Secret Coast Radio #17

NSP Meditations, secret coast radio

Welcome to the Secret Coast Radio podcast broadcasting somewhere on the Secret Coast

Let us begin by saying:

We prefer the first person plural over the singular.

We prefer mystery over journalism.

We prefer conversation over monologues.

We prefer reaching out in times of crisis over doing nothing.

We prefer working with good purpose over futile listlessness.

We prefer energy over sloth, movement over stasis, putting tools away in the shed over leaving them out in the rain.

We love when people make art or music or poetry when the world is on fire. Now is the time to make more!

We prefer the country change after the crisis abates over business as usual. How about mail balloting for all and a single payer health care system for starters?

We prefer walking over driving, dedicated passion sprung from intelligence and measured reflection over mindless obsession sprung from watching talking heads on television.

We prefer putting in the garden over marking time and cultivating plants and ideas over greed and gossip.

We prefer molehills over mountains and bees over busybodies.

And we really prefer people who change their minds in the face of facts as concrete as gravity over the ostriches with their heads in the sand.

What is this podcast about? Who are we?

Like we said, mystery over journalism.

Let show number 17 begin.

The link to the show is:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/385945

Pioneer Pride: Part 22-Kissers II

NSP Meditations, Pioneer Pride

The Followers built their own separate, utterly isolated cultural and economic community within Oregon City and its environs. This was known around town but never became an issue because the Followers were totally apolitical and went about their work and religion in relative quiet. The men worked blue collar trades and the women stayed at home, raised the children, and expertly practiced the domestic arts. Almost none went to college. The Followers had their own Follower plumber, contractor, roofer, electrician, hardware store, grocery store, auto repair shop, etc. They even had their own cemetery, in Carus, ten or so miles outside of Oregon City.

And of course they had their own church. Everything came back to their church. You didn’t go against the church. If you transgressed, you got shunned. I have no idea what amounted to a transgression back then or today. There’s a whole book on that subject alone but shunned people typically don’t write books.

Of course there were closeted rebels within the church, but they weren’t organized in cells or part of any movement. My older sister befriended one in high school, in the drama program. He was a Kisser and who wanted to be an actor, an avocation or profession inconceivable in the church. You poured concrete and sewed clothes. You fathered children and bore children.

I never met a single secret Kisser rebel in grade school or junior high, but I secretly longed to. In high school, one of the girls somehow ended up on our newspaper staff, sold ads, and that was it. No writing at all. She was gorgeous, smart, sexy and mysterious and probably was being the person she always wanted to be—at least for 45 minutes a day, five days a week, and eight months out of one year.

The Followers spent their money within themselves. They socialized only with each other. They exclusively married within their community, cousins and all that. A vast majority of their last names were Crone, Dotsun, Edwards, Hickman, Eels, Smith and White. They were all related to one another in some way.

As I look back on it now, I find it incredible that the Followers didn’t create their own private school system right out of the church, particularly when so many other Christian sects did exactly that in the 80s and 90s. But they never did. They sent their children to Oregon City public schools for the barest minimum of legally mandated education and then the children got the hell out.

Since the Followers didn’t believe in doctors, I don’t know how their children attended school without immunizations back then. Perhaps there were religious exemptions in those days (are there now?). This is all very interesting to pursue, but I don’t want to pursue it. It’s not the Story.

(Note to reader: It is my wish that the reader will support the idea that Pioneer Pride is a “book.” It is also my wish that the reader consider “buying” the book as it rolls out in installments. A purchase supports an author and future literary endeavors by Nestucca Spit Press. To purchase, look to the right on the blog to use Paypal or contact me to make other arrangements.)

Pioneer Pride: Part 21-Kissers I

NSP Meditations, Pioneer Pride ,

We called them Kissers, but Oregon City Followers of Christ Church, or Followers as they referred to themselves, was their official name.

There is exactly two congregations like them in the United States, one in Oregon City, the other in Oklahoma, I think. I don’t know for sure because I am researching this all from memory. Believe me, the Kissers imprinted concrete memories and I have photographic recall when it comes to this type of Oregon City things.

