"I'm here at night for hours," Betty says, "and I don't scare easy. But one night I was working late and came downstairs to see Lee. We were alone in the building. I asked him, 'Why were you going up and down in the elevator so much?'"
Sitting here now, Lee laughs and says, "And I told Betty, 'I thought you were using the elevator...'"
To find Maryhill Museum, take Interstate 84 east for about two hours to exit 104. Turn left and cross over the Columbia River. Then follow the museum signs. They're open March 15 through November 15, 9:00 to 5:00, seven days a week.
14. Suicide Bridge
The Vista Avenue Viaduct was built in 1926 to replace the wooden Ford Street Bridge. The arched, reinforced-concrete bridge connects Goose Hollow to Portland Heights and passes over SW Jefferson Street. The bridge's dramatic height—and the five lanes of pavement below it—have made it an inevitable magnet for local jumpers.
15. Oscar
"At first we weren't allowed to discuss it," says Janet Mahoney, the room division manager for the Columbia Gorge Hotel. "The official policy was: Oscar does not exist. Now it's: Document every occurrence."
And document they do, starting from the early 1980s, when the hotel's third floor was renovated and opened to guests for the first time in fifty years.
Built in 1921, the forty-room Columbia Gorge Hotel was an isolated three-hour drive from Portland. That made it a favorite love nest for Hollywood types from noted sex maniacs Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino to Jane Powell, Myrna Loy, and Shirley Temple. The hotel was dubbed "the Waldorf of the West" but was eventually forgotten and neglected as a retirement home. Restoration started in 1978, and the hotel again became a lovely clifftop retreat for guests including Burt Reynolds, Kevin Costner, Olivia Newton-John, and Terri Garr.
Trouble started a few years after the 1978 restoration, when they reopened the third-floor honeymoon suite. One day, in the few moments the third-floor hallway was empty, something turned every wall sconce upside down. Janet says, "It took the maintenance man half a day to turn them all back."
On another day, she says, "A guest comes in from the parking lot. She slaps her hands down on the counter and demands, 'Is there something I should know about? I just saw a woman with dark hair, in a white gown, throw herself from the tower and disappear.'"
According to Janet, a honeymoon bride in the 1930s killed her husband in the third-floor suite, then jumped from the hotel's tower, landing in the parking lot. Just recently, another honeymoon couple sat in bed and watched a woman in white emerge from their bathroom, stand looking at them for two minutes, and disappear.
AH over the third floor, water starts running in the bathrooms while the maids clean. Fires start by themselves in fireplaces. In empty rooms heavy furniture moves up against the door so no one can enter from the hallway.
"Nobody's ever gotten hurt," Janet says. "Nobody's ever had more than the wits scared out of them."
One bartender, Michael, stays over some nights and reports the television turning itself on and off and a phantom hand being placed on her face.
A hotel maid, Millie, nicknamed the spirit or spirits "Oscar" after she started finding flowers left every day in the exact same place on the attic stairs. In the attic, marbles roll out of the shadows. They roll uphill against the slanted floor.
To find the hotel, take Interstate 84 east for about 1.5 hours. Take exit 62 and turn left at the stop sign. Cross back over the freeway, toward the river, and turn left again. The hotel will be between you and the cliffs. It's that yellow building—with the tower.
16. Powell's Rare Book Room
Employees swear that the ghost of Walter Powell, the bookstore's founder, still walks the mezzanine outside the Rose Room. Check for Walter near the drinking fountain. Steve Fidel in publicity says Tuesday nights are the most likely time. Also check out the sculpture of stacked books outside the northwest street door. Inside the carved stone are the ashes of a man who wanted to be buried at Powell's. The canister of his cremains sat on a bookstore shelf for years until it was sealed inside the new sculpture.
(a postcard from 1988)
This year I'm living in a two-story town house at 1623 SW Montgomery Street—with severed heads and hands hidden in the back of every kitchen cabinet. Some are male, most are female.
My roommate, Laurie, works as a window dresser at the downtown Meier & Frank department store and tells me about meeting guys and fucking them in the store's big display windows along SW Fifth Avenue. You have about two feet of dark, filthy room to maneuver, she says, between the inside wall and the scenic partition that the mannequins stand in front of. Beyond the mannequins is nothing but plate glass and a zillion people walking past. The narrow space limits your sex positions but it's private. Plus, Laurie says, you get the thrill of rush-hour crowds waiting for their bus only a couple feet away.
Unless you want to get fired, she says, you can't go too wild or you'll make the mannequins shake.
When we drink, Laurie tells me about her childhood. How her mother used to get up every Sunday morning to cook a hot breakfast. While her mom was busy, Laurie would crawl into bed with her dozing father and suck his cock. This was every Sunday morning for years, and after a few gin-and-tonics Laurie can see how this might color the rest of her life.
At home our severed hands and heads are mannequin samples, and Laurie shows me how the dummy industry designs them for each market. Mannequins made for California have bigger breasts. They're sprayed to look tan. Mannequins made for Chicago aren't. The creepy clutching hands. Or the bald heads with high cheekbones and staring glass eyes. We stash them everywhere. Under the bathroom sink with the extra toilet paper. In the cabinet with the breakfast cereal. The one time Laurie's dad comes to visit, he goes hunting for coffee filters and almost has a heart attack.
The only mannequin Laurie has all of is a female she calls Constance. Connie's made to sit, with both legs stretched out in front, her knees bent a little. She's made for the Portland demographic: pale and small breasted with a dishwater-brown wig. Laurie dresses her in a pink chiffon gown from the thrift store St. Vincent de Paul on Powell Boulevard. It has yards of flowing pink chiffon that hang down, like angel wings. Up the back of the dress, you can see thick black tire treadmarks that suggest a very ominous end to some prom night.
One Saturday, we're drinking gin-and-tonics before watching the Starlight Parade. The official kickoff event for the annual Rose Festival, the parade features lighted floats and marching bands and starts at dusk, moving through downtown in the dark.
It also features the year's crop of Rose Festival princesses, all of them in pink prom gowns, standing on a float and waving with gloved hands. The more gin-and-tonics we drink, the more important it seems to make a political statement. You know, attack the idea of women as objects on display. We have to put Constance on the boot of Laurie's MG convertible and sneak her into the parade. We have to reveal the Rose Festival for the sexist institution that it is.
Really, we just want our share of the attention.
In the North Park Blocks where the parade assembles, we tell the officials we're part of a local car club but we've missed our entry time because of traffic. Near us, the parade float full of real princesses glares at our dummy with the black tire tracks up her back.