Happy Birthday, Ben.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

Question: If Benjamin Franklin were alive today - or better yet, on Tuesday - would he be able to blow out all of his birthday candles?

The guy was, and still is, known for a lot of things, from inventing bifocals and the lightning rod, to being a major flirt, to being one of the greatest statesmen and diplomats in American history. He was also known to publish a newspaper or two, and he fancied making his own brew. Whether he had the wind to knock down the flames on 300 candles, well, who knows about that one?

That's how old one of the most famous Americans ever, a man known as "The First American," would be Tuesday if he were still running around with a kite below a lightning-filled sky. That might not sound too smart, but Ben was no dummy. And, given his legacy and all that he did during 84 years of life, it's almost surprising he didn't invent a potion that would have kept him going all the way to his tercentenary celebration that kicks off Tuesday in his hometown of Philadelphia.

And that's not the only place Ben's big birthday will be celebrated: Right here in Eugene you can hoist yourself a pint of Poor Richard's Ale at the Steelhead Brewery (visit www.poorrichardsale.com for more information and the recipe).

Born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706, the 15th of 17 children, Franklin was not only the publisher of Poor Richard's Almanac (one of the most widely read papers of its day), he also invented the Franklin stove (the world's first cast-iron heating stove) to complement his other inventions. He was the only person to sign all four of these key documents in American history: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain and the U.S. Constitution. He served as Philadelphia's postmaster, then the colonies' postmaster, and then became the new nation's postmaster. He proved that lightning is electricity. And his diplomacy with France was considered the key to ending the Revolutionary War.

All that - and much, much more - daylight-saving time was Franklin's idea, too.

"Benjamin Franklin was one of the greatest Americans to ever live," says Matthew Dennis, a University of Oregon history professor who assigns his students to read Franklin's autobiography. "He's important in so many ways. He's a rags-to-riches story (and) he made something of himself out of nothing."

Signs of a great American

But what would the man whose image graces the $100 bill think of life in Oregon almost 215 years after his death? There was no Oregon when Franklin died in 1790 - there wasn't even an Oregon Territory yet. And it would be another 15 years before Lewis and Clark made it to the mouth of the Columbia River. He most likely thought of it as a frontier region that was home to that great river, Dennis says.

Nonetheless, the Benjamin Franklin Federal Savings & Loans might be long gone from Eugene and Springfield, but there are signs of Franklin all over our state, from the bifocals you might be wearing, to Franklin High School in Portland, to Franklin Elementary School in Corvallis, to Ben Franklin Crafts on Harlow Road in Springfield, to the grave of Benjamin Franklin Harding in Cottage Grove.

Was Eugene's Franklin Boulevard named for Ben? No one seems to know for sure, but that's the assumption. City of Eugene senior planner Ken Guzowski checked the city's records and could not find an answer. The street that runs east and west along the north side of the UO campus was part of East 11th Avenue as of 1912, Guzowski says. But by 1925, it had become Franklin Boulevard, he says. A check with the Lane County Historical Museum brings the same news: The assumption is that the main arterial was named for the balding guy with bifocals. So, Philadelphia, Ben's hometown, has the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and we have Franklin Boulevard.

But that's not all we have.

You can also head down to Eugene's Steelhead Brewery beginning today and swig on some Poor Richard's Ale. The Steelhead is just one of several breweries in Oregon and across the nation that are serving the special batch from a recipe formulated to resemble a quaff that Franklin might have enjoyed or made himself.

"I think a lot of those guys dabbled in brewing because that's how you got your own," says John Harris, the brewmaster at Full Sail Riverplace in Oregon. Incidentally, his wife, Jane Rowden, is a distant ancestor of Franklin's.

Harris was one of the judges who traveled to Boulder, Colo., in October to select the winning beer recipe. The Ben Franklin Tercentenary Commission, a nonprofit alliance in Philly established to mark the old boy's 300th birthday, asked the Brewer's Association, a national association of brewmasters, to come up with a recipe.

The winning brew came from Tony Simmons, the brewmaster at Brick Oven Brewing in Pagoso Springs, Colo. The recipe includes two distinguishing ingredients: molasses and corn. "Both were common in ale during colonial times and each would have helped to reduce the colonists' dependence on imported British ingredients - a fact that would surely have pleased Franklin," it says on the Tercentenary Commission's Web site.

If you want to dig deeper into Oregon's history, you'll discover that Franklin might never have set foot in Oregon, but his namesakes did. Benjamin Franklin Owen was a Kentucky-born pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail, according to his obituary in the Eugene Daily Guard of Jan. 5, 1917. His great-great grandson, Lee Gentemann of Salem, tells how Owen was part of the "Lost Wagon Train of 1853' on his genealogy Web site.