I suspect many other people growing up in Oregon City will remember the Kissers. How could you not? There was nothing like them anywhere in the country. There still isn’t anyone like them. They’re still around.

Those girls. Those cars. The dunks by white guys. The tackle football games. Those girls. That church. And they were all blood brothers and sisters in the church and that is no figure of speech.

They were called Kissers because of rumored mysterious kissing ritual. No one really knew what it was but we often imagined it. Later, I discovered the ritual involved adult men kissing each other on the mouth when they greeted each other in private. Maybe it’s true.

A man named Walter White immigrated with his family to Oregon City from Caldwell, Idaho in the early 1960s and established the OC Followers’ congregation, which at the time was located in a rural area of Highway 213 near present-day Clackamas Community College. It’s still there, now surrounded by strip malls and fast food franchises.

White was the leader of the church and also claimed status as a prophet. He predicted the end of the world was coming in 1969. It did, but not in the way White foretold. It was much worse: Richard Nixon became President and the horror that he unleashed back then is still unfolding today. The modern unmaking of my country began with his hate and paranoia.

Interestingly enough, Richard Nixon and his criminal henchmen on the White House staff were soon to play a very important but largely unknown role in the history of the Kissers. Key staff members were Christian Scientists, faith healers, and the Followers were faith healers, too. They didn’t believe in doctors but they did believe in dentists, orthodontists and optometrists. So the story goes, White had bad teeth and was practically blind, so there you are.

My dad knew Walter White. He would only shop in Walter White’s WB grocery store in Oregon City because it had all of three aisles and everyone working there, including White, knew my dad and greeted him warmly because he taught many of their kids and the kids loved him.

They greeted me warmly, too, when Dad would take me to the WB, introduce me as his son, and buy me groceries when I first moved out on my own at age 20 and didn’t really have a job yet that covered all the bills.

Or did I meet White? I just called Dad for confirmation on this and he couldn’t confirm that it was the Walter White who owned and operated the WB. In my mind, it was him. The man I met in the meat market apron had that prophet look.

At the time, Dad and I didn’t know Walter White was a self-proclaimed prophet, much less one who got it wrong on the date for the Rapture. Think if that: Oregon City had a prophet who botched it! After White died in 2003, the congregation never found a replacement. They are still searching for a new prophet. The WB is still open.

Who would want to follow a prophet who got it wrong? Where do you go from there? It’s not like following a bad rock and roll band on stage. The stakes were much greater.

The faith healing aspect of the Followers garnered them national notoriety 15 or so years ago when the Clackamas County justice authorities finally cracked down on members of the church who withheld medical treatment from their children and allowed them to die from easily treatable maladies. It was in all the papers and all over TV news. Kissers went to prison and several are still incarcerated.

Yes, the children unnecessarily dying was a fascinating, tragic story, covered by conventional reporting, but it’s hardly the Story of the Kissers.

I know what that Story is. I was right there. She was right there.

(Note to reader: It is my wish that the reader will support the idea that Pioneer Pride is a “book.” It is also my wish that the reader consider “buying” the book as it rolls out in installments. A purchase supports an author and future literary endeavors by Nestucca Spit Press. To purchase, look to the right on the blog to use Paypal or contact me to make other arrangements.)

Secret Coast Radio 16

NSP Meditations, secret coast radio

Welcome to the Secret Coast Radio podcast broadcasting somewhere on the Secret Coast

Let us begin by saying:

We prefer the first person plural over the singular.

We prefer mystery over journalism.

We prefer a long tale about a man transforming into a beaver over a story about murder and mayhem, and we prefer people who can listen for 20 minutes while going about their work or home life, but still pay attention. Isn’t that the genius of podcasts? You can put in the garden and still listen to something thought provoking. Of course you do miss out on the tranquility of putting in the garden.

We prefer meeting people via paper connections over digital ones.

We prefer delighting people over debasing them.

We prefer zines over zoos, understanding over unrest, underdogs over sure things, conversation over contention and planting trees over planting lies.

