Rich Wandschneider

Jonathan Nicholas, the longtime columnist for the Oregonian, spent a recent week in the county with a group of old Peace Corps friends who’d been in Nepal together 50 years ago. We joked about Wallowa County being “The County” for insiders across the state in his heyday at the newspaper.

The visit sent me back further, to my arrival in the county in 1971. My ticket was the Oregon State University Extension Service. I spent a week in Corvallis getting oriented before I could see the place (I was living in Washington, D.C., at the time, and had been hired by a group of Corvallis academics and Extension Service supervisors. One of the supervisors was Jim McCallister, who’d grown up in the county — and has a daughter and grandchildren living here today.)

I was told that the county was a beautiful place, but that my boss, an ole Wyoming cowboy named Chuck Gavin, would be a challenge. Chuck, a lifelong Republican who had little use for religion or Democrats — except for the chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, Al Ullman of Baker — turned out to be the best boss I ever had.

Chuck not only introduced me to the county — we made a 10-hour tour on my first day on the job — but introduced me to the state. When we went to Portland, we stayed at the Imperial Hotel, where the Oregon Cattlemen had their office, and where most people from the dry side stayed when in the city. When we traveled to Corvallis for Extension’s annual conference, we stopped at the Long Branch in La Grande for breakfast, and ate lunch at Charburger in Cascade Locks, picking up Extension agents along the way.

At my first conference, having a drink in Chuck’s Corvallis room the afternoon before, Arleigh Isley, born in the county, but at the time Extension agent in Lake County, was at the door. There was a crowd, most of them men from east of the Cascades. A new man came to the door, and I wondered for a minute why no one paid him any attention, and then Arleigh said “Chuck, he’s got low shoes on. Do you think we oughta let him in?”

In the 1970s, 4-H, 4-H Summer School in Corvallis, and county and state fairs were big. We had between over 300 4-H’ers, and a county fair win meant a trip to the State Fair in Salem. We even had a county booth at the State Fair — I gathered photos from Walt Klages and operated it for a couple of years. And the president of OSU showed up for the annual Cattlemen’s steak feed and dance at Cloverleaf Hall, told parents he’d met Jim or Sally at Summer School, and asked when they’d graduate and come to his college.

OSU was the college of choice, even though Leland Ratcliff gave scholarships to Eugene. Eastern Oregon College had commuters from the county finish degrees, and supplied us with many teachers, who’d found their ways to Eastern from across the state. But check the diplomas of most retirees raised in the county and you’ll find they came from Corvallis.

I moved on from Extension when we opened The Bookloft in 1976. When Chuck retired, he drank coffee in Judy’s Kitchen with Max Bauer, who’d grown up here, went off to war and a job and music on the west side, and came back to take care of his mom, Ethel Wade, and start a jazz band!

Sen. Mark Hatfield was also a Bookloft customer. Hatfield’s chief of staff, Jerry Frank, sipped coffee and talked while the boss was meeting with county commissioners. Frank was a “Meier and Frank” heir, a proud Oregonian who used his travel time with the senator to scout the best places across the state. He wrote a guidebook, “Jerry Frank’s Oregon” — still available in a fourth edition!

I began this piece with Jonathan and The Oregonian. Bobbie Ulrich was the agricultural editor then. Chuck knew that squeaky wheels got greased, and was often on the phone with Bobbie. And then Jonathan, the Welshman, came on board at the paper, and immediately began combing the state. He fell in love with the county and the east side, and at least once a month he’d be in Condon for a fair or the county for a look at the lake or the canyons. He was a frequent Bookloft customer, and eventually Mary Swanson read that the store was for sale in a Nicholas column, came out, and bought the place!

There were always wet-side-dry-side jokes and OSU-UO and Democratic-Republican rivalries, but one can’t help thinking that 50 years ago thousands of 4-H kids, the Extension Service and a statewide newspaper helped knit Oregon together. That joining Idaho would have been a laugh.