Robbie Waller's Story

MLC Memories

I was a student at MLC in the years it transitioned from Couch to the Metropolitan Learning Center, from when I was in kindergarten through third grade, 1968-71—around the time Couch Park was getting a complete makeover and its first play structure, and around the time TriMet first started.

I spent most of the first part of that year free-ranging it on the streets of northwest Portland and hanging out in the old Couch Park. I had a good friend at that time named Sally who was also free-ranging it. We'd spend days taking pictures of the neighborhood, whether there was film in our cameras or not. I will try to find some of the actual photos.

At that time, we lived at 2068 NW Flanders, Apartment 2, across from the old Tasty Freez on NW 21st. Our days included collecting cans and bottles (the first days of the new Oregon bottle return bill), which we pushed around in a Freddy's grocery cart like we'd seen some of the homeless people do. When we thought we had enough for candy, we'd push our cart through the line at the Stadium Fred Meyer and buy candy with our proceeds. Surprisingly, no one ever batted an eye or questioned us.

Our adventures came to an end at the first parent-teacher conference of the year. When my mother showed up, the first question the teacher asked was, "We don't see much of Robbie. Is he home-schooled?" To which my mother replied, "No, I send him out the door every morning for school!" And since we only lived a block away from school, everyone assumed I was getting there okay.

After that, I found new fun things to do at MLC/Couch school. The park was still my sanctuary, and I have great memories of picking up trash and pretending it was treasure and hanging out with and singing along with drunken sailors who were also homeless. Some didn't even speak English, but came up from the shipyards to drink in the Northwest. Back then, instead of trendy shops on 23rd, there were dark smoky dive bars everywhere. That was the year they moved the Captain John Brown House from 20th and Everett to the east end of Couch Park. My dad was involved in trying to save this historic Victorian mansion.

Skipping forward in my memories to first grade in 1969 with Mrs. Yuzon, I discovered how much I loved art. I remember being very bored in kindergarten and the art at that point consisted of finger painting and playing with clay. But Mrs. Yuzon got us into building art, building things and creating things from rough objects and I thought that was awesome! I made an army of pet dinosaurs and lizards out of popsicle sticks, cardboard, and googly eyes. That was also the year I discovered how awesome MLC was. I started hanging out in the art rooms more and I discovered the wood shop in the basement which forever changed my life. Looking back on it from today's eyes, I'm amazed they let a seven-year-old use a drill press and belt sander, using a high stool because I couldn't reach it. I drilled holes in 2" square wooden blocks then glued the blocks together into a cube, connecting all the holes so that you could drop a marble in one end and listen to it roll around until it dropped out the other side. Me and my friends and some of the older kids slid two large tables together in one of the main floor rooms and built a giant marble maze with different chutes, ramps and pathways. And then we would race our marbles from one end to the other. Every few days it would get torn down and we would all work to rebuild it. I believe this type of education greatly influenced the rest of my life.

I repeatedly drew and painted pictures of my teacher Mrs. Yuzon in the purple mini skirt she often wore and that I loved.

In ‘69 our apartment building sold and the rent increased, and my parents were fortunate enough to know a woman who had just inherited a large rooming house/Tudor mansion down the street that needed managing. She hired my parents for the job and we moved into 333 NW 20th (the Hausner House). Going from a small apartment to a five-story mansion with a huge yard and wrap-around porch was great for me and my brother and all of our friends, and still a block away from MLC.

Second grade with Mrs. Mutti was a reality check for me because I had a lot of catching up to do after my free-ranging. I was a bit behind in my writing and math skills and it didn’t help that Mrs. Mutti didn’t like the fact that I used both hands to write with. I discovered music that year, and met Michael Carroll, a friend who is still a friend today.

At show and tell one time, I brought a deer skull to school with a full rack of big pointy horns. When Mrs. Mutti saw it, she took it away from me and marched me down the hall to wash my hands in the janitor’s closet. She took the deer “head” as she called it and made me take it home that day. I always got the feeling she was more of old Couch than the new MLC.

Between second and third grade, I went to a camp on Shaw Island through MLC. For a week we played and hiked around on the island in the Puget Sound. We were sometimes guided by counselors but most of the time we were trusted to do what we wanted to. I have so many good memories of that time that I can’t write them all down. I saw whales and orcas and giant jellyfish for the first time in my life. And I believe that was the first time I ever rowed and rode in a boat.

In third grade, I had a great teacher named Mrs. Arthur. I was still playing catch-up with reading and she was very patient with me, and also would read books to the class which helped improve my vocabulary and reading skills. I spent a lot of time in the library in third grade. Practically every day, I’d come home and tell Mom what a great teacher Mrs. Arthur was. When it was time for the first parent/teacher conference, my mom and I walked into her room, they looked at each other, and my mom called her by her first name, Sharon. I had always known her as Mrs. Arthur. They had gone to school together and hadn’t seen each other in over 10 years. They’re still friends today, and Mrs. Arthur was at my wedding. Sharon Arthur’s husband started Arthur’s Academy, a private charter school.

I remember the principal's office on occasion smelled of "incense" (my parents' words at the time) which many years later I discovered was actually marijuana.

Third grade was the year of the big tornado in Vancouver, Washington. The winds were very strong in Portland as well. I remember staring out the window at the northwest corner of the school and watching trash cans bounce down the street and against cars. They finally let kids go home when branches started hitting the windows. I remember watching several large trees blow down in the park on my walk home. It was out of hand and the most horrendous wind storm I can remember.

I went to the Shaw Island camp with MLC again after third grade with my friend Michael Carroll. Being a year older than the first time, and knowing the island, I had even more fun and really got into studying nature. I remember finding a dead frog on the side of the road, scooping it up and taking it back to the camp, and using nine-volt batteries and some wires to try to shock it back to life, like Frankenstein’s monster.

At the end of that summer, my parents bought a house in Milwaukie and we moved to the Ardenwald area where I attended the rest of grade school. I had great teachers at Ardenwald Elementary, but the education I got from MLC flavored not only the rest of my elementary education, but has served me in the rest of my life as well.

(Robbie Waller, 1960s, student)

ROBBIE WALLER'S reminiscence, charming, evocative, full of details, beautifully written, presents earliest MLC experience through the eyes of a little kid!

Robbie, age, what, five? spends his first days of MLC-style freedom pushing a shopping cart around the neighborhood collecting cans and taking pictures. Now is that not just the sort of adventuresome invention MLC delivered?

Mrs. Yuzon, known to Couch kids in pre-MLC days (and before her marriage) as Miss Guthrie, was a special-projects teacher before apparently being assigned a regular classroom. It is curious that she, and the stately if very traditional Miss Mutti, were, if memory serves, never MLC teachers but always Couch teachers. This suggests the pull of pre-merger MLC was simply too powerful for the young Robbie!

He submitted this just too late for the 50th Anniversary publication in 2018. We hope he reads it here and sends in some of those pictures!

Photo courtesy of MLC Wikipedia page