Arriving in Portland

I remember still:

Fred’s 1962 pickup, loaded with two suitcases and four extra tires.

Two twenty-seven-year-old fathers driving up Interstate 5, leaving behind a community of four hundred in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Heading north to the big city in 1968, hoping to get on in a paper mill or aluminum factory.

Fred the father of five, dirt floors in his home,

Me father of two, Stearns County Minnesota boy, long way from home.

When we entered the edge of the city

     THE TRAFFIC

        THE BUILDINGS

           THE SIGNAGE

We froze and kept right on the freeway, across the Columbia river bridge, eyes straight ahead watching the road and traffic.

Ending up in Camas, Washington, in a small motel outside town, to calm down and absorb the experience.

This little motel still sits on a hill there, probably harboring other new immigrants to the big city, across the river.