INTERVIEW WITH JULIE DAVIES OF THE YACHATIAN STATION
The
Yachats Gazette caught up with Julie at 665 Hwy 101, where she runs an indoor
consignment market.
 |
| The Yachatian Station Store Sign |
TYG: What
exactly is the point of this store?
Julie: Well Allen, the Yachatian Station is
[a] multivendor store and I guess it probably has 15 vendors in here right now.
TYG: Wow,
holy cow!
Julie: Yeah!
Julie: Yeah!
TYG: They
can’t each have their own booths…
Julie: And they don’t.
TYG:
There is nowhere near enough space in here.
Julie: But I have plenty of space, we have
two new, wonderful vendors coming in. The idea is to have everything from a
teaspoon, to an artful decoration, for maybe a higher price. So we want to
offer a myriad of things.
TYG: So
basically anything and everything from Yachats. Because you have such a variety
of stuff here.
Julie: Right, that’s the idea. And the
vendors are wonderful, some of them are artisans, some of them are just “unique
findings”, that you find at other places, but I try to remember that we all
have a budget.
TYG:
Yeah.
Julie: And so at the end of the day if it
was just two dollars, that made your day, or $500…
TYG: You
want the $500!
Julie: I would like the $500! But Allen, by
walking to the store and walking out but having spent two dollars when I only
had five, I feel good.
TYG:
Yeah. Oh, so you’re not saying that will be all that’s bought.
Julie: Yeah right Allen, my goal is to have
a store in which every budget can have something. [...]
TYG: Man,
it’s amazing how much stuff is in here.
Julie: I know. Oh, and I recently got Green
Bike, which I’m very excited about.
TYG: So
what does that mean, “you’ve got Green
Bike”?
Julie: The gentleman Rick at the Green Bike
shop in Waldport was nice enough to give me some free green bikes, one of which
is a tandem, which you’re looking at right now. Of course that means riding at
your own risk because until you ride it you don’t know what that means, I can
tell you I do. [laughs heartily]
TYG: So
you’re saying tandem bikes are difficult to ride.
Julie: Tandem bikes are heavy, but they’re a
lot of fun and say for a couple visiting town, how much fun to see the ocean
that way, right?
TYG:
Right, and there are two people pushing.
Julie: Exactly.
TYG:
Which, face it, is not a very good bike to have, and it’s so long that you
virtually cannot put it on any kind of rack.
Julie: Yeah, well I’ll tell you, it’s great
for two people. I rode it as one person but I walked up the hill, let’s put it
that way. [Laughs heartily] Also Allen, I went down the hill like no
one’s business, WHEEEEEEE, but up the hill was a whole different ballgame.
TYG:
Which hill?
Julie: This little hill that goes down
Seventh Street. Going back up was like... [heaves with effort] I had to
get off and walk it. Well, overall, I’ve got Green Bike and lots of interesting
people here in town. Unfortunately I did get one bike lost recently, the night
before last. So I would implore anybody that took it, please return it, because
it’s on donation only and…
TYG: I
wonder what could have happened to it.
Julie: I just ask that whoever dropped it
please return it.
TYG: I
see.
Julie: I’ve got a lot of things from
jewelry, to Green Bike. I hope to soon have a call for vendors…
TYG: That
would be cool because you have so much space out there!
Julie: Uh-huh! And you know that!
TYG: I
see it, I go back there relatively commonly and you have a huge amount of space
there!
Julie: At some point I would even like to
have Friday night charades out there.
TYG:Charades?
Julie: I had a deck built, and the potential
use of that is that we can play charades all on Friday nights every week.
Charades are where you have to act out a clue. [...] I’d also like to have the
first adult Yachatian hide-and-seek league, where we wear different colored
T-shirts.
TYG: I’d
put it in The Skinny so that if anyone sees someone hiding in the bushes they
won’t call 911. [Laughs]
Julie: [...] I also thought about having a
Yachats kickball league.
TYG: Are
you going to use the field?
Julie: Uh-huh!
TYG: I
thought that would be where this game would be held, pretty fun! It would be
great if we had two baseball leagues, because I mean we have a field big enough
for baseball, I know we have the Smelts already [Yachats’s baseball league].
