Wikstrom Mills

Inez Wikstrom Langdon Memories

1991

Inez Langdon, born in 1900, said her parents came to Scappoose to escape the perils of farming in the Midwest.  Her father had a wheat field in Kansas.  One evening he went to town and got a reaper to bring in the wheat, and left it sitting out, they didn't have a shed, overnight.  "There was a hail storm that night that took the canvas off the reaper," she said.  It also smashed the wheat crop.  "He took the reaper back to town to the store, sold the horses and whatever else he could and ended up in Portland with his wife,  four children, three trunks and $300.''

That was the beginning of a long history of Alice and I.G. Wikstrom in the Scappoose community.  The Wikstrom Planing Mill, located where the fire station is now, operated from 1902 until 1910. and supplied much of the lumber for the Scappoose School, built in 1908, said Langdon.  "Dad had a mill or some kind of timber business wherever he went." she said. "He started logging with oxen and ended with a train in Washington."  A flume, using water from Scappoose Creek brought lumber down to the mill.  Porch posts made by a trained lathe operator and produced on a rare turning lathe were sold all over Oregon

She remembers their home, built in 1903, located close to where the U.S. Post Office is now, was the first home in the area with indoor  water and plumbing.  

Dad played the accordion and we square danced on the linoleum: said Langdon, who still lives in Scappoose not far from the early home.  "We sat around the table and did our lessons, and sometimes we would sing, pull taffy or roast peanuts with all the neighbor kids."

Langdon remembers the scads of ginger cookies her mother baked on Halloween that the children would decorate with faces and then take to elderly people in the community.  

Some of her favorite memories are of the perpetual battle between students and teachers in school.  Kids had pets back then, she recalls.  "We had one teacher who wore long skirts and was very religious." She said one boy in the class had a pet chipmunk he would smuggle to school in his pocket.  ''One day he rolled hazelnuts up front under her skirt." said Langdon.  "The chipmunk would run up, get the hazelnut and come back to his pocket." The children all took great delight in putting one over on the straight-laced teacher.

Langdon attended the two-room grade school on West lane Road for one year, and then started in Scappoose School when it first opened in 1900.  She participated in the Debating Society and the Choral Croup, competing with other school groups at the County fair.

Langdon's family was her top priority. and except for a brief stint in the Steinfeld's Plant during World War II, she lived on the farm with her husband Lester Langdon and family and took care of her mother and father and the stock and the garden.

The Spotlight July 10, 1991