Oregon Tavern Age: Talkin’ Turkey

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , , , , ,

It was a Friday afternoon and sunshine shellacked the windows of Turkey’s. I sipped a local lager and soaked in the ambiance of the greatest tavern in Oregon, which happens to be roughly the size of Thoreau’s cabin.

I almost forgot. Out the window, I could see turkeys crossing a bridge.

The latest preposterous Turkey’s story was Gary’s attempt to fix a portable heater from a resident at a nearby trailer park. She had brought it to the joint, put the damn thing right up on the bar. Gary, a retired electrician, inspected it, diagnosed the problem, and said he would get the part in town, bring it back to Turkey’s, and fix the heater right there! An OTA electrician service call! They set up a time, Gary bought the part, he and Linda showed up, but the woman didn’t and they never saw her again.

An OTA man walked up to me and offered me some beef jerky he’d jerked himself. I had to decline. I told him I was a vegetarian. There was suspicion in his eyes.

Gary told me that in his former life he was a falconer! A falconer! I was sitting next to man who had handled falcons and hearing his stories of falconry! (I might also add he was wearing a $300 Western shirt at the time.) Gary also mentioned that he knew a man who once carried around his money in a pouch he’d made from the scrotum of a big horn sheep.

A man entered Turkey’s and ordered a beer. Outside, his pickup had four flat tires in the bed. He was on his way to get them pumped up at a gas station. Turkey said he he had an air pump in his shop and could rig him right up. The man took up Turkey’s offer.

A rumor is floating around that a hair stylist is going to start cutting hair in Turkey’s kitchen. Cash or barter only. A secret OTA salon. I dismissed this absurd notion at once, but I do need a haircut.

Somehow, because this was Turkey’s, the subject of water witching came up, and Kip or Gary said that Turkey was a bonafide water witcher! And quite a famous one! The word was out in Curry County. For a hundred bucks, Turkey would visit a property, wield his magic willow, and divine where the water lurked in the deep. “He’s never failed,” said Kip. I asked Kip if I might accompany Turkey on a water witching gig because I simply had to see such a sight. “I don’t see why not,” he said.

Linda directed my attention toward a painting of turkeys that was resting on a shelf, above the canned corn and pear halves. I got up to inspect it. Most unusual. The artist, a local man, painted the turkeys on what appeared to be a mushroom of some kind scraped off a tree. “A conk,” Linda said. “They’re called conks.”

I’d never heard the word before or seen it in print. Now Turkey’s was teaching me new vocabulary!

Gary asked if I wanted to hear the story of the time he pulled his friend Bruce’s tooth in the parking lot outside of Turkey’s.

What?

Sure. I’d always wanted to hear a tooth pulling story in OTA country. There was one?

So the story goes: Bruce and Gary were at Turkey’s when Bruce said, “Will you do me a favor and pull my tooth?”

Gary agreed and they went out to the parking lot where Bruce wrapped a string around one of his teeth, and tied the other end to the handle of Gary’s open truck door. The plan called for Gary to slam the door shut and rip out the tooth. Just like in the screwball silent comedies and cartoons.

Everyone in Turkey’s watched from the bar.

The first attempt failed—too much slack in the string. The second attempt succeeded and the tooth rocketed out of Bruce’s mouth and ricocheted off the truck’s bumper. Bruce didn’t scream.

He went back inside Turkey’s and announced that anyone who found his tooth would receive a free beer.

Turkey’s emptied. The tooth was never found. It’s still out there and I suspect I’ll find it one day after a hard, sluicing rain. Or maybe a turkey gobbled it up.

Linda told me about the local chicken with her 11 yellow chicks and two black ones. A cat had swiped a couple, but at least it wasn’t a fox. She also mentioned that recently a regular had lost a beloved Labrador and walked into Turkey’s and broke down crying. He got hugs from the bartender and patrons. He rang the bell and bought the house a round to honor his dog. I should have done that when my husky died.