Owen was one of eight young men who left the group of wagons, lost in the Harney-Malheur lakes country of Eastern Oregon, to seek help, according to Gentemann. Traveling on horseback, the men headed toward the Willamette Valley. They were later founding starving along the McKenzie River. The wagon train actually reached the valley before Owen and the other men. Owen settled and lived the rest of his life in the community of Irving, now part of Santa Clara.

Benjamin Franklin Dowell, a native of Virginia, also came west on the Oregon Trail in 1850, and made Jacksonville his home. He was an attorney who also owned the Oregon Sentinel newspaper in Jacksonville, says Richard Engeman, the public historian of the Oregon Historical Society in Portland.

Dowell's daughter, Ann, was one of the first women to earn a law degree in the state, and she and her father practiced law together under the name B.F. Dowell & Daughter, Engeman says. Dowell's son, Benjamin Franklin Dowell Jr., was a well-known Portland firefighter, Engeman says.

Visit Fir Grove Cemetery in Cottage Grove and you can find the grave of B.F. Harding. That would be Benjamin Franklin Harding, a U.S senator from Oregon during the Civil War. Born in Wyoming, he made Cottage Grove his home toward the end of his life and died there on June 16, 1899.

One could surmise that naming your child after The First American was popular in the late 18th century and early 19th century, sort of like naming your kid Dylan nowadays.

A real character

Perfecting a Dylan accent, and getting into his character, might be a difficult thing to do (we'll leave that to actors of a future century), but actors have been performing Ben Franklin for years.

"That was one of the roles I wanted, because I think he's one of the funniest characters in the play," says Don Kelley of Eugene, who will play Franklin in `1776,' which begins in March at the Actors Cabaret of Eugene. "He gets to do most of the sexual humor and innuendo."

Like this - as Kelley relates - when the character, John Dickinson, the Pennsylvania congressman, asks Franklin: "What's so terrible about being called an Englishman? The English don't seem to mind."

Franklin replies: "Nor would I, were I given the full rights of an Englishman. But to call me one, without those rights, is like calling an ox a bull. He's thankful for the honor, but he would much rather have restored what's rightfully his."

Kelley laughs. "Yeah, it's a good line," he says.

Kelley is currently immersing himself in the character of Franklin, a man who was "earthy," Kelley says, but also "a man of the world. (Franklin crossed the Atlantic eight times in his life and lived abroad for 27 years). "He was really sort of on the forefront of the new philosophy of the time."

Dennis, the history professor, says that although Franklin was "amazingly intelligent and brilliant," he was the antithesis of the intellectual.

"He was a man of the people," Dennis says. "He could get along with anyone. And he was incredibly funny. He poked fun at himself all the time."

Besides being known as The First American, Franklin was also known as America's first great humorist. Take these lines as examples:

"A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats."

"Beware of the young doctor and the old barber."

"God heals, and the doctor takes the fees."

Yes, we can still learn from Franklin, Dennis says.

"Not only is he important in that he was fundamental in helping produce the future that is now our present," he says, but he was also a visionary we would do well to emulate today.

After all, it was Franklin who said: ` 'Tis easy to see, hard to foresee."

Ben A to Z

A snapshot of "The First American"

A: Abolitionist/Almanac maker/Advertiser

B: Balloon enthusiast/Bifocals inventor

C: Composer/Cartoonist/ Civic citizen/Chess player

D: Deist/Diplomat/Daylight savings advocate

E: Enlightenment thinker/Electricity pioneer/Experimenter/ Entrepreneur

F: Founding father/ Flirt/Firefighter

G: Glass harmonica operator/Gulf stream mapper/Genius

H: Humorist/Health nut

I: Inventor/International celebrity/Insurer

J: Junto creator/Journalist

K: Kite flier

L: Librarian/Lightning rod inventor/Londoner

M: Medical engineer/ Militia member/ Mathematician/Mason

N: Natural philosopher

O: Odometer maker

P: Printer/Public relations master/Publisher/ Prankster

Q: Questioner/ Quartermaster/ Quintessential American

R: Revolutionary/Reader

S: Scientist/Swimmer/ Self-made man

T: Traveler/Treaty signer

U: University builder

V: Volunteer/Visionary/ Vegetarian (temporarily)

W: Writer/Weight lifter

X: Xenophile 

Y: Young prodigy/Yankee/ Yarn spinner

Z: Zealot

- Public Broadcasting Service 

QUOTABLE FRANKLIN

Many sayings and quotations have been attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Here's a sampling:

"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

"God helps those who help themselves."

"A penny saved is a penny earned."

"Little strokes fell great oaks."

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

"He's a fool who makes his doctor his heir."

"He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals."

"Beer is living proof that God loves us."

and ... "If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." - Poor Richard's Almanac, 1738

FRANKLIN AT 300

Visit www .franklin300.org for information on events this year celebrating his life. "Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World," is on display at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia through April 30. After that, it travels the nation before heading to Paris.

CAPTION(S):

Namesake Benjamin Franklin Harding's grave is in Cottage Grove.