Oregon Tavern Age: Eclipse Part 1

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The Old Oregon Saloon in Lincoln City had the distinction of being the first Oregon Tavern Age joint directly in the Path of Totality of the Great American Solar Eclipse, the first one across the continental United States in 99 years.

At approximately 10:00 a.m. on Monday, August 21, the moon would fall into perfect alignment, and blot out the sun. The media had fanned anticipation and people had journeyed for around the world to don the glasses and witness a marvel of our solar system in person.

The Old O opens at 7:00 a.m. (seven days a week) so I guessed a couple of regulars would be bellied up to the bar drinking as the momentous celestial event occurred…and…they…wouldn’t budge an inch. Too much strain. Too much science to consider. They couldn’t be bothered. In fact, they were bitching about the fuss. A bunch of crazy tourists buying gewgaws and nude hippies dancing on Cascade Head.

That was my eclipse story—the curmudgeon—and I would damn well get it, while other the lemmings dug up their cliches and interviewed a corporate executive waxing spiritual or single mom whose baby got his retinas fried.

I would nail the curmudgeon angle because I was a curmudgeon of the eclipse. The Grinch of the Eclipse. I wanted rain, a freak summer storm, a viscous gray, to obliterate the joy and awe of Whovilles in the Path of Totality. They would get the Path of Nothing and like it.

The Oregon Gods were summoned the night before. I knelt by my bed, anointed myself with Rainier, lit myrtle wood incense, and prayed to the spirits of Tom McCall and Ken Kesey for a secular wet intervention. I relished a holy washout and terrible things said about Oregon.

I couldn’t travel to Lincoln City to investigate the OTA indifference myself, although I dearly wanted to. Authorities predicted cataclysmic traffic jams and coastal gridlock. Locals had hit the liquor stores to stock up and ride out the madness. Vodka dried up first. Then came the mediocre brands of Canadian whiskey.

This story was mine! I would not be denied! Thus, I went deep into my bag of storytelling tricks and conjured a solution. My great notion was to call the Old Oregon Saloon during the eclipse and interview the OTAs who didn’t care and stayed in the bar. They’d be lining up to bitch to me and ordering shots of Fireball to fuel their harangue.

I placed a call 30 minutes before the event to prep the story. A bartender answered and I gave her the lowdown on my angle. She was game and would query the regulars. I would call back later and get the cynical goods. I asked about eclipse drink and food specials. None, she said. Good. She did add that commemorative sweat shirts were gone and only a few t-shirts remained.

What? Alarming. There was some interest and several OTAs had spent money on apparel. This was good beer money poured down the drain instead of the the gullet.

“Thanks for your help,” I said.

“Sure honey,” the bartender said.

I love being called “honey” in OTA country, just nowhere else, though.

The call ended and I waited for the eclipse. I would be calling the Old O soon. I rubbed my hands together in anticipation of listening to a double shots of sheer vitriol. I might even crack open a Rainier to chase it.

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Bonnie and Clyde Files 18

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Impressions from the river.

The river is sort of gray and definitely slack.

Drizzle on three consecutive visits to the dog sanctuary.

I am wearing the jeans I got married in 20 years ago. I am wearing the wristwatch my then wife presented me as a substitute for a wedding ring.

These jeans are faded and threadbare and have grass stains in both knees. I taught hundreds of school days in these jeans. I got grass stains while teaching in them. I used to go to the ground with my teaching and life. When I went to the ground, I got those stains. It occurs to me that grass stains in the knees of your jeans is a good metaphor for how to live.

I want new grass stains for my jeans. How in the world will I ever be able to get them now?

In the distance, I hear sounds of logging, excavation, and heavy equipment.

Bonnie is looking for something in the river. Aren’t we all?

Clyde’s muzzle is inches from my pocket as I sit on my camp stool and write these impressions.

I picked a few blackberries enroute to the river and tasted them. Close. Summer blackberry harvest on the Oregon Coast is almost here. I will harvest. I might even get blackberry stains in the knees of my corduroys. All my pants used to have either grass or blackberry stains on them. That’s how I used to live.

I got away from that. It went wrong for me.

Return to the stains! How is that for a motto?

Question: will Clyde eat blackberries? I will find out.

Lots of poetry and prose about blackberries..from Walt Whitman to Tom Robbins to Emily Dickinson (I think).

The Black Crowes even wrote a song about blackberries called “Blackberry.” Whenever I hear a Black Crowes song, I think of exactly one person in the world and will only think of that person whenever I hear the Black Crowes. I wonder if that person is reading this?

I’ve written my fair share of prose about blackberries. I need to write more.

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Meditations Overlooking Youngs Bay 2

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I am writing this in longhand.

The air is heavy. I wish it would rain. I wish it would rain on the eclipse.

