Log yards and divorce logs: It's Q&A time.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

From renegade Oakridge cross-country runners to divorce listings to bags of nonpotato chips, the June Q&A has it all:

Question: What used to be on the land where the new federal courthouse is?

Answer: First, trees. Then a sprinkling of donation land-claim houses, including one lived in by Judge Joshua Walton. (You might recognize it as the former Moreno's Restaurant, now the Bates Steakhouse, on Broadway.)

Finally, Agripac, a cannery, stuck down roots that lasted roughly a century before the company went bankrupt in 1995 and sold to Chiquita Processed Foods, which gave way to a much bigger banana.

Question: I recently saw a Dodge pickup in Eugene with a window decal that said (I think): "In loving memory of Kade Raymond Jacobson, 2002-2007." Who was this little boy?

Answer: Kade, 4, was the son of Steven Mack Jacobson II and Megan Zacharek, who lived in the Eugene-Springfield area and now live in Bend. He died Jan. 7 after hitting his head hard while roughhousing, according to a grandmother, Kay Winsted, of Harrisburg.

The idea for the decals came from his mother, who wanted her son's memory preserved, Kay said. About a dozen family members sport the decals on their vehicles.

"Kade was curious about everything," she said.

`He loved trains, Hot Wheel cars and the movie `Cars.' It's been hard.'

Question: I'm one of those strange people who reads the dissolutions of marriage listings in the paper. Why is the man mentioned first sometimes and the woman other times?

Answer: The plaintiff, the person filing for the divorce, is listed first and the respondent second.

Question: If Oakridge High School's nickname is the Warriors, why have I seen cross-country runners with what I think are cows on their singlets?

Answer: First, those are bulls. But you might also have seen kangaroos and bears.

"I'm kind of a rogue," says 64-year-old Ron Hebert, head coach for 38 years.

The change began, he said, when the team felt a lack of recognition a few years back.

`Someone said, `That's a bunch of bull,' ' Hebert says. The rest is history, helped by some female team members who didn't like what they said was the political incorrectness of "Warriors."

Question: It seems the sole purpose of Teevin Log Yard, on Irving Road between Highway 99 and Prairie Road, is to reload logs from trucks to railroad cars. Where are the logs going?

Answer: To Longview, Wash., onto ships, and to Japan, on behalf of Weyerhaeuser. But Teevin also takes logs that have come south on those railroad tracks from its Rainier facility and loads them on trucks bound for mills in the Eugene area and Roseburg. The railroad operation began in Eugene only last month. "It's cost-effective," says company owner Shawn Teevin.

"You can get 3 1/2 to four truckloads of logs on a railroad car."

Question: What is the UO track made of?

Answer: The base is an Atlas SE polyurethane compound rubber surface that includes up to 20 percent of "Nike grind," meaning ground-up shoes. The surface, a mere 13 millimeters thick, consists of pigmented urethane and embedded EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) granules, a synthetic rubber.

Question: I'm from out of state and have been puzzled to see these mesh bags of wood chips along the curbs. What are they for?

Answer: The city of Eugene requires those "bio bags" at work sites where sediment or chemicals could get washed into storm-drainage inlets. "The inlet is the last line of defense," says Josh Colley, an erosion prevention specialist with the city.

"We're looking to keep materials on work sites and out of the storm system. Ultimately, 100 percent of the city storm system flows to a river someplace. We're concerned with oil and toxins, but even sediment can impact aquatic life."

Bob Welch can be reached at 338-2354 or at [e-mail].