To Don,

One time I woke up from a black out drunk outside of LA Grande without shoes is a pick up heading south. I asked the guy where wever are and where we we are going. He told me if he got me shoes I'd help him brand. Called it squake 2 hen he dropped my off for classes back in Moscow. . . And I got shoes.

The Grande Ronde river snakes through the taiga mountains of northeastern Oregon to find its way to La Grande, a hamlet of some eleven or twelve thousand hearty souls. Winters are sideways with blinding snow and icicles form in seconds in the crisp air. The snow would pack in on the town streets and we would grab the rear bumpers of cars and let them pull us along as we skied in our boots. The illicit sport was called hooky bobbing.

When the snow melts in the spring the Grande Ronde strains at its banks and flows cold at breakneck speed. Back in the day a bunch of young men from the local teacher's college would get drunk and make rafts to race down the raging stream. Half the makeshift rafts would smash into the rocks and townfolk would use their cars to follow the race on a frontage road.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2014 10:44PM by donbagley.

I enjoyed a summer visit, once. An adult child used to live there, but hated those winters, and left. What is so amazing is that drive up the mountain. Definitely beautiful scenery, but not for the faint of heart.

I think Northwest Oregon is the best kept secret in the country. Made a pilgrimage back there last year. It's where my people hail from--back to Oregon trail days. Spent two days in Union. The restored Historic Union Hotel and the the ongoing restoration of the old Hot Springs into a hotel and incredible museum made my trip.

I was shocked that they hadn't torn down the old beautiful Mormon church and put up a cookie cutter one. They did that in Baker City where my grandparents lived. I loved that amazing rock work on the Union chapel. They added on to the back but tied it in well to the look of the old church. Score one for TSCC doing the right thing occasionally.

It was Huckleberry Festival weekend in North Powder too. Brought back so many childhood memories. Drove up to Sumpter and the loop through the mountains back to LaGrande. Such a beautiful place.

Northeastern Oregon. I hope I'm not just being an ass, but northwestern Oregon is Portland.

It said Northeastern when I wrote it. I swear it did.

Well, that was awkward, wasn't it?

Yes, that part of the United States is the best part, and I don't want any of you going there to screw it up. La Grande is nice, but not exactly wonderful, but Baker City and its surroundings are absolutely the best. Being there is all I want to do, weather extremes and all.

I grew up just south of there in Ontario. Yup, it's nice around there.


I'm just glad this thread is about that part of the country, and not Richards.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2014 12:03PM by utahstateagnostics.

LaGrande is in Union county, OR. My mother was born there and is buried there. That entire area was settled by Franklin S Bramwell, a team captain sent by B.Y. Famous LDS names include Hanks, Bean, Peterson, Shumway, etc. There is still a substantial Mormon presence, but it is shrinking and few if any new


conversions are taking place.

My grand patents lived on a ranch in Halfway when I was a child. It was a great place up on the side of the hill. We spent hours playing in the barn and riding the horses.

If we got bored we'd take the long hike to Jim town store. The church in Halfway was like an old white church with wood floors. I remember the parking lot being dirt. I don't know if that church is still there. We also used to go up in the hills and go to an abandoned old gold mining town called Cornucopia. It was spooky being in all those old buildings with peeling paper on the walls. The old saloon was a fun place to go even though it was scary.

My grandfathers hay sled is in the museum there. I remember aunts, uncles cousins riding on the sleigh through the trees. The horses that pulled it were huge work horses, their harneses had bells on them.

My boyfriend from high school is a police officer in LaGrande.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2014 02:21PM by madalice.

the cop who chased me on foot across downtown La Grande over some reefer in 1972.

Real name and lead-in both! We called him brittleprick. Life was stranger than fiction in those days of yore.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 04:39PM by donbagley.

Don, no one says "reefer."

You're right. I go way back to the era of lids and eight track tapes. Heh heh, Officer Glascock told me I wouldn't live to be thirty with my dissolute lifestyle (only he didn't use the word dissolute on account of his vocabulary being small enough to shove through the hole of one of his glazed donuts), and I looked at him and said, "I hope not."

in 1972, my boyfriend was a senior in HS. So no, you're safe. His last name is Crutcher.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 04:10PM by madalice.

I remember LeGrande, OR, as a shortly to be a 9-year-old and it remains a vivid memory.

We stayed at least two nights in a motel in mid-February 1966 moving enroute from Nebraska to Washington State.

We stopped in LeGrande due to the snowy weather (couldn't discern the boundaries of the roads) and my father feeling ill. I remember going to lunch at a sit-down restaurant in Le Grande with my mother and younger two siblings and shopping in a downtown LeGrande dept store where we got coloring books.