I am reading two literary biographies at the moment: Dorothy Parker and Ross MacDonald. The former loved dogs and scotch; the latter was a former high school English teacher who loved birds. Prince wrote about a song about Dorothy Parker and it’s called “Dorothy Parker.” Not too many musicians have written songs about writers although writers write about musicians and songs all the time. The 10,000 Maniacs sang a fun song about Jack Kerouac and The Hold Steady wrote a rocking song about the poet John Berryman (his suicide). Why hasn’t anyone written a song about Rachel Carson, Colette or Thoreau? Maybe someone has. Enlighten me please, but don’t Google it. Tap your knowledge base accrued through hard study.

I might also add that Ross MacDonald was instrumental in saving the Californian condor from extinction and taking a fierce conservation stand on the historic Santa Barbara oil spill. There’s a mystery in that for sure. A mystery writer who cares about the watershed.

That’s the mystery novel I will write.

Werner Herzog’s Of Walking in Ice is might be the greatest mesmerizing book I have ever read and it was written by a German filmmaker.

I am also reading Pablo Neruda’s memoir. It reads like a river of passion.

I once met a female poet of confessional love poetry who had never read Neruda, never heard of him. She’s a millionaire these days, giving passionate advice about love.

I hear distant sounds of hammering, trucks, vacuuming, dropped tools and commerce.

I wrote another 1000 words on Oregon tavern age life. I wonder if anyone ever reads them? How will I get that book out?

I just hit 57 unsuccessful job applications.

Mint picked from a yard and crushed into whiskey is bliss.

I wonder if I have lost my right to vote.

There is a deep soul sickness in Astoria. It’s in all the papers but the paper here never reports it.

The rummage sale for the dog sanctuary is today and tomorrow in Warrenton. I hope they exceed their goal.

I just caught a whiff of skunk.

I want to write a dystopian short story where an authoritarian regime has banned corduroy and macrame because it makes the people less likely to conform. There will be a revolution.

I wish I owned one of the macrame tennis racket covers that were popular in the 70s.

Lots and lots of press about the eclipse. The media is missing the most interesting story. That story is who doesn’t care about the eclipse and will be sitting in an OTA joint in the Path of Totality when the eclipse occurs and sipping a Crown and Coke.

There is one special person I know who loves Crown and Coke.

Again, I ask: why can’t people do their jobs? I think it’s because they never wanted to do this particular job. It debases them. Or they debase the job because they aren’t worthy of the job. I saw that a lot in teachers over the years.

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Bonnie and Clyde Files 17

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I was feeling blue, Crayola Royal Blue. I can’t seem to make anything happen that will move me forward. I feel like I’m going to be marginalized forever. It’s a swim up a river running at three feet above flood stage.

You spend some time on a river and the river metaphors begin to appear.

More drizzle on the summer landscape as I pulled into the parking lot of the dog sanctuary.

Jacque, the sanctuary’s founder and resident saint, was there to greet me, along with roughly 12 other barking dogs. It was all sweet music to my ears. She slipped Bonnie and Clyde out the back gate and Clyde promptly went to the rear of my car and waited for me to open the trunk. He’d obviously watched me on previous visits and knew where the treats were stashed.

He’s obviously smarter than the President of the United States of America.

I unlocked the trunk and fished around for treats. Clyde damn near jumped into the trunk after them! The blue started lightening up right there and I pulled the old fiendish dog away and fed him a treat, Bonnie, too.

Fifteen or so minutes later, Bonnie and Clyde and I were standing near the river’s edge.

I looked left and saw some rustling in the high grass. Three or four tiny birds then splashed into the river, lined up tightly behind one another, floated down the rapids, veered to the right, floated under an alder root wad, and away from my sight. Were they baby ducks of some kind?

I had never seen anything like this before: birds riding the rapids!

The blue faded a bit more.

I bent over and cupped some water from the river and washed my face. Perhaps I could wash away a lot more than torpor and disillusionment. Can you do that with river water in Oregon? Can it wash away the blues? Is there a blues song on that subject? I ought to bring the guitar my attorney bought me on a snowy day in Astoria and strum it up while sitting on a camp stool in the river.

We sat down on the bank together. The drizzle picked up. I could see it moving through the air but it never made any impression when landing on the water. And believe me, I looked for that landing. I thought there might be some inspiration in there, something subtle and beautiful. Anything at all.

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Meditations Overlooking Youngs Bay

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It is good to be around a dog on a daily basis, even if it’s only temporary.

A hummingbird just visited me.

I read an interesting line about constructing and reconstructing one’s personal myth. Had I constructed one for myself? Now that almost everything about me has been annihilated (except my heart) how do I go about reconstructing a new personal myth? Or should I even try? Am I trying right now, subconsciously? Is it such a bad thing to have a personal myth? Myths are powerful forces in human culture. I need to think more about this subject and discuss it with more people.

