Garden Home School 1956-1957 5th grade class

Having read Colin Lamb’s entry I thought I would add a little. I was at Garden Home for all of elementary (1950-1958) and lived at 7280 SW 77th through high school. My father, Plez Martin taught at Garden Home for 2-3 years while I was there. He is now 93 and at the Veterans Retirement Home in The Dalles. I briefly worked at Lambs store and fondly remember Colin’s parents who really were always there and very nice.

I had a paper-box just alongside the store (the Upchurch store?) where Dairy Queen now is. One day, flush with collections, I purchased a one pound box of cherry centered chocolates. Waiting for my afternoon papers to arrive, sitting in my box, I ate the entire pound, got violently ill and to this day cannot face a cherry centered chocolate without feeling a little nauseous.

I recall the Frank estate up for sale (77th street ended at their property). They were asking $42K as I recall and I thought that was just an incredible amount of money. My parents paid $7K for our house in about 1949.

Lots of memories: Playing Beat the Clock with chairs set up in the back yard at Ward Nelson’s home on 76th. And then there was the time I put a baseball through their front window. Down in Rose Garden Village (NE corner of Garden Home Road and 92nd), a paper customer invited me in and gave me a home-made cream puff. When I bit into it, the soft cream filling came squirting out all over her rug. The bakery cream puffs had foamy fillings and that was all I knew. That is a vivid visual still!

In the early days you could walk the railroad tracks up to Multnomah, that was always fun. At the Portland Golf Club you could caddie 9 holes and earn 75 cents. Then you would take that to the back door of the kitchen and for 50 cents get this half pound hamburger and fries. Through some fluke, we never had more than 4-6 girls in our class of 20 some. It was lucky they made it out alive with all the boys trying to get their attention. Maybe Rita Losley (sp), Cheryl Eastman or one of the other girls remembers.

By Clark Martin (Retired clinical psychologist and 22 year kidney cancer survivor)

Ed: Clark’s mother, Ruth Martin, wrote a three-page history of Garden Home for the Extension’s book celebrating the history of Washington County, 1959. See Ruth Martin.

Printed with permission by 2012