Family originally moved from midwest to Seaside
in 1936

By Leslie Pugmire - Seaside Signal

When Fort Stevens was bombarded by shells from a Japanese submarine during World War II, young Russell Palmer rushed to the Prom in Seaside to watch.

 “It sounds crazy now, but everybody did it,” Palmer said with a laugh. 

The North Coast native has lived here his entire life (70 years and counting), an observer to the Depression, war, and the boom and decline of timber and groundfishing and their effects on the region.

Palmer’s family moved to Seaside from the Midwest in 1936. “Dad had a 1931 Chevy sedan that was packed with everything we owned including my older brother and me,” he recalled. Palmer’s father came west looking for work, finding it in the woods and driving truck. 

Even though the Depression was in full swing at the time Palmer arrived in town, he describes the economy as healthy. 

“The trains were still coming to town then and there was a lot of logging,” he said. Palmer earned money as a youngster delivering the Oregonian  newspaper, working as a Piggly Wiggly box boy and digging razor clams commercially.

“I set a goal of digging 100 pounds of clams per tide that I actually met a couple of times,” he said. Palmer fondly recalled one of his favorite clamming buddies, Bobby, who matched his production despite having only one arm.

As a boy Palmer lived on 12th Avenue and his paper route took him from there to 4th Avenue. During WWII he had to get special permission to travel the Prom (part of his route) after dark due to its nighttime curfew. Palmer said during the duration of the war soldiers manned several heavy machine gun bunkers along Seaside’s beach, nestled next to the concrete walk. He
delivered to the beachfront homes and sold papers to the soldiers on duty. 

Another military-related memory is a fond one for Palmer. When he was a boy Tillamook Head was a favorite playground and exploration of a clay slide on its north face led to an intriguing mystery. 

“I found these perfectly round holes that the slide had exposed,” he said.  “When I dug around with my pocket knife I heard the clink of metal. I found some long cylinders that I took home and kept for years. I could never figure out what they were.” Many years later the mystery was solved when Palmer spied an old photo showing Oregon home guard troops during World War I using the headland for target practice. The mortars were fired from Seaside’s beach. 

During Palmer’s adulthood, he worked variously as a logger, groundfisherman, and millwright. “My dad always taught me to never specialize so much you can’t go on to new things,” Palmer said. 

He briefly flirted with newspaper work, encouraged by his father-in-law, a linotype operator. Harriet Palmer’s grandfather owned a newspaper and the entire family grew up learning the trade. Her father set type for the Seaside Signal for a spell during the 1950s.

Palmer described the profession as dirty, hot and smelly. “A favorite initiation for newcomers was to show them where the type lights were (on the printing press),” he said. When the new employee would bend down to look they would be unceremoniously showered by solvent and ink. 

As a newlywed Palmer allowed his father-in-law to convince him to move to Redmond and set type for a newspaper there. It didn’t last a year.

“I had to get back to the beach,” he said. “The job was miserable enough but back there the press room was 102 degrees. I’d rather be fishing in the
cold.”

Fishing and logging took the next several decades of Palmer’s life and his father who taught him to develop a variety of skills was responsible for fostering a hobby that gave Palmer his profession for the last 20 years. 

“I bought my first camera at the Seaside Agate shop when I was 10,” he recalled. Palmer’s father taught him photography and the art of the darkroom. 

“He said ‘You took ‘em, you develop them,” Palmer said. His lifelong hobby would eventually lead to a job when Compleat Photographer opened a store in Seaside in the early 1980s. Palmer manned the desk, selling photography equipment and maintaining the photo printing machines. He never operated the machines though — Palmer is color blind. 

 “It didn’t matter with my own stuff because I worked in black and white,” he said. “I can see color, I just can’t tell shades of a color apart.”

Palmer recently retired after two decades at the photo shop. He hopes to have more time for his other hobby — woodworking — and plans on taking care of his wife, Harriet, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. 

“It’s my turn to take care of her,” Palmer said. “She was there for me when I needed it.” His leg, injured in a logging accident in 1969, was eventually amputated in 1992 and since that time Palmer has also suffered a serious bout with hepatitis. 

“I’ll miss working,” he added. “I loved meeting people everyday.” With almost a dozen great-grandchildren and many more progeny before that, Palmer is unlikely to be lonesome.

Text and photo (C) 2002 Seaside Signal     Reprinted by permission