Pixie-phernalia

by Marc C.
(Portland, OR.)

Well, our family always took a yearly vacation, no matter what, no matter how little money my parents had...and that meant a week at the beach. We'd stay at either Surftides or Cozy Cove, and usually ate at the Pixie Kitchen several times while we were there.


As kids we were just mesmerized by the Pixie display in back, and always ate at the tables facing the train, whale, etc. I remember walking past the bar (The Shell Room) when we went in, and there were always figures at the bar, huddled in darkness, and one of those neat fiber-optic/oil spray things just inside the door. "One of these days you'll be old enough to go in there," my dad would always say. I was always awe-struck by that forbidden world.


I remember the food being pretty good, just burgers and things were all my brother and sisters were ever interested in. As more kids came along my folks had to cut back on the amount of trips to the Pixie Kitchen but we'd always go at least once. We'd usually save up our allowances and buy a bunch of crap in the souvenir store downstairs...mostly gag items like palm buzzers and that sort of thing, and various Pixie Kitchen gewgaws that I really wish I had kept now. Somehow I convinced my dad to buy a huge Pixieland cigar one year...it was easily the size of the cardboard tube inside a roll of paper towels, and it sat behind the bar in his party room for about six years before he finally lit the thing and tried to smoke it. I doubt that it was very good to begin with but the six years of drying out made it pretty nasty. He finally gave up and threw it out.


Eventually the day came when I was indeed old enough to go into the Shell Room, which I did on my own a few times (I turned 21 in 1981). Sort of anticlimactic, as I recall, but I did get pretty hammered in there. I can't remember the year the place burned and was disassembled but I happened to be in town one weekend then, and pulled up to snoop around...it was kind of sad to go in back and wander through the ruins of the old Pixie display. A lot of the old plywood pixies were leaning up against walls around back, and I almost swiped one, but chickened out. About 15 years ago I saw one of them in a back yard in North Portland, near Beach School, but it's probably long gone. Sure would be nice to know that someone is storing the whale, pixies, etc. somewhere.