October 2, 2001

Community Hops

By Tom Henderson

INDEPENDENCE -- Independence City Manager Greg Ellis can admit it now. He secretly wondered how crews could get Main Street ready for the Independence Hop and Heritage Festival. Less than 48 hours before acoustic musician Don Mahoney took the stage and started the festival, Main Street was still a dirt road. And not a very handsome dirt road.

Ellis was joining the ranks of the skeptical. Then a miracle happened. Fresh dry asphalt greeted people as they came to the festival. No one was more surprised than Ellis. "I was amazed at how quickly it came together." Marilyn Morton, a member of the committee that organized the festival, has an explanation for the miracle. "We quit stressing about it," she said. "Once we did that, it all came together. We just said, 'hey, even if we have packed gravel, we're going to have a good festival.'"

Main Street in Independence has been torn up for weeks as part of a $300,000 project to widen sidewalks and generally make downtown a nicer place for pedestrians. The project was funded by a grant from the Oregon Downtown Development Association.

The project includes not only widening the sidewalks by three feet but also putting in antique-style street lights. Most of the street lamps were in by the Hop Festival. They just weren't working yet. No problem, said Billy Kay Harrell who runs Taylor's Soda Fountain. "They make a great place to hang hops."

The Independence Hop Festival was a tradition for years and years. In the old days, the event include parades, bands and dances. Not to mention a festival court with a queen and princesses selected from among the young ladies of Polk County. The old hop festival fizzled out in the years following World War II. Local residents decided it was time to revive the party, celebrating both the community's past and future. Morton said organizers could not have asked for a better event -- from the hundreds of people who attended to the cool fall weather.

What really got to her, Morton said, was a karoake session where a woman got up and sang the National Anthem. People poured out of homes and business, solemnly putting their hands over their hearts. "I just had shivers the whole time," Morton said. The event coincided with the second annual Salmon Run. Local artists bought pieces of foam board from the River Gallery for $25 apiece.

The result was hundreds of brightly painted fish to raise money for a visual arts scholarship for a graduating senior from the Central School District. The fish were more than just decorated. They became mediums of personal expression. Jana Svboda turned her fish into an explosion of words and images, including her own personal apology. She apologized for locking her sister, Laura, in the toy box and for the way Laura still keeps bringing it up.

"I'm sorry for all the rules I've broken and I'm sorry there are so many," she wrote. Betty Lou Smith of Independence said hops are not as big as they used to be in the area. There were once as many as 4,500 acres in hop production in and around Independence. Today, there are only two hop farms with about 800 acres in production.

However, Smith said it's just good that people are interested in the history of area agriculture. "This has been just so wonderful," Smith said. "People are interested in the history of the community."