We've been married just about forever and sometime back at the dawning of civilization*, we lived for a couple of years in New Pine Creek. We went to see it last week when we were in Southeast Oregon. It's a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of place that straddles the Oregon-California border on Highway 395.
This little farm community is twenty miles south of Lakeview Oregon and 50 miles north of Alturas California, with nothing much else in between. It's the outback of the outback. Back then (*it really was 1959 through 1961), we thought we were so lucky to get to move there. Bill had just graduated from a two-year program at a Teacher's College in Idaho and he got a position as teacher/principal (and janitor) at New Pine Creek Elementary, a one-room school on the California side of the border. (California! It paid more than Idaho, where most of his fellow graduates went.)
We had a one-year old son and a baby on the way. (Our daughter was born in Lakeview). This is the house where we lived — as you can see, it is about a foot from the highway. The house actually looks better now than it did then; we didn't have siding or a fence. It snowed a lot in the Winters we were there. The snowplow would come past several times a day and plow the snow into drifts that blocked the house in. Those winter days were long!
This is the old school building — it was about the length of two blocks straight up the highway from our house. Someone is living in it now; the school closed years ago. It is funny to realize that the eighth-graders Bill taught were actually only six or seven years younger than he was.
It was a very small village even then. But there were a couple of grocery stores, a good butcher, a barbershop and a Grange Hall that had an active social schedule. Now the Grange Building looks like something straight out of a ghost story.
There isn't much left of the town now. Both of the grocery store buildings are still standing, but they are now "antique" stores. Junk shops — especially when there are more than two in a three block stretch — must be the last dying gasp of a small town.
After our two years here, we moved back to Eastern Washington. LIving there again, we had two more sons, bought our first house, worked a bunch of various jobs between us, and, eventually, Bill completed his degree. (That last sentence alone would be worth a hundred posts if this were really that kind of blog!) In 1971, we moved to Lane County, Oregon — the opposite side of the State of Oregon from NPC, in every possible definition.
Our visit last week was only the third or fourth time we've been through here since we moved and we've long since lost track of the people we knew. But we'll always remember our two years here — we did a lot of growing up and had a lot of fun too.
I wonder if there will be anything left of the town if we ever drive through here again.
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