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cmdr_zoomFor my father's 63rd birthday this past Saturday, my brother Travis had the idea of taking a road trip back down to the town where we all grew up -- Oakland, about 60 miles south of Eugene, Oregon. Specifically, taking our father out to dinner at the town's one claim to fame, a restaurant and soda fountain called Tolly's. I'd only been in there once or twice, and not more recently than twenty years ago.
"Historic Oakland" pretty much defines the place now. It was always kind of small and sleepy, the archetypical small Central Oregon farm town (population under one thousand), but now most of the buildings -- including several that were working businesses when we moved to Roseburg around 1980 -- are closed up and full of museum knicknacks. Every window has a little placard about what it used to be. "Antiques" signs are all over the place. The bank's closed, as has the post office, and the library has moved up the street to the new town hall. About the only thing still exactly as I remembered is the school buildings up on top of the hill: Oakland Elementary and Lincoln Jr. High (and the high school, which I didn't attend). And, of course, there's Tolly's. The meal was excellent, by the way.
Perhaps it's that we went there on a weekend, but it felt very eerie and deserted walking along the empty streets, seeing the town I knew as a boy reduced to one big museum exhibit - hardly even a functioning town any more.
We also stopped by our old property, about a mile outside of town on seven acres (just the right size for a young couple up from California, looking to raise their three boys in the country). The new owners have been busy; it was impossible to recognize even the outline of the old house under the current dwelling, and the yard has completely changed. If I was able to wander the back country, I might find some familiar hill or meadow... but that's not going to happen. To paraphrase the elder Rose, of TITANIC: "That place exists now only in my memories."
"Historic Oakland" pretty much defines the place now. It was always kind of small and sleepy, the archetypical small Central Oregon farm town (population under one thousand), but now most of the buildings -- including several that were working businesses when we moved to Roseburg around 1980 -- are closed up and full of museum knicknacks. Every window has a little placard about what it used to be. "Antiques" signs are all over the place. The bank's closed, as has the post office, and the library has moved up the street to the new town hall. About the only thing still exactly as I remembered is the school buildings up on top of the hill: Oakland Elementary and Lincoln Jr. High (and the high school, which I didn't attend). And, of course, there's Tolly's. The meal was excellent, by the way.
Perhaps it's that we went there on a weekend, but it felt very eerie and deserted walking along the empty streets, seeing the town I knew as a boy reduced to one big museum exhibit - hardly even a functioning town any more.
We also stopped by our old property, about a mile outside of town on seven acres (just the right size for a young couple up from California, looking to raise their three boys in the country). The new owners have been busy; it was impossible to recognize even the outline of the old house under the current dwelling, and the yard has completely changed. If I was able to wander the back country, I might find some familiar hill or meadow... but that's not going to happen. To paraphrase the elder Rose, of TITANIC: "That place exists now only in my memories."
