Council Crest tower disappears from skyline

I saw a small blurb today in The Big O saying that the red and white steel tower on Council Crest was being removed and replaced by some gigantic space age tower. When I was a kid growing up on Montgomery Drive, the Council Crest tower was the largest icon in our landscape. There were legendary stories, most unverified by personal observation, from people who claimed to have climbed its narrow steel ladder to the highest landing. In my time this giant structure's maintenance ladder was unsecured and I, along with my brother Nick I believe, climbed as high as the lowest of the landings. That seemed plenty high to me. As I recall, in the late Fifties or early Sixties, the small brick building at the base of the tower was the control center for a television or radio station, in addition to which it had public restrooms which were open virtually all the time. Since Council Crest was a favorite place for young people to take their dates, look at the view, watch the stars, walk about, and explore bird and beelike subjects, the restrooms were a big deal. So many memories stir there: picnics, cruising, and lying under the stars to watch Sputnik pass with my Dad and my brother, Nick.

The tower at Council Crest had, of course, tiers of flashing and solid red lights. Its general form as a narrowing quadrangular spire gave the lights a distinctive profile, even when the structure itself was not visible. I remember that when I first moved away from home, to the East Side, I took consolation in the fact that the apartment had a view looking West and that I could see the slow, constant pulse of the Council Crest tower, timelessly marking the spot where I grew up. Though that was over forty years ago, I still look west from where ever I travel to orient myself to the Council Crest tower. And now it is gone. No more a beacon. No more the symbol of boyhood legend.

One of these days I'll ask Mar if she'll take a ride with me up to Council Crest to view this new spire. Doubt that it will fix itself in my consciousness but maybe for some young kid growing up in Portland's West Hills it will become the new beacon of his imagination of his finding home.