On Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 9:56:56 PM UTC-7, Technobarbarian wrote:
On Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 9:42:48 PM UTC-7, Technobarbarian wrote:
I had one thing I wanted to do south of me and ended up with three. Have you ever been to one of those geezer lunches? I've always been a bit curious, but had never gotten to it. Hell, I never felt old until the pandemic. I did that today, and it was
a bit better than I expected. I got there a little early and there were people playing bingo outside the lunch room. There was a choice of fish tacos or beef/mac. I thought the tacos were excellent. There were about 20 people there and most of them were
pretty quiet. The developly disabled man who said he had been volunteering there for 20 years was the most talkative person of the group. I liked him.
From there I drove to the Insane Asylum museum, where they filmed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I had hoped they had a bigger part of huge building they are in. There are two miles of tunnels under the complex and you don't get to see any of that.
My main memory of the time I was there over 50 years ago was going down a long corridor, through several locked doors. You don't get to do that. But, they were able to select from a big collection of old equipment in the basement for the museum. The
museum is small, but it's modern and well done. It's history goes back to 1844.
From there I drove to the Willamette Heritage Center. Besides the museum they have: a restaurant, a Pendleton Woolen Mill store and several other boutique shops. The main focus and the best part of the museum is the old woolen mill there, with a lot
of the old equipment. Since it was a quiet day without guided tours I was given a visitor key to enter the various buildings.. They have what is thought to have been the second wood frame building, in Oregon built by and for the Methodist missionaries.
The first wod frame building was for the wood mill they got their lumber from. Log mills used to burn down frequently here. So I assume that's what happened to that building. There's a millrace there that used to run gears and belts to power the woolen
mill. Now they power an electrical generator. The mill is this big old four story wooden monstrosity that was used until 1962. They have an elevator and that was out of order. "If you want to rock and roll it's long way to the top." They have hobbyists
using looms on the top floor. I got there just in time to watch them lock up that section.
I don't know what happened to the freeway, But I-5 south bound was jammed up all the way from Salem to Portland when I headed north again. As usual north bound was reasonable until I got close to Portland. We had a lot of rain today, so it was a fun
day to drive.
TB
Oh yeah, interesting thing about the movie. The director of the hospital decided that both patients and staff needed to vote on whether or not they allowed filming there. The hospital director played himself in the movie. They used some of the staff
for patients in the movie and some of the patients were used to portray staff.
Missing Heritage Center link:
https://www.willametteheritage.org/
TB
For a short time, the prison I worked had a role in a "Scared Straight" program, where "at risk" 15-18 year old boys, about 8, or 10 to a group, were brought into prison, to show them what might be waiting for them, if they didn't change their low
down ways... The convicts absolutely loved participating, in scaring them, and were real hams at doing so!
Staff would take them into a cell block, and let the convicts taunt them mercilessly for 45 minutes on what it's like to be buggered by a grown up nakkid, convict, then robbed, and sold to other prisoners... After that, they'd be escorted to the chow
hall, where unsympathetic staff would tell the more jailhouse horror stories... During this time, a phony alarm would sound, and the heroic prison guards would respond, bringing back bloody (ketchup smeared) combatants, cuffed, & crab walked to a
holding cell.... The convicts always put on convincing performances......
Uncle Bighouse (Ret.)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)