FEMCOR

 Well, life sometimes has surprises around the corner.   We attended a small rally the other day at our daughter's home, meeting some neighbors.  We've just moved from SE Portland (near Reed College, Steve Jobs' alma mater), to McMinnville, Oregon, about forty miles SW of where we were.  

McMinnville is somewhat famous these days because the local aviation museum has the fabled Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' plywood 'flying boat' from WW II--essentially the largest plane in the world for a long time.  Its total flying time is something like 26 seconds at 135' off the ground, covering one nautical mile, with Hughes at the controls, and some 35 others on board.   Incidentally, the wood used was mostly Birch, not Spruce.   Maybe it's apocryphal, but employees who built it were said to call the plane the Birch Bitch rather than the Spruce Goose.

So, one neighbor welcomed us warmly, and asked 'where are you from?'    We replied, something like "we've lived lots of places, but we're Californians by birth and most years that's where we've lived."

"Where?" she pressed.   Jenny's laconic reply, "Well, Bay area mostly, but Chuck is Southern Califonria and Jenny Sacramento."

"How do you like living in a small town like McMinnville?" she queried.

And I instantly had a flood of thoughts.   FIRST, I worked in McMinnville for HP forty years ago, when it was 10,000 people instead of 40,000.   That stopped her cold.  She had no idea HP'd ever been here.

Second, Palo Alto was the same size as McMinnville is today, when I went to work for HP, and Cupertino had only 3,400 people when we rented an apartment there, PERIOD.   All cherry orchards.   I skipped telling her that when my younger brother was born in Phoenix, that it was not much larger than McMinnville today, and when I moved as an HP designer to Colorado Springs, it too was not much larger than McMinnville is now.   Yesterday seems SO FAR AWAY.

Moreover, my wife Jenny and I moved from a small (like really small) town in Central California four years ago to Oregon.   We managed a horse ranch and stable for a decade in Elderwood, CA (pop. 158), 23 miles northeast of Visalia, on the last public road affronting both Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.   We were 19 miles (on CA State highway 245, a twisty two-lane road, with signs suggesting that RVs 'skip it') south of another small town, Badger (pop. 140).  Here's a picture of our ranch, with the majestic Kaweha mountain range (think 5 miles from Mt Whitney). and a ranch part way to Badger.  Yes, there are STILL remote parts of California.

To give you an idea, Woodlake on this map, at 7,800 folk--an agricultural town--Jenny and I added 14% to the total of postgraduate degrees in the entire town when we moved to 'suburban' Woodlake in Elderwood.  Backwoods.  Note the other towns nearby -- Seville (pop. 411); Yettm (pop. 108); Lemon Cove (pop. 498); Lind Cove (pop. 236).   Park City, Utah when we moved there before their first Winter Olympics was 2,800 when we first bought there.  So, we had to laugh with this woman who thinks McMinnville is "small".   

But YES, HP did have a plant here in McMinnville.   As we drove yesterday back into Portland, both Jenny and I recalled it (she worked at HP in a different group and saw HP in many ways that I did not, and vice versa).   She knew it only as an HP Division, but I knew it as the company that the Medical Group bought in 1974.  I couldn't remember the name, but came up with initials FMIR as we drove--Field eMissions Infra Red--was what I was imagining.  But on the way home, it hit me--it was FEMCOR which stood for Field EMissions Corporation.   And just outside the airport where the Spruce Goose 'lives' today (a great visit, by the way), I Googled FEMCOR and got nothing.  Then I Googled HP McMinnville and found a squib describing Femcor, started in 1958, and bought by HP in 1974, and then 'moved' somewhere undisclosed in 1997.  The reason for the article was to describe the remediation efforts to clean up a 100 acre tract for later use.   The address was given as SW 1700 Baker Street, which in turns out is still vacant land just east of the Albertson's and Roth markets where we shop today.   And Linfield College owns the ground, and is six blocks west (this is all right on highway 99W going through town), and moreover there is a building (or auditorium) at Linfield named the "HP" building, according to our daughter last night.     https://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/ECSI/ecsidetail.asp?seqnbr=207

So, both Jenny and I have 'older roots' in this particular small town than darn near anyone here.

Go figure.