Red Squirrel in the Snow

NSP Meditations

I stepped outside onto fresh snow. There you were! Perched on the wooden fence! Looking dazed and confused, a bit lost. Hello red friend, the native squirrel from around here, but displaced by the gray brutes from the East decades ago. How you came to travel through my back yard and rest here, well, it was a mystery and a welcome, joyous mystery at that, a respite from desperate human mysteries all around me.

I hurled peanuts. I cheered. The squirrel didn’t move. I named him Red. Red didn’t know what to do.

He wasn’t the usual freeloading socialist squirrel of Sellwood. He was used to working hard to survive. I walked across the snow to the fence. Red turned toward me and didn’t flinch. He looked confused. Maybe he was on the lam, a pariah. I knew something about that. I greeted him. I placed peanuts on the fence post. I waited. I cajoled Red. I called him my new friend. Red sniffed at a peanut. He took it with his paws and raised it like a crooked politician might a Cuban cigar, from those halcyon days of the smoke-filled rooms when politicians got shit done and ignored other worse shit going on.

Red nibbled and shelled the shell. I heard crunching. He began munching. I backed away and marveled. I went upstairs, donned the binoculars, and watched him eat peanuts for 20 minutes. It was a Christmas card but not on paper.

There is no larger metaphor in this encounter, but that doesn’t make it any less a poem. It’s merely a poem expressing joy, squirrel joy. That goes a long way these days.

Oregon Tavern Age: Smith River Tavern

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , ,

I was driving a remote and winding road up Smith River north of Reedsport. It was a Thursday in December, around 11 in the morning, My destination: a waterfalls some 30 miles into the upper reaches of the watershed.

I passed farms, barns, houses, trailers, trees, creeks, machinery, livestock, and all manner of old and discarded things in overgrown fields and yards. Whenever I explore one of these isolated river valleys on the Oregon Coast, places where it often rains 80 inches a year, I shake my head in utter astonishment: what in the hell goes on here? How do these people live?

Rain started falling. It was turning darker green and gray. I rounded a sharp corner, looked right, and there it was. No, it could not be there. A tavern! Surely an Oregon Tavern Age joint! And I thought I had seen them all.

I saw a sign: Smith River Grocery and Tavern. I saw beer neons glowing. The damn places was open. After seeing the falls, I’d explore the tavern and get some grub.

An hour later, I stepped inside the Smith River Grocery. It was more of a museum than a store. I perused the meager offerings and then made my way through a side door into the tavern.

A fire was crackling in a corner wood stove. Two OTA men warmed themselves near it. One of them said hello. I noticed CNN playing silently on a couple screens. CNN in OTA country? Something was off, but in a good way, I thought.

Let me start my report of the Smith River Tavern by saying there wasn’t a single mention of Donald Trump, the person solely responsible for ruining the art of OTA storytelling.

I sat down at the bar. One of the men from the fire came around to serve me. The Smith River Tavern serves no beer on tap so I ordered a dark beer in bottle. I was hungry so I also ordered fries. The bartender cranked up the fryer and said it might take a while. I said I wasn’t in a hurry.

It turned out the bartender was the owner and a very nice guy. He bought the spread from his parents almost three decades ago and lived next door in a trailer. He had been attending law school at the University of Oregon when a jury acquitted OJ Simpson of double murder and he was done with the law right then and there and decamped to Smith River.

As I drank my beer and waited for the fries, I looked around the joint.

There was a sign that read: “My gun is safer than Ted Kennedy’s car.” Another sign read: “Ted Bundy was a Husky.

A snakeskin hung from the ceiling. I saw antique rifles and antlers on the walls. I also saw old logging tools, cans and bottles of long dead brands of beer doubtless favored by loggers, memorabilia depicting the plight of loggers during the spotted owl wars and photographs of gigantic logs felled by handsaws.

The owner/bartender was an excellent local historian and also candid about the poor prospects for the future of his business. He wanted to spruce up the compound and add this and that, but he was barely hanging on. How he managed to survive during the Pandemic was probably a miracle. I didn’t ask about it.

