One of my favorite destinations on my rambles about the little town of Rogue River (population 2,000) is Palmerton Park, a five-acre arboretum adjoining Evans Creek. Within its boundaries are nearly 100 species of trees and shrubs, a truly unique treasure anywhere, but especially so in this small community. Being a gardener (and a frustrated one right now, without a plot of land at hand for me to tend), I especially enjoy strolling the paths and admiring the size, form and variety of the lush growth around me. Over the last month and a half the deciduous trees have been transitioning from summer glory to fall brilliance to winter dormancy, making it possible to more clearly observe the collection of firs, pines, cedars and redwoods in their midst.

Orin F. Palmerton, a Spanish American war vet, purchased this land in the 1920s and established a nursery here. He continued to operate it as such until 1966, and in those years he planted and nurtured pines from Japan and China, cedars from the Mediterranean, and all kinds of exotic and native species. As his health declined, he sold the property to the county for a nominal fee, for he had always envisioned that what he had tended so lovingly and well would become a park for all to enjoy. His dream became a reality, and in later years the City of Rogue River took over care and maintenance of the park. New specimens continue to be added to the towering sequoias, elms, gingkos and others that Orin Palmerton planted.

It reminds me that each of us has the potential to add something enduring and beautiful to the world we inhabit. Too often, I think, we can be overwhelmed by the legacies of the likes of the Roosevelts, Carnegies and Gateses and lose sight of the fact that one doesn’t need millions of dollars to make a positive impact.  Perhaps some are fortunate enough to be able to deed a plot of land for a link in a trail system, a unique home to a historical society or a building for community use. Most of us, though, while not having those resources at hand, can still support a local program or society with our time, skills or donations. It isn’t just the large gift or gesture that is needed, but also the long-term generosity of the many that maintains and grows the jewels in our towns and neighborhoods and keeps them vibrant.

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

Whenever I move to a new community, one of the first things I look for is whether there is a good hardware store nearby. Now, I’m not talking about one of those big, warehouse-sized national chain stores–though I have nothing against them and certainly shop there on occasion. What I am on the lookout for is a place that has been there for decades and has employees that have, shall we say, the patina of experience upon them.

You might be led to believe that because a good hardware store is high on my list of hometown necessities, I am some kind of do-it-yourself, remodeling whiz, but nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, I re-grouted a shower stall once, and I can replace a washer, broken sprinkler head or leaky toilet valve when necessary, but that’s about the extent of my fix-it skills. Nevertheless, I have come to appreciate a store that stocks all kinds of interesting gadgets and gizmos even if I don’t know what most of them are, and I appreciate even more a knowledgable staffer who can tell me how to deal with whatever domestic disaster I am currently facing.

Perhaps my fascination with such emporiums began when, as a little girl, I accompanied my dad on his early spring trips to Holland’s Feed Store in downtown Beaverton, Oregon. While he picked up seeds for our enormous vegetable garden, chicken wire, stakes and twine, oil for the rototiller and a new hoe, my sister and I would be draped over a stock tank set on the floor holding the season’s batch of fluffy little chicks and bunnies. I must admit that I was just as thrilled some forty years later when I walked into our hardware store in East Wenatchee one March day and followed the sound of chirping to cages holding ducklings, chicks and even baby turkeys (What is the proper nomenclature for a baby turkey? turkling? goblette?). My younger daughter, true child of mine, though 15 at the time, seemed equally entranced and annually made it a point to find an excuse to visit that store at that time of year.

Cute balls of fluff aside, I honestly enjoy just strolling the aisles from plumbing to electrical to garden, taking in all the thing-a-ma-bobs and doo-hickeys and nearly always finding something that I didn’t realize I urgently needed until I saw it there. The clerks are always helpful and pleasant and seem to be able to tell when I need some serious assistance as opposed to when I’m just doing some serious browsing. And believe me, when I have a technical question, I want to be talking to a grizzled veteran who has clearly worked a lifetime as an electrician or plumber. I imagine this man (they’re almost always guys) retired one day, spent a few weeks around the house driving his poor wife crazy trying to find something that needed fixing, and then was kindly nudged by her into applying for that opening down at the hardware store. Now everybody’s happy!

