My wife and I had season passes to the zoo. The sales tax free shopping at Portland’s fabulous malls and downtown retailers used to be terrific. They also had free trams to take you all around downtown and over to the big mall with the ice skating arena where Tonya Harding first developed into a premier ice skater.
My wife was invited to do a presentation at one of the 8th Airforce Association quarterly meetings almost every year. In 2013 she set up a big display at the Military Vehicle Preservation Association convention in Portland. And I met R. Lee Ermy there with my geriatric wiener dog. It turned out that R. Lee had lost his own wiener dog a few months before and you never saw a more touching display of a man with a reputation for toughness loving on a dog.
My wife was dressed in a WWII Nurse Uniform and looked beautiful... she and here friends went down to get some pictures with R. Lee and he didn’t have much interest in the group until my wife said something about him appreciating her wiener dog. Then he lit up.
We also took groups of senior citizens to Portland on a few occasions and we always had a great time. Sadly we would not do that again any time soon and will be hesitant to even do more shows there when this idiotic lock down is over.
Sorry it was the 2008 MVPA convention in Portland where we met R. Lee Ermy. She received an invitation to go to Hawaii at that show. 2013 was also a good time. By that time the Wiener dog that R. Lee Ermy had loves on was gone. I brought a kayak along and the dog and I paddled across the mighty Columbia together on a couple of different days while my wife was at the show. It was very breezy as is common on the river and more challenging than one might imagine. The dog did not like it much. But they had a great park that I started out from just a few miles from the Convention.