This is the Bigfoot mascot of the Molalla High School sports teams. Apparently there have been sightings of Bigfoot there.
Because I’ve visited the town this story about Molalla caught my attention… and I thought I had an unusual perspective to share.
The article begins:
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – The Gladstone School District and Molalla River School District say they’re investigating a report of a student who allegedly wore blackface to a basketball game between the two schools Friday night.
Flynn Brechbiel is a sophomore on the Gladstone boys junior varsity basketball team and said he started noticing some concerning things when the team first arrived at Molalla High School Friday. He said the woman escorting the team to the locker room kept holding her phone up over her shoulder, pointing it toward the team. He said the phone displayed an image of an American flag attached to a Confederate flag.
“I told my friend, who’s also African American… ‘It’s probably going to be a long night. So like, just like, be aware. So just keep your composure. It’s going to be a long night,’” he said.
By the expressway it’s about a 35 minute drive from me, but I like taking back roads so it took about an hour to get there though our lovely farmland countryside.
I’d visited the town to check out some of the restaurants in my quest to find unique places to eat around where I live in a suburb of Portland. Walking around the town I decided on The Hitchn’ Post.
While I was greeted in a welcoming way both by some of the patrons who I said hello to as I came and went and the staff was very friendly I got the distinct impression that I didn’t fit in. For example, the four or five men sitting about 20 feet away talking loudly in the section next to mine who were there when I arrived and there when I left spent the entire time talking about the pros and cons of various brands and types of firearms.
I have a mostly non-political blog, a diary really about my life. Today the story includes this one but also is about my first experience with an air fryer. I posted a photo essay about the visit there.
Below are some of the photos on my lunch at The Hitchn’ Post including of the men talking guns, two of whom were wearing cowboy hats in this rodeo town.
Click to enlarge image below.
I don’t know anything about the politics of the owner, but they do make a damn tasty hamburger.
Click to enlarge image below:
Molalla is known for its popular Buckeroo rodeo (website):
It made the national news when the state was having wildfires: How a 'Hillbilly Brigade' saved an Oregon town from raging wildfires.
A mere six days ago it made there local news:
I just found this article from six days ago as I was writing this. Had I seen it then I might have written this diary at the time.
Excerpt: Speakers at the Let Freedom March III rally spoke out against mask, vaccine mandates before marching through downtown
The River Church, located in Salem, hosted a Let Freedom March III rally in Molalla on Saturday, Jan. 22. The rally was part of a series of demonstrations put on by the church.
River Church Pastor Lew Wootan led the event with a goal, he said, of creating an army of folks willing to stand up for Oregonians' rights against mask and vaccine mandates.
The rally attracted a couple hundred people and featured several community members, business owners and local students.
When I go out to eat in nearby towns I feel that I am among like-minded people. The further I venture from home the more aware I am that I can’t make any assumptions about the opinions of people I interact with. My curiosity got the best of me when I was in Yamhill where Nick Kristoff has a farm and asked a clerk in their general store what she thought about his wanting to run for governor. (See recent story about him: Ruined lives prompted Kristof’s run for Oregon governor.) You may have read that he’s in court trying to reverse a ruling that he can’t run because he’s not a resident.
I was ready for a MAGA diatribe about why this liberal New York Times columnist would bring the perils of socialism or worse to the state. Instead the woman grinned and said she loved him and described what he was like in high school since her mother was one of his classmates.
Here are some more photos of the town from my blog.
Click here to read above.
Addendum:
My blog is about my life and includes photo essays of my trips around the Portland, Oregon area venturing as far as Vancouver, Washington, to eat at one of their riverside restaurants and then driving along the winding State Rt 14 which also runs alongside the Columbia River all the way to The Bridge of the Gods - see photo and then crossing back into Oregon where I drive back home on the I-84 expressway which also runs along the scenic and mighty river. Another favorite drive is into our beautiful rural Yamhill County in Oregon's wine country where there seems to be a lovely vista around every hairpin turn (some photos below).
In the blog I also document my quest to find unique restaurants in photo essays and I have found quite a few including one that is in a working gas station a a small dinner that is something of a Betty Boop memorabilia museum.
So, dear reader, if you’ve read my Kos posts before you may think I am obsessed by politics. Oh, hush, I have other far more pleasant ways to occupy my time than reading articles about how perilously close the country is to becoming a former democracy and then trying to come up with something original to write about the news.
International readers on my blog. I have no idea who in Indonesia or Russia may be reading it.