Yes, I don’t want to live too far from a decent mall, a well-stocked specialty food store and options for cultural entertainment. But believe me, when the toilet handle breaks an hour before dinner guests are expected, it’s far more important to be 10 minutes from your helpful hardware place than 10 minutes from Nordstrom’s!

 Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

Nicholas Aristides Vanikiotis was eighteen years old in 1943 when he was drafted into the Army. While in training at Fort Carson in Colorado, William “Wild Bill” Donovan arrived to recruit members for the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the C.I.A.). As a son of Greek immigrants, Nick had the language skills that would be invaluable to the special operations groups (S.O.G.s) being formed to help the National Resistance fighters against the Axis powers in Yugoslavia and Greece. Donovan was clear that the mortality rate for such secret missions could be as high as 70 to 90 percent, but with the bravado of the young and a desire to help free his parents’ homeland from the Nazis, Nick, along with 500 others, volunteered. After weeks of a strict vetting process that included F.B.I. checks, interviews and psychological testing, 150 young men were chosen, my future father-in-law among them.

Three months of initial training in weaponry, tactics and hand-to-hand combat took place at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland, followed by demolitions training at Hagerstown, Maryland. Eventually several of these S.O.G.s were transported across the Atlantic and hopscotched from Egypt to Palestine to Italy. Based finally on the island of Vis, the only island off the Dalmatian Coast not occupied by Germany, the troops’ mission was to disrupt German supply lines and support Marshal Tito’s resistance army in pushing the enemy out of Yugoslavia and Greece.

After the Allies recaptured the island of Solta, Nick’s group set out on the mainland on a nearly 1,000-mile, 17-day march conducted mostly at night over mountainous terrain to Volos, Greece. Along the way they ambushed German supply convoys, blew up bridges and cratered roadways. Years later he glossed over the details of this mission, never revealing to his sons or grandchildren exactly what his encounters with the enemy were like. He would talk about how that trek ruined his feet (he always walked with a limp) and mention with affection those who were wounded or killed, but as with so many veterans, he did not share how a 19-year-old boy coped with all that he saw and did in that time. In fact, the story he most often shared involved his “celebrity sighting” while stationed on Vis. He told of observing a three-masted schooner sailing into the harbor one day skippered by none other than Sterling Hayden, the movie star. Hayden was also working for the O.S.S., smuggling guns to Tito’s fighters.

Like most others who survived fighting for our country in World War II, Nicholas Vanikiotis returned home after the war, went to school on the G.I. Bill, married, raised his sons and worked hard to support his family. His sons and granddaughters, when prodded by history lessons at school, would ask him to tell them about the war. He would relate these bits and pieces, but it was clear it was not a subject on which he wished to dwell. When he passed away eight years ago, we found a few of his mementos of the war: his discharge papers, his uniform, pictures of him in front of the Sphinx in Egypt, a dagger and a pistol.

As the years have passed and I watch new generations of our children volunteer to travel to foreign lands and go in harm’s way, I stand in awe of the sacrifices they and their families make. Having gotten a very private glimpse of the changes those sacrifices worked upon one young man, I honor every one who travels that path.

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

I spent this past week at our home in East Wenatchee–yes, it’s still OUR home (sell, baby, sell!) though we’re now living in southern Oregon. I was there to check on the house, do some packing and take care of end-of-the-season chores in the yard. This year’s annual putting-the-garden-to-bed flurry of activity was also my farewell to the spot of land I have stewarded over half-a-dozen years.

For me, saying goodbye to my garden is as difficult as parting with the house that has been our dream home, refuge and shelter the last six-plus years. I’d rather do yard work than house work any day, and working outside is my own personal form of therapy. My daughters half jokingly claim that I love my plants more than I love them, and I half jokingly reply that they could be right: the plants don’t talk back nor give me sleepless nights.

I relish the early spring days when the warming sun draws me out to sweep aside last year’s leaves to uncover tulip and daffodil shoots pushing up through still-frosty ground or tiny swirls of bright green foliage emerging around the rotten stems of died-back perennials. April and May bring some new vision of rebirth every day: the weeping cherry suddenly in full bloom, peonies unfurling their lush petals like a debutante swirling her full-skirted ball gown, chives and baby lettuce offering to refresh my winter-weary palate. Summer brings with it the embarrassment of riches from the vegetable garden and roses and rudbekias and bees drowsing over catmint. In September and October, the reds of dogwood, maple and burning bush and the yellows of larch, aspen and cherry make up for fewer hours of sunlight. But there is something especially appealing to me in these early November days when all the burst and blossom of the growing season give way to the hush and rest of winter.

