Arline Robinson rides her horse, Boots, with daughter Myrna Roper.
Arline Robinson, one of the original residents of the Old Willapa area, has just recently celebrated her 102nd birthday. To put that into perspective: Robinson's grandparents came to the area in covered wagons, on the Oregon Trail. Robinson lives in the same house that she moved into in the 1940's. Robinson has witnessed some of the more revolutionary events that have occurred in the last century, such as electricity, the prohibition, the first motor vehicle, as well as the general settling of the area. Robinson recalled some of the more prominent memories she still hangs onto.
"My mother witnessed my Uncle Dan bring the first Model T to come into the area. He came down the rail road track. He'd invented an attachment that rode one of the rails and they brought the car down into the area between the trains, which would go out around 4pm or something so after then they had until the next train to ride on the track," said Robinson, "there were no roads then, just horse trails."
Robinson recalled another first for the Willapa Harbor area, the first flying airplane to come through the area occurred just after World War 1: "An airplane came barnstorming in after the first world war, our uncles took our family down to where they had carved out a landing strip down the bay and they were charging so much per pound, to go out sight-seeing. I've still never flown in an airplane. I thought after I fell down and broke my thigh, if it had been too severe I'd have had to ride in my first helicopter."
Robinson told of a particular memory when she was a kid, saying that she'd loved horses and always wanted a Shetland pony. "One of the farmers that lived up the street from me, I presume he would run out of hay, and he would let his animals out into the neighborhood and they would make the rounds and eat what they could get out of somebody's yard," said Robinson. The woman went on to tell the story about how she would try to make friends with some of the animals that would end up in her yard. She had told her older brother to go get a box so she could stand up on it to try to mount the horse that she was feeding. "No ropes or bridle, just before getting on, a man that was going with my mother came by to tell me it wasn't a very good idea," said Robinson, "I finally got me a horse after we moved into this house in the 1940's (the house they were currently residing in Old Willapa), and we had a lot of fun riding the horse trails and into town."
Robinson then wanted to talk about the car wrecks that she had been in, all four of which had rolled completely over, "I have rolled into four different canyons in a vehicle, and never been hurt. Four separate wrecks," Robinson exclaimed in awe. Robinson explained that her family was at a picnic and her uncle had offered to drive the family home after the picnic, "I know my dad was drinking and my uncle probably was too, and we were coming down the road and for some reason we wrecked and ended up in the ditch upside down, and from the stories I hear they said that they found me down on the floorboards, unhurt," said Robinson. She then went on to tell of the last time that she was in a wreck, in 1979. Robinson and her husband were in a rush to Centralia for a medical appointment when there was snow on the ground on the Pluvious Pass out on the way to Pe Ell. They ended up flipping the car into a ditch on the side of the road due to loss of traction, "We couldn't get out of the car after we flipped it, and if I had a seatbelt on I probably would've been hanging there," said Robinson. "I told Ken, if he would help me roll down the window, I could get out. There wasn't much snow. So he managed to roll the window down and I climbed out and then I signaled a car that was coming up, and they said I looked crazy," Robinson explained, adding that the car that she flagged down helped to remove her husband from the wreck, as well as take them home. Robinson then told about her most interesting wreck: "I was coming home from high school, we had just passed the wrecking yard on the town-side of Casey's Pond. My friend was driving and she came to starting to turn around that curve and she said 'it won't turn!' and I don't think she ever tried the breaks to stop the car," said Robinson. She went on to explain why this was her most interesting wreck, "this was a school day and I was dressed up in military garb, because I was doing a presentation about WWI. I happened to have a flask in my uniform, and I figured I'd throw it into the pond since I didn't need it and of course the rumor got out that we were not hurt from the wreck; that we were just drunk."
Robinson has seen and experienced all of the most major events of the past century, and so we wish her a happy birthday, as well as a healthy life.