Five years after the Lewis and Clark expedition spent a winter at the mouth of the Columbia River John Jacob Astor's fur company founded Fort Astoria, making Astoria the oldest American town on the West Coast. The celebration of Astoria's bicentennial was just a couple weeks after I had visited.
The Astoria Column is on top of a steep hill on the south side of Astoria. The column was the last in a series of monuments put up in the 1920s to honor explorers of the West. The monuments were the idea of Ralph Budd, who wanted to drum up business for his Great Northern Railway. Budd got Vincent Astor, great grandson of John Jacob to pay for the monument.
The local tradition in Astoria is to buy a balsa wood airplane at the little shop near the foot of the column and fly that plane from the observation deck on top. But what do you do when you visit in the off-season and the little shop has closed for the day? Why you rely on the generosity of three really drunk guys, who've gathered up many previously flown planes, to give you a plane or two to fly. They actually insisted I fly the first one because I made the trek all the way to the top of the column. They climbed the stairs too, so I'm not sure why that entered into the decision other than they were really drunk.
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