Julie: Oh yeah!
TYG: The
Smelts aren’t much though!
Julie: Oh, you never know!
TYG:
Although some of them really know how to play very very well! Some of them are
really good! Mostly because some of them were obsessed with baseball all their
life.
Julie: Oh yeah! It’s not me that’s why I’m
doing hide-and-seek! [...]
TYG:
Yeah. Fortunately they’re using different rules in the Smelts, so there are no
outs and you can keep hitting until you hit the ball.
Julie: Now that sounds like my kind of
baseball! Well I think with everything going on, this summer is going to be
lots of fun. A lot of businesses, and townsfolk.
[The
Yachats Gazette will carry the conclusion of the interview with Julie Davies of
the Yachatian Station in next month’s issue.]
INTERVIEW WITH CICELY BERNARD OF THE YACHATS FARM STORE
TYG: So
what kind of food do you have in the store?
Cicely: The food is, and is going to be,
organic food. Even if it’s not certified organic, it will be raised as local as
possible, so we’d like to get our produce from local farmers in the Yachats
area, and the Waldport area, or south of here.... Local can also mean within
Lincoln County—we have a farmer who’s in Toledo, and a farmer who’s in
Siletz. And we’d like to have more farmers in the Yachats River valley and the
Alsea River valley. We’re trying to keep our products coming from, if not from
Lincoln County, then from the neighboring counties. So that’s quite a few
options for getting food that may not be already here.
TYG: What
kind of stuff will the greenhouse hold?
Cicely: The greenhouse will have pallets of
bagged potting soil, bags of compost, and it’ll have shelves of plants.
TYG: What
kind of plants?
Cicely: Mainly edibles. We’ll have all
organically grown plants.
TYG: Will
you have seeds?
Cicely: Yes. We have seeds now. We have
herbs, and vegetables, and flowers… like sunflowers, and zinnias, and
snapdragons, and nasturtiums. And some grain over there, and also root
vegetables… In the greenhouse, when we have plants for sale, there’ll be little
potted plants, either four-inch or six-pack, or maybe gallon-size, and there’ll
be a lot of stuff in there that people would want to plant on their property,
so they could grow food. Like, if somebody wanted to grow raspberries, and put
in a row of raspberries, then we’d have gallon pots of raspberries. Or if they
wanted to start a strawberry bed, we would have little four-inch pots of
strawberries. We’ll have some native
plants, so in case people want to encourage wildlife habitat in the area around
their homes and they want to naturescape, which is a way of landscaping using
native plants, they could find some plants here.
TYG: Will
you be selling, like, roses, or hydrangea?
Cicely: You know, there are roses for sale
already in Yachats—that’s what Blythe and Don do. But I would probably
use the space for something that isn’t already here, like…
TYG: But
what about hydrangea?
Cicely: It’s an excellent choice for a
coastal plant. And hydrangea might be something that I do—because, you
notice, I planted one out there in front of the door and I love them, so I
might get hydrangeas.[…] One plant that was brought to my attention is a little
violet that’s a food source for the larva of the [endangered] silver spot
butterfly.
TYG:
Ohhh!
Cicely: So I’m going to try to have native
plants like that, that would help re-establish habitat. Ideally I would have a
whole flat, or two flats, of this little violet, and they would have flowers on
them. And if there weren’t already butterflies in the greenhouse, coming to the
flowers, I would put a picture of the butterfly right by the flowers, so people
would know that if you plant this flower, you would be providing [habitat].
TYG: I
would love to be a volunteer.
Cicely: Would you?
TYG:
Yeah. I have a little garden patch. It has low light, though—can these plants
survive in low light?
Cicely: Is it in full shade all day long, or
does it get some sunlight?
TYG: It
gets occasional sun—unfortunately there’s a huge butterfly bush right in front
of it, where the sun would come in.
Cicely: Can I tell you about those? The
butterfly bush is a really beautiful bush, that attracts butterflies, but it’s
actually classified as an invasive weed, because it spreads and gets really out
of control. And they get huge—so as beautiful as they are, it’s a good
thing to keep pruned really far back, down to a smaller shrub. [long
discussion regarding berries edited]
TYG: A
question for the community: Will the out-back region be used for emergency
food?
