It’s a ‘storybook’ year in Dilley

By Staff Report

The Forest Grove News-Times, Dec 17, 2009, Updated Dec 24, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

File photo / News-Times

Cut-out characters in Storybook Lane have enchanted visitors for three decades.

You could sense a slight level of anxiety in the voice on the other end of the phone when the call came into the News-Times early last week.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” the woman said, “Is this a Storybook Lane year?”

In western Washington County, if you don’t know about Storybook Lane, you have no business working for the local newspaper.

When the woman heard that yes, indeed, the biennial light display is up and running south of Forest Grove this holiday season, she was relieved.

It turns out her mom, who used to live in Forest Grove, will be visiting from Florida and she was hoping to drive up from Albany to take a trip down memory lane.

It was 30 years ago this November that Storybook Lane came to the Dilley neighborhood.

The O’Rear family had inherited a collection of mechanized “Fairyland” from timberman William McCready and decided to turn their property into a village of nursery rhymes, fairy tales and Disney characters.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, the extended family starts hauling out the displays. Some need touch-up paint and sealer. Small motors, used in many of the displays, are cleaned and greased. Many things need a good scrubbing, including the fencing made from PVC pipe and painted with red stripes for a candy cane look.

Stacked two high, something like a split rail fence, it’s the perfect height for toddlers to lean over and see the figures beyond at eye level.

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