Chaos in Memories
The way I remember Columbus Day
I am very glad that I do not live on the East or Gulf Coast. Here in the Pacific Northwest we are safe from those weather disasters called hurricanes that plague the nether regions of our country. Or we were except for one specific date in history. On October 12, 1962 we were visited by what some say was the tail end of a Pacific hurricane. We remember it as the Columbus Day Storm, and it was a doozy. The coast folks, including my paternal grandparents, saw scenes like the one above. But it came far inland, including my family’s neighborhood and my dad’s workplace in downtown Portland. It sent 100 mile per hour winds through the city and suburbs, took some roofing off my dad’s workplace, and depleted our yard up in the West Hills of some trees.
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I was just 6 years old at the time so I don’t remember a lot. Just the sound of tree branches sweeping across our roof with the wind howling around us. I remember that we were all at home, myself with my sisters and parents, hunkering down. But then I just realized that my oldest sister, Sylvia, was in her freshman year at Linfield College, and so was south of us in McMinnville, with her classmates in some dorm. I never thought to ask her what her experience was like -and now can’t since she passed in 2022.
We were fortunate to have gas heat and a gas stove, so we kept warm and fed, unlike the rest of the neighborhood who had just electric power. I don’t know how long the power was out but I do recall the sight of one of our neighbors bringing their dinner to our house in a little red wagon, so they could heat it up in our gas stove.
1962 was a notable year for something else. The Seattle Worlds Fair was held, and the Space Needle erected, and my family came up to visit. I doubt if my dad could have afforded to take our family up, but my wife and I had dinner there once and were blessed to have a perfect sky view.
It is a sad day as well. A favorite singer of ours, John Denver, passed away in 1997 on this day. His was a strong voice for our world and how we treat nature, an advocate for all the creatures of the world that we often take for granted. In his song Alfie, The Christmas Tree, he sang “Say a prayer for the wind and the water and the wood and those who live there, too.” Something for us all to remember, even when the storm isn’t raging.