Cicely: Well, there will cellars in the back,
built into the hillside, up against the basalt rock… so one idea that we had
for the cellars, besides where our beer is stored, is having some emergency
food in there….
TYG:
Yeah, that would be a great idea.
Cicely:… Preserved food…
TYG:
Yeah. Frozen food.
Cicely: Well, it would probably be more like
fermented or dried… maybe frozen, we’ll see.
TYG: I
think frozen would be better, because you can thaw it out, and it kind of
preserves the taste, and that would allow greens to be stored.
Cicely: Have you ever eaten dehydrated
greens?
TYG: I
bet it doesn’t taste nearly as good.
Cicely: I think I have to make you some kale
chips.
TYG: Oh,
I’ve already had kale chips.
Cicely: That’s dehydrated greens! They’re dry
and crispy. But anyway, we’ll see.
TYG: I
heard you were going to expand this entranceway. What will the new storefront
look like?
Cicely: That’s a great question for Nathan,
because he’s the designer. I know that it will be a different door, that it may
very well be those doors you saw leaning against the front of the building.
TYG: I
didn’t see them.
Cicely: Well, we got some doors out of an old
restaurant in Portland. We like to re-use materials that have been used in
other buildings. […]
TYG: How
long did it take you to complete all this woodwork? I mean, where did you get
the idea for all of this woodwork?
Cicely: Nathan is a woodworker, he’s a
carpenter—and he’s passionate about this kind of thing. He even milled
some of the wood from trees on our property. He came up with some of the
beautiful faces of the drawers out of alder. And a lot of [the flooring] is reclaimed. Did you notice that these
barstools are made out of old recycled wine barrels? See the wine barrels up
there? These are being taken apart and made into barstools.
INTERVIEW WITH NATHAN BERNARD OF THE YACHATS FARM STORE
Nathan: So right now, we’re in the main
retail space for the Yachats Farm Store. Where you’re standing will very
shortly be where the tasting bar for Yachats Brewing will be—it will be
kind of an L-shaped bar that lives right here. There will be taps where beer is
served. Over this way is more retail space for the farm store: we’ve got our
produce and meat area as well as a book and gardening area here. We’ve got food
preservation and cured meats and eggs as well as cheese-making supplies. This
is the old vault from the bank that used to be here. This building was built
for a bank, so this is the area that used to be the vault. There used to be a
very expensive shiny door right here that locked this up tight.
TYG
Editorial-Assistant: What happened to that?
Nathan: When the bank moved to where it is
now they took their door with them, because it was a $70,000 door, is the story
I was told. [Exclamations] So that’s where that door is today, over in
the other bank. I will show you where the commercial kitchen is. This kitchen
is where we will be doing a lot of food processing and preparing of foods to
put out into the retail space for sale, in the deli case and out on the floor,
and in the other coolers.
TYG: This
tour will include the outside too, right?
Nathan: Yes, we’ll get there. So this is the kitchen,
as you can see, so like I said this will be the area where we’re mostly
processing and cooking food. The counter that you were eating at will be
seating if you would like to have some food in the store or have a beer. Out of
this door will be the greenhouse and garden area. So we’ll step through this
door and out into the greenhouse area. This area here will all be enclosed
under a greenhouse roof, a clear roof. This will be full of plants and garden
supplies and tools and fertilizers. As we walk back this way, this area will
still be greenhouse, and then a wall right here with a door. As you pass
through that door, you will now be in the brewery. So this is where the main
brewery will be. The big tanks will sit right where I’m standing. Another set
of big tanks will be all along that wall.
TYG: I
see.
Nathan: As we walk through here, this is the
cooler. When beer is finished and is ready to be served it will go into this
room.
TYG: And
it will go into these taps!
Nathan: Exactly! It will go through these
holes into those taps and there will be kegs and tanks and hoses—things
like that in here. And then out here, this area where all this rebar is, is
going to be the cellars. So there will be a doorway kind of right in front of
us. That room back there will be a barrel room. There will be barrels with beer
aging in them. This area right here will have a little bottling line so we will
be able to bottle beer. That room over there will be for finished beer in
bottles or kegs, that is ready to ship out. As we walk through the brewery we
come closer to the back door of the kitchen. This will also be a kind of shared
space where the food processing happens.
