Lunch with Lynn

July 13, 2025

I'm back at my familiar post at the opening hour again, because we're getting an early start to the day. This is the day of our long anticipated lunch date with our friend Lynn, who's up on her own road trip to visit old friends and haunts in the region she lived in perhaps even longer than Rachael and I did. Were meeting down in Salem at the Wild Pear Cafe, a place we've had lunch with her before, and need to leave town around 10 in order to arrive in time.

I work on the blog while I sip away at my first cup of coffee until around 7 when the pastries get laid out. Today there's a new option, a feta and ?? croissant that I'm happy to try. This is my time to catch up on the horrors of the day though, because typing and eating don't mix well. Today I find this horrifying scene from MacArthur Park, the latest and maybe the most revolting yet of these raids yet, rounding up people with the wrong look and complexion and hauling them off to their newest concentration camp.

But we're not going to go there today, other than to note in passing how quickly our country is being taken away from us unless enough of us Stsnd up!! Fight back!!

We aren't doing that today though. We're going to Salem. And everything about the day is one big nostalgia trip as we pass one thing after another that brings a memory back that we haven't thought of or talked about for a while. And there are dozens of them, hundreds, a thousand of them maybe, because until we went vagabond seven years ago the entire Team Anderson played out along this fifty mile strip between Salem and Portland.

There are many tangents I could go off to of things that came up along the way, but we'll just stay focused on our lunch with Lynn and some photos I took while waiting for her to arrive.

We arrived in Salem just after eleven, after a drive made easy for me because it's a drive I've made a thousand times now so I know every curve and landmark along the way, and because it's the right direction and time of day. My eyes are at their best in the morning, and the sun is on the left, the side of the good eye, so it doesn't agitate the other one and start affecting my vision.

And still though, I miss my turnoff onto the Chemeketa Parkway (now the MLK Parkway; I'll have to retrain myself) because Rachael and I are chattering away about some new old memory that's just resurfaced. Fortunately she and the map are on the case and alert me in time to get off at Market instead.

The Wild Pear is open when we arrive but Lynn isn't due to arrive for another fifteen minutes so while Rachael goes down to the restaurant to watch for our friend I take a walk around the block looking at some of my favorite buildings in the historic core of our State Capitol, starting with maybe the best of all, the Ladd and Bush Bank building (now the US Bank building).

Looking down the State Dtreet face of the Ladd and Bush Building. Our restaurant is at the opposite end of the block.

The Ladd and Bush Bank went up in 1868, the first bank in Salem and nine years after statehood.

One of the doors at the entryway of the bank.

Now the Globe Tower Travel Building, this was built in 1880 and was previously the Capitol National Bank Building. We have a history with this place, but we won't go there now.

Busick Court, with the same-named breakfast restaurant on the right we'd sometimes come to.

It's interesting zooming in on the window on the right: Established in 1992 and again in 2024. I wasn't aware of it but it must have shuttered during Covid.

The Bike Peddler is another place we have a history with this, as well as a surprising stipory but we won't go there now either. It's time for lunch.

Inside the Wild Pear Cafe. That's our table to their right, with my strawberry lemonade and three glasses. Rachael's out front waiting for Lynn to show up, who will arrive shortly.

Like several of these historical buildings, the Wild Pear has a pressed tin ceiling.

We last saw Lynn a half year ago at her new home in Palo Alto, in a world so different that it feels like a foreign land now. We arrived on our drive down to San Luis Obispo, me still plagued ba a nonstop headache and just beginning to experience vision issues. There is so much to catch up on that time goes too fast when it's time to move on. We talk first about me because she asked and is behind the curve - she still thought we were leaving for London in a few weeks. And then we turn to the news from her world, and then we start reminiscing about our lives together.

Because there's a lot to reminisce about. We've known Lynn almost since the day we met, and we have enough stories with Lynn in the frame to fill a book: work colleague, member of the bridge group, member of the movie group, companion on ski trips and hiking trips and road trips. Many of those settings and trips and adventures are worth telling and will eventually find their way into this narrative somewhere if the rail continues on long enough to get there.

For now though, let's stop here as she heads south for home and we head north for Portland before the rush hour hits.

Whew! At just the last minute Rachael remembers that we haven't taken a photo yet.

The day ends with me packing away my Bike Friday, and remembering to take yet another suitcase packing shot. This one's different though, and exciting - because he's not being packed away to travel this time. He's bound for the storage unit, and finally Roddy will get to see for himself the great southwest that he's been hearing so much about for the last seven years.

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Andrea BrownWait. The SOUTH west? Did I miss something?
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1 month ago

Scott AndersonTo Andrea BrownNo, but I just haven't published the whole itinerary for the rest of the year. We're taking the train up to Bellingham for a month, then we're stopping off in Seattle to see dad on our way back to Portland for two weeks - we've booked an AirBnB on Hawthorne about six blocks from you.

After that we're going to make our way down to SLO by train and rental car, figuring it out as we go based on weather and other issues. We'll hang out around there for a while and then catch the train to Tucson. Should be awesome.
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1 month ago