Rest in Peace

The final chapter in Scott Canfield’s life closed on December 26, 2021; it was a short bout with COVID-19, let’s call it an epilogue.

Scott’s story began with his birth to Shirley [Martin] and Glen Canfield in Newberg, Oregon, in 1952 – in an old house called Newberg Hospital, where the First Federal Bank building stands today. His upbringing, like his family, was fraught with complications and adversity.

Scott’s parents separated not long after his twin sisters were born, and he lived mostly with his mother who soon brought into the family his half-brothers Loren and Gary, as well as several step-siblings. Growing up they lived sometimes together, sometimes apart, staying with his mother, grandparents, foster parents, or members of his extended family. Between Washington and Oregon, Scott grew up in more houses than he could remember to count. Sometimes he would visit with his father’s new family, and often checked in with the new half-siblings he found there.

Scott came out on top of all the troubles, determined to have a happy home, bolstered by his faith of God, a passion for helping others – especially family – and his love of cars.

He was helped along the way by his own second family – his great Aunt and Uncle, Edith and Levi Dressel – who took him so he could stay in Newberg to finish school, and became a powerful influence for the rest of their lives. Scott’s kids knew the Dressel’s better as Grandma and Grandpa than Scott’s own parents.

It was at Newberg High School where he met Diane Beardsley in 11th grade English – his high school sweetheart and the love of his life. They would marry three years after high school in 1973. Their first son Brandon arrived in 1978, followed by their second son Robin in 1982. Eventually Scott converted his photography dark room to a bedroom for his son, but he never stopped taking pictures.

Scott always enjoyed working with his hands. In his teens he started fixing cars and selling them off – a strategy that worked so well that by the time he got his driver’s license he had the same car as his mother, but a better model. He frequented car shows to take photographs or show off his ‘57 Chevy, and also loved taking out his RC cars with friends and grandkids. Building off his experience working in his father’s cabinet workshop, among other jobs, Scott launched Canfield Home Insulation in 1976. The business would last until Scott took a job with the Public Works department at the City of Newberg in 1993. He worked at home as well, continually adding and improving things at the family house. In his retirement, visits to his sons would often begin with “what can we fix?”

Scott had a spirit of generosity that led him to help people, especially youths. Throughout his life he had close relationships with his nieces and nephews, and helped them through troubled times. For many years Scott served as a Youth Pastor at Joyful Servant Lutheran Church where he led countless high school youth through myriad lessons, on many growth-spurring trips, and otherwise guided people down a path to being better adults. Not keeping his kindness to just friends and family, Scott also spent many years volunteering as a Crime Victim’s Advocate, helping strangers in times of tragedy. Nor was his generosity limited to youth, as Scott was known in the family to be ready to help aunts, uncles and others in time of need.

Throughout his life Scott loved telling stories, especially funny ones. There wasn’t a good story that his friends and family hadn’t heard several times over, but that didn’t slow him down. Re-telling stories only helped him refine his favorites – such as being stopped by the local police one December day while reading water meters for Newberg Public Works, when an alert had been called in for a crazy old man wearing a Santa hat, riding around on a bicycle and poking the ground with a stick. He really knew how to make people laugh, but nobody laughed at his stories as hard as he did.

Scott retired in 2018, but he sure kept busy with his own projects. He continued helping his family and friends, working on his house and his cars, practicing photography, playing with his grandchildren, and writing down his stories. And he fought hard to keep living – fighting off cancer three times to stay on this earth.

Scott leaves behind his wife Diane, whom he loved to his last breath. His sons Brandon and Robin will forever use their first tool sets that Scott was so happy to give them. Sauvie, Desmond, Kellen, Jory, and Morah, will no doubt hold onto their custom-made family photo coloring books from Grandpa for many years to come. He is also survived by his brothers Loren, Dan, Mark, and Doug, and his sisters Pam, Paula, and Barbara. There are many friends who would call him brother, uncle, hero, or more – too many to list here.

No doubt Scott is eating cookies for breakfast in Heaven, and drinking ice cold Mountain Dew while catching his brother Gary up on many years of stories.

A gathering to celebrate Scott Canfield’s life will be held on Saturday, May 7, 2022.

Good news

I have Tendinitis –  not a new or relapse of cancer.  The fluctuation in some of my blood test numbers three months ago, combined with an increasing hip pain had my Oncologist on the verge of concern that the Multiple Myeloma might be returning.  We agreed to wait three months for the next regular tests before becoming officially concerned.  The tests now show the numbers fluctuated back to where they were and a PET scan and ex-ray suggest the hip pain is arthritis, not cancer.