There will be big tables and sinks here. Right about here there will be another
wall, and when you come through a big overhead door there will be an elevator
door right here so you will be able to go into an elevator.
TYG: [In
a very excited voice] You’re using elevators?
Nathan: An elevator will go up to the second
and third floors.
TYG: Oh,
there are three floors!
Nathan: Yep. So the second floor will be
mostly dry storage on one end. We’ll have a room that is for the mill and the
grain for the brewery. So we’ll store the grain and we’ll mill it up there, and
it will gravity-feed down into the brewery below.
TYG:
Coooool!
Nathan: And then the very top floor, the third floor,
will eventually be a tap room. It will be a place where you can go and sit and
have beer and look at the view and have a nice area up there.
TYG:
That’s nice! I wasn’t sure what the third floor was.
Nathan: Yep! It’ll be a taproom.
TYG: Will that be allowed for kids?
Nathan: Yes. This whole place will be for all ages.
There may be some hours and certain events where we won’t do minors up on the
top but most of the time it will be open to everyone.
TYG: Great!
Nathan: So as we come out of the brewery there and
through this door, this will be the shipping and receiving area over here. So
this will be where a lot of beer and food is coming and going.
TYG: So this is actually a full-scale business,
not just for the Farm Store basically but for the entire county and state!
Nathan: Yes, we’re hoping to have our food in
a lot of different places eventually. There will be products that we make. For
example, Cicely makes sauerkrauts and pickles and things like that. Those are
things that we’re going to be packaging and selling at other places also, as well
as having them for sale here.
TYG: The third floor will be enclosed, right?
Nathan: Yes, there will be a balcony so you’ll be able
to step out onto the balcony and get a nice o open view of the ocean.
TYG: When do you expect that to be finished?
Nathan: The building will be done by the end of the
summer but that space up there will probably not be used—the tap room—for
probably three years or more. We’re building the whole building now because we
had to do that for the engineering, but we don’t really anticipate needing that
space for several years. So it will probably be three years before we do the
rest of the finished work on the top level and turn that into a finished tap
room.
TYG: But the second floor will be done.
Nathan: That we will be using, because that is where
the grain is stored. So we will have a special room as humidity control, so it
doesn’t get too wet in there, and that will be where the grain is stored and
where the milling is done.
TYG: Humidity control is essential around here!
Nathan: Yep, it’s very humid around here. The grain
likes it dry.
TYG: Can you explain to me how exactly beer is
made?
Nathan: I can tell you in the simplest terms. The
brewer that is going to be brewing for us can tell you in very detailed terms. Basically,
the way that it works is that water is heated and poured over grain which is
basically malted barley—that’s just the type of grain that is used—and
it is let to sit a certain amount of time. The liquid that comes off that grain
is called “wort,” and it goes into another container that is called a kettle.
That container is heated and it boils the wort. After a little while you put
hops, which is a plant—a vine that has very wonderful smelling flowers on it—you
put the flowers of the hop plant into the kettle and boil that all together.
After it’s boiled a certain amount of time, you cool it down to a certain
temperature, and then you put a type of brewing yeast in, and then you let it
sit for a couple of weeks at least. And then it’s beer.
TYG: Interesting! So that time is to let the yeast
grow, right?
Nathan: Right! So that wort, that liquid that comes
off of the grain, is very sweet and has lots of sugars in it. The yeast loves
to eat sugar. When you pour the yeast in, the yeast will grow and consume the
sugar and eat that wort into beer. Part of what happens to the yeast is that it
creates alcohol in that beer.
We can go
back through this door and into the kitchen area. We’ll just take a look at the
last few little spots here. Here’s one bathroom and here’s another. […] So
that’s the tour of Yachats Farm Store and Yachats Brewing.
TYG: Thank you! When exactly was the construction
started?
