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Takin' the old road Sunday Jan 3, 1999 at 2:00 AM Dec 16, 2010 at 7:20 PM JONEL ALECCIA Highway 99 offers a mix of yesterday's charm and today's headaches A few miles to the east, Interstate 5 moans under the responsibility of rapid transit, groaning with the growl of truck brakes and the whir of car tires on a wintry morning. But here at the crest of the Pacific Highway, all is quiet. Rain mists the already-wet pavement rising north from California; wind blows silently through the manzanita and tall grass at the side of the gravel-edged road. It's an inauspicious start for the route that once welcomed all travelers to Oregon, a highway once regarded as the Gateway to the Northwest, a road now known to most as 99. But you quickly realize that anyone looking for omens along the highway that stretches more than 300 miles from one end of the state to the other will be sorely disappointed. A backroads journey from Ashland to Portland reveals that 99 has devolved from its 1950s and '60s heyday into what one historian calls little more than a memory, a jumbled hodge-podge of past and present. There is a certain amount of wistfulness, says George Kramer, a historic preservation consultant in Ashland. With this road, we made some tradeoffs. The biggest tradeoff, in Kramer's opinion, came with the 1967 completion of Interstate 5, the behemoth that sidelined Highway 99, changing the patterns of commerce and culture forever. What the state -- and Oregon society -- gained in speed and ease of transportation, it lost in charm and a sense of community, he says. With I-5 bypassing the downtown, we sort of exacerbated that `drive-15-miles-for-a-quart-of-milk culture,' Kramer says. We've lost a lot in recent years and 99 has fallen on hard times. But you can still find it. In Jackson County, the historic old road endures in familiar sites. The road winds out of the Siskiyous past Emigrant Lake and through downtown Ashland, where the Mark Antony Hotel -- formerly the Lithia Springs Hotel -- has stood for nearly 70 years. It continues past Talent, where a tiny Fiat 500 perched atop a pole advertises Jim's Better Buys Used Cars. Former Talent mayor Jim Walker started the business in 1964 and raised a passel of kids on the edge of its parking lot. Highway 99 runs past Craig Hansen's BMW and Triumph motorcycle dealership, the place his dad started in 1966. Hansen, 50, remembers moving up from Oakland, Calif., via the old highway, hauling a Model A car during a grueling 15-hour trek. This was not a prime location then, he says, surveying the busy traffic outside the shop at 3598 S. Pacific Highway. Everything has grown up around it. But the local road also runs past some strange sights. There's Dusty's Transmissions, the Central Point shop whose sign features a pair of legs sticking straight out of transmission. We're into transmissions, an ad explains. And in Gold Hill, where 99 becomes the Rogue River Highway, the road follows the river past B&Bs and barns that boast antlers, right past Joseph and Laurie Bonfiglio's ramshackle antique store. It's only been a year since the couple set up shop with a collection of goods ranging from the deer head sporting a hat over the door to a 3-foot salmon with bent fins mounted on a board. Neither one of us work, says Laurie, 37. We make a living off of this. Joseph, 46, is gone just now, undoubtedly gathering more milk cans or railroad lanterns or wooden whirligigs, their best sellers. The pair picked the place on the old highway because it was accessible and available. They hope to do well with the tourists come summer. We had a '36 Plymouth, you know, a Bonnie-and-Clyde car? says Laurie, who lives in the tiny travel trailer next to the shop. ``We wanted two mannequins to dress up to show people. We never got around to it, though, so we sold the car. Past Josephine County, Highway 99 hugs I-5 for a stretch, then veers off above Myrtle Creek to creep past a string of struggling businesses: boarded-up diners, a car wash, several small auto parts stores. One store appears more prosperous than the others, perhaps because of its advertising gimmick: another mannequin, this one suspended head-first from the handlebars of a motorcycle set atop a 20-foot pole. It's eye-catching; it's just something different, explains Bill Allen, a mechanic at the Auto Mike shop. This spot on Highway 99, across from the Country Club Tavern, is a good one, he says, to a growl of agreement from Shorty, a pit-bull mix guard dog. This is the busiest street in this area, Allen says, surveying the empty shop an hour before closing time. And this is the only auto parts store until you get to Roseburg. Location was also the reason Gary Aitken started selling lattes by the road in Myrtle Creek a month ago. The owner of the new Northwest Pony Espresso parked a white trailer in a muddy parking lot near the historic Horse Creek Covered Bridge and started cranking out espressos. We know this is a busy, busy, busy highway and we're the only espresso stand around, says Aitken, who staffs the trailer daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Just before it merges with Highway 42 near Dillard, Highway 99 snakes along the train tracks across the road from the huge Roseburg Lumber mill. It heads past Ron's Dillard Pit & Stop, past the Dillard-Winston United Methodist Church and into the city best known, perhaps, for the collection of exotic animals that populate the Wildlife Safari game park. On this rainy Wednesday evening, the main drag in Winston is a collage of fast-food restaurants, gas stations and, there on the right, the 99 Tavern, whose lighted sign promises shuffleboard, burgers and pool. Inside, a half-dozen men in baseball hats and plaid shirts hunch over Budweisers at the bar, while a wide-faced blonde with a big grin wipes the counter. The tavern, with its concrete floor and cigarette haze, has been here a long time. It must be 40 years anyway, the men all agree, surprisingly eager to talk about the place. In fact, they offer to get tavern owner Steve Fisher on the phone; you can ask him yourself, they say. So you walk behind the bar and pick up the black plastic phone that smells like a beer. Steve Fisher is on the other end, describing how his dad, Bill Fisher, opened the tavern in 1949. Of course, Winston was a boom town back then, Fisher says, his voice faint through the phone. His idea was for it to be a Route 66 roadhouse, the place you came after you got paid. Then you gambled your paycheck away on shuffleboard. But the freeway went through in the early 1960s, diverting Bill Fisher's prime customers. I-5 changed all that; it changed everything, says Steve Fisher, who took over the business in 1976. The tavern has weathered other blows, including the decline of mill jobs -- and millworkers -- during the past decade. New pool tables and expanded hours -- 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. -- help, but few people play shuffleboard anymore. Still, loyal customers come. I knew old Bill Fisher, says Ed Katzmarak, 78, above his beer. He arrived in Winston three years before the tavern opened; he's been coming weekly ever since. If you ask him why, he just shakes his head and takes another swig of beer. He just comes, says a buddy. He don't know why. Pulling out of Winston in the winter darkness, you trace Highway 99 through the headlights of oncoming cars. Through Roseburg, Winchester and Wilbur. Past Yoncalla, Drain, Curtin and Cottage Grove. In Eugene, you stop for the night and wake to bright sun, blue skies and a winding road. It's here, in the northern half of the state, that the rural character of the Pacific Highway is most apparent. That stretch between Eugene and Albany, it's gorgeous, says Kramer, the historian. At one time, the stretches between Medford and Phoenix were like that here. Now, the only place that's left is between Talent and Ashland because there isn't any flat land you can build garbage on. The highway splits into two forks -- 99 East and 99 West -- north of Junction City, a spot where acres of recreational vehicles flank both sides of the road. To the east, toward Albany, the road skirts rolling fields dotted with sheep, green farmlands, views of distant peaks. It winds through tiny Harrisburg, whose water tower is etched with what passes for graffiti here: Timmy, Charlie, June 15, 1982. You stop in Shedd, where the Valley Rose Bible Chapel and the Shedd Methodist Church vie for attention on either side of the road. You stand on the west edge of 99 and realize the road's barely wide enough to spit across, black pavement, yellow stripes and all. Farther up, past Tangent, you head over to Corvallis to take a look at 99 West. That's where you encounter Jan Brownell, the hiker determined to take 99 toward Canada as far as he can. He says he'll walk all the way if he has to. I haven't gotten one ride yet, he says. People are unkind. You leave him, too, hiking past the Little Beavers Day Care center, heading out of Corvallis. More rolling fields, more train tracks, more lichen-crusted trees. The road follows the river, more or less. In at least one place, the river wins. That'd be the Bayou Golf Course on the outskirts of McMinnville. On good days, the 90-acre course attracts dozens of golfers. On other days, like today, most of the course sits under a dozen feet of water, courtesy of the Yamhill River. This happens every year, says Steve Gillette, maintenance manager for the Bayou. There's, like, two or three places where it floods and there's no way to stop it. Gillette surveys half-submerged trees and floating benches and admits he doesn't even try anymore. Instead, he waits until the river recedes, then he starts cleanup again. When it's not under water, it's a really beautiful course, Gillette says. But you could drown out here now. Past the sodden golf course, Highway 99's helter-skelter character intensifies. Between Amity and Sherwood, vineyards and hazelnut orchards vie with strip malls, chain stores and fast food joints for a share of the unceasing traffic heading to and from Portland. Just the volume of traffic since I've been here has been incredible, says Sharon Boeckman, a 12-year Sherwood resident who's spending a December day selling filberts from a roadside stand. I sold all day long yesterday, too, well over $1,000 worth of nuts. It's the same on other other side, toward 99 East. But if you look closely, you can still see traces of the old road's attractions. There's the 99W Drive-In near Sherwood, for instance, which has operated continuously since Ted Francis opened it in August 1953. The single outdoor screen has been twice replaced, once after the Columbus Day Storm in 1964 and again after a strong gust took it down in 1990. Twin indoor cinemas have boosted audiences, but grandson Brian Francis admits popularity fluctuates. Business was good in the '50s to '70s, and was awful in the '80s and early '90s, he writes on the web site at www.99W.com. It's doing stronger now. Now 98, Ted Francis is going strong, too, still working six nights a week running the camera at the nearby Cameo Theatre. And there's the B-17 bomber that has perched along Highway 99 in Milwaukie since 1947, when Art Lacey flew his Lucky Lady into the Tualatin Airport. He settled her at the site of his new restaurant and gas station. Highway 99? It was a cow trail when he got here, says Punky Lacey Scott, Art's daughter and part of the large extended family that still runs the restaurant, ice cream store and motel park. Lacey's Bomber Inn once roosted over 75 gas pumps and welcomed perhaps a million tourists who came for a peek at the plane, a fill-up, a cup of coffee. Now 90, Art Lacey stopped selling gas in 1990, when he could no longer compete with the big oil companies' pricing. Now, the family has launched a campaign to raise $1 million to renovate the bomber. It's a landmark, says Punky Scott. People say, `How do you get there from the Bomber?' But like their aging owners, these Highway 99 icons are fading, says George Kramer. He would like to see the old road designated a historic district, at least in certain stretches, both to preserve what's left and to encourage a resurgence of highway culture. Maybe, slowly, we could work back to some less tawdry sense of that route, he says. But even Kramer isn't particularly hopeful that such renovation will happen. We all have this nostalgia about the simple '50s and the early '60s, he says. That was the era in which Highway 99 was king. But the reality is that north of Sherwood and Milwaukie, the old road disappears into the maze of bridges and highways that criss-cross Portland. There's no avoiding I-5 from there, or the fact that if you're heading back south, it's the fastest way home as well.