the consignment shop next to The Arc of Oregon bingo parlor,
up and across the highway from The Great Alaska Bush Company. Consignment shops are
cousins of pawnshops, both functioning as ways for people to score fast cash for
merchandise, with the option to reclaim the merchandise within an agreed upon period
of time.
I pull into the parking lot. There's a woman just getting out of
her blue Honda Civic parked near the entrance of the store. A small black dog jumps
out after her. She ignores the dog, goes to the back of the car and pops open the
hatch. The car is crammed with stuff, each item indistinct from the next. But she
knows exactly what she's looking for. She wears a short sun dress, purple with blue
flowers and lime green shorts under the skirt. The heels of her feet pull away from
her yellow flip-flops as she stands on tiptoe to get at what she wants. She piles
tools and household odds and ends and a couple of small sparkly things into the crook
of one arm, pulls the hatch closed and heads into the shop. She leaves the dog outside;
it watches her dutifully through the glass.
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Highway
99: The Nitty Gritty
-- Number of residential apartment buildings on Highway 99 to Airport
Road: 0
-- Number of motels where you can pay by the week: 6
-- Number of doctor's offices on Highway 99: 0
-- Number of storage unit companies on Highway 99: 7
-- Percentage of Eugene's manufactured home brokers located on
Highway 99: 50
-- Price per gallon of regular unleaded gas at Highway 99 Shell
station: $1.34
-- Price per gallon of regular unleaded gas at 18th and Chambers:
$1.45
-- Price per gallon of regular unleaded gas at 29th and Willamette:
$1.49
-- Number of adult book stores/entertainment clubs on Highway 99:
1
-- Number of adult book stores/entertainment clubs in Garfield-11th-6th
area: 3
-- Arguably the nicest piece of architecture on Highway 99:
Columbia River Power-Eugene Substation
-- Eugene Substation's next door neighbor: Burrito Amigo
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In the shop, I'm a little dazed by all the stuff. There's a bucket
of screwdrivers, 25 cents apiece; shelves of used routers and sanders and cordless
drills; a wall display of rifles behind a glass display case of handguns; five crossbows
hung neatly in a row across the top of the store's front window; stereo speakers
and amplifiers and boom boxes and 15 TV sets; a Lincoln Electric arc welder, complete
with welder's mask. There's a CD rack filled with CDs by bands I've never heard of.
And the jewelry -- secondhand jewelry is always a little bittersweet -- the engagement
rings and wedding bands especially. There is some small loss in all of that twinkling
gold and gem work.
The woman in the sundress spills her load onto the counter. The
lines around her eyes and mouth belie the sunny colors of her dress and sandals.
Her brown-gray hair hangs limply around her face. A clerk comes to see what she has.
She bites at the nail of her right index finger as he picks up each item, gives it
a look, puts it down. "Oh," she says, "I just love this necklace ..."
She picks up a string of dark green beads.
There are quite a few families shopping this afternoon: A young
couple and their small son browse through the used video game cartridge selection.
A mother, teenaged daughter and grandmother look through the CDs and posters, each
with a handbag hung daintily over her forearm.
Through the window, I see a tall man careening into the parking
lot on a black bicycle. He steers the bike with his right hand. In his left hand,
he holds an orange Stihl chainsaw. His eyes are a little wild. His sideburns are
shaved up past the top of his ears. His hair feathers back and down over the collar
of his flannel shirt. He kicks up and off his bike, props it against the wall near
the entrance. The little black dog, still waiting loyally, nearly gets clocked by
the blade of the saw. The man swings open the door and in three long strides he is
at the counter.
"You need any chainsaws?" he asks a second store worker,
an older man with white hair and a round belly. This man comes to look at the saw.
It's covered in grit and dirt. He rolls over the saw to look at the other side. He
holds the handle, points the blade up and out, flips a switch.
"Doesn't seem to run," he says. "We can't take something
that doesn't run." He puts the chainsaw down. The bike man stares blankly for
a beat, grabs the saw, hefts it down and heads back outside to his bike.
The couple with the little boy has chosen two game cartridges and
a couple of kid's videos. The mother-daughter-grandmother trio has taken a leisurely
browse, but left without buying anything.
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Ron Fowler hauls groceries,
a radio and a fishing pole up and down Highway 99.
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As for the woman in the sundress, the store worker tells her, "I
would pass on all of this." He pushes everything back at her. She takes her
stuff and heads out-- nothing ventured, nothing gained. The little black dog wags
its nub of a tail, happy to see her again.
Our Place
Today's lunch special at "Our" Place Bar and
The Little "R" Café at Highway 99 and Roosevelt is a choice of tuna
melt or beef enchiladas. The parking lot is packed when I arrive at half past noon.
Peggy Henson, the owner for the last two years, bustles around the dining room, tending
to the lunch rush. She greets most of the customers by name. There are two women
commiserating in a side booth about their love lives. There's a group of denim-clad
men in the corner. A man with a black handlebar mustache speaks on his cell phone
to his mechanic. He clicks to hang up and exclaims to his lunch partner, "Yeah!
I get my car back. My Mustang--" Behind the cash register, the dry erase
board lists "Sweet Mama's Pies: Cranberry-Apple, Lemon Crème, Boysenberry."
Driving by outside on the highway, you'd never get the closeness
in this place. There's an old-fashioned sense of neighborhood as people chat easily
from table to table, hang out outside under the awning over leisurely good-byes or
an after-lunch cigarette.
This is a neighborhood where you're bound to see men in Wranglers
and work boots and aviator sunglasses leaning up against the beds of beefy pickup
trucks in hardware store or machine shop parking lots. You're bound to see more growly
muscle cars and put-put beaters than Subaru Outbacks parked on the side streets.
It feels a little closer to a generation or two ago, closer to the small bustle of
places like Junction City or Albany. You'll probably see more than one or two people
walking the highway sidewalks, their faces set hard and a little tired as they head
to wherever it is they're going. This is Eugene, too -- our small businesses, our
working class, a place into which we stretch and grow and hopefully flourish.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is the first in an occasional
series of looks at the gateways and outer limits of Eugene.
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