On Friday, June 13th, 1975 — 45 years ago today — my sons’ father and I and our first golden retriever left Michigan and all we’d known and headed west. Our “covered wagon” was a small pop up trailer that Jim and his childhood family had grown up camping in that his parents gave us before we left. So grateful.
We didn’t know where we wanted to settle, just somewhere “out west.” Jim and Brook and I spent a month on the road. Each morning we’d wake up and make a plan for that day. We traveled to Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and other states where, back in Michigan, we thought we might want to live. But coming to each new town or city, it was hard to imagine feeling rooted there. So we just kept going.
When we arrived in Seattle, I was tired of camping and wanted a home. Plus we were nearly out of money. We looked one morning for a place in Seattle, but then Jim said, “Let’s go to Oregon.” I initially resisted because I was so ready to stop our wandering. But then on July 12th we headed south, drove through Portland, and then headed east. That was my first time to see the Columbia River Gorge. I was overwhelmed with its beauty. That was the day that we first began to make Oregon our home.
We camped a couple nights in the gorge and then got an apartment on the east side of Gresham, a suburb of Portland with a population of 16,000 at the time and over 110,000 today. The next day I interviewed for a job working at Ron’s No Place in Sandy, a tavern now called the No Place Saloon, and was hired on the spot. The apartment manager hired Jim to paint the complex. Our friend Ron Zilli traveled from Michigan and moved in with us and together they painted the whole apartment complex.
Three months later Jim, Ron, our golden Brook, and I moved into our first house on Jenne Road in east Portland — a home which was on 3 acres and cost us $145/month. We got such a great deal on the rent after Jim and Ron completed major house renovations. We then embarked on our “back to the land” phase. We planted a big garden, heated with a wood stove, got chickens and rabbits and ducks and geese and goats and a horse, and I began to can our vegetables. That lasted until I realized how much work it is to “get back to the land.”
There’s much more to our story. But this is a glimpse. Now Jim and I have 3 beautiful sons and grandchildren who are native Oregonians. While I will always treasure Michigan as my childhood home and the home of my ancestors, I experience the Pacific Northwest as the home of my heart and soul.
I’m deeply grateful for the courage of Jim and myself — two 24 year olds who grew up outside of Detroit and who left everything and everyone we knew 45 years ago today and headed for the unknowns of the West, ultimately landing us here in the Pacific Northwest. We didn’t know anyone, we didn’t have jobs, we had no specific place we knew we’d want to call home. We just headed west and kept going until our money ran out. And Oregon/Washington has been home ever since. Today is a very special anniversary.
♥ Molly
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| Jim, Brook, my brother and me — just before leaving Michigan, June 1975 |
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| Jim and me on the Oregon coast with our 3 sons Brian, Kevin, Matt and our golden retriever Dillon, 1990 |
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