3468.
The setting is SE Division St in the mid-130s. Heavy Eastside Portland. There, at 136th, just between the Dairy Queen and the Dutch Bros. Coffee drive-through, is a pedestrian overpass.
Deep outer SE Division is a thronging boulevard, the main route into, through, and out the area on your way from Portland to Gresham, Sandy, Welches, Rhododendron, Government Camp, and points east and southeast into central Oregon and the Oregon outback. And, as in much of east Portland, it's a combination of what amounts to Oregon urban sprawl covering a palimpsest of the rural land it was about 50 years ago.
The pedestrian overpass gives a good sweep of what the eastside has become.
Down and to the right you see a set of tiny apartments that used to be a roadside hotel. These days, it's the Swan Court; back in the bad old day, it was the Swanee Motel. It had seen better days even then. Now it's a shabby-ish apartment court, and it's actually much better off that way.
Just east of that there's the pet shop. We've never been in that pet shop.
The red-eaved building just beyond that is the insurance agency of Nick Kondos, one of those strange, insurance-agent names you see around town like Billy Grippo.
The pale monolith in the distance is the sign for the Division Fred Meyer store. That's out at 148th Avenue, so that's about three-quarters of a mile off.
Looming above all this is our fair-haired sentinel, boastful of a cap of snow that, this year, at least, is more snow than average. Of all the things we have to worry about this year, at least a drought summer isn't one of them.
You count your blessings these days.
Deep outer SE Division is a thronging boulevard, the main route into, through, and out the area on your way from Portland to Gresham, Sandy, Welches, Rhododendron, Government Camp, and points east and southeast into central Oregon and the Oregon outback. And, as in much of east Portland, it's a combination of what amounts to Oregon urban sprawl covering a palimpsest of the rural land it was about 50 years ago.
The pedestrian overpass gives a good sweep of what the eastside has become.
Down and to the right you see a set of tiny apartments that used to be a roadside hotel. These days, it's the Swan Court; back in the bad old day, it was the Swanee Motel. It had seen better days even then. Now it's a shabby-ish apartment court, and it's actually much better off that way.
Just east of that there's the pet shop. We've never been in that pet shop.
The red-eaved building just beyond that is the insurance agency of Nick Kondos, one of those strange, insurance-agent names you see around town like Billy Grippo.
The pale monolith in the distance is the sign for the Division Fred Meyer store. That's out at 148th Avenue, so that's about three-quarters of a mile off.
Looming above all this is our fair-haired sentinel, boastful of a cap of snow that, this year, at least, is more snow than average. Of all the things we have to worry about this year, at least a drought summer isn't one of them.
You count your blessings these days.
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