I was about 3 ½ when we moved to the family farm on the river. I know that because we were already there when my brother was born. I remember watching my mother treat his umbilical cord with iodine.

(The star shows where I lived at this time. Pearson Road goes all the way to Old Highway 30 (having gone underneath Columbia River Highway - US 30).)

The house was built in the 1930s when my Swedish ancestors immigrated to Oregon. They built it in the Swedish fashion upon a foundation of stilts which works perfectly on the soft soil of a river bank. At the time we moved in, it was a two-bedroom house of about 700 square feet. Very small by today’s standards. My parents got the corner bedroom with two windows and I was in the other bedroom with my brother in the crib.

There was a multitude of mice living there, with little gnawed holes from behind the skirting boards. It was like Tom and Jerry or something. Except to my imagination, these were tunnels for a little train that would go around the house in my dreams.

We had high ceilings in that house, the tall Swedes built the house with 9-foot ceilings (rather than the standard 8 feet in most homes today.) This was particularly noticeable in the kitchen, where we had an old wood cookstove for a few years until my parents could afford an electric one. The kitchen sink had the hot and cold reversed for a long time. And the cupboards were coated with thick paint (probably lead-based) that peeled in places – fun to play with.

We ate our meals (to begin with) in the breakfast nook off the kitchen. It had lots of paned-windows, one of which opened on a slider bar. These were thin windows, but with old glass that had warped with time. They frosted up delightfully in the winter. The ceiling in that part was framed with wood along all the seams, and painted in brown, like a half-timbered house, except these small timbers were on the inside.

In the living room was (originally) an oil burner. I remember the truck visiting to refill the tank – before my parents bought the wood heater, the first of several, while they learned what worked and what didn’t (pretty glass fronts that shattered with real use.)

The room had a square bay window which, I’ve since discovered, is a very typical Swedish feature. This was the area we used for the dining room. There was also a beautiful in-built china cabinet with glass knobs on the glass-paned doors.

In the living room, sort of forming the boundary between the dining room and the living room was where we kept the piano – a 5’ (or so) high piece of furniture which could never be tuned quite true. (He would break it if he did, the blind tuner told my parents.) It was always about half a note flat, but true to itself. I would spend many hours on the piano bench over the years to come.

Across from the piano was the couch, but behind that is where my parents set up the book shelves, simply wood boards stacked with cinderblocks that had little holes perfect for spiders to make themselves at home – and to hide Easter eggs in. Those went from floor to ceiling and held many interesting works that had either been read, or was on their “to read” list.

Forming the final third of the room were things like the TV set (I remember when we first got color – and I discovered that the “diversity” activity on Sesame Street wasn’t just four black balls, but were red and blue – three of them striped and the other one spotted – something that was completely lost in black-and-white.)

At Christmas time, we would have a tree that would touch the ceiling in a metal star with a light. The lights weren’t the boring primary/secondary colors like we have now. They were all kinds of pastels, pinks, blues, pale greens, beautiful! And they would reflect on the ceiling like it was a distant landscape – like the one I could see out the North window…

(A slightly enhanced view of the river. There are fewer trees now and the house has been restored and improved.)

Where the porch was… It wasn’t in great condition anymore, years of rain and snow rotting it in places, so only Dad was allowed out there – when he was using the barbecue. A tall ladder was in place outside the porch, as a fire escape.

But the North window also gave us a nice glimpse of the Columbia River which stretched a good 4 or 5 miles across – across the sloughs and islands. On the far, far side was the shipping channel. When it was foggy, I could hear the fog horns blaring as the ships made their way safely up the river to Portland or down the river to Astoria.

Twice a day on the weekdays, the Portland-to-Astoria freight train would pass. Around 7am and again around 7pm, I guess it was. There was one place on the porch from where you could see it, but otherwise, it was heard, but not seen, despite the fact it passed maybe 100 feet from where we sat. It was just that that 100 feet was a steep bank covered in trees, vine maples, salmonberries and blackberries.

(The train ran past at the bottom of that hill. There is an island in the Svensen Slough which prevents seeing where the tracks were.)

It was 7.5 acres of heaven for me. Despite the wood hauling and winter wet gales that would wave trees threateningly. Despite the ¼ mile walk to the school bus when I was old enough and the driveway that many people wouldn’t even dare to drive down due to it becoming a rocky, muddy mess in the winters. Despite the large owls that liked to eat our chickens.

Yes, a perfect place to grow up. But I will continue that next time.

Photos taken in August 2019 with my Pentax K30.
Map from Google Maps, used for educational purposes.

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Past issues...

Preschool to Second Grade - Svensen, Oregon

Svensen Trailer Court ,

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Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
(Buy my work at RedBubble, TeePublic, and DeviantArt.)
verified author on Goodreads
find me on Twitter

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