The place had incredible potential and the owner discussed some of the possibilities. He got me thinking about how to help him realize that potential. I pitched a few ideas, but they all required capital. The tavern was really in the middle of nowhere coastal Oregon, but for some reason I found that attractive. I think in the coming years, that’s where I want to live and write. I’ve had a taste of it and I like it.

But for now, responsibility in the city directs me. That won’t last forever.

Nifty Thrifty

NSP Meditations ,

It was a dark and stormy Friday afternoon two weeks before Christmas and my two friends, their kooky dog and I rolled through Bandon after picking up groceries. We were spending a holiday weekend together and making considerable merry. Believe me, making up profane Christmas carols is a lot of fun, as is making up story lines for profane Hallmark Christmas specials, especially the one about Santa’s fudge factory.

Earlier on the drive into town, I had spotted a tiny sawhorse sign advertising Nifty Thrifty. It pointed in a direction east off Highway 101. I am a great connoisseur of coastal thrift stores, and indeed, my life has been dramatically improved by purchases and donations related to these shops. I could write a book about them and maybe I will.

This shop, however, was new to me, and I couldn’t pass it up! So after the grocery run, we planned on a stop and find the diamond in the rough that always come with these joints.

We found the shop, which was a house, and a tired two-storey one at that. It stood on a huge double or triple lot and had an outbuilding or two behind it. I also noticed a scrawny grove of fruit trees off to the left and a brand new fifth wheel out back.

My friend pulled his vehicle over. He would wait with the dog, listen to Frank Sinatra and fart, while my other friend and I scoped out the offerings.

We exited the vehicle and walked on wet grass toward a deck. There was a rivulet of mud to cross before we could take a couple of steps up to the deck and then into the shop. A young man standing on the deck hailed us hello and told us to use the large rubber mat he had placed over the rivulet. We took his advice and seconds later found ourselves being ushered into the store, which amounted to one narrow room, an oddly-shaped bedroom in its former life. The man said he would also open another room for us. His wife was just now stocking it.

Just now?

It dawned on me that we had walked into Nifty Thrifty’s opening day and we were its first customers.

We stepped inside the room. It had shelves on either side displaying, well, coastal thrift store stock. In a closet off to the side was a bit more stock, mostly DVDs. I checked out titles and saw War and Remembrance, the classic long-winded 12-part mini series about WW II starring Robert Mitchum (!) that aired in 1988. I had watched it when it premiered and had never seen it again…and…well, it would remain that way.

Mini series…they call them streaming shows today and yet they move much slower than the slogs from 40 years ago.

I will say, though, I wouldn’t mind seeing Rachel Ward in The Thorn Birds again. That voice, you know, and the way she seduced Richard Chamberlain, the tortured and horny Catholic priest.

My friend chatted up the owner and he was an excellent chatterer. I perused the stock. That took precisely one minute, including the time I checked out the wares in the back room. About the only thing of interest was a black and white photograph of Kurt Cobain smoking a cigarette hanging crookedly on a wall.

Poor Kurt. I always get a pang when I see a picture of him or hear his music. All he had to do was give it all up and move back to his hometown of Aberdeen, a place that still won’t name a street for him because he blew his head off with a shotgun. I think he might sort of like their longstanding, reactionary enmity. There’s certainly a punk rock song in it.

The genesis story of Nifty Thrifty emerged from my friend’s chatting with the owner. It was a bit difficult to follow and I apologize to the owner if I got something wrong. It went like something like this: the man, his wife and two kids were transplants from the Midwest. The couple had served as elderly caregivers and somehow made their way to Bandon. They had been taking care of a man in this home and he’d passed away and willed them the house. Now, it served as a kind or residential care facility for several elderly people who were living upstairs of the thrift shop. His wife had contracted cancer and it looked bad until they began juicing from the cherry trees outside the house and she was cured. He said angels were looking out for his family and that he’d rather be “intelligent than educated.” Neither he nor his wife were masked or mentioned the pandemic. The thrift store was their hobby and passion and they had plans to expand the store.

If you never leave the road always taken, you never walk into interesting stories or better yet, become part of a story yourself. That is especially true at Christmas.

