Join the celebration

My editor, Joe Beach, posts over at the Back Forty:

The Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center will hold a centennial celebration from 2 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, June 30.

Afternoon activities include kids entertainment, historical exhibits and lab and field tours.

Official presentations will take place from 6 to 6:30 p.m.

A complimentary, family-styled dinner will be served from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

The celebration includes live entertainment from 7 to 8 p.m.

The research center is at 2121 South First St. in Hermiston.

Information: oregonstate.edu/dept/hermiston/, or call the center at 541-567-6337.

A Steven Spielberg production it's not...

... but it is a short film premiering today. This one is a Capital Press production, available on YouTube and and on a page attached to our podcast site.

Our web guru here at the Capital Press, Debbie Evans, is not in the office this week, but I managed to figure out her secret and added a link to the video to the multimedia section on our website too, where you can find links to other multimedia items, like photo slide shows and audio recordings.

My apologies for the production values of this video. This was, literally, the first time I have ever used a video camera in my life. Hey, cut me some slack, I started out as a still photographer. I still like the power of a still image, but don't let it be said I'm afraid to try new things. OK, I was afraid, but I figured no one would actually ever watch this video even if I could managed to record it and edit it, so the risk was low for total humiliation.

So for what it's worth, here is what I believe is only the second Capital Press video we've ever posted online and the first one I've every tried. We do have some other videos listed on the multimedia page, but they are videos made from still images and supplemental audio.

This video goes with the story about the Hermiston watermelon giveaway that was held Friday, Aug. 3, in Portland. See the story and this post for more details.

Former melon thief now gives 'em away

I knew the voice instantly. When I picked up the phone Monday afternoon, it was like stepping back in time.

The voice belonged to Frank Harkenrider, former mayor of Hermiston, the town where I cut my teeth as a reporter and editor back in the early 1990s. And it was that tie to that place and that time that sent Harkenrider to my phone yesterday.

Harkenrider, or "Harkie" as he's affectionately known around Hermiston, was preparing to make his annual pilgrimage to Portland to promote his beloved hometown and its beloved signature crop, the Hermiston watermelon. At 82, Harkenrider is something of a rarity in the city that celebrates its centennial this year. Harkenrider is a native, born and raised in the community where he spent more than four decades on the city council and followed in his father's footsteps and served 10 years as mayor.

Harkie and a contingent of folks from the community will be passing out watermelons in Portland at noon on Friday. He wanted to know if the Capital Press was interested and wanted to know if I could help spread the word.

Harkenrider seemed to think I could do that because his wife had seen a copy of something I had posted on the Internet about Hermiston watermelons. I'm assuming that was a blog post, Blogriculture: Watermelon worth the price, on the topic I wrote about Hermiston melons last year. It seems that little essay has made the rounds around town. I blame my mom for that. OK, so someone probably found it by searching for "Hermiston watermelon" on Google, but it's more fun to blame mom.

So, I asked Harkenrider about the plans for this melon giveaway and got the details that became a story on the Capital Press website.

This year, there is more than fun and promotion in the giveaway. There's a political message in the promotion for Gov. Ted Kulongoski and those who thwarted a bill to tap into more Columbia River water to aid farmers and others in the area as part of what has been called the Oasis Project.

"Really, what we're trying to do is promote this whole area," Harkenrider said, not just Hermiston." It takes water to grow these products."

And the people who grow those products have donated a portion of their production to make watermelon, cantaloupe and potatoes available at noon Friday in Pioneer Courthouse Square to anyone who shows up and can haul away their booty, for as long as the produce will hold out. Which isn't likely to be long. Harkenrider credited the Hermiston Watermelon Association, which includes Bellinger Farms, Walker Farms, Pollock Farms and Walchli Farms, for supplying the melons and Bud-Rich Potato for providing the spuds that make the event possible.

It's been at least 15 years since I've interviewed Harkenrider for a news story, but I knew I could count on him for a colorful quote. He didn't disappoint. Harkenrider was telling me about the high quality cantaloupe coming out of the area this summer, which he confessed is a personal favorite going back to childhood.

"Of course, I used to swipe them as a kid," Harkenrider said.

Whatever harm Harkenrider may have done to farmers' profits as a child, he has spent a lifetime making up for it by promoting his hometown and the agriculture products grown around it that have provided the cornerstone for the region's economy.

Watermelon worth the price

The billboard has been taunting me for weeks. "Look for the sticker" the large sign implores along my daily route home from work.

But it's not the words they got to me. Not those words anyway. It was the image of a ripe, juicy piece of fruit that has been as much a part of summer in my family as the Fourth of July and long, hot sunny days.

Watermelon.

And not just any watermelon. Hermiston watermelon.
My mouth waters every time I drive past the billboard. But I can't just blame the clever marketing campaign for being possessed by the imagery on the sign. No the real blame goes to my grandfather and my father.