We prefer grace under pressure over folding in the clutch.

We prefer common sense over panic.

We prefer direct democracy to elect our president over the undemocratic electoral college.

We prefer the anticipation of a first date over the blasé of tired relationships.

What is this podcast about? Who are we?

Like we said, mystery over journalism.

Let show number 16 begin.

The link to the show is:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/385945

Pioneer Pride: Part 20-The Rivalry

NSP Meditations, Pioneer Pride

There was Conde McCullough, Oregon’s master bridge builder’s first elegant arch bridge, an Art Deco masterpiece, completed in 1922, spanning the Willamette River, connecting Oregon City to our despised nemesis West Linn. Before the new Oregon City High School campus opened in 2003, this bridge conveyed the players and coaches to the oldest continuous high school football rivalry west of the Mississippi River. Oregon City and West Linn are right across the Willamette River from each other. For a century or so, because of where the schools were located, perched on high ground, students, if they had binoculars, could actually see each other from a secret spot on each others’ campuses. We had binoculars and we knew the secret spot and we spied on the Lions, or rather, lionesses, whenever we had nothing to do at school on a clear day, which was pretty much all the time.

The schools were so close to each other, a stunning and probably unprecedented intimacy between rival cities and schools, that whenever the annual Friday Big Game under the lights occurred, the away team’s marching band, accompanied by cheerleaders and other students on foot or following in muscle cars, would march in what was essentially a patchwork parade, to the rival’s stadium. Usually in the rain! And to get there, they had to march across Conde’s bridge, a bridge that probably facilitated more acts of drunkenness, violence, vandalism, lust, gridiron lore, and daredevilry related to a high school football rivalry than any other bridge in American history. That bridge, with its seductive concrete arch pitched at such a low angle, tempted you to walk right up and over it. Many men and some women did exactly that in those anonymous daredevil days. I heard someone even rode a motorcycle over the arch and lived to seed a legend.

I think it was my freshmen year when the night before the big game, a bunch of Oregon City varsity football players raided the West Linn campus at midnight and painted red and white the testicles of the golden lion statue that graced their main entrance. West Linn played at Oregon City that year and beat us 50-0.

And my favorite rivalry story comes from 1974. Some Oregon City football players procured hydrochloric acid and used it to dislodge the lion statue from its pedestal. They somehow (drunkenly) hauled the lion to the bridge, tied a noose around its neck, secured the other end of the rope around a girder, and threw it over the side. A hanging. They left it there and fled.

(Note to reader: It is my wish that the reader will support the idea that Pioneer Pride is a “book.” It is also my wish that the reader consider “buying” the book as it rolls out in installments. A purchase supports an author and future literary endeavors by Nestucca Spit Press. To purchase, look to the right on the blog to use Paypal or contact me to make other arrangements.)

Pioneer Pride: Part 19-Tennis Team II

NSP Meditations, Pioneer Pride

Ashe somehow served thunderbolts to the heavens and Oregon City switched leagues, out of the powerful old Wilco League and into the newly-established Timber Valley League. The Timber Valley League was comprised of rural Clackamas County timber and farming towns such as Molalla, Silverton, Estacada, Sandy and Sweet Home.

Just like that, Oregon City was the best team in the league. We started kicking ass and reveling in that power with a real swagger that we often made up on the spot because, well, we were winning and previously had no idea how it felt.

I recall as if were yesterday, the indelible moving images from those away matches in the Timber Valley League against the logging and farm boys, total hicks and hayseeds. Why they were on tennis teams is still a complete mystery to me.

There were the players who played in boots and Levi’s and Wranglers with cans of chew in their back pockets and took subtle dips during changeovers. Some of them didn’t know how to keep score. Some refused to hit backhands. They often used wooden rackets with little photographs of Pancho Segura and Pancho Gonzales advertising their star 1950s status. There was the match at Molalla, in front of log yard, with Mollala students hanging out in pickups behind the fence, smoking and drinking beer, listening to Molly Hatchet (LOUD), watching their friends play, and threatening to punch out my teammates if the line calls didn’t improve. One player rode his horse to a match and tethered it to the fence like it was a scene from a Western, had there been tennis matches in Westerns. I beat him handily and he road away into the sunset and diesel fumes of the log yard.

