By Vern Holmquist
I have a dream. Whoa! I wonder where I got that line? Anyway, I do have a dream, a dream for Mt. Angel. I dream of a train that will get me from The Oregon Garden to Portland.
A commuter train, if you will. Everyone here seems to have a reason to go to Portland sometime, whether it is to work, to play, to go to the doctor or just to visit. Does it really have to take two tons of steel, rubber and glass and a half-tank of gas to get us there?
Mt. Angel and Silverton serve as bedroom communities to Portland. Those who work in Portland make that 80-mile or so round-trip every workday. The heavy traffic between Silverton and Woodburn testifies to that.
And then there is the interest of our local people in drawing tourists to our towns. Visitors could take the train to Oktoberfest, The Oregon Garden, Abbey, Silverton and Mt. Angel as well as get our produce to market. I dream of open-sided railroad cars in the summertime where visitors and our residents could enjoy unobstructed views of our beautiful valley in a less hectic way.
A commuter train would let someone else do the driving. Others have had this dream, but so many things have changed in the past few months that this dream has taken on a practical side. We will be seeing more changes in our lifestyle; the days of waste and extravagance are disappearing. Whether the government decides to bail out the Big Three auto makers or not, we will be driving smaller cars but even those smaller hybrid or electric cars will not solve our infrastructure problems. We have an increasing population and it will take mass transportation to move it around.
Pollution, climate warming and high unemployment due to our cooling economy will force changes in our lives and many of us will have to stop dreaming and start preparing ourselves for an unavoidable future. For now we can dream but before too long we will have to turn dreams into practical solutions.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I stopped at one of my favorite Mt. Angel spots, The Koffee Konnection. So what if he can’t spell coffee, Prentice is always coming up with something new, he is always improving his facilities for entertaining people as well as serving them the tastiest soup and sandwiches found anywhere. Do I hear an amen?
If you wander past the food preparation area you will discover a stage, stage lighting, sound system and a big screen TV. He can now go forward with live entertainment on occasions, Karaoke nights for aspiring singers and movie nights. (He can’t charge for the movies but he can charge for the food you consume while enjoying the movie.) And best of all, he intends to let us know if a particular event is for the young set or old folks. Hey! How accommodating can a guy be? Good luck to you, my friend.
While I advocate cheaper, ecological transportation, I admit my personal contribution may be a bit drastic. We surviving World War II vets must be a pretty hardy bunch, yet I did have an appointment with the VA clinic in Salem. There I was on a foggy morning hardly able to see across the street, my gloved hand trying to keep the fog off the inside and outside of my helmet face shield as I got all I could out of my 50cc motor scooter. I checked my wind chill chart and the 35 degrees turned to 5 degrees at my 35 mph on our country roads, well, it was an interesting challenge and I was no way worse off for the adventure and it makes a good story for the grandchildren. Hey, taking a few chances gets one the most of life.
