Roofing!

NSP Meditations , , , , ,

A friend had forwarded me an email advertising a writing gig. The subject line of the email read: Roofing Blogger.

Roofing blogger! Hell yes! I love roofs! I once roofed a house! I once ripped a roof off a house. I fell off a roof in third grade and broke my arm! I once made out on a roof! The love of my previous life once surprised me by waiting on my roof in a bikini! (She was actually cleaning the skylight.) I want to write about roofs! Five posts, 800 words each of original roofing content. Twenty-five hundred bucks. I could crank out five posts in three hours, pay the mortgage and then some.

My mind raced to conjure possible topics: 1) That riveting Oregon Tavern Age conversation about roofing I overheard in the Big O Saloon; 2) The classic early 60s hit “Up on the Roof” by The Drifters; A probing literary essay about all the mentions of roofs in Sometimes a Great Notion; 4) Snoopy’s existential musings on the roof of his dog house; 5) A meditative pastiche of roof-top images from Mary Poppins, Peter Pan and Jason Bourne rooftop-chase scenes; 6) A deconstruction of the rooftop scene from the movie Reality Bites; 7) A proverb from the Old Testament that went something like, “It’s better to live on the roof of a house than inside with a contentious woman.”

I was giddy about the possibility of writing about roofs, perhaps becoming the foremost blogger in America on roofs. I hurried down to the garage, dug out the ladder, brought it outside, climbed on my roof, and beheld the gillnetting grandeur of Youngs Bay. There was another essay right there!

A gull flew by. Then another. They gave me the eye. I came to my senses.

The roofing industry wouldn’t want my swashbuckling takes on their product. They would demand the basics and practicalities. They would want discussions of composites, shingles, cedar shakes, tiles, gutters, sealants and moss eradication.

I couldn’t write that dreck!

I looked at my roof. It was a damn good roof and kept me dry during a record rainfall. Not one tiny leak or speck of mold.

I could write that dreck! And I would sprinkle in Kesey and The Drifters, too, dammit!

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Bonnie and Clyde Files 20

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Bonnie and Clyde and I approached the river on a torpid summer morning and rousted a bald eagle. She took flight toward the clearcut. Moments later, two blue herons flew overhead in their unmistakable prehistoric manner. I’d never two fly together before. It was almost unsettling. They have always seemed to me like such creatures of incalculable solitude, out there on the mud flats alone. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always identified with them.

I sat down on the bank, fed the crew some treats, and looked around. Three hummingbirds flitted in the alders. Alder leaves detached and floated into the river. The leaves floated past me. Detach me with them, please.

Bonnie made a little foray into the river, searching for something. She stopped in the middle of the channel, sniffed, drank and splashed around. I honestly believe this dog communes with spirits in nature. I’ve never seen anything like it in a dog…or for that matter, a human being.

Clyde remained by my side and occasionally whimpered his treat whimper. I’ve spoiled this old veteran and it brings me some of the little joy I have in my current life.

I watched the river and craved rain, a ripping rain, the resulting freshet, and perhaps the miracle of watching wild salmonids make their run up into the watersheds to spawn. I’ve seen that sight twice in 20 years and want to see it again. This might be the place. But you can never plan for the magic. It just appears when the water is right and the fish get the scent. Rain is the key. Rain is always the key.

Fall is coming. Two summers of my life evaporated by the staggering heat of disapproval and isolation. The water from this river has helped keep my soul hydrated. These old dogs, too. They know how to put the lick on my face.

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Oregon Tavern Age: Friar Part 2

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The server came over and my cousin ordered another round. I went into full reporter mode and asked her about the party and the Friar. I pumped her for information and she took a little step back at my pumping. I dug out a Keno card and started scribbling notes with a gold pencil.

It was a going away party for the local priest of the Hammond Catholic church (pictured here). He hadn’t been posted all that long and now faced his flock for perhaps the last time—in a dive bar—and received their earnest well wishes.

I asked the server the good Friar’s name. She didn’t know and I said I had to know.

“I’ll work on it.”

She was working both rooms.