I recently read Tim O’Brien’s 1994 novel In the Lake of the Woods and found the experience a revelation and almost supernaturally relevant to my current state of mind. Incidentally, I found it in the garbage. Think of that: I basically found supernatural relevance in the garbage. There out to be a word for that.

Here is one passage from the novel that I can’t get out of my head: “One way or another, it seems, we all perform vanishing tricks, effacing history…All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond the dark there is only maybe.”

Only maybe is a powerfully ambiguous phrase. I am living that phrase right now. I grow weary of it.

In the novel, the lead character’s wife disappears into a wilderness around a great lake. A short time later, the character disappears into the same wilderness.

Nobody knows what happened to them. Their bodies are never found. The author speculates and offers a lot of maybe this and maybe that, but the reader is left to imagine what happened. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The idea of disappearing is intriguing to me. I would say very intriguing. Pull an Ambrose Bierce, a Rimbaud or Eddie from Eddie and the Cruisers.

You just can’t do that sort of thing in the age of the Internet and the rise of the Digital Police State. There is no real way of vanishing and reappearing later as someone new. You can’t be Jason Bourne in the real world.

A crow is cawing madly in a cedar tree above my house.

I am eating pie for breakfast. I believe the crow wants my pie.

I can hear drumming in the distance, the Astoria High School marching band at practice, sounds of my former life.

I just freed a bumblebee from a spider wed. It flew away into the rosemary bush.

I saw the perfect job for me to begin rebuilding my life. It truly is what I’ve always wanted to do for a living. There is no way I can ever get this job.

The creative mind remains strong within me. If that goes out, I’m done.

I am thankful for my friend Caroline for getting me work that allows me to write creatively and protect Oregon’s future.

Humbug Mountain is calling me.

I once wrote an essay about being in the Rock Zone. I’ll never be there again.

Winter ale in summer?

It felt so hard to be an American last weekend in light of the hate and murder in Virginia. But I am buoyed by the fact that so many fine Americans did take to the streets to counter hate and white supremacy. There is hope yet.

A murder of crows is sending up a resounding racket. They are preparing to strike for pie.

I am going to wash my car today.

It feels good to tell someone how you feel about them.

I wish I would hear from you.

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Oregon Tavern Age: Pitch’s East

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One day, a woman sat in a bar, Pitch’s in Port Orford. She saw a horse drinking beer from a saucer on the counter. On another visit, she saw a live boxer crab holding an unlit cigarette in one claw and a glass of beer in the other.

The woman’s name is Lacey and she used to work as server in Pitch’s. Now she works at Pitch’s East, across Highway 101 from the old Pitch’s. A couple of years ago, it went up in smoke and flames in the middle of the night and when it did, every Oregon Tavern Age man, woman and dog felt the loss deep, deep in the gut. There ought to be a gin-soaked country song about the pain of losing Pitch’s. Maybe there is.

I found myself in Pitch’s East an indeterminate time ago, and Lacey recounted the story of the terrible hell fire as I sipped a local ale and took notes on a napkin. It was just me sitting at the bar at 11:05 in the morning and Lacey behind the bar. She opened her narrative by saying, “Pitch’s was my first illegal drink in a bar, first legal drink in a bar, I got kicked out of it, and then I worked there.”

It don’t get no more OTA than that.

Then Lacey said, “It’s just not the same since the original burned to the ground.”

I know something about that.

She continued: “When I woke up that night, I could smell it. That deep fryer smell. It could only be Pitch’s being deep fried. In the morning, I heard it was.”

The only survivors were two kegs of beer and wooden name plaques of the female servers carved by an OTA local. Lacey’s name was one of them

Pitch’s owners tapped the kegs for the cleanup crew and the charred name plaques now rest in Pitch’s East. Lacey put hers in my hands and my hands trembled.

Lacey kept on storytelling. I grabbed another napkin and ordered another beer. What the hell, it was a Tuesday morning and foggy outside. She told me about her father, a legendary Port Orford character whose wake was equally legendary. She told me Pitch’s East used to be called The Truculent Oyster. The Truculent Oyster!

A delivery man arrived and Lacey went over to attend to business, not storytelling. But she wasn’t through, I knew that. And I wasn’t through listening because I wanted more of her crazy Pitch’s’ stories and I wanted to immortalize them all in print, because these OTA joints are slowly disappearing from the coastal drinking landscape. A fire here. A gentrification there. Then no more.

I just may have to open one myself. It would only be open from seven in the morning to four in the afternoon. I might even call it the Seven to Four. We’d offer Hamm’s and eggs as our only breakfast option. We’d have the greatest variety of pickled grotesqueries of any tavern or bar in the world, artisan ones, too. We’d have someone playing country covers on guitar every weekend morning. There’s be a couple of rescue OTA mutts lounging around the joint as well.

A man can dream, can’t he? A man has to dream after a terrible hell fire has incinerated him. Isn’t there a story about something rising from the ashes? I bet Lacey knows it.

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