After returning from our recent road trip to Disneyland, I got into my memory box to find my old Disney wall map.  It hung on the bedroom wall in our apartment when we lived four blocks from Disneyland.  I’m thinking about mounting and re-hanging it.

A Sample Love Note

While rummaging through the box, I rediscovered letters and love notes written to me a lifetime ago.

  I pulled them from the box and began putting the letters in order by postmark date and scanning them– that’s just the sort of thing I do. 

Notes and Letters make up only part of the memories in this box
Sometimes you had to use up your one cent stamps

I asked my wife, the author and sender of many letters in the box, if she kept my letters to her. 

She did and has loaned them back to me.  How many couples can review tangible evidence (handwritten notes) documenting the very beginning of their relationship over fifty years ago, before they even knew it would be a relationship?  And what an opportunity – to read again, ancient love letters bearing six-cent stamps we once licked and stuck on an envelope to communicate with each other.

More good news

– it’s okay to cry.  I told my doctor I find myself crying a lot lately.  Actually, this has been creeping up on me for years.  Tears try to get out and words can’t.  The right song from my past can do it.  A sparked memory can do it.  Sometimes I’m pretty sure I know what has me feeling that way, and other times it’s out of the blue and I have no idea why.  Now and then it begins with a happy thought, like when our god-daughter, Kaydia, asked me to officiate her wedding.  I didn’t think I could do it because I would instantly choke-up at the thought and would be unable to speak.

The doctor said it’s because of all I’ve been through.  Before I could ask how she knew my life story, she continued, “What you’ve been through with cancer.”  The prostate cancer (twice), the multiple myeloma, the skin cancer, and all the cancer treatments – the brink of death chemo, the stem cell transplant, two years of bi-weekly low dose chemo shots in the stomach, and two, three week series of radiation treatments.  There were countless blood draws, throw-in a couple of surgeries, and it goes on.  She said, “That can do that to you.”

I’m pretty sure it actually began long before I got cancer, but I’ll agree that these things can weigh on a person.  I’ll accept this conclusion from my oncologist and if ever I get choked up when we’re talking……….

I have a note from my doctor.

Interstate 5 Road Trip

Some friends of ours recently went to Disneyland.  They told us the park was limiting the number of daily guests due to virus concerns, and that the wait lines were surprisingly short.  It seemed a good time for us to go before we might have to show a passport or special ID to cross the state line, rent a room, or enter a theme park.  

So, my wife and I packed some things into the Yukon, made our way to Interstate 5 south, and drove to Disneyland. 

Out ‘N’ About Treehouse tresort

Along the way, we spent a night in a treehouse, and a night in a motel down the street from Knotts Berry Farm where my wife worked as a cleaning maid when she was just starting her life of independence after graduating from high school.

One motel we stayed in had the most comfortable mattress I’ve ever slept on, and another had the best pillow ever.  I copied info from both, but so far – I can’t find them.

In Anaheim, we drove slowly along Colchester Drive, the street where my wife grew up.  She pointed and told the names of the families that lived in each house.  We stopped for a moment in front of her childhood home.  Her eyes were drinking in the changes and she voiced memories that were coming one after another.  She enjoyed some good reminiscing there.

I met a couple of photographers at Knott’s

We spent a day at Knotts Berry Farm, Disneyland, California Adventure, Laguna Beach, and Huntington Beach.  We also had a delightful, four-hour visit with some long-time friends. 

We ended one Disney day exploring the grounds of the Disneyland Hotel.  Much has changed since the last time I was there.  I found myself fighting back tears when we walked past the location of the worst moment of the worst day of my life so many years ago.  I quickly began rehearsing the words in my mind, “No, I don’t think I want to tell you what’s wrong,” in case my wife noticed and asked.  I didn’t want her to know what an emotional pussy I am, still reacting to a heartbreak some 50 years ago. 

We watched surfers at Huntington Beach

I had been thinking it might be interesting to drive a few more blocks and walk around the swimming pool at the apartment complex on Lemon street where I once loved and lived with a girl, the one that got away, but I realize now that would be a mistake.  I can’t do it.  This hurts too much. 

With time, my mind has come to understand and accept why things happened the way they did, but my heart still hasn’t caught up with that.  Understanding doesn’t erase the pain or make the moment any less traumatic. My lovely heart-breaker told no lies and broke no promises. She was just a girl making what she felt was the best decision for her life at that time. As it turned out, it was probably the best for both of us, but it didn’t feel like it. Love can be pure ecstasy, but it can turn around and make you feel like you want to die. All reminiscing is not joy.