Nathan: That’s a good question! I guess we started in
January of 2012, I think, or maybe December of 2011. It’s been a year and a
half since we started. I don’t know if you remember back when we started but we
did a bunch of tree work, because there were trees hanging off this cliff and
leaning over the back of the building there. So we had a lot of work to do just
to get those trees done. We did remove some giant stumps and we excavated a lot
of material from the back as you saw—about 350 yards of the back [of the
property].
TYG: 350
cubic yards you mean, right?
Nathan: Yes, cubic yards of rock.
TYG: Man, how did you ever find the time to do all
of this woodwork?
Nathan: Well, it’s the thing I love to do the most!
The woodwork was something that I have really enjoyed, and enjoyed taking the
time that I thought would make it turn out the best. I don’t think I could ever
afford to pay someone else to build all this woodwork, but because it’s
something that I am passionate about and love to do, we were able to really
just cut loose on the carpentry.
TYG: When do you think the beer situation is going
to be done?
Nathan: We’ll
be serving beer for the July 4 weekend, but it will be beer that was
made at other breweries and not here on site. Around the end of July we’ll be
able to start putting the equipment into the brewery, and by sometime shortly
after that—August—we’ll be making beer here.
TYG: And of course it will be another two weeks
after the time when you start that you’ll actually be serving beer that’s been
made here because of the fermentation process.
Nathan: Exactly!
That’s exactly right. You remember well. [...]
TYG: […] How did you ever find the money to do
this?
Nathan: We borrowed the money. We wrote a very
thorough business plan and then we found people willing to loan us the money to
build this project.
TYG: I see. Why do you have the Bread and Roses
business card here?
Nathan: Oh, because Blythe [the owner/baker at
Bread and Roses] is a friend of ours, and we love her bread, and people ask
where they can go to get some fresh bread or some soup or something, and we
like to be able to give them one of those and send them over.
TYG: […] That greenhouse will be grand, won’t it?
Nathan: Yes, I’m excited to get it finished.
I was happy to pour the concrete last week and now I’m ready to get the roof on
it. […] Okay I need to go to the lumber yard to get some wood for some work I’m
doing this afternoon. Thank you for talking to us!
TYG: Thank you so much!
INTERVIEW AT CLEFT OF THE ROCK LIGHTHOUSE
WITH DEB AND RAY PEDRICK (PART 2)
WITH DEB AND RAY PEDRICK (PART 2)
 |
| Cleft of the Rock Lighthouse in Yachats, OR (viewed from the west) |
Cleft of
the Rock lighthouse, just south of Yachats, was the home of lighthouse keeper
and maritime author Jim Gibbs, who died at home on May 1, 2010, at the age of
88. It is a private residence, not open to the public, as well as a
navigational landmark officially recognized by the US Coast Guard. The Yachats
Gazette staff was privileged to have the opportunity to tour the site and to
spend an afternoon talking with Deb and Ray Pedrick, Mr. Gibbs’ daughter and
son-in-law, who continue to live on the property. This is the second part of
the interview, and starts out on the first landing of the lighthouse tower.
Ray: Now it doesn’t
look like much: the light up in the lens came from Solander Island, which
pretty much looks like a Seal Rock. It’s just a rock along the northwest coast
of Vancouver Island [BC, Canada]. […] The Canadian Service in the 1970’s
decided it was too hard to run oil up to there, so basically it was an aerial
beacon. It was made in the 1950’s, made in Crawley, England by
Stone-Chance—Stone-Chance used to make Fresnel lenses 150 years prior. But then
they started making aerial beacons.
TYG
(Graphic Design): What is an aerial beacon?
Ray: It’s just a
light that you’re looking for—in airports, that kind of thing.
TYG-GD: But is it electrically powered?
Ray: Yes it is. […]
TYG-GD:
So how did he get that light, and get it Coast Guard-approved?
Ray: That’s the
million dollar question! I have been trying to find out—I remember when he got
that lens, because he asked me “Where’s a welder that I can make a stand with?”
and I told him where he could find one. I know he went up to BC, but you know…
Jim has his artifact friends, and he has the museum friends, and all this, and
they all talk amongst each other, and somehow somebody found out that they had
this decommissioned lens that the Canadians wanted to get rid of… So he
probably made a bid on it and got it. […] Anyway, so I’ll go up first and open
the windows so nobody gets claustrophobic up there.
