Coast Walk Diary

Coast Walk Diary

In 1931, my father (Matt), then 15, and his aunt (Ruth), then 38, hiked the Oregon coast, north to south. Ruth had purchased a new Kodak Brownie camera, the photographic equivalent of the Ford Model T, an incredibly durable camera (my mother's was still being used into the 1970s) that took, as you'll see, remarkably sharp photographs. They kept a diary with each of them posting their own entries.

A little background

Ruth Consuelo Babb and her sister Belle Lydia (my grandmother) were born on the outskirts of Chicago in 1885 and 1893. Ruth collected everything from the Chicago Exposition that opened the year of her birth. I don't really know her education but believe she was already working as a nurse when she joined the Army in WWI. Belle graduated from the women's college of the Univ. of Chicago in 1903, having majored in English, “because it interested her.” Belle worked at Hull House during this time and while there met a young Irishman (as he would later write in his diaries, “the worst of all things: Liverpool Irish.” His parents and many of his siblings had been born in Ireland, but they emigrated first to Liverpool where he was born and then came to the U. S. They met, he proposed, she said she had work to do yet, and somehow he ended up on a sheep ranch in Montana owned by relatives of Belle. Eventually the reconnected and married and settled in Portland.

Both Belle and Matt were political radicals, Matt a “card-carrying commie” as they would say in the 50s, whose politics and and lack of faith got him excommunicated, thus sparing us a lifetime as recovering Catholics. In his diaries, the New Deal made him reconsider the necessity for the overthrow of the system as he now believed it was possible to work for real change within it. But that still lay ahead in 1931 when the trip took place. By contrast, Ruth was a staunch Republican who swore to the end that Roosevelt had sold us out at Malta. Belle an avowed suffragette and later “libber” was nevertheless the one who married, had children, and was the stay-at-home wife. Ruth, never married and worked for much of her life, though she would eventually take on the domestic duties for her brother after his wife died.

The house in the first pictures is Belle and Matt's, which they built / moved into when my dad was four or five. Prior to that they had lived across the street in the woods that were there until the 70s. There they lived in the “tent house.” The tent house had a wood floor and walls about three feet high but was canvas above that. This, in Portland where it rains nine months of the year, so well-oiled canvas I assume. In this place they started their family: first, two daughters Mary and Ellen, and then Matthew Joseph Coleman Jr., my father. The house as pictured, has been relocated. They built it, then later dug a basement, and picked up the house, turned it 90 degrees and set it down on its new foundation, where it remains to this day.

Ruth had many other siblings but only two played a significant role in my life, and to some extent Belle and Ruth's. Horatio (Bobby) Babb was a chiropractor and Thomas, eventually an optician, but not until after logging in Oregon and working as a merchant seaman on a proverbial “slow boat to China.” After Horatio's (Bobby) wife died (by the early 50s), Ruth moved in with Bobby in Tillamook Oregon to “keep house.” They would remain together for the rest of his life. In 1955 at the age of 62 Ruth decided to learn to drive and bought a Chevy BelAir. After he retired, she and Bobby bought an Airstream trailer and began touring throughout the west and Mexico. Her driving scared my mother, but to my knowledge she never had an accident and she drove a lot of those miles with trailer in tow.

The Trip

The purpose of the journey, as my great aunt later explained to me was for her to search for a place to settle down. She would always dream of owning her own house and this was the first attempt, though it would never happen. Ruth joined the army in World War One. She was sent to Walter Reed Hospital and became part of the group that invented modern physical therapy. At the age of 98, my then brand new wife got to meet her. During that conversation she told us at the end of her service her commander violated army protocol and instead of sending her home via the most direct route from Washington DC to Portland, Ore., allowed her to book her own return. She decided to circumnavigate the country to the extent she could. By train, she went south from D.C. Then west to New Orleans, where her train was ferried across the Mississippi, and across Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, then to California and finally north to Portland. Upon her return she worked as a physical therapist in a number of places including Tacoma, Washington just prior to the trip. I'm not sure why this particular moment seemed to her right to take this journey.

First Entry

[In Ruth's hand]

Tuesday July 21, 1931

Beautiful trip as to scenery but uneventful. Changed Greyhound Stage at Roseburg for Coquille. Arrived Coquille Tues July 21, 1931 at 6:35 Pm. Had good dinner of fried chicken and fresh strawberries (Matt had apple pie a la mode) at the Coffee Shop.

Saw good looking pair of bookends made of Oregon Myrtle wood.

Spent the night at an Auto Camp just outside of Coquille on the Road toward Marshfield

Matts Pack My Pack

Clothes Bedding

Food

Accessories

I found a pack board very comfortable for carrying purposes.

We are a great curiosity apparently, to all who see us with out pack on our backs.

[then in Matt's hand]

We appreciated the stove, wood and hot shower at the Auto Camp.

Aunt Ruth on the left and Matt Jr. on the right. Left to right on the porch Ellen, Mary, Belle and Matt Sr. (seated).

Note the highway on trestle work in the lower view.