My grandfather, my mom's father, introduced me to watermelon when I was very young. Every summer, for as long as the succulent fruit lasted each season, Grandpa Leis had watermelon for lunch and dinner. Or maybe I should say dinner and supper as the midday and evening meals were known by those names respectively in the Nebraska panhandle community where I was born.

Fresh fruit and vegetable, usually from my grandmother's garden, but sometimes from neighboring farms, were part of every summer meal. The canned versions, home-canned mind you, were part of every winter meal too. But you can't can watermelon. It just wound't be right to each watermelon out of a pressure-cooled Bell or Mason jar. You have to sink a knife right into the melon's heart and let the red blood spill out on the counter, your plate and your chin.

Grandpa would cut off a big slice of watermelon and eat it down to the rind, with an occasional shake of salty to add a little zip to the sweet fruit flavor. Then the rind itself was fed to the chickens. Nothing went to waste from a watermelon, well, except maybe those pesky black seeds. But even those could be a source of amusement for a young grandchild enjoying a slice of melon with his granddad.

One year after a summer of meals featuring watermelon, sweet corn, cucumbers and countless other harvest treasures, my dad packed me up, along with my mom, young brother Ron, newborn brother Dean and moved us to Oregon -- smack dab in the middle of a watermelon country. Hermiston watermelon country that is, in Umatilla County in Eastern Oregon.

Every summer, when watermelons turned ripe, there were always plenty of melons at our house. my dad, being an ag pilot, or what folks often refer to as a "crop duster," did work for many of the farmers in and around our area. No one from our family, or anyone on my dad's work crew, could drive a pickup (or any rig for that matter) past one of the farms dad did business with without getting loaded down with food at harvest time. Onions, potatoes, asparagus, sweet corn and of course watermelon. Hermiston watermelon.

A few years after I graduated from college I was back in Hermiston working as the editor for a small weekly paper when then-mayor Frank Harkenrider guilted me in to making a trip to Portland one summer. Harkie -- everyone who know Mayor Harkenrider called him Harkie -- was leading a contingents of local dignitaries delivering a ceremonial first load of melons for the season to Portland. It was 1992 and only the second year of what has now become an annual pilgrimage of produce to Portland that celebrated its 16th anniversary this year. Harkie may have been a small town mayor, but he was a bit flamboyant and knew a publicity opportunity when he saw one.


He was taking the melons straight to Portland City Hall and dropping them, figuratively at least, into the lap of the even more flamboyant Portland mayor, J.E. "Bud" Clark.
Clark and his trademark "Whoop, whoop" became nationally, even globally, known as the tavern keeper who upset an incumbent mayor and took over leadership of Oregon's largest city. Clark was also known for posing for a famous poster in the 1980s with the slogan "expose yourself to art" while wearing a trench coat and seemingly flashing a sculpture of a woman in downtown Portland. Clark, who sold autographed copies of the poster to help pay off his campaign debt, signed several copies of his poster for the Hermiston delegation on that summer day back in 1992. It was his last year in office. He even signed one for a certain young journalist, who still has it hanging on a wall in his home.

But perhaps I digress. Needless to say, watermelons, and Hermiston watermelons in particular have long been a summer favorite. But during 10 years I spent in California, they were impossible to find. And California melons, though most of them were seedless and tasted fine, just didn't taste the same. Anyone who has had a Hermiston watermelon will tell you they are special. And if they people are from the Hermiston area, they'll tell you Hermiston melons are the best.

So over the weekend I had the opportunity to take my daughter back to visit family in Eastern Oregon and we stopped to visit Grandma Leis, who is now living in my parents' home. Grandpa Leis, who would have celebated his 92nd birthday Aug. 21, has been gone 23 years now. But Grandma is still here, and celebrates her 92nd birthday on Wednesday, Aug 23. And that baby brother, just a newborn on that trek West by air over the Oregon Trail, turns 33 on Friday, Aug. 25.

And in the fridge during that visit there was a big, ripe Hermiston watermelon in the fridge, and two more in the utility room by the back door. The one in the fridge tasted great, I can assure you, and one of the ones in the utility room was liberated. It made the trip back to Salem with me. Complete with its "A Product of Oregon" sticker, attesting to the fact that it is indeed a Hermiston watermelon, "Grown & Distributed by Walchli Farms."
And all it cost me was $60 worth of gas and seven hours on the road to get it.

I hope everyone is enjoying some fresh "locally grown" produce this summer and making some lifelong memories with their family and friends too. Thanks for going along on the ride with me Suzanna. And thanks from teaching me how to eat watermelon, Grandpa. Oh, and happy birthday Grandma. And yea, you too Dean. Thanks for the melon, Mom and Dad. And thank the Walchli's for me too.

That billboard isn't haunting or taunting me any more.