I am not making this up. Even then I knew it was preposterous and probably wasn’t happening anywhere in the country except rural Clackamas County, the place where tennis met logging!

As for my team, the varsity tennis team of Oregon City High School, circa 1979-82, the Pioneers…we were a strange crew indeed.

There was sneaking into a tennis club in the early mornings before school and using their courts, ball machines and saunas and never getting caught. Who exactly set that up I do not remember. I think it might have been our coach, who was a member, and left the back door open!

This was the same coach who hailed from Nebraska and played collegiality, who was well out of his intellectual depth with us but knew his tennis stuff and almost duked it out with Molalla’s coach one time over a stacked lineup. We wanted that fight so bad. It would have fomented an all-out brawl.

There was playing tennis during the spring in Western Oregon and having it rain during at least half our matches. We were masters of tennis in the rain.

There was calling lines in high school tennis, which meant players were their own referees and sometimes players cheated. I recall the time my doubles partner from my junior year got into a fight over a line call. He jumped over the net and it was on.

There was our number one player who was obviously gay (clues: thespian, bringing his pressed uniform on a hanger and blow drying his hair before matches) and we never talked shit about him because he could beat every one of us 6-0, 6-0. We also had homophobic teammates who would have kicked the hell out of any opposing player who insulted our number one. We were brothers.

There was an African American player on our team, the only one in the league, with rapier-like slashing strokes and a huge afro, who called his penis “The Snake” and would occasionally pull it out during his doubles matches and dangle it through the net during an opponent’s serve in hope of encouraging a double fault. Not one opposing player ever said a thing. The Snake was a cryptic legend around the league and probably still discussed in a log yard in Silverton if there is a log yard left in Silverton that hasn’t become a wine complex.

I want to repeat that story: a black kid put his penis through the net during matches against schools like Estacada and Molalla. He not only charmed The Snake through, he dangled it, whipped it around from side to side and held conversations with it and the opposing players.

“You like my Snake? Look at my Snake. Good Snake. Goin’ to win us a match today.”

How our coach never saw this is beyond me.

There was playing a singles match where I was behind 0-6, 0-5, 0-40 and came all the way back and won. I’m trying to do exactly the same thing in life right now. I did it once, I can do it again.

There was a quarter of the team stoned during their matches (not me).

There was my girlfriend coming to matches and bringing me orange juice and homemade cookies. She didn’t really understand tennis but was there for me, like I was there for her at swim meets.

There were long bus rides with the girls team without coaches because the coaches drove to the away matches. No adults except the driver. There were plenty of things that happened during those long unchaperoned rides through logging and farming country. The Snake was often on the loose. The Snake had handlers, too.

Tennis was a grand time in high school. But it ended very badly for me at the state tournament, in the first round.

From my senior year journal:

5-17-82

There was no fire, no emotion in me. Many times we had the chance to break the match open but we couldn’t—or should I say we could have but didn’t, There is a difference. I feel so useless as far as tennis is concerned. The guys who play all their life are so good and take it so seriously that you’re beaten before you go on the court. It is not a great feeling. Tennis is over. I’ve played my last high school match. I was sick of tennis but this was not the way I wanted to end. If only I had played well or put forth a decent effort then it would have been worth it. My final match total for four years— including everything: 50 wins 23 losses (I’m not sure if that is accurate but it is close).

I didn’t pick up a racket for several years after the tournament debacle. Much later I would return to tennis as an instructor and coach and renew my love for the game.

(Note to reader: It is my wish that the reader will support the idea that Pioneer Pride is a “book.” It is also my wish that the reader consider “buying” the book as it rolls out in installments. A purchase supports an author and future literary endeavors by Nestucca Spit Press. To purchase, look to the right on the blog to use Paypal or contact me to make other arrangements.)

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