Jesus! I had to buy something! It was Nifty Thrifty’s opening day! Christmas was coming. I was standing inside a couple’s passion and hobby. My friend was striking out finding anything to purchase. We had to rally!

My eyes landed on a nicked-up nerf football. It cost a buck. I’d buy it for the dog. He’d shred it like the Republican members of Congress shred the poor working class every legislative session—that meant savagely and in total bliss.

The man was overjoyed at the purchase. My friend and I left the store to his cries of Merry Christmas. Back in the vehicle, we nearly died of fart asphyxiation, but the dog dug the toy. We drove away to the crooning of Mel Torme or Doris Day and wondered what the hell had just gone down. It all felt like a kind of Christmas Carol meets Peanuts Christmas Special meets Gift of the Magi meets It’s a Wonderful Life holiday tale on the Southern Oregon Coast and we somehow had passed a mysterious test of humanity and everything, for the moment, would work out just fine.

Note to self: Next time through Bandon, be sure to bring several boxes of high end items for Nifty Thrifty.)

Nog Walk

NSP Meditations ,

The Bandon Holiday Nog Walk & Cider Stroll of 2021 was about to commence at three o’clock in afternoon. The annual Christmas parade would follow.

A storm with gale force winds ripped through the port town and threatened to murder the holiday spirit so many people so desperately needed.

I got dragged to the Nog Walk by a friend, a true believer in Christmas if there ever was one. I hate egg nog! And besides, Army and Navy were battling in a pigskin classic on TV and I didn’t want to give that up for some Chamber of Commerce or Downtown Association promotional racket.

The event called for buying a $10 glass to participate. Like, I said, a racket. We were directed to begin the event by gathering at a covered picnic shelter at the port. The Nog Walk would last for 90 minutes.

We found the shelter and stepped inside its cozy glass-enclosed interior. There stood two masked people behind a table. To the left, sat two unmasked homeless men doubtless seeking shelter from the storm and most likely not participating in the Nog Walk.

I checked the map of the 20 participating merchants. Joy to the world! A distillery was one of them. I conjured a great notion: while my friend wandered the streets of Bandon in a pulverizing storm and visited the merchants, chatted them up, purchased their gewgaws, and drank their alcoholic or non alcoholic egg nog or cider, I would hunker down in the distillery and talk to absolutely no one.

It was quickly apparent that we were the first customers of the Nog Walk. It occurred to me that we might be the only ones. My bah humbug vibe was ratcheting up.

My friend must have sensed my mounting dread. There was only one way to dispel that. She broke into song with unhinged gusto.

Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King”
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled

I joined in singing and started conducting. The choir took it to a higher level.

Joyful all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With angelic host proclaim
Christ is born in Bethlehem
With angelic host proclaim
Christ is born in Bethlehem

I looked at one of the homeless men. He was smiling and singing. He knew all the lyrics! The other homeless man wasn’t singing and he wasn’t smiling. So be it. One homeless man singing “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” inside an enclosed picnic shelter as a storm raged outside was more than enough.

The carol ended. We all clapped, well, except for one man. Then it was out into the blustering Bandon afternoon to do our civic duty. My friend and I split up and I walked to the distillery. I opened the door and beheld a woman tending bar. No egg nog in sight. She didn’t know anything about the event even though the distillery was listed on the map. She also didn’t care. It was utter holiday indifference and it cheered me to no end.

I checked the time. The Army/Navy game might still be going on! I sprinted into the rain and wind and seconds later was drinking a Guinness and watching the Navy hang on for the upset win.

Silver and Golden Christmas Falls (Part 9)

Fiction, NSP Meditations , ,

Christmas morning arrived. The sun rose, but nobody had seen it in weeks. Wayne whipped up eggs, hash browns and toast, ate his third, Chief ate his, and then Wayne carried out a plate and fork to the shed.

He knocked on the door. Jared said to come in. Wayne opened the door and Jared was reading another Elmore Leonard Western, Forty Lashes Less One.

“Merry Christmas!” said Wayne. He handed Jared the plate and fork. “Eat that quick. Let’s get rolling.”