(Read a related post about the 2007 watermelon giveaway: Blogriculture: Former melon thief now gives 'em away

Agriculture
Summer
Oregon
Hermiston watermelon
Locally grown

Watch Hermiston grow

The large water tank on Highway 395 used to sport the slogan "Watch Hermiston Grow" on one side and had a large slice of watermelon painted on the other. The slogan has been painted over, but it's really no longer needed. The signs of growth are everywhere. And the water tank, which used to be on the outer edge of town is seeing development of government facilities and new housing in its shadow.

The city's logo still includes a watermelon slice, celebrating the locally grown produce which helped give the city an identity when it was just a little farming town.

Compared to more urban areas of the West, Hermiston may still look like, and in fact may still be, a little farm-market town, but in rural Eastern Oregon this little town is on the move.

For the 10 years I lived in California, when people asked me where I was from, I rarely used Hermiston as a reference point. Even when I was going to college in Western Oregon most people had no clue where Hermiston was, so I gave up trying to explain it. I used to ask people who expressed curiosity about my upbringing if they had ever heard of Pendleton. As host of the Pendleton Round-Up and namesake of the Pendleton Woolen Mills, even people who have never been there had at least heard the name.

I went to school in and was graduated from high school in Echo, about 30 miles west of Pendleton and a few mile south of Hermiston. But back then, more than 20 years ago, Hermiston was the social center for all off us farm and country kids looking for fun and girls (or boys) on a Saturday night.

When my family first moved to Oregon in 1973 it was a 15 mile trek into Hermiston for grocery shopping or other necessities. Big shopping trip, for school clothes or other amenities, might involved a trip to Pendleton or even Portland or more likely to the Tri-Cities, Wash. The Tri-Cities (Richland, Pasco and Kennewick, Wash.) weren't much farther than Pendleton from our little country house and they had a mall and fancier restaurants, and a nuclear power plant where material for our nation’s first atomic weapons were refined. Prom dates mean going to Tri-Cities for dinner and then trekking back to Echo for the dance. But for pretty much everything else, Hermiston was the place. When mom and dad said they were going into town, they didn't mean Echo, they meant Hermiston.

An A&W restaurant, the kind where carhops brought your order on a tray that hung on your window, was the only drive-in or fast-food-type place in Hermiston when we moved in about 10 miles from town. So when McDonald’s came to town it was a big deal. But there have been a lot of big deals since then. Now there are several fast-food places in town. There is even a Starbucks on the main drag.

Back as a young reporter I covered City Hall in Hermiston and my big scoop was being the first reporter to get the words Wal-Mart in print when a new retailer was coming to town. In the years since then Wal-Mart not only build a story there but expanded it into a Supercenter and the company also build and operates a distribution center out by the airport between Hermiston and Stanfield.

The latest big deal was the recent opening of a Home Depot store just off the main drag.

The city, which had maybe 5,000 people when my dad bought his aerial spraying business and moved us there in 1973 has tripled in size. In 35 years time, from 1970 to 2005, the city grew by more than 10,000 people, from 4,893 people to 15,027 according to the latest population estimates.

I was back in the old stomping grounds over the weekend, cruising "The Gut" as we then-teenagers used to call Highway 395 between the old McDonald’s to the plaza across from the 7-Eleven (yea, it was a big deal when 7-Eleven came to town too). My dad took me on a tour around town, showing me some of the new housing, government and commercial developments that moved in in the years since I moved out, much of it in the last handful of years. Out by the airport, near the newly opened Stanford Hansell Government Center, is a narrow street leading from the National Guard Armory and Blue Mountain Community College branch campus back into a residential area. In the span of maybe a quarter to a half mile, you can see what Hermiston was and what it is becoming. A small pasture with cattle is surrounded on three sides by the signs of the encroaching city on the once rural area. Just down the road a few hundred yards is a new church. The sign out front saying "future home" has been hand-edited to read "new home" to let prospective congregants know the facility is open for the business of saving souls.

But will the town's agricultural soul be saved?

There is still a lot of irrigated farm ground around and farmers and ranchers are still an important part of the local economy. But where the biggest houses around once belonged to farmers and ranchers and where Lamb-Weston and Simplot potato plants were once king and queen, the revolution has begun. Doctors and other professionals now boast some of the biggest houses. Simplot has shut down a major part of its operation and Home Depot and Wal-Mart are sporting the biggest crowns.

It isn't just California or Oregon's Willamette Valley where agriculture land is being gobbled up for houses. It's happening in places like rural Eastern Oregon too, in a town once known for it's unbeatably sweet and flavorful watermelons.

On one hand I'm proud to see that that little town is growing up. But it's a little sad too to realized the industry that drew my family to that little farming town more than 30 years ago, the industry that helped feed, nurture and employ so many in that town, along with the railroad and the Army depot, is losing its influence on the child it reared for so many years.

Agriculture
Eastern Oregon
Hermiston, Ore.