Tales from Wyeast

I have a story to tell you. It relates to the old building I used to work in. You may be aware of a portion of this story.

I work nights for Ivey Imaging. About six months ago Ivey bought Wyeast color. In the dead of winter we moved out of our old building to the Studio facility in Milwaukie. The old building sat on the hillside below Pill Hill. Once a month I would be given a roster with film and chemistry inventory listed. This was my cue that inventory would have to be taken.

Wyeast, in its heyday, used a prodigious amount of film, paper, and chemistry. It was the largest photolab in the pacific northwest. With the advent of digital technology, less and less film was used. The 3rd floor, the floor where all the processing went on, was shut down in 1999. Wyest numbered its floors in reverse; first floor was sales and admin, second was production, and the basement was floor 3.

Before Wyeast had taken posession of the building it was the property of the Red Cross. Floor 3 contained massive freezer rooms where all of Oregon's blood supply was kept. The freezers were perfect for storing film. The freezers were climate controled behind thick airlock doors.

Taking inventory always gave me the creeps. You go down in the elevator and when the doors opened you were greeted with total darkness. You had to walk down a short corridor and turn the lights on. Even then only a few were swtiched on.

The place was a maze or huge processing machines, drying racks, and chemical containers. It smelled of fix and developer. Businesses are here to make money and when a portion of business is shut down it usually just sits there. The 3rd floor was no different. I always felt a bit like the Omega Man wandering around down there. Desks still had paper work on them, albeit from 1999.

The freezers were dark and humming away. Once you were inside you turned on the lights and it looked bright and happy. Though the creepiness factor was always there since one wall was lined with glass doors, much like a supermarkets freezer isle. Beyond them was more dark building.

Inventory usually took several hours. Before 1999 it could take days. I would sit on a rolling chair and take the tally.

The building around me would make all the noises old building make. But every once in a while you could here doors open, or even feet. I would tell myself that it was all going on on the 2nd floor. Once I even heard a sink turn on and off. Then there was the time a bank of lights all sparked at once and then shut off. Even on the 2nd floor I would turn on all the light, and crank the radio, to cover the bumps in the night.

I would not even bother to relate this stuff to you, but I came across an article in the Oregonian today that made things more clear and disturbing. You see the building inquestion was built in 1961 on property purchased from the City by the Red Cross. This city property contained cemetery #4. One of the oldest graveyards in the city. The story in the paper says that a title search done by the owners and neighborhood association, has determined that the city made no attempt at removal of the bodies. A specialist in pioneer cemeteries was called in and, using his euipment, found coffins 5 feet beneath the surface. Currently there are 120 coffins under and around the current structure. The only things the city moved were the headstones.

Epilogue: I guess this is not new to the City. According to Mr. Doering, the specialist. There are bodys under all sorts of developments. There are coffins under the sidewalk at SE 32nd and Main. Coffin removal was not really enforced by the City until the mid sixties.