Old Settlers parade a highlight for horse ridersby Mary Le Arneal For Carol Diffey Clement, a child of the 1940s and ‘50s, Old Settlers was always a special Thursday in August before Labor Day and the start of school.
When she was in kindergarten her father bought her a pony, Pat, that she was thrilled to ride in the parade. Every year. “I worked at it so I would get first prize, $5,” Clement said. “Mother said, ‘We’re going to put that in the bank because you’re going to college.’ I listened to that for 18 years.” The parade assembled at the Railroad Park at 11 a.m., now the southwest corner of Platte River Road and Highway 79. It would proceed up Main Street to the area of today’s city park. At noon people would eat lunch. Clement remembers her mother always brought a picnic lunch from home. In the afternoon, at 1:30 p.m., there was a speaker. A truck flatbed would be brought in and placed facing north (where the present pavilion is), and the audience was to the west. When she was older, Clement opened the patriotic event singing the Star Spangled Banner with her mother, Lillian Diffey, on the piano. She remembers Larry Gaughen being one of the speakers a number of times. After the speaker, the Loving Cup was presented to the longest married couple. In 1951, when Carol was 12, there was a dance at 5 p.m. and another one that evening, from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Clement remembers going to the dance at Old Settlers as a preschooler and standing on her father’s shoes as they danced. The dances were always a big deal, with big name bands featured, Jan Garber being one she remembered. Clement said there was a big cement slab, where the Boy Scouts set up their stand now, where the dances were held.
Clement remembers a carnival taking up the whole parking lot of the school and the lot south of the park. There was a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round. She doesn’t remember having to buy tickets for the rides. Another memory of Clement’s from the day after Old Settlers was when she and her friend, Margaret Warren, would go to the park and look under the bleaches for coins and pop bottles that would bring 2¢ when you returned them to the store. “We thought we were being naughty,” Clement said with a laugh. Clement graduated from North Bend High School in 1957, went to Tarkio College where she met her husband, Joe. After teaching elsewhere for a few years, they returned to North Bend in 1965. They would compete in horse shows and ride their horses, Salty and Gus, in the Old Settlers parade. Clement still goes to Old Setters, but not like she used to. She still enjoys playing in the community band, singing in the church choir and the parade. “That’s about all I do,” Clement said. “It’s not glorious like it used to be, but it’s still Old Settlers.”
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