Matt Groening’s Portland

• His native city lives in the heart and pen of ‘The Simpsons’ creator Homer’s odyssey began here

By Don Hamilton

The Portland Tribune, Jul 19, 2002, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Matt Groening shrieked one day on the playground at Ainsworth Elementary School. There was no particular reason; it was just one of those unpremeditated shrieks that come from the sheer exuberance of being in first grade.

Mrs. Hoover didn’t get it. All right, the teacher scolded. Who blew that whistle? To the great amusement of the kids, she went crazy searching each one of them for a whistle that didn’t exist.

The memory lingered for Groening, the Portland native who went on to create “The Simpsons” animated sitcom. He learned a lot that day about how authority figures stifle creative expression and how humor soothes the unfairness of the world.

“The rest of my life,” he reflected in 1993, “has been blowing invisible whistles and making people wonder.”

That was only one of many lessons Groening learned in Portland. He drew heavily on the people and places of his childhood to create the characters and sensibilities of “The Simpsons.” Portland’s impact stretches far beyond a few street names.

His wildly popular creation, now seen in 60 countries, will begin its 14th season this fall with its 292nd episode Ñ a mark that Groening never dreamed of. Planning is already in the works for the 2003-2004 season.

Portland’s role as the template for the show happened quickly, almost as an afterthought. In 1986, in his first meeting with Fox executives about doing animated TV shorts, Groening quickly realized that they wanted the rights to characters in “Life in Hell,” his comic strip. That wouldn’t do, so he stepped into the waiting room and in 15 minutes sketched out the Simpsons much as we know them today, complete with characters named after his own family.

There are subtle and not-so-subtle similarities to Matt Groening’s Portland and Bart Simpson’s Springfield. Like Springfield, the Portland of his childhood had a scenic gorge, a nuclear plant nearby and a polluted river. Like Springfield, there were woods and parks and mountains and surly teenaged bullies who might beat you up. And like Springfield, it was a world where a child could find great beauty and adventure alongside arrogance and hypocrisy.

All this became his fodder.

“I look at the situation and try to provide an alternative that would amuse me,” Groening told the Tribune. “Would this have entertained me when I was much younger? ‘The Simpsons’ is the cartoon show I would have liked to see when I was a kid. It’s a more entertaining version of myself.”

Rebel with a cause

Groening may have been a rebel growing up, but he rebelled from the West Hills and Portland’s most mainstream institutions. He was a Boy Scout and student body president, and he swam for the Multnomah Athletic Club.

He went to the Methodist Church, summer camp at Spirit Lake and two of Portland’s finest public schools Ñ Ainsworth Elementary and Lincoln High, shunning the radical Adams High School. He later attended Evergreen State College, the rebellious outpost in Olympia.

And he’s still a rebel today: “The Simpsons” mercilessly satirizes its own network, Fox, part of one of the world’s largest media conglomerates.

He attacks the very power structure that nurtured him and brought him success. He targets pomposity, vanity and sanctimony Ñ but with humor and satire Ñ in ways that allow the subjects to laugh at themselves no matter how pointed the barb.

“Matt knows how to get in a point of view without clobbering you over the head,” said a high school friend, Portland photographer Lawrence Shlim.

Even as a teenager, he found a darkly humorous heart in the most mainstream cultural icons. Dan Heims, a high school friend, once saw a big smiley-face poster on the wall of Groening’s basement bedroom. But what’s that semicircle you drew between the eyes? Heims asked. “Brain tumor,” Groening said.

He’s more writer than cartoonist. After college he was turned down for a reporting job at The Oregonian. He once said his ambition was to write the great American novel, and “Catch 22” was a favorite book.

Riding the rails

Portland’s influence on the show is clear from the first seconds of its opening titles. The hills behind Springfield Elementary School look just like Portland’s West Hills, the center of Groening’s world while growing up.

The Groening family Ñ mom, dad and five kids Ñ lived in a barn-red, Cape Cod house on Northwest Evergreen Terrace, one of those dead-end streets that wind high through the West Hills. The Simpson family also lives on Evergreen Terrace.

The woods of Washington Park and Hoyt Arboretum were his route to school and the setting for childhood adventures.

“We lived right between the new zoo and the old zoo, which is where the Japanese Gardens are now,” he said. “They closed the old zoo when I was 4 or 5, but they left the cages, and when I was little we’d sneak in behind the bars. I actually swam in the green water of the bear pool.

“We used to hide in the bushes and sneak on the zoo train at the station and get on for free. When they were first building the tracks down to the station, I went with my brother and some buddies, and we pushed a flatcar up the hill and started riding it down. It picked up speed and didn’t make the loop at the station. Suddenly, everyone was yelling ‘Jump! Jump!’ I jumped and rolled along the gravel. Then they were yelling ‘Cops!’ and I found myself running from the police. I met up with my brother at the archery range.”

He was smart and well-read, and he got good grades when inspired to do so, said his mother, Margaret Groening. His closest friends included Eric, Tim and Duncan Smith, the sons of Lendon Smith, renowned as “the children’s doctor.”

“He had an idyllic childhood,” his mother said.

“Every so often,” Matt Groening said, “we’d get it into our brains to hike over to the biggest shopping center in the world (at the time), Lloyd Center. We had ways of sneaking into the big downtown movie theaters; the Paramount and the Orpheum were the easy ones. We never could crack the Music Box. The Broadway was easy, too. We’d hide in the balcony of the Paramount and watch the ushers punch the curtains looking for kids sneaking in. It was quite dramatic.”

His late father, Homer, was an engaging, multitalented man. He was a filmmaker by trade but also a cartoonist, writer and ad man who brought pens and pads of paper home to his children to encourage their creativity. He taught Matt film-editing skills at a young age.

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