“You expect any customers?” said Jared.

“There’s always someone on Christmas Day wandering by. Or someone alone in a motel.”

“It seems strange to put up a tree for a day when you’re the only one who ever sees it.”

“I bet it keeps some people alive.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it took effort and effort means you’re still alive.”

Jared wolfed down his breakfast and laced up his boots while Wayne warmed up the truck.

Christmas morning. It was Christmas morning in Coos Bay. There was probably more misery in it for some folks than a routine Tuesday morning in May.

Jared slid into the cab of the Sierra. Wayne had the heater and defroster blasting.

“Where we going?” said Jared.

“To your Christmas present.”

“You got me a present?”

“Sure. And it didn’t cost a nickel, the best kind.”

“I didn’t get you anything. I feel bad.”

“Forget it. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t received a Christmas present in almost half a century. Why start now?”

He laughed.

A minute later, the trio was cruising up 241 toward Wayne’s farm with Al Green crooning on cassette as rain ripped across the roadway.

Twenty minutes later the truck blew past the entrance to Wayne’s farm. They’d never passed it before.

“Where are we going?” said Jared.

“Like I said, your Christmas present.”

Two minutes after that, the road dead-ended into a small parking lot with signage, picnic tables and a pit toilet. There was no other vehicle in the lot.

“Where are we?” said Jared, as he rolled down the passenger window for a better view.

“The trail head to Silver and Golden Falls,” said Wayne. “I’m going to pick you up in two hours and load up some gear and a special mushroom stew from the freezer. We’ll get drunk tonight and sing carols around the fire.”

Wayne surprised himself with the excitement he felt at the prospect of this.

Jared said, “Why don’t you and Chief come with me. I’m kind of nervous to go alone.”

Wayne turned to him. “Nervous? It’s a waterfalls for chrissakes. Two of them! You can’t turn down a waterfalls for a Christmas present! Take a photograph and send it to your mom. She should hear from you. And you can show me what they look like, too.”

“What are your talking about?”

“I’ve never seen them.”

Jared turned to Wayne and said, “Are you kidding me?! You’ve lived your entire life a couple miles away and never saw them? You’re bullshitting me.”

“It’s true. I just never got around to it. Maybe I will one day.”

“It seems impossible you haven’t been there.”

“You know how many people who live in Paris never go up the Eiffel Tower or who live five miles from the Grand Canyon and never see it?”

“Come on!”

“I read it in National Geographic years ago.”

Jared still didn’t believe it. How could someone not explore something so monumental when that something monumental was so near and so accessible.

Many Americans do exactly the same thing with their hearts and souls. They’re the New Yorker who never visits the Empire State Building but sees hundreds of Broadway shows or the Oregonian who never visits Crater Lake but sees dozens of Oregon Duck football games.

Wayne handed Jared a water bottle. Jared took it, but didn’t budge or say anything. Then he exited the truck. Wayne turned the Sierra around and drove out of the parking lot. Chief stuck his head out the passenger window and looked back toward Jared. The sound of honking horn disappeared down the road.

Jared stared into a wall of trees: Doug Fir, hemlock, myrtlewood, maple, oaks, cedar. A creek gurgled down to his right. Everything around him was gray, green and black. Jared dug out his pill bottle. He unscrewed the cap.

A wall of wind blew across and above him. It shook loose the last of the remaining acorns hanging in the oak trees and they fell on and around Jared like so much grapeshot on a Civil War battlefield.

For a moment, Jared thought he was coming under fire. His breathing became labored. He felt a hot surge in his chest. Tinges of a headache registered. Why the hell had that crazy old man left him here? On Christmas damn morning when everything had been going so reasonably well the past month?

He dropped the bottle and pills spilled out. They landed in a mud puddle. The pills floated for a mini-second and then disappeared. The bottle took on water and went down like the Titanic.

Jared fell to his knees to salvage some pills from the puddle. It was useless. Goddammit he needed Wayne and Chief!

But they weren’t there. He stood up and started crying. He felt vaguely pathetic crying over pills drowned in a mud puddle, but at least he was crying. That was something.