Ok, this banister came out of the
Yaquina Bay Lighthouse. They just had a room full of junk down there before
they restored it. […] This [lighthouse] became operational in 1978—the house
was built in 1976. Every year the Coast Guard comes, and they have to inspect
it. Generally it’s really neat guys from the Coast Guard auxiliary that come
here and do it, and it’s just kind of a fun time. But they usually come out and
make sure it’s all up to snuff. We have a back-up lens in case the original one
gives out—it’s this little tiny fellow right here—it just shines within a
smaller area out there. If the light becomes un-operational for whatever
reason—we have to do maintenance, or it just breaks down (which it never
has)—we have to let the Coast Guard know immediately.
TYG-GD: What if the electricity goes out?
Ray: The light goes
out. We used to have a back-up system up there, a big RV battery, and it would
go on that automatically—it doesn’t draw a lot of electricity—but the battery
boiled over once, so Jim got rid of it. […]
TYG
(Editorial Assistant): So this is a barrel lens?
Ray: It’s a barrel
lens. It has its own signature within a geographical area. Ours is
red-white-red every 10 seconds. Now Jim and Cherie also constructed what was
called the Skunk Bay Lighthouse up on the Kitsap peninsula in the Puget Sound,
and Jim saved the iron lens-house off of Smith Island Light before it tumbled
into the ocean. It’s kind of like the sandstone that’s down at Coos Bay, and it
kept on sloughing off, and finally the lighthouse just fell in. So he was able
to save the lens from the lantern house off of that. He built Skunk Bay
Lighthouse out of Hansville, WA. Since Jim was editor of Marine Digest
for years, which was a professional publication, he knew a lot of ship captains
and stuff. He told one of the captains “I’ll shine the light for you when you
come in tonight.” And so he did. Well, somebody complained, and the next day
the Coast Guard was at the front door. All it was was this little one-room
shack with a lens on top. I mean he had to bring his own water with him, he had
an outhouse… and so the Coast Guard came and said “Are you the one that started
the light?” and he said “Yes I am.” And he said “Well, you have a choice: you
either put it out or you make it official.” And he said “Well, what do I do to
make it official?”—so they told him, and it became official. So this is his
second official lighthouse. This is one of two privately-owned lighthouses on
the Oregon Coast. The other one’s down in Brookings, right above the harbor.
 |
| Ray Pedrick and Allen Taylor, Publisher, viewing the Fresnel lens at Cleft of the Rock Lighthouse in Yachats, OR |
[We
climb up into the tower which has very, very little room for other than the
light and its stand]
Ray: This has an
automatic sensor which turns [the light] on at night. Now in all lighthouses
you have the lens room; you have the rotunda, which is the actual tower; you
have the gallery, which is the hand-rails around the edges where you stand and
do maintenance.
TYG: Is
there a way to get out there?
Ray: Yeah, through
the window. You crawl out the window.
TYG-EA:
We won’t do that.
Ray: No, we’re not!
Now you can see where this thing is built to take the outdoors. It’s massive.
It’s an acrylic lens. You can get in there, just pull that [gel] out, change
the lenses to different colors—the whole lens piece actually lifts out. It’s a
tight fit, but I have to bring it out about every 30 days. I clean everything
down. I oil the gears in there and everything, which are just beautiful
bearings. You can just turn them with your finger like that. So this shines
out—on a good clear day, it’s about 8 miles, 12 miles max. So you can kind of
get the bull’s-eye look. If you get right in the bull’s-eye, you get a good
idea of how even the plastic prisms—acrylic, plastic, whatever you want to call
it—they’re slightly damaged, but they do a good job.
TYG: What
happened to them?
Ray: I think they
just got a little bit wasted when they were up in Canada. I’ve tried to polish
them out, but they just don’t polish out very well. But they do the job, for
just a small 60-watt bulb in there it’s not bad.
TYG: How
often do you have to change the bulb?