Wednesday was bright but cold, and I raked the leaves from flower borders to lawn for sweeping up with the mower, saving bags of leaves for compost that (hopefully) some other gardener will be spreading on the beds next year. The lawn got a final, very short cut, contributing the green counterpoint to the compost bin. There is something very satisfying in looking out over that flat, neat expanse of leaf-free grass.

The next day was dreary, foggy and wet, but I couldn’t avoid hours of cutting back rose canes and frost-blackened perennials and pulling up rotting annuals and tomato plants. As I worked my way around the property, I recalled when I had planted this shrub or cleared that spot for herbs, and noted how tall those little trees we added had grown in just a few years. At the end of the day, I surveyed my domain of neatly trimmed beds, soil heaped over rose crowns and tender root systems, satisfied that I had tucked up my “babies” and protected them as best I could for the coming snow and wind and cold.

As hard as it always is to leave a place behind that I have tended and fussed over, I know that I have left a bit of myself here for others coming after me to enjoy. Should I come back this way years from now, I will be able to measure how much more those trees have grown and how those roses still bloom and the clematis climbs by the door.

It is enough.

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

Finally in the last few weeks I have had some time to get out and walk around my new town and begin to learn the lay of the land. Work and travel have kept me from getting acquainted with Rogue River, and it’s made me feel a bit out of sorts to not know more about where I’m now living. I noted that there was a small Victorian-era cottage housing the Woodville Museum (incorportating the town’s former name), and I decided that I’d have to make some time to stop in there and learn some background.

Before I took the time to do that, though, I stumbled across the cemetary, founded in 1888. Compared to communities on our east coast or Europe, I realize that doesn’t seem so terribly long ago, but that was only 16 years after the town was established. I figured I might get an initial, albeit rather unusual, history lesson here.

On one beautiful fall afternoon I strolled beneath a canopy of 70- to 80-foot-tall oak, madrone, pine and fir trees. Here the only sounds were the crunch of gravel and acorns beneath my feet and the rustle of dry leaves in the breeze high overhead. I was drawn toward the far reaches of the cemetary where the oldest gravestones stood, and noted as I went that there were no elaborate marble monuments or mausoleums. The majority of the people laid to rest here more than a hundred years ago were from fairly humble backgrounds, and the modest granite headstones generally held the most basic information about those laid beneath. Whereas some carried only a name and the years of birth and death, others revealed a little more about the loved ones lost and the ones left behind to memorialize them. Some of the saddest, of course, where those marking the graves of mere babies and children which spelled out exactly how long the child was on this earth. This one commemorated two children from one family:  Minnie M./Born Apr 26, 1896/Aged 9 yrs 8 mos 16 ds/ Stella Oct 18, 1891 Aged 1 da

I wandered for over an hour, noting the popularity of “Ida May” in the mid-1880s as a girl’s name, the apparent pride in one’s origins when the place as well as the date of a birth was included in an inscription (Aberdeenshire, Scotland; near Logan, Dearborn Co., ND; Flemingsburg, Ky), generations of families clustered together within neat, low, stone walls. Finally, there was one stone which led me to the tiny Woodville Museum to search for some answers.

I learned that this town founded on the banks of the Rogue River, which rises in the Cascade Mountains to the east, has experienced major floods many, many times over the course of the last 125 years or so. Typically the river and several tributaries spill over their banks in the late winter, following a season-long buildup of a high snowpack in the mountains and a lowland snowfall of several inches followed by heavy, warm rains and a rapid melt. Just such conditions occurred in February of 1898, when even the valley floor received an unusual knee-deep snow before the temperature quickly rose and the rains began to pour down. This is the inscription on a tall, plain stone slab at the back of the Woodville Cemetary which led me to search out these facts, its few words telling an entire, heart-wrenching story:

            Olaf P. Randall/Born/Feb 12, 1850/Drowned Feb 13, 1898

            Oleva B./dau. of/O.P. & B. Randall/Born Feb 12, 1891/Drowned Feb 13, 1898

                              How we miss our dear ones!

Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader