3712I go on about Rossi Farms a lot, but it's really a nifty place. I've never been to an event there, but I know it's a true working farm, now deep in the middle of a major American metropolitan area.
Portland is a city of size, sprawling in its compact, Oregon way, with a population which may well close on 700,000 in the next few years (and close on one million within the city limits by the time I meet my own demise). But here, along 122nd Avenue, is a snippet of the way it was at one time; small farms from 82nd Avenue all the way out past Gresham, instead of unrelenting miles of housing tracts and traffic speedways. Driving the bit of 122nd that passes through the property is always a treat, for more reasons than one.
This last weekend, the Brown Eyed Girl and myself enjoyed a bit of Burgerville while parked on NE Shaver St, the road that bounds the Rossi place on the north, taking in the view of our favorite volcanic mountain. We hadn't been down it very far for a while and, after our mobile meal was finished, she took us farther east down Shaver, interested in the houses down that way, and we were treated to these little bits of time warp.
Because who would ever think to find this sort of thing in the middle of a city like Portland in the year 2020 ...
A working barn, paint peeling but sill in use ...
... and ancient, rusting farm implements of astoundingly, delightfully antique vintage.
They called back, as things do to men my age, a time of youth. I was born and spent my early life, up until just about puberty, in Silverton. I wouldn't call myself a farm boy, not quite, but my early homes were decidedly rural and featured at least one barn. Grandparents on my Mom's side? They were hard-core farm life until my Grandfather passed and Grandma Bitterman had to move to a modest place. Driving down a road and past rusting, parked farm equipment resonates hard.
And not any less so when you drive past the same thing on a suburban street.
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