Ray: They burn out
about once a year. […] We do have to refinish everything up here—it gets a
little baked—all the heat in the house rises up here, and then this [light]
puts out a lot of heat too. And like all lighthouses, there’s a lightning rod
up there too. […] [We all move back
downstairs]
Ray: Again, just what
we want to stress, is this is Jim and Cherie’s home, and this was Jim’s dream,
and Deb and I are nothing more than stewards of this lighthouse. It’s a gift to
us, and we never took it for granted. A lot of people ask what we are going to
do with it.
TYG: Yes,
that would be a good question!
Ray: I’m going to be retiring this year, but we
honestly don’t know what we are going to do. People say “Are you going to make
it a bed and breakfast?” and the answer is “No.” “Are you going to make it a
vacation rental?” “Probably not.” “Are you going to maintain it as an official
light in honor of Jim and Cherie?” “Yes, we are.” And that’s about the best we
can do for them—and of course enjoy it ourselves, and let our animals enjoy it [they
own a snuffle of bulldogs]. It’s a beautiful place, and we know that we’re
very fortunate—and like I said before, we do not take it for granted.
TYG:
Where did Jim get the idea for this lighthouse?
Ray: Remember when I
told you that when he was a little kid, he always looked [out his window at the
ships coming into Seattle]? He’s always been in love with the sea, and with
ships, and with ship lore, and sea stories and stuff like that. He fell in love
with lighthouses when he was a little kid, and he always said “I want to build
one.” And he also said he wanted to build one on the Oregon Coast. […]
 |
| Young Jim Gibbs |
TYG: Why
did he choose this location? I mean, it seems kind of desolate.
Ray: Yachats! [laughter]
Actually, he was offered, in the 1960’s—those houses didn’t look like they
do now; there were just a couple of shacks down there—I think he was offered
the whole thing for $10,000. [Awed “wow”’s all around] But he and Cherie
came down here close to when he retired and bought this property around 1970,
71. And then they moved to Hawaii.
TYG: He
lived in Hawaii?
Ray: Yes, he did for
a while. […] He got very sick in the late 60’s and had a type of cancer that
most men didn’t survive.
TYG: But
he did!
Ray: But he did. But
he didn’t think he was going to live long, so he moved to Hawaii. [And then] he
went and lived another 47 years! He kind
of surprised himself. So they moved back to the mainland because Cherie wanted to
come back—I think Jim would have been happy in Hawaii. […]
TYG
Editorial Asst.: We were talking about [before we started recording] how you
came here, how long the two of you have been together…
Ray: Deb and I will
have been married 40 years in May. We moved to this area in 1975 when I got out
of the Air Force. I worked in the mills, and Deb worked several jobs. I was
working in the mill fulltime and going to school halftime—I was going to be a
history teacher. That never panned out. Then we owned a business up on the
Alsea River for 12 years [Alsea Power Tools], and then I’ve been a UPS
driver for the last 20 years, and I’ll be retiring at the end of this year. We
owned a couple houses, and then around, I think, 1985, we sold that bed and
breakfast place that we talked about—it wasn’t a bed and breakfast then. We
wanted to live up Yachats River and have horses, but we couldn’t find stuff
that we could afford, or we’d find a place that needed fixing up, but we
couldn’t afford to fix it up. And we got to that 2 year mark when we had to
reinvest that money [from the house sale] and we were living in that cabin down
the driveway [near the entrance to the property]. Jim and Cherie came up to us
and said “If you want to build on the center point [of their property where the
lighthouse is now], you’ve got our blessing!” basically—and we did! It was a
good choice.
TYG-EA:
How did you two meet?
Ray: Actually we met
in 1968. You know Jim was somewhat of a faith-full person—he was a lay Baptist
preacher right up to the time he passed away and he was very involved with the
Yachats Baptist Church—but Deb and I met in a church when my family moved up
from Los Angeles to Seattle. I remember seeing this little blonde-headed girl
standing back there, and she was cute!
TYG: So
Deb’s father is Jim [Gibbs]?
Deb: Yep. I’m the only kid.
TYG: Do
you guys have kids?
Ray: We have dogs and
cats. Those are our kids.
TYG: It
was awesome meeting you guys—thanks!
Deb: Sure was nice spending the
afternoon with you!
