Author: darrelplant

My boss, Brad Smith was in Cork, Ireland the other day and ran across a building with this interesting plaque.

I’m not really sure how—aside from the fact that I’m probably just too old—I was unaware of the fact that there is something called the Dixie Mattress Festival, or that it has been around for ten years now.

It’s such an inside-SE Portland joke. For many years on SE Belmont near my house, there was a dingy-looking place that sold mattresses, under two large Confederate battle flags, called Dixie Mattress. They’ve been gone for nine years now, but apparently a Portland band (now) called Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons wrote a song featuring the place—or at least a mattress from there—more than twenty years back.

You think this lack of love and money
Would leave us banging on the walls
But when I lie with Dixie Mattress
I don’t give a damn, care if I
Ever see your face at all

Such a weird little piece of Portland history to be—I guess—celebrated? At least it’s in Scio.

At least there’s a free show by The Dickies at the big casino just north of Portland this weekend.

I had noticed some work down the other day on a house owned by the woman who was probably the oldest and longest resident on SE Alder. When I walked past it this morning on my way to work, however, I noticed that it wasn’t renovation going on, they’re deconstructing one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood, built in 1889 (most of the other houses on the street were built in the first couple decades of the 1900s).

Anna, the woman who lived there, died a couple of years back. She had a big garden in the side yard and grew much of her food, including—it was rumored—a couple of small coffee bushes. She also owned a couple of other houses on the block as rentals.

The garden and the house are soon to be no more, however. The big lot’s too valuable for city farming.