If Jared had been smart enough, he might have recognized a metaphor with the pills drowned in mud puddle, because it was a pretty obvious one. But he wasn’t smart. At least not yet.

But then again, a metaphor need not exist to get someone going in a better direction in a story or reality. Sometimes, you merely need to move and keep moving. Movement means life. Movement leads to human encounters and encounters in nature. These encounters will bear fruit, but it may take time.

Jared wanted to move. So he started moving. Which falls first?

Why Silver of course! Everyone goes to Silver first. Silver before gold!

Jared laughed. Golden Falls here I come! No need to go for silver if gold is at hand. He read the info on the signage. Two routes to Golden Falls—shorter and longer. Jared chose longer, the road seldom taken by choice.

He swigged some water and stuffed the bottle into his back pocket. It started raining. Then it really opened up. So what? Seeing a waterfalls in the sunshine with its flickering rainbow colors is the cliche for Hallmark movies and New Age retreats. See a waterfalls on the Oregon Coast in the winter after seven inches of rain in seven days—that’s what you really want. The image won’t delight you like dancing rainbows. It will brace you like a shotgun spread to the face.

Jared started moving up the trail. The climb was gradual and slippery. More acorns pelted him. He caught one at random and winged it at a oak split by lightning. He passed rocks. He traversed roots, leaves and needles. Rain pummeled him all the way.

His headache vanished. He lost track of time. He kept moving. His mind moved faster.

Jared heard something, a din. He picked up his pace. The din became a roar. Then the roar became a word not yet invented to describe the sound of a waterfall blowing over a cliff with a massive and incalculable volume of water.

He began jogging and the trail narrowed until it seemingly ended at the base of jagged rocks and an impenetrable fence of maples. Jared noticed a knotted rope off to his left. He went over, gripped it, looked up to where the rope led up a steep path, and pulled to take out the slack. Then he started climbing up the path and around rocks, roots and stumps.

The rope ended. The sound of Golden Falls grew louder, but still the spectacle was hidden from Jared’s view. He clambered over rocks and secured his footing by grabbing brush and branches. He climbed his way up a tiny slope and then stood upon a flat rock and beheld Golden Falls a hundred yards away exploding over the cliffs. The water wasn’t falling. It was shooting out as if exploded from a 16-inch gun on a battleship.

He had to get closer. There seemed no discernible path to follow so he followed his own. It was muddy and slick and rocky. Jared felt the spray from the falls. He made his way out into the open toward the pool at the base of the falls. Rain mixed with spray brought down a deluge.

At last Jared stopped. There was no way over a fortification of downed trees and boulders. He stood there on Christmas morning and looked up at Golden Falls. Something was being conceived at that moment. It was both inside and outside Jared. It wasn’t therapy as quack therapists define it for simplicity and profit. It was action and action is consolatory. Consider this: what has more answers to hard questions? An expensive therapist in an office or a free waterfalls? Which language plunges you deeper into reflection?

Jared stared at Golden Falls for half an hour. He thought. He remembered. He made a forecast for himself. Perhaps it would end up like the typically wrong weather forecasts on television. But sometimes the meteorologists got it right. There were always percentages in favor of something predicted actually happening.

It was time to go. Nothing gold can stay, not even a waterfalls, although in truth, it does.

Jared snapped a couple photographs for his mom and would text them to her later. He couldn’t wait to show them to Wayne when they were drunk around the fire. He’d tell him, “There’s something about seeing a waterfalls that does a man good” and they’d bust up laughing and get even drunker.

The next morning, they’d break down the lot with hellacious hangovers, head for the farm, and take it from there.

Silver and Golden Christmas Falls (Part 8)

Fiction, NSP Meditations

Dusk settled over Coos Bay on Christmas Eve. Downtown was dead. So was the lot. But Wayne, Chief and Jared soldiered on. The music played. The fire crackled. The locomotive kept chugging through the idyllic landscape all of us want to inhabit.

Wayne whipped up a turnip and rutabaga stew and baked cornbread. Jared stoked the fire and they sat down around the flames to eat and talk and drink. They agreed to hit the sauce lightly until they closed the lot. Wayne knew some straggler would eventually show up needing a tree or needing to see the train set in action. There was just something about seeing a toy train chugging along that does a sad grown man good.

