The Hong Kong-registered bulk grain carrier La Fresnais loading grain at Kalama Export’s massive grain terminal in Kalama, Washington, in early August. Capable of carrying nearly 40,000 tons, the La Fresnais was scheduled to sail to Japan once loading was completed.

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A journey down the Snake and Columbia
August 26, 2022 1 a.m.

A journey down the Snake and Columbia

PORTLAND, Ore. — In 1976, Herschel Slavens, then nearly 80, sat down to write about his life, including the time he found himself nearly penniless and looking for work in the early 1920s. “We didn’t have hardly any money so we stopped in Kennewick, Washington, and I got a job working for my cousin … who had a trucking company hauling wheat from a field to a warehouse on the Columbia River,” Slavens wrote in an unpublished memoir he shared with members of his family.