NE Tillamook & Rodney

Today's cheerfully painted intersection is at NE Tillamook & Rodney. In addition to the usual floral theme, this one features bees and musical notes. Last year's painting announcement (from the Eliot neighborhood association) describes it as a "lovely design based on our collaboratively chosen themes: gardens & food, historic Eliot, and diversity/multiculturalism.". Willamette Week posted a video clip of last June's street painting / neighborhood block party.

That's all I've got regarding the street graphic here, but I checked the Oregonian database and I do have a few colorful petty crime stories from the early & mid 20th century, things that happened right here at this very intersection....

• November 7th, 1919, in a story about local policemen becoming victims of petty crime themselves.

  A burglar stripped the automobile of Inspector Tom Swennes while it was standing at Rodney avenue and Tillamook street Wednesday night. The man is said to have attempted to drive the car away. When he failed in that he took everything moveable, including the lights.

• "Police Stage 'Holdup'", January 30th 1928.

  Visioning a wholesale holdup in progress, Police Sergeant Johnson and Motorcycle Patrolmen Gaunt and Stockdale, emergency men of precinct No. 2, made a hurry-up call to Rodney avenue and Tillamook street about midnight Saturday.
  
  An excited citizen had telephoned that several persons were holding their hands in the air at that address, while two or three others were searching them.
  
  "Arriving," the policemen succinctly reported, "we found the morals squad at work in a house in the neighborhood."

  Sadly the article fails to mention what the morals squad was doing here, or what these unnamed persons were being detained for.

• "Gun Toter Booked", September 30th 1957.

  Robert R. Isom, 26, [address], who was carrying a loaded shotgun and an empty rifle while walking at N.E. Rodney avenue and Tillamook street, was arrested Sunday on a charge of unauthorized carrying of firearms. He told police he was carrying the guns because a man had threatened to kill him. He was booked into city jail under $100 bail.

  (Note: The Oregonian used to habitually print the home addresses of people mentioned in the paper whenever they could lay hands on that information. I've swapped those out for "[address]" because I think that was a bizarre and invasive practice and I don't care for it. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, but hey, I make the rules here.)

• "Man Robbed of Cash, Ring", August 18th 1966.

  A 42-year-old man was robbed by three men Wednesday morning, after a drive with a woman he had met in Southwest Portland.
  
  Joseph Richard Harrier, [address], told police that he had given the woman a ride in his car after she asked if he would like to go to a party. He said that they drove to near NE Rodney Avenue and Tillamook Street where she asked him to stop the car.
  
  Harrier said that, when he stopped the car, three men approached the car, took the woman, his wallet, $185 in cash, and a $120 gold ring.