Still no phone camera, but I will occasionally offer links of interest. Here's a documentary from the mid-1990s about the history of the McCleary Bear Festival--
Showing posts with label Norman Porter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Norman Porter. Show all posts
Thursday, June 10, 2021
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Every picture tells a story
The public restrooms on the left of the photo was about where Henry McCleary had his executive office when his sawmill was in current day Beerbower Park. The kitchen-picnic building behind that was constructed around the late 1980s or early 1990s to replace the original building that had been built in the early days of the McCleary Bear Festival as a place to cook the bear stew.
The current City Hall, constructed in the late 1950s, was originally the site of Henry McCleary's later headquarters. When President Roosevelt came through town in an open car in the 1930s, Henry instructed his employees to turn their backs. After McCleary sold the town to Simpson, he tried living in northern Nevada for a brief time, but that did not work out. In his final year or so even though he resided in Olympia he could occasionally be seen sitting outside of his old headquarters watching the world go by in a town he no longer controlled.
The crosswalk brings to mind this little tale. McCleary has had a long and colorful history of Chiefs of Police. In the 1950s the City hired a young photogenic fellow from Shelton for the job and he was the first person to institute the use of marked crosswalks on the main roads. Most of the residential streets were not paved until much later.
Anyway, after maybe a year the Chief vanished "between two days" as Norman Porter of the McCleary Stimulator put it, with part of the City treasury and someone else's wife. The law finally caught up with him in the Bay Area about a year later. So think of that next time you use a McCleary crosswalk.
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Preparing the bear stew
In 1959 the town celebrated the first annual Second Growth Festival, an event that stemmed from the University of Washington sponsored Operation Second Growth, 1955-1956, a program designed to help small communities help themselves.
The local editor of the McCleary Stimulator, Norman Porter, got into an editorial war with Roy Craft, the editor of the Skamania County Pioneer over which county had the better tasting bears. I suspect alcohol was involved in this debate.
Craft, who had actually started the Stimulator back in the 1920s with his twin brother Ray, and was a childhood pal of Porter's had briefly been Marilyn Monroe's publicist. He was the guy who convinced her to stand over a grate in downtown NYC in order to promote the Seven Year Itch motion picture. Leave it to a McCleary guy to think of that.
Anyway, in the first year the bear was served in steak form, but in short order the Festival planners figured out it was easier to make stew so more people could enjoy it.
The Festival soon became known as the McCleary Second Growth and Bear Festival, but now the "Second Growth" portion of the name has been discarded.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
The Pig Lot
This body of water behind the Simpson Plant has been known as the "Pig Lot" for decades. The water itself is created by a dam and for years some locals used the large pond as a fishing hole. Today the area has a "No Trespassing" sign.
The name "Pig Lot" originated back in the 1920s when John Wesley Porter, the operator of the Porter Hotel, used the area for keeping his pigs before the animals were converted to bacon and ham for the guests. The Porter Hotel stood in the the little strip mall across from City Hall, where the pizza place recently closed. The hotel, which was intended for working people, grew so big it expanded into an annex across 3rd street. When the annex was demolished in the 1950s, much of the recycled lumber went into building the present VFW Hall.
Porter's son, Norman, later became the editor of The McCleary Stimulator in the 1950s and one of the people who started the tradition of serving bear meat on an annual basis since 1959 in McCleary.
Monday, July 11, 2016
The last glimpse of a James Abbot mural in McCleary
Jan. 2, 2016
The last glimpse of a James Abbot mural in McCleary, shortly before the remaining wall of the former Rhodes Grocery was destroyed. The little building on the corner, also destined to be cleared, was the office of Norman Porter's newspaper, The McCleary Stimulator, in the 1950s.
A website devoted to James Abbott's murals can be found at this link:
http://jamesabbottmurals.blogspot.com/
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