A Recent Conversation with My Father

NSP Meditations ,

Fifteen minutes into a recent conversation with my father, I stopped—and marveled. Here he was, almost 88, and he was correcting me on some finer points of Constitutional knowledge, something I take great pride in and occasionally put to good use, such as recognizing when my Constitutional rights are being violated.

We were discussing the implementation of the federal income tax during the Progressive Era and I said it was inconceivable that the 17th Amendment would be passed today, even if the nation was on the verge of financial collapse.

“It was the 16th Amendment,” he said. “The 17th was direct election of the Senators.”

He was right, of course.

Our conversation veered toward the 25th Amendment and the convoluted provisions for removing the President because of disability. He knew it by heart and knew it would never be used with our current President because his Cabinet has absolutely no integrity.

In my former life, I used to teach American government with gusto. I made my students learn the Constitution and its Amendments by rote instruction, the only time in my career I ever used rote pedagogy. I talked about this with Dad, and his teaching philosophy when it came to rote instruction. He used it way more than I did in his 40-year teaching career and I have always been skeptical of its effectiveness. I prefer more creative approaches.

He said, “I’m alive because of rote instruction. The Marines taught the M-1 rifle by rote and it worked. (Dad is a combat veteran of the Korean War and saw a lot of action.)

That gave me a pause.

Next, we moved onto to his recent attendance at the Three Dog Night concert at Spirit Mountain Casino, with my step-mother. It was the first rock concert of his life. This was a man who special ordered VWs from the factory without a radio. I drove one of these radioless cars in high school and it was a source of amazement to my friends and dates. It made us have to talk when I drove. Imagine that.

He told me had a good time and “learned” a lot at the show.

Learned? At a rock concert?

After that, we moved onto one of our favorite subjects, Perry Mason. We discussed the episode where a dissipated poet is a suspect in a murder, but it turns out he didn’t do it. It was a scorned female lover.

“Poets don’t kill,” he said. “They don’t have it in them.”

That sounded like a great line to open a mystery novel, where a poet does kill.

River Coffee Shop Novel Notes

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I sit on a wooden picnic table. It is early morning along a slack river. I am drinking weak coffee from a paper cup. It is leftover free bank coffee. It was in the car for days.

It occurs to me that I can’t write on picnic tables unless they’re made of wood. Not many of those left in Western Oregon.

On my way here, I hunted for ripe blackberries and found not a single one. It was an incredibly poor blackberry year, one of the worst in recent memory.

On my walk along the river, I encountered the largest woodpecker I have ever seen. It was the size of a rabbit. It had a red head and hammered away on a large branch. I crept close and watched it hammer for five minutes from five feet away. It wouldn’t deign to notice me.

Two huge mastiff-like dogs just left me. They came up and goofed around the table as I wrote. They towered above the table. Their owner, a man in his 40s, apologized. I told him not to worry. His dogs made me laugh and I was grateful for that. They were happy and the man told me they were his first dogs in 17 years. When he was younger, he went though an agonizing death of his childhood dog and couldn’t bear to have another one. Sonny the husky lived for 17 years and has been gone for two. It may take me another 15 years before before I get another dog. If I do, I am naming it Lt Tragg.

I am now writing this inside the car. On my return walk, I happened across dozens of apples on the ground, from an ancient tree a homesteader planted over 125 years ago. I picked one up. I threw it toward the river and heard it made a fat smashing sound when it hit the water. It was a cannonball dive sort of sound. I saw nothing of the splash. I imagined that apple floating down the watershed, endlessly floating until it found the ocean. I threw only one. That was enough.

Oregon City on the Mind

NSP Meditations, Pioneer Pride ,

I am writing this from my mind as it overlooks the river of my youth. I am on the best, private promenade in the state.

There is silence from the mills. Oregon City used to be a three-whistle shift town. Where are the millworker men of today working?

Our arch rival lies across the river. I met some of the finest people of my life in West Linn. They changed my life for the better. Perhaps some of them can change it again. We’ll see. I am thinking of someone in particular.

Hardly a boat on the water. The summer season of the salmon is over, fake salmon that is. I’ll never understand how that obvious realization doesn’t cause a massive shift in our relationship to the damaged Columbia River Watershed. I plan to explore that issue in a forthcoming detective novel.

My mind sits near a young oak. Leaves are turning yellow, orange and red. The helicopter seed heads are poised to fly.

In many ways, I lived in silence and solitude in my youth. They served me well then and have helped me survive in recent years.

Not too long ago, my dad and I had a probing discussion about the Book of Job. Patience has also helped me survive. I have faced tremendous pressure and inertia to exhibit impatience and have resisted at every turn. Others around me have not. They gave into temptation and they are gone or dead.