I was thinking about my great dog when an OTA man walked in carrying paper plates of sandwiches and cookies and set them on the counter. His wife trailed behind him. They both sat down and he ordered a draft beer and she ordered a Keystone Light in a can and glass of ice. A few seconds later she opened the can and poured the beer into the glass. In all my years of roaming OTA country, I’d never seen such a thing.

They had brought the sandwiches and cookies in because it was a semi-regular Friday tradition with them. I asked Linda what kind of sandwiches—tuna—real tuna off a local boat that the woman had canned herself. And, naturally, the cookies were homemade.

I was starving and asked for a sandwich and cookie. The tuna sandwich was the best I’d ever tasted and had hard boiled eggs in it and a delicious and mysterious relish. The cookie was superb, too.

The sandwiches went fast, and two were wolfed down by a young male firefighter covered in soot and grime who didn’t say a single word or fiddle on his phone the entire time he was in the bar.

As I neared the end of my beer, Turkey’s whiteboard food menu captured my attention. I’d never noticed it before. Chili dominated the choices.

I asked Linda about Turkey’s chili. Linda said it was legendary, concocted from a secret recipe handed down to Turkey from his family. Apparently, folks came from miles around to taste the legend and the joint typically ran out. I suspected roadkill found its way into the pot. There might even be wild turkey in the mix.

Turkey chili in Turkey’s made by a man named Turkey, eaten while turkeys come into view.

One day I will figure out what that convergence means, and when I do, I’ll rule Oregon.

I hadn’t tasted meat in over 25 years but the prospect of a Turkey’s roadkill chili dog roiled my imagination and titillated my palate. I felt my stomach could handle the fresh meat in the chili but that an Upton Sinclair hot dog would probably kill me.

My mind drafted a scheme. I would sneak a tofu dog into Turkey’s and then replace the death dog during a diversion of some kind. It would be a perilous undertaking in Oregon tavern age country. I might get beat up or shunned.

But I had to try the chili.

Oregon Tavern Age: Love to Love You Baby

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , ,

Silence reigned in an OTA joint as three OTA men and one OTA man sat at the bar.

The Andy Griffin Show played on low volume on television.

A meth man walked into play a video line game and walked out seconds later.

A deep fryer gurgled grease.

A blind man played pool.

Something about everything cohered to produce as sexless a moment as every time a Trump family member has sex.

I watched the bar from a corner table and wrote a letter to a wild animal. My porter was flat.

Donna Summer’s legendary disco hit, “Love to Love You Baby,” came on the jukebox at an ear-splitting level. It’s the song where she simulates 23 or 28 orgasms.

One of us had chosen the song. We all stared at one another. It was showdown of sorts, and it was exactly high noon.

Oregon Tavern Age: Busted Femur

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , , ,

From a back table at Pitch’s, I watched a blowout playoff football on television and scribbled in my journal.

The female bartender was talking to an OTA regular. She wore a breathing apparatus and sucked in pure O2. She wasn’t OTA. She had traveled light years beyond that commonplace visage into history.

I eavesdropped and it wasn’t difficult because the bartender was practically yelling at the regular, not at him, but telling a story that occurred a few days ago.

She was pissed, breathing fire. Doubtless the oxygen threatened to ignite and we’d all die.

But I would report the OTA story until the end. My scribbles might survive the conflagration.

So the story went:

Two female employees of the joint were off the clock and drinking in the joint with an OTA man, presumably their friend. They began play slapping each other across the face. Or more precisely, the women slapped and the man received. He barely resisted, but got in a few taps.

The game went on for some time. Everyone was watching.

At some point, blood was drawn. It spilled out onto the floor, a real Thin Lizzy moment in Port Orford. The girls were back in town.

The bartender on duty, not the one narrating the story, (who I learned was the owner), threw the trio out. They left and continued the slapping on the sidewalk.

He went down hard to the concrete and fractured his femur, compound. More blood. An ambulance rushed him to the Gold Beach hospital, and later, over to Medford for rehab. He was still there! He might never walk normally again. A cane was a distinct possibility.

She called them fools, idiots, fuck ups. There was no slapping in her bar! She was putting up a sign. Anyone caught slapping was 86’d. Damn well forever. We can’t have that nonsense in here! A man could have bled out!