“Does the congregation meet here often?” I said.

“I would say yes, for meetings and gatherings,” she said.

“What are they like?”

“Sometimes they can get a little rowdy.”

My cousin listened and somehow tried to take it all in. He appeared a little dizzy.

“What’s their favorite drink?” I said, expecting to hear Black Velvet or Seagram’s.

“Wine.”

“Red, right?”

“No, white.”

The white threw me but also made me clap my hands in glee. I could see oceans of Chablis from boxes and jugs. Carlo Rossi and gravy! Monks and gravy!

The server left and my cousin launched into what we’d just heard. I felt I was verging on mania. I wanted to get up and interview the priest, get his take on coastal Oregon Catholicism and Catholic OTAs. We would talk long into the double Benedictine afternoon about the spirituality of rain, too. Maybe I would convert and confess right there!

The server returned with our beers.

“Ben, Father Ben is his name.”

I looked into the dining room and the Friar turned my way. I got a straight look at his face. It was the most feminine face I’ve ever seen on a man in an OTA joint. There was more going on in that face than any face I’d ever seen in an OTA joint and it wasn’t even an OTA face.

There was mighty, mighty, wondrous, cataclysmic change in the Friar’s face and I think it bodes well for the future of the faith.

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Oregon Tavern Age: Friar Part 1

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My cousin and I hadn’t seen each other in ten years. He lived in Los Angeles and worked in advertising. He worked hard, moved fast, and made a lot of money. He drank fine liquors and ate in fancy restaurants, surrounded by beautiful and glamorous people with perfect smiles of real teeth. He hadn’t been on the Oregon Coast in 30 years but here he was, soul searching like me, and thus our reunion was on.

I suggested we meet at the beach, perhaps build a driftwood fort, and then head to Oregon Tavern Age country, the South Jetty in Hammond for lunch. Everything would slow down in there for my cousin; it was a physical law he was powerless to resist. He would see unforgettable toothless OTA smiles. He might even order a frosty Hamm’s and shovel into his Oregon roots.

We talked for almost three hours on the beach and saw two other people on a sunny day in August. He couldn’t believe the absence of people. I gave him the short history of Astoria’s pathology, fake fish in the Columbia River, and hubris of building the South Jetty. We laughed, cried and went deep into reminiscence, not for nostalgia’s whitewashed sake, but to relearn important matters pertaining to ourselves. We both knew that if we can’t learn anything new at our age, it’s over.

The parking lot of the South Jetty was jammed and that mystified me. I have never seen an OTA parking lot full in my life. Something inebriated was afoot. Could be a wedding. Could be a wake. Could be a firearm exhibit. Could be a caucus to politic against your own economic interest and hate the people who staff nursing homes you will die in. Could be a charity toy drive that doesn’t have to involve drinking, but somehow it does.

My cousin and I repaired to the lounge side and found it practically empty. The dining room side was packed with octogenarian men and women. It was obviously some kind of party and the din being thrown up augured good elderly mischief.

We ordered lunch and beers and dove back into our conversation. I sat facing the dining room party and secured an excellent vantage point for Maximum Storytelling Potential (MSP). There was tremendous bustle in the dining room, servers and busboys moving with serious purpose. A big meal was about to commence. Let there be rubber chicken. Let the mashed potatoes and gravy flow like milk and honey.

What the hell were these Hammond old timers drinking? They seemed like a Canadian whiskey crowd. I had to know.

A figure came into view. My cousin was saying something but I stopped listening. The figure was large, very large, and dressed in a brown robe with a white rope tied around his waist. There was enough fabric and rope to outfit a sail, for a boat sailing on a perilous missionary mission.

I picked up my beer and sipped a sip. My cousin was still talking.

The brown robe and rotund body reminded me of Friar Tuck from Robin Hood lore (the Errol Flynn classic, not the Kevin Costner atrocity.) Was I looking at a friar? A monk? A priest? What the hell is the difference anyway? I thought about ordering a double Benedictine on the rocks and perhaps the answer would divinely arise. They had a bottle behind the bar. A couple of doubles and I’d soon be finding images of the Virgin everywhere in the South Jetty, maybe even in the lines of an OTA face talking about how he missed reeling in a sturgeon.

