Rich Wandschneider

Russell Ford passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was, like me, 80. In fact, we got to celebrate our 80th together at the new Lostine Tavern in October. I’m happy for that.

But it occurs to me now that time has passed, and many of the people that Russell and I dealt with at the OK Theatre and the bookstore decades ago are gone. New people seeing the OK being refurbished, going to plays at the Elgin Opera House, seeing the glass mugs at Terminal Gravity or seeing new glassware turned out at Moonshine Glass might not know that it was all Russell’s doing.

Russell arrived in the county in 1976 or 77, shortly after we opened the Bookloft. He went straight to Imnaha, as far away as possible from his swimming pool cleaning business in Southern California. Like most who arrived in the ‘70s, Russell came in a VW. His was a van — mine a bug. I don’t know how long he cowboyed and carpentered for the Borgerdings and others on the Imnaha, before he found us and the other newbies in town found the backroom of the Bookloft. The Bookloft added Judy’s Kitchen at the rear, with fresh coffee at 50 cents the cup, and a phone. Pre-cell and pre-computer, phones were precious things.

Ralph Swinehart says that Russell talked to him about fashioning a movie theater in Imnaha. I don’t remember that, but do remember him buying the Vista Theater and turning it back into the OK. Cleaning up the restrooms, putting together a first-class popcorn stand and movie-candy counter — think Necco Wafers and Dots. He cleaned up the playbill as well. The joke in town was that all the people from La Grande came to Enterprise when “Deep Throat” played at the Vista, and Wallowa Countians who wanted to see the film went to La Grande. I guess it was to hide their porn thirsts from their hometown neighbors.

In the early 1980s, when Russell was fresh at the OK and Judy’s Kitchen newly minted at the rear of the bookstore, the Kitchen became a hub for art talk. Eve Slinker went back to school to get a degree in art and got me involved in a new Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council. Don Green and Malcolm Dawson backed a Montana Repertoire Theater production and the gym at the high school filled. We had regular visiting artists in the schools. Soon the Wishart brothers were running the best school art program in the state. And the Wallowa Valley Arts Council grew in that Kitchen.

I don’t think Russell was on the original Arts Council board, but he was up for live theater, and with Arts Council support, got money for stage lighting, expanded the stage 10 or 12 feet to the front, built a “green room” for actors to rest and dress in, and off the community went with live plays and music from the college in La Grande. Russell was on a roll. He cleared the fly loft and bought a new screen that he could pull up when he needed the whole stage, and use to drop backdrops for plays. Missoula Children’s Theater regularly sold out two shows, and, as Chuck Ackley, who was working at the Bookloft and had acting chops, and Russell became good friends, they conjured up a one-man Clarence Darrow show that was terrific.

And, somehow, he learned that the building that housed Elgin city offices had been built in 1912 to house the city and its entertainment. The Elgin Opera House had a slanted theater floor and box seats. City offices were upstairs and the jail was in the basement. Russell got a lease and restored it, helped found an arts group in Elgin, and ran first-run movies back and forth between OK and Elgin while the people there developed live theater.

When I left the bookstore to start Fishtrap, Russell came on as a board member. And when Fishtrap read John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” for The Big Read, over 300 people showed up to see the original film at the OK.

But I think what really kept Russell on the board were the August meetings at Janie Tippett’s house. Russell loved good wine, but he also loved Janie’s blackberry cobbler, and we all loved the conversations around Janie’s picnic table.

The big 80th birthday bash at the Lostine Tavern was not quite our last go-round. Russell loved wine, and he loved port and he had a Portuguese connection. His wife, Lori — he waited until he was 60 and found Lori to marry — thinks it was when he went llama trekking with Stanlynn Daugherty (our longtime local llama packer off Hurricane Creek Highway) in France that he slipped over to Portugal to bring back extraordinary port, including some from 1942, our birth year.

And, just a few weeks ago, Lori, Russell and I convened at Rick Bombaci’s house to taste it against other years. Lori thought another year’s was better port, but 1942 was a good year for Russell and Rich.