When it was time for us to go home and end our vacation, we found our way back to I-5 and headed north.  I should have bought stock in Interstate Five long ago, I’ve driven it so many countless times between Salem and Anaheim. 

I was eighteen years old when I first drove that thousand miles from Newberg to Anaheim, alone in my blue, fat-tire, 1965 Chevelle.  I was off to begin an exciting new life with a beautiful young lady attending college in southern California.  How could I be so lucky?  I was young and in love, filled with eager anticipation that was increasing more and more through each of the 16 driving hours it took to reach her.  I was motoring my way down I-5 to a new life, on my way to experience what would be remembered without question as my best year ever.

Another I-5 trip was with my wife in her red, 1972 MG Midget.  It was in the heat of the summer.  The MG was blowing hot air on my feet and I couldn’t turn it off.  An MG Midget has a valve on the motor much resembling a miniature garden hose connection like the one on the side of your house.  There, you can shut off the hot water going from the motor to the cabin heater.  I stopped in the shade of an overpass, popped the little red hood, and began closing the burning hot water valve.  As it closed, hot coolant began shooting out in several directions.  I re-opened the valve and the liquid remained in the system.  We continued our trip with the MG deep roasting my feet.

I was shocked the first time I passed the “Panocha Road” sign on I-5, and then, “Little Panocha Road.”  I realized my Mexican co-workers at the mobile home factory in Santa Ana must have been kidding when they taught me the meaning of that word. They began by telling me it was a kind of bread.

One marathon I-5 trip was from San Diego to Seattle with my good friend and now ex-brother-in-law, John.  We stopped only for food and gas.  When we hit a stretch of elevated highway just north of the Sacramento river, my hot-rod  Chevelle felt and sounded like a galloping horse.  It was a combination of my driving speed, the distance between the big seams in the concrete bridging, and the pressure in the air shocks on the rear of the Chevelle.  It was kind of like a grandpa bouncing a kid on his knee a little too vigorously because it’s been a long time since he did that.  The car’s rhythmic bouncing was so exaggerated, John and I stopped talking, looked at each other and laughed out loud.

I drove that route again south to north, returning to Oregon in time to report for duty when my lottery number (#4) was summoned and I was drafted into the Army.  My life was changing then, sliding quickly from the best to the worst.

I later drove I-5 again, alone, north to south – apprehensive, hopeful, curious, no longer trusting freely.  With a heart on the mend, I was anticipating true love, at the same time watching for signs that maybe the relationship wasn’t meant to be.

Now it’s hard to believe how many years have passed since I first drove that thousand miles.  Interstate 5 has mapped itself into my life’s chapters, entwining with my life’s journey, and claims some of my personal milestones as its property. 

Here I am, sixty-nine years old, traveling that same stretch of pavement again, enjoying another road trip with my wife of 48 years. 

Life is good, love is precious, God is eternal and his blessings abound.

I GOT PUBLISHED!

Wow, it’s a first!  The first time for me at age sixty-nine. 

@tattoomediaink and @skinart_mag

My brother rebuilt the custom, three-wheel motorcycle he’s owned for forty years.  I took pictures – as is my habit.  I knew some of his history with that machine, but I asked him for the full story.

I thought the words and pictures went together nicely and maybe I could make a little coffee-table book as a gift for him.

And then I thought it would be even nicer if I could get that story and pictures published in a motorcycle magazine.  I sent out a few letters of inquiry but got no takers. 

About six months passed before I received an email from an executive editor at Tattoo Media Ink in New York, saying he would love to see my story and pictures for publishing consideration in their Outlaw Biker Magazine

I submitted my article and was told they would use it.  Great! I said before asking what they pay.  Unfortunately, there is no monetary compensation, it’s more a tradeoff for the exposure.  “Not even a tee-shirt or some complementary issues?” I asked. 

They were generous with complementary issues, and it is exciting to open a slick, lacquered magazine cover, flip three glossy color pages and see, “My Brother’s Chopper – Photos and Article by Scott Canfield.”

The story and pictures cover three glazed pages that are preceded and followed by almost as many pictures of motorcycles as pictures of nearly naked women.  That can make it a bit awkward when I want to say, hey – I got published – take a look!

This issue will be on sale nationwide on newsstands and in most Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million locations on September 7th, 2021.  You can see the cover, some pictures, and the description here.  Please note one misprint – they say, “We also feature custom builds from ANTHONY CAMMARANO & LOREN CANFIELD!”  Loren is my brother, but his last name is Stonebrink.

 You can see and/or download a PDF copy of the magazine here.