Down by the riverside

Captured these as we looped down to Oregon at the end of July, weaving along the back highways following the tail end of the Columbia River.

Ilwaco, WA

Not much going on in this old fishing port on at the mouth of the river, but they do make an effort keeping Main Street colorful and "vintage"!

Bar, Scappoose, OR

Rhymes with "papoose."

Auto shop, Scappoose, OR

Scappoose is a surprisingly thriving strip along Highway 6. This building looks like it's been through a few bar fights.

Scappoose, OR

Even the front door is slightly gimpy.

St. Helens, OR

Time remains frozen on the banks of the Columbia. Except they do show 3-D films.

St. Helens, OR

I don't know about Robert Frost, but I do like a good wall.

Westport, OR

Green patch of mystery in another wonky door.

Westport, OR

Westport, OR

Signage galore...keeping the past alive.

St. Johns, Portland OR

A wonderful north-end riverside neighborhood.

St. Johns, Portland OR

A hot morning, good for manly shorts and tank tops.

St. Johns, Portland OR

The Western Well, not to be confused with the Western Wall.

St. Johns, Portland OR

Our family had this car, or "as close as dammit," in the '50s. My father dubbed it "Uncle Wiggily."

My Many Hats (2. The Spy)

This week I depart ever so slightly from this week's Sepia Saturday "games" theme: although as a child I dearly loved proper games such as Uncle Wiggily, Chutes and Ladders, Monopoly, Scrabble, and so on, much of my playtime was taken up with role-playing. The heyday of this activity began around fifth grade, 1965, when spies came into my realm of knowledge.

And soon enough I created my own spy, writing a collection of lavishly illustrated short stories of his outlandish exploits.

Simon Ferret, Esq., the UK's only "internationally known clairvoyant espionage agent"

Here's how that came about... What with the Cold War being in full swing (let me tell you some time about my Cuban Missile Crisis experience), spies were in the news and on the entertainment front. The James Bond films were too mature for me, but my mother did introduce me to The Man from UNCLE on TV, which I quickly became obsessed with. I took it deadly seriously, not realizing it was a spoof.

I acquired the requisite related materiel, from bubblegum cards, the soundtrack album, and books spun off from the series, to Corgi models of the UNCLE cars...

From here I quickly followed along with the popularity of the genre, soaking in episodes of the debonair I Spy g-men Robert Culp and Bill Cosby...

the peerless Avengers, with Emma Peel's Lotus and John Steed's (wait for it) BENTLEY, both of which Corgi also happily offered...

Pre-007 Roger Moore as The Saint with his dashing Volvo...

Bond himself eventually, with the classic Aston-Martin, which Corgi sold with all its bells and whistles...

Maxwell Smart and Agent 99, in Get Smart, which spoofed the spoofs with a wimpy little Sunbeam Alpine...

Honey West, who, to be fair wasn't a spy but a private eye, but still had a hot car, an AC Cobra...

And the creme-de-la-creme, Patrick McGoohan as The Prisoner, hot on the heels of his Secret Agent (aka Danger Man)... in his Lotus 7

So back to Simon Ferret... it's hard to say whether his derring-do or his collection of rare automobiles was more important to his stories. 

He kept many garagefuls of them scattered around Europe for use at the drop of a bowler...typically attached to his palatial residences.

One of Simon's humble abodes

Spot these features in Simon's workroom: opaque projector, table of the elements, movie screen, hazmat suit, shortwave radio, and a ...er ...computer.

Simon's living room contained: the de rigeur lava lamp, fireman's pole to the lower floor, elevator-pedestal to the upper floor, an American-style phone booth, and a marmite dispenser.

I developed Simon into an alter-ego, becoming an obnoxious Anglophile to the extent of affecting a generic British accent (fluctuating wildly between BBC and a Beatle-y scouse) which still I slip into at odd moments to this day. 

Winlock Morning

The Evolution of Uncle Wiggily

Welcome to the first Eff-Stop post of 2014! I stretch the bus-centric theme for this week's Sepia Saturday post just a hair by featuring some vehicles from my father Nelson Bentley's life.

Here's Nelson around 1920, going hogwild on his scooter, near the Bentley Bros. general store, next door to their farmhouse in rural Michigan. Meanwhile the family truck lurks in the background. It looks to me like that's a spoked spare wheel leaning against the wall.

Here's a better view of the truck, a year of two later. That's sister Margaret sharing the sandpit (the farm was situated on a sand hill).

This is the family car around the same time. I can't tell the make, but historically my grampa George Bentley loved Chevrolets. I imagine that's him at the wheel. Nelson appears to be wearing a Scout's uniform. I wish cars still had running boards.

As a teen, Nelson drove the new International delivery truck, named Bosco. The dogs are Pluto (on the hood), Mike the Airedale, and Chingo the chow. Reportedly there were also three cats, Dempsey, Tunny, and Firpo, named for contemporary boxers.

Jumping ahead to college years, this suave pose has Nelson letting the Michigan winter wind up his leg.

And the same car (whatever it is...perhaps my mother's Dodge, which she bought with University of Michigan prize money for her fiction) in warmer weather. Note the pocketful of pens, which were forever a trademark of my father's, and the sockless moccasins, in which he wouldn't have been caught dead in later years.

Speaking of my mother, here she is with our family's first cars, Uncle Wiggily, a cream- and-gray 1950 Chevy, at the Pacific coast circa 1957.

Uncle W's replacement was, of course, Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy the Muskrat Lady Housekeeper, a 1955 Chevy of a unique washed-out blue. Here I am joined by my friend Mark and my sister Julian, around 1965, soda bottles in hand, on a trip to Bellingham, Washington.

Bonus:  Uncle Wiggily and Nurse Jane

There are a few more of the Bentleys' autos at this 2010 post, Detroit Wheels...