I read the news today, oh boy...

A brief story in Portland Monthly mentioned that the Virginia Cafe will be closing its doors as the entire block is razed for development of a new office tower. Reassuringly, there will be a new Virginia Cafe rising nearby. The article noted that all the old traditions would be preserved.

For me though, this is one further step in the reshuffling of the urban landscape of my past, a reshuffling that isn't mitigated because a new location has been selected where all the elements of the past will be recreated. I recognize that this isn't as big an issue as, say, moving Monticello closer to the urban center so it would be easier to visit. This is only the Portland of my past. At the same time, I mourn the change. At the same time, I look forward with curiousity to the future.

The Virginia Cafe figures large in the mythology of my youth. As a fourteen year old from the West Hills taking the cross town bus every morning to Central Catholic on the blue collar Eastside, I would get off the Council Crest bus at Park Avenue. Half a block down the street was the Virginia Cafe, a restaurant trapped in a past distant even in the early Sixties. The strongest memory I have is walking into the Virginia Cafe and telling the cashier at the front door that I wanted a pack of cigarettes. The waitresses in this time were all, to my fourteen year old eyes, well beyond elderly. They all wore, in memory's eye, crisp white waitress uniforms which included some sort of linen tiara. When I asked for cigarettes, the woman across the counter smiled sweetly at me, and looked down at the glass-topped counter. "What kind?" she asked. Panicking because I was afraid I'd be nabbed any minute, I scanned the displayed brands below the glass. "Tareyton," I said. "Herbert Tareyton". I could see the pack right in full view. "Oh," she said, "that's fine." And she removed a single pack and placed it carefully on the counter. I think the price was twenty five cents. While I wouldn't wish smoking on anyone today, it was a rite of passage for me then.

But it is more about the sense of places, than about cigarettes. In later years I had memorable lunches and 'drinks' with friends at the Virginia. In high school, there was a pool hall, "Sam's" upstairs and just next door where we would often while away early afternoons. Before I got to high school, Robert's Rod and Reel Cafe anchored the corner a half block away. On Saturday mornings, my best friend, Rick, and I would take the bus down to the Library at Tenth, check out a ten pound stack of books- Heinlein, Treece, Bradbury, Stevenson, Norton, C.S.Lewis, and so many others- and carry them to Robert's. The standard there was to order a turkey sandwich (cut off the bird not pressed meat) and a vanilla milkshake which we would devour while plunging with all our souls into our books. Timing the indulgent moment just so we could be able to catch the next bus back up the hill.

The Virginia and Robert's are placeholders for other food and beverage places now gone. The Pickle Barrel coffeehouse by PSU. Old Main at the base of the Hawthorne Bridge. Reubens 5 Tavern on Jefferson. The Ninth St. Exit and Cafe Espresso Coffeehouses. Brasserie Montmartre. The Speck on Southeast 52nd and Foster. The Lido. Hung Far Low after midnight. The strawberry shortcake at the old Hoyt Hotel. The QP in Northwest. Key Largo and even the Sambos which used to serve dime coffee at West Burnside and Vista. Memories now. All memories and the crisply attired ladies of the Virginia Cafe are waving as they too fade into the distant and unrecoverable past.