My mind likes this bench and this friendly oak and the river flowing below me. I have tremendous stories to tell about this river and this town. I simply must cultivate patience for them to emerge.

Rain Coffee Shop Novel Notes

NSP Meditations, Of Walking in Rain , , , , ,

In my novel, rain slaps against the windows of the coffee shop. The windows are good. They will hold.

Two Christians talk Christian things. The Bible has some good lines of rain although it basically is a book of the desert.

A man fondles the crucifix he’s wearing around his neck as he reads the Bible.

A crow on the roof seems delighted with his manic splashing in the rain. I’ve seen humans act like that after a long dry spell. Umbrellas automatically prevent this sight, among other beauties of rain.

A school bus full of children rolls by the window. They will go to school, plug in, and learn nothing of rain. I once taught my students about rain. Rain was an essential curriculum.

Rain offer opportunities for the mind; the sun dulls them. Rain is a Russian novel; the sun an airline magazine.

I think about someone who had rain tattooed on her arm. Where is she?

I wonder if anyone is reading my rain book at this exact moment. I have approximately 40 rain books left.

Rain inspires conversations; the sun makes people want to workout. Rain kills fire; the sun sparks fires. When will this country ever elect a man or woman of rain to serve as President?

Rain picks up outside. I sense a deluge is coming. I mean that in reality and metaphor.

Christian Coffee Shop Notes

NSP Meditations

A beautiful morning in an imaginary beautiful word. This is the fiction I am writing.

I am killing time in a Christian coffee shop. A Christian rock power ballad plays softly. The singer is killing it about Jesus being killed.

This shop doubles as a church. It has a stage with instruments, a PA, lights, mixing board, huge monitors, the works. This place looks more like a rock club than a church. I bet the pastor is a reformed rock and roller, drugs, groupies, destruction of motel TVs, all of it.

Incredibly, this church has no pews. Red cushioned chairs. How can you find Jesus with that kind of comfort?

The house coffee costs $1.35. Odd.

The barista is playing solitaire with real cards. No one is on their phone or tablet. Maybe God is present here.

A customer is complaining about the dirty windows. Another customer talks about the homeless man who cleans the windows at her work. Someone else mentions a vagrant in the area who charges virtually nothing to clean exterior windows and does a great job.

I sometimes marvel at the fact I was once a preacher’s kid. I’ve explored that strange life in a few essays and as minor parts of books but never given its proper due as story material. One day, I think. How could I not?

I remember everything.

I just finished a conversation with a one-armed man. He owns the building where I am writing this. The church was once a bar that he operated. He nearly drank himself to death doing so. He lost his arm doing so. He closed the bar after some time in jail and leased the space to a pastor, who was creating a new church. Sure, why not lease it to him? A good story to convert sinners. It worked. The pastor converted him in a manner of months. He hasn’t touched the sauce in five years. This story is better than a novel.

Youngs Bay Wine Shop Notes

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A morning dove glides overhead. I drink a glass of white wine and watch the bay roll not an inch in either direction.

In the distance, I hear the sounds of my former life as a high school teacher—the marching band is practicing. I had a good run. I made a unique difference in the lives of many of my students. I can live with that. I can die with that.

I busted ass on the grounds of the wine shop. I still love to do this kind of work. It is tangible.

Clouds barely move. I see white, silver, gray, brown and black clouds. I once taught an entire cloud-themed writing workshop to my students. We just waited for the right moment and then strolled outside and reclined on our backs on the football fields. I shouted out prompts and they wrote in their journals with their arms upraised. The writing always floated into beautiful unknown areas of imagination and reflection.

Okay, I miss doing that sort of thing, I admit that.

Some more people from my former life have recently emerged. So far it has been a tricky proposition, to determine motives and discover agendas when this occurs.

Two morning doves are walking on the floor of the wine shop. I read they mate for life. These two are a couple, for sure.

Salmon is cooking. The wine shop serves incredible meals.

Over in a far disused corner of the shop, I see a statue of mermaid that I once stole from an abandoned vacation home. I had an accomplice in that mission and I would like to see her again.

Labor Day came and went. Labor Day always makes me think. It’s hard to believe Congress and a President once passed such legislation, to honor the working man and woman, and provide a day of rest. Working class men and women once voted for FDR. Now most of them support Trump. Where did it all go wrong in their minds and wrong with my country to see that happen? Historians can perhaps settle it out. Or maybe novelists or poets. Forget rock and rollers, and of course, the streaming shows will never touch it.

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