My name is Ann Brownlee and I live in Portland Oregon. I was fooling around today and typed "Troy Oregon" into my AOL search engine. The page you did on Troy came up and I thought I might share a story with you about our adventures in Troy OR.
My name is Ann Brownlee and I live in Portland Oregon. I was fooling around today and typed "Troy Oregon" into my AOL search engine. The page you did on Troy came up and I thought I might share a story with you about our adventures in Troy OR.
A couple of years ago my husband Ben and I and three of our children decided to take a trip to Eastern Oregon. I am kind of a genealogy buff and I thought that I still might have relatives in that part of the country. I had been to different towns in the area but was told about the road to Troy and had never risked it. When we came upon the sign to Troy, we decided "why not?" and turned that way.
About thirty miles and three cranky kids later, we descended into Troy and stopped at the cafe to feed the kids. I asked a local if she knew of the Hafers and she said, "Of course. They just finished building a brand new log home. Go about 11 miles up this road........you can't miss it."
So off we went. She was right, no one could miss that baby! Huge carved sign in front read, "Hafer Homestead". Beautiful flower beds, everything perfect. And guess what? Nobody home!!!!!!!!!! I was so bummed. I wanted to meet these long lost cousins. But it seemed not to be that day.
We got back to Troy and asked for a better way out of there. We were directed toward Flora. Everything was going smoothly until we got several miles out of town. The van died. It was a electrical problem that Ben could not fix. We sent our son John (who was seventeen and blue haired at the time) down the mountain to call Triple A. Then we waited. Soon a pick up truck came upon us. They stopped and asked if they could help. We asked them to pick up John if they saw him. They left and soon another pick up came along asking again if we needed help. We told the woman that we were okay.
About a half hour later, the first pick up came back. John jumps out of the back, runs to the van and says, "Hey Mom, want to go check out a beautiful log home with lots of flower beds?"
Granted, the population of Troy and surrounding area is not large. But what were the chances that my own cousins would be coming down that road at that time of evening and just happened to meet us? They had been to a wedding and had chose not to stay and eat as they normally would have done.
We stayed the night at the ranch and the van was towed (by another cousin) to La Grande. A few weeks later we drove my parents, my aunt and two uncles to visit the ranch. Even though these people were distant cousins and we had never met them, they made us feel at home. My great great grandparents are buried in a tiny cemetery on the ranch as well as other aunts and uncles. It was really interesting to be there.
Used with permission of the author.
