Horace Wirt and Harry Bowen Visit in Oysterville, 1948

More and more, even right here in Oysterville, near neighbors communicate with one another by telephone or email. Even our newest full-time neighbor, Tucker. When he was here only periodically, he would stop by, often unannounced, and come in for a visit. I miss that.

I haven’t tried to analyze what it is about our lives that limits face-to-face visiting these days. I don’t think I really want to know. But I remember Tucker, himself, saying that just knocking on someone’s door was the “Oysterville Way” of doing things. Just like an “Oysterville Meeting” which occurs when two or more neighbors happen to converge on the road – as pedestrians or behind the wheel; it doesn’t matter.

In the seventies and eighties when my folks lived in this house, my dad often remarked that it was like Grand Central Station. During those years, my dad was the point person for the renovation of the church and for the development up on Douglas Drive.   My mom, meanwhile, managed the social end of things and was soon considered the Pearl Mesta of Oysterville. The doorbell seemed to ring all day long – contractors carrying blueprints, workmen with questions, various club-member friends of mom planning the next fund-raiser.

Dale Espy Little, ‘The Hostess with the Mostest’ 1999

Now, forty years later, Nyel calls this house not Grand Central Station, but “Information Central.” Every day, or so it seems, we get questions by email or telephone. Some are directly related to our Oysterville responsibilities – brides or grooms wanting to know availability of the church, for instance. More and more frequently there are questions from Oysterville Daybook readers or from people who have been referred to us for answers about local history.

While we were on our ten-day ‘sabbatical’ recently, we let the telephone answering machine collect messages and we let the emails accumulate in our cyberspace mailboxes. It was a vacation for us in every sense of the word. But, have we ever been scurrying since we got back!

In the Telephone Message Department six questions related to an upcoming House Concert (and one regarding missing gloves after the fact). There were two wedding inquiries (one from a bride; one from a groom), a question from someone in Oregon City regarding an original Charles Mulvey painting, one question about a memorial donation to ORF, and an inquiry from my cousin BG about the exact color of the curtains in the Red House. Oh yes, and a call asking for Oysterville Storekeeper Greg’s phone number. There was also a message from a woman who wanted to dispose of a chair that she thought came out of the first Pacific County Courthouse (which was here in Oysterville.)

Information Central?

That last call turned out to be the most interesting of all and resulted in a visit from a lovely woman named Barbara Hale from Mill Creek, WA and her daughter, Traci Lund. It turned out that Barbara is descended from Amable and Amelia Aubichon Petit, is related to the Mechals and Herrolds and many other old families from Chinook and Ilwaco, and has great stories to tell. I do hope we have more chances to visit. And, for the record, no one is sure about the exact provenance of the chair and it has been given to the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum.

And then there were the emails… But I’m happy to say that Tucker did come over for a face-to-face visit the first day we were back. It wasn’t done in quite the usual ‘Oysterville Way’ though – he called first.