The bartender looked up and saw me writing. “You writin’ a book?” she barked in a kind way.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good!”

Oregon Tavern Age: Wellness

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , ,

I drank a local porter and wrote about beavers. Beavers are my friends. We are also collaborators.

A country song I didn’t recognize played on satellite radio.

Crows cawed outside. The stuffed ones inside didn’t.

The tattooed OTA bartender said she needed a smoke break and to let the dog out of her rig to piss. Her man was coming home after eight weeks on a job far away. She was horny as hell.

“Friend of the Devil” by the Grateful Dead came on.

I caught snippets of three conversations behind me: 1) the pawn shop owner in town died last night after a fall. He tripped in his living room and cracked his skull open after hitting a coffee table. The coffee table survived; 2) a doctor told a regular he had to stop drinking Rock Stars with booze. If he didn’t he was a dead man; 3) a high school teacher in a nearby city blew his brains out with a shotgun right before Christmas Break. The kids would be all right. They didn’t like him anyway.

A Mark Knopfler country song came on. Good warm pickin.’

I wanted a dog, but the timing wasn’t right yet.

I finished my porter and left. I had said exactly three words on this visit to OTA country. “Porter” and “thank you.”

Writing Workshop in Astoria

NSP Meditations, Writing , , , ,

Writers:

On Saturday, March 9, I will teach a writing workshop at a private home in Astoria. The workshop is called “Stimulating, Shaping and Shopping Your Writing Project” and the idea is to take whatever you are working on, no matter at what stage of completion (it might be just a concept or it might need a final polish) and move forward. It doesn’t matter what genre: poetry, memoir, novel, essays.

We will sit around a table, think, write, talk, share, pitch, laugh, listen. I feel it essential for writers with projects in mind or in development to come together in a relaxed setting, and write for writing’s sake and articulate your passion for your project. I believe it helps writers finish and build a community for the projects.

Each participant will email me a brief summary of the project and 100-200 word excerpt that captures its essence. I will print this out, comment on paper and discuss my comments with the writer at the workshop. Writers will also bring two additional copies of the excerpt to the workshop.

The workshop will run from 1-3 p.m. And hopefully we can have a little social time afterward.

The cost is $60.

Message me if interested. We have a really great group in the area.

Fort Siren (idea for a noir story)

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations , , , ,

(Author notes) Look at this fort. More windbreak for a fire than fort, but a fort nonetheless. I didn’t build it.

Of course it’s not there anymore. No driftwood fort except one stands forever. It is still standing in the dunes of Fort Stevens State Park near the jetty, hidden, a fortress. It was built by my students on the last day of my teaching career. Yes, my teaching career ended on an Oregon Coast beach building forts with my students. I might have peaked that day as a teacher, then everything vanished. Well, perhaps not everything because the fort still stands.

Back to the fort pictured here. It was destroyed not by the wind or tides or meth miscreant, but by a developer, who illegally commandeered 75 feet of our public beaches to build a mansion he and his South Carolina wife would inhabit two weeks every other year. The state did nothing. They did worse than nothing. They were complicit in the theft.

But I remember this fort well, and chiefly for the brief time I spent there with a siren, my siren. I will write a crime novel about her one day.

It was years ago. I forget how many.

I no longer recall what we talked about in this fort. I took some photographs of her with a film camera but the prints have disappeared. I think we were drinking beer. She was smoking cigarettes I’d purchased for her. I think it was the only time in my life I’d bought cigarettes. Pall Malls? Camels?

It ended badly. It sent me on my way, a bad way, but that is noir. Will this story have a happy ending? That sometimes happens in noir, but someone has to die.

She disappeared and reappeared. She tried to unsiren herself but it never worked. She’s trying again and I am writing letters to her in longhand. I wonder if the letters are doing any good, but that’s not the point. I don’t know what is. That’s a good reason to write letters. You just start and see where your heart and mind goes. More people should write letters in longhand. That I know for sure. It seems even sirens enjoy receiving them. Some sirens can even write, like this one. I want to include her poems in the story.

«‹ 216 217 218 219›»