Drizzle floated through the park. Wayne decided it was now or never to pitch an idea that popped into his head while reading Matterhorn two nights ago. He was about to speak when Jared said, “I guess I’ll be shoving off tomorrow.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Wayne. “What about coming to live out on the farm through the winter? It’s got to be rough out there in the rain.”

“You mean it?”

“I mean it.”

“What would I do out there?”

“Work. Like I do. Cut firewood. Cut brush. Run errands. Tend the greenhouse. I’ll pay you a wage and you don’t have to pay any rent.”

“Where would I live?”

“The house.”

“A whole house to myself?”

“If you want it.”

“I think I’d like a little trailer like yours. It’s perfect.”

“How about we find an old one and fix it up for you. There are dozens of them left behind in storage units. I see them for sale in Nickel Ads all the time.”

“I don’t know how to do any carpentry.”

“I’d teach you.”

“Wayne, I’m probably going to fuck up again. I don’t want to let you down. That’s why I’m out here the way I am. I don’t let anyone down.”

“What about your kid and mom?”

They looked at each other. Wayne knew he’d hurt Jared. There was no call for that on Christmas Eve. But then again, maybe there was. Maybe that was precisely the time for it.

Of course, Wayne wasn’t on the receiving end. Jared didn’t really have that in him.

“So you fuck up again,” said Wayne. “But maybe you won’t. We can’t predict anything in this world. Why try?”

“Could I have visitors?”

Wayne hesitated for a moment. He thought of Jared in Winston. He thought of a transvestite logger mainlining meth and ferrets running loose.

“Just no Winston types,” said Wayne.

Jared laughed. “No Winston. I only do Winston in Winston. I was thinking my kid could visit if I could track him down. Maybe another vet or two if someone needs a break from the road.”

“Sure. Good ideas. No guns.”

“Never again for me after what I did.”

“You didn’t do it. Your government did. Never forget that. And another thing. If you see something that needs changed or improved around the farm, you speak your mind.”

“What about bringing in the Internet?”

“Oh Jesus! Okay. But you’re paying for it.”

“All right. I’ll stay and we’ll see how it goes.”

“Whatever happens, can I work the lot with you and Chief next Christmas?”

“Hell yes! And you can stay in your own trailer!”

A can of malt liquor collided with mug of red wine. It made an unusual thud but a toast is a toast.

They talked of the farm. Jared surprised himself by talking about opportunities and possibilities They sounded strange coming out of his mouth. He felt it probably was like speaking a foreign language and in one respect, it was. It required practice.

A bedraggled man appeared at the edges of the firelight. Two bowling bags rested behind him. They weren’t carrying bowling balls. The man spooked Chief and he growled. Wayne quieted him. He wanted to know if he could have a tree. He didn’t have any money.

Jared jumped out of his chair and offered to help him choose one. Wayne wondered how the man would carry it along with two bowling ball bags. He and Jared would rig it up somehow. They were Marines!

A few minutes later the man walked away with a tiny potted tree in a kid’s Disney Frozen backpack Wayne dug out of lost and found. It was all preposterous and all beautiful.

After he left, Jared said, “Where is he going tonight?”

“Where were you going last Christmas?” said Wayne.

“I can’t remember.”

“There sure seems to be a lot more people like you living outdoors these days.”

“There are more. A lot more. Why is that you think?”

“I don’t really know. There was nothing like that around Coos Bay forty or even twenty years ago. We turned a bad corner somewhere.”

“You think it will all go away?”

“Well, are you going to ever get off the streets for good?”

Jared didn’t respond. But he had thought about it. Most of the homeless people he met had as well.

Silence reigned for a few minutes. Jared was thinking. He wasn’t equipped intellectually to discuss matters of policy. But he was certainly able to discuss matters of the heart. Maybe there needed to be more heart-making than policymaking on this issue. Because policymaking on the homeless crisis wasn’t cutting it in America even though it was a dictionary word and heart-making only rated a hyphen and not a dictionary listing at all.

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