Lesley Taylor

My name is Lesley Taylor and my family moved to Ontario, Oregon in 1970, and onto the Oregon Slope.

My father was a water master for the North Board Company, my sister was about 12 years old in 1972 and attended Annex School, right on the Oregon side of the Snake River. I was only 6 in 1972 and I went to the first grade in a little white one room (2 room?) school house on the slope, my teacher was named Mrs. Starr.

After that my mother opened up a Beauty Salon in Weiser,  called the “Magic Mirror,” which we owned and operated for 6 years, in a remodeled room in the historic hotel that sits across the street from Les Schwab Tires.

After first grade they shut down the little school house and I then went to Pioneer Elementary school from 2nd grade until the 6th grade and have very fond memories of growing up there.

One highlight, my forth grade teacher was Ms. Carr in 1975/76. the year in which I won the grand champion award for best science fair project. I constructed a working model of a solar heated house. 

I took swimming lessons at the Payette pool and went to Ontario Jr. high in 1978 and played optimist football for the Eastside Cafe Dragons – we went on to win the Super Bowl in a blowout that was played at the stadium of Ontario High School.

Halfway through the 7th grade my parents split up and sold our house which my father and my uncles had built and moved to Seattle where I remained until the year 2017 in which I was diagnosed with colon rectal cancer – after finally recovering I decided to make a trip back to Ontario just to look around and see how things had changed. To my surprise almost nothing had changed, Pioneer Elementary looked exactly like it did the year I left, right down to the paint color and the playground equipment.

The Jr. High, which had become a middle school, and high school looked the same and so did the football field.

I drove out to our house and it too had not changed at all, same gravel road, drive same farmers fields and then I went into Weiser which still looked the same, to my mothers old salon building across from the Les Schwab tires.

I had bought my first record album “KISS ALIVE “at Kings Variety Store, which I think had turned into a furniture store 

One thing that was different was a little gas station market with a cafe called “ Verns Market” about halfway between Weiser and Ontario on the old highway, had been replaced by a well digging company. 

My sister worked at the Center movie theater in Ontario where I saw movies like Rocky, Jaws, the Legend of Sasquatch, The Pink Panther, Race for Your Life Charlie Brown, Dog Day Afternoon, Chariots of the Gods and Star Wars.

If I could buy our old house and move back there today I would do it, and happily spend the rest of my life there, I don’t know why, seeing that Seattle and Lincoln City Oregon, where I live now, are much larger and somewhat more interesting cities, when I went back there I found it hard to leave and was very melancholy driving away again.

From Lesley Taylor – January 24, 2024