The Friar called for quiet, uttered a few pleasantries, and then began blessing the meal. Goddammit! I couldn’t hear the blessing because of the accursed noise generated by a drag race on television.

I motioned for my cousin to turn around and take a look at the sight of a Friar blessing deep fried food in a dive bar on the Oregon Coast. I reached out to his shoulder in preparation to steady him

He turned around. He watched the blessing. Then he turned back to me. We looked at each other in awe, gesticulating, throwing crude hand signs that harked back to anthropology’s golden age. Wispy halos circled above our heads as we silently nodded. We both got it: we were in the humble presence of god, the OTA god who walks and drinks Hamm’s among us all, and loves lapping gravy at noon.

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Fort Crab

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , , , ,

A driftwood fort reeks. That’s a first for me in a thousand driftwood forts. Someone or multiple persons decorated the fort’s exterior and interior with crab shells and crab legs, probably 30 pieces of crab altogether. Someone even staked up a crab shell like the pig’s head in Lord of the Flies. There’s a gathering of feathers and rocks, too. I dub this structure Fort Crab and adorn it with a chunk of crab buoy discovered ten minutes ago at the wrack line near the South Jetty.

I brought my breakfast to breakfast at the fort: Yuban coffee, tap water, plum, two hard boiled eggs, bagel and cream cheese. The sand finds its way into every taste and bite.

The ocean is a uniform gray with bleach-white breakers. I am the only one here for miles around.

My dearly departed husky enters my mind. She’s still visiting me in my dreams. I have some newcomers to my dreams as well, dead people from my former life.

An assembly of gulls on the wet sand point south into the wind. They almost seem like a phalanx.

Why do I sit here on this driftlog and write this rumination? I wonder who will read it? Are my driftwood and jetty thoughts merely circumlocutions? Saying it too slant? Can they reach landfall? Are they merely clouds that never get to rain?

Can I go the distance? The 15th round? A draw? Can I make it into the fifth set? Can I rally on the back nine into the gale? Can I kick at the end of the distance race and dive across the tape? There is no pinch hit scenario in fashioning a sports metaphor for my current predicament.

I’ve seen the spout from a whale’s blowhole three times in 20 years of rambling Oregon Coast beaches. The third time is happening right now.

Whales practice democracy and some sing mysterious songs. Perhaps they are singing the song of democracy. We can’t hear it. We’re oblivious to its clarion call; we’re underwater with rage and superstition.

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Notes on Listing, Walking the Plank and Gaffs

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I saw an old boat listing in a moorage. Moorage is a strange-sounding word. Someone walked away from this boat. One day this boat would disappear underwater and no one would remember it. But remember: it’s still there, rotting slowly, until most of it disintegrates.

Listing indicates peril for a boat. Something went wrong. Could have been human error or the elements. A sinking is imminent.

Am I listing like a leaky boat at sea? Can the boat be repaired, righted and sail into safe harbor? What about towed? Why would anyone like me who does not ride in boats use this is a metaphor?

Rivers and seas and water-going vessels provide the ultimate metaphors for landlubbers.

Bob Dylan once sang, “We live in a political world, where mercy has walked the plank.”

It’s a highly obscure Dylan song, rarely discussed or worshiped. It’s in my Top 3.

I walked that mercy plank. I was thinking of Dylan’s song when I did. I walked right off into the dark carpeted sea. It was calm and cold that afternoon. There was even a microphone present for a statement. The ship’s resident crew was mostly silent, just a few claps here and there. The ship’s social media crew was very noisy and let out a hearty round of applause.

But I did swim after the drop and not sink with my eyes closed to the bottom. I came up for air, breathing steadily, not gasping. I didn’t give up. I am still swimming, trying to find land or another boat. Someone or some thing needs to gaff me out of the water. I can’t gaff myself out, contrary to what someone keeps telling me.

Gaff me out of the water. How’s that for a metaphor?

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