The W. D. Taylor House

     Of the thirty-nine buildings in Oysterville, two have recently sold, three are presently for sale, and two are undergoing serious remodeling.  That is a lot of change for a little village the size of ours.  If my math is right, one in every six of our structures is undergoing a transition of one kind or another.
     Change is what ‘they’ say we can count on.  Yet, as we grow older, it’s change that is the most difficult to deal with.  It’s no wonder that history seems to interest us more as we age.  At least we can count on it to stay the same.  It’s done.  A fait de compli.  Well… sometimes.
     I am always interested in the new bits and pieces of information that turn up over time.  They may be discovered in heretofore unread documents, newly found letters, or through a skeleton in a family closet that is finally revealed.  Probably the most significant “find” I’ve ever made was in a small diary of my grandfather’s.  In it, he had written several pages of an interview with his father concerning his arrival in (what would become) Oysterville with Isaac Clark in 1854.
     Major Espy (for that’s my great grandfather was called) said very clearly and several times over that he and Clark were guided here by “Old Klickeas” – the same Chinook Indian who visited with him at his cabin over on the Palix the previous autumn.  It was Old Klickeas who had told my great-grandfather about all the oysters on this side of Shoalwater Bay and suggested they meet here in April.
     Even though that information is indisputable, I have serious doubts that it will ever “catch on.”  Too many people, including my late, venerable Uncle Willard, have mistakenly written that it was Chief Nahcotti who befriended Espy and who had subsequently guided Espy and Clark ashore by beating on a hollow log.  Since Nahcotti has a greater “presence” in the area – a grave marker (though probably not a grave) at the Oysterville Cemetery and a namesake town nearby – I doubt that present or future historians will give serious consideration to Old Klickeas.
     I did give ‘credit where credit is due’ in my book, Oysterville, published last year by Arcadia Press.  I doubt that anyone noticed.  If they did, they didn’t say so.  I guess some changes just don’t count…