The whole time we were there, we found the people friendly and welcoming. That's interesting about the area founded by Mormons and lived in by a majority being Mormon! We weren't aware of that while there and left with nice memories.

I thought it was LeGrande but now checking Wikipedia, I stand corrected with it really being La Grande. In talking in the past with family about that time, I remember now it was La Grande.

I was confusing it with the first name of a Mormon church leader, LeGrande Richards!

My grandfather, John Henry Bagley, is buried in Baker City. Even though it's near La Grande, we didn't go look at his grave. I think my father knew that our family history is really embarrassing and not much more than a story of stupid men having too many children (and sometimes too many wives) to take care of.

Every generation for the last three or four going back, large Bagley families have dissolved in rancor. The Mormon ones hate the ones who become secular. My father had most of his siblings do that, and we were kept away from those sinners when I was a kid. He's a very evil Mormon man, my dad, and he lied to me about his own family. He said they wished they'd never left the gospel and wanted back in, but it was too late somehow. When I finally met his sister in Fontana, CA, she told me he was selfish and arrogant to his siblings.

My father married my mother, a non-Mormon, because her parents had money. She was perhaps the craziest young agoraphobic woman in La Grande. Dad was a local dumbass who the other kids called "Bowge." I don't know where his nickname came from. His father had died early and Bowge was a weird Mormon jerk who claimed his old man turned into a God. Mom was afraid of boys, because they wanted her to socialize. So she hooked up with the outcast oddball, Bowge, at the tender age of nineteen and they were married in the Idaho Temple.

Mom's mother was a mysteriously dark-skinned woman who may have been part black, but that wasn't talked about in the family. My parents went to work on my wealthy grandparents, telling them how rotten I and my siblings were. Their strategy was successful, and none of their offspring were named in the will. Grandpa's side (not Mormon and not lunatic) named the children and grandchildren in the will. Those were from a different marriage, I think. So my mother and father took every last cent of their family's side of grandma and grandpa's fortune, which was one of the best in La Grande.

La Grande is an odd touchstone for me. I was born there, humiliated and abused by my father there, and cut out of the only will that I might have been part of. I was denied a chance to know my agnostic grandparents, as my parents carefully poisoned the relationship. The people of La Grande who were not LDS used to call the local Mormons "cricket stompers." I remember thinking that the Mormons were the worst people in town. The bishop proved my point by demanding that I talk about my genitalia in an interview the first time I met him. I imagine the town now, huddled under the slopes of Mount Emily and Table Mountain, awaiting the dark and frigid nights of winter. It will always be a winter place for me.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2014 11:19PM by donbagley.

Some day we will meet, drink beer or something, and for a few moments the world will seem okay.

Wow, Don. You do write beautifully.

Tough stuff, but always beautifully written.

A fan in Paris ;-)

My dad worked on the Hell's Canyon Dam in the mid 60's. As I recall, he got mail at either Halfway or Baker City. Is this the area you are speaking of? It was a small place as I recall him describing it and he lived in a small trailer.

There was no way to call him, so he gave us the phone number of a diner there in one of those towns where we could leave him a message. The problem was he didn't tell the folks at the diner what his name was. Anyhow, my mother had to have emergency surgery for something which I can't recall. I was in my early teens. I called the diner and told them I needed to get an urgent message to my dad. They had no idea who he was. The waitress I talked to asked me if he had any particular food that he really liked so she might remember a customer who ordered something. I said that he had mentioned that he really liked the raisin pie they served. She immediately knew who he was and got him the message! Some nice people up that way.

My father was an iron worker,and also worked on the dam in the 60's. I recall him being gone for long stretches.

Topping for night readers

I find all of this conversation a little funny. My greatgrand parents homesteaded there and my grandma who was the youngest child, was born there in 1906. None of my family are big names in mormon history though.

I call Union County home. I live about 10 miles N of La Grande. Beautiful place, but yes, harsh winters.

When I left TSCC about 10 years ago, I was attending the Elgin ward.

A-hey-hey-hey-hey...

I lived part of my childhood in a town not far from La Grande. I remember going to stake conference in La Grande and seeing Star Wars for the first time at the movie theater there. Beautiful country but being a kid I didn't realize that it was heavily Mormon influenced. Many happy memories of good friends, going hiking and learning to ski on Wallowa Lake.

I love this part of the world. My moms side of the family is from the Ontario/Fruitland area. If I could figure out a way to make a living there, I would move to Enterprise in a heartbeat.

There is also a city namedGrand Ronde in northwestern Oregon. Its not far from Spirit Mountain casino. I always get the Grand Ronde River near LaGrand and the city of Grand Ronde mixed up.

The first exmo I ever met grew up in LaGrande.

This was back in 1983 in Salem. It only took me another 25 years to make my exit.

Her last name was Jarvis. Maybe you know her family?