The Legend of Drain Gravy Part 1

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History , , , , , , , , ,

I stood in line to pay my gas and coffee bill at the Food Mart filling station in Drain, Oregon, gateway to Highway 34 to Reedsport, the most sublime drive from the Willamette Valley to the Oregon Coast.

To me, the line seemed surprisingly long for a weekday morning in Drain. A few seconds into my waiting, I noticed most customers weren’t paying for gas or any other food or drink item. They were just waiting.

Something resting on the counter near the cash register caught my eye: a large crock pot of gravy, thick and steaming, with a shiny metal ladle sticking out. I’d never seen such a thing in all my years of noticing of rural Oregon convenience store oddities and there are a lot of them out there, I assure you.

A middle-aged woman ahead of me ordered a basket of biscuits and gravy. She started fishing out change, but the female clerk preparing the order reminded her the price had just gone up 50 cents to $2.50.

She didn’t have it. A customer behind her threw down a couple quarters and solved the problem. The woman gathered up the basket, walked outside, mounted a bicycle, and rode away.

Yes, I saw a woman riding a bicycle in Drain, Oregon with one hand while carrying a basket of biscuits and gravy in the other. I also saw gravy spilling on the street.

When I came to the counter, I asked the clerk about the gravy as she was ladling up another order. They were ten people deep for gravy in Drain. My curiosity had dammed up gravy.

She told me the tradition had been going on for over a decade. Customers came from Eugene, Roseburg, Coos Bay, Elkton. They always ran out by noon and they never whipped up a second batch. You wanted good gravy in Drain, you had to get up early.

I started taking notes about gravy on a napkin meant for gravy. More people entered the store and got in line.

The Food Mart’s owner materialized and I introduced myself as a writer researching a book about the Secret Oregon Coast. I told him this Drain biscuits and gravy story was simply incredible and must be included. I asked him if anyone had ever written a story about it. No one had.

I would scoop them all on this second greatest Oregon biscuits and gravy story of all time. Back in the summer of 1993, in Portland, I lived through the best one. (Read my true crime book, Rose City Heist, for all the tasty details. It sold out a couple of years ago but is available as an e-book on my web site.)

The owner beckoned me away from the line so I wouldn’t continue to impede the flow of gravy and interrupt the natural workings of the universe in Drain.

“Tell me a hot biscuits and gravy story,” I said.

He then told me about a man on a 200-mile walk for charity who had walked into the Food Mart and wolfed down an order. He reappeared several days later and said he had walked an extra hundred miles so he could eat another order.

A man walked a hundred miles for gravy in Drain.

I know that somewhere down the line, this sentence is going to end up in my detective novel called The Watershed and that book will make me an existential fortune. I might even get rich. I’ll be in the gravy.

There is something about writing “gravy” and “drain” in the same sentence that excites me in a way I can’t yet comprehend. Perhaps I never will.

“Tell me about the gravy,” I said.

“It’s a family recipe,” he said.

“A secret one, right?”

“That’s right, from the South.”

I left it at that. I’ll make it up later for the novel.

The owner seemed happy about the prospect of a story. We shook hands and I drifted away to take a photograph of the crock pot. More people started showing up. They came on foot, bicycles and skateboards. A cop car rolled into the parking lot, too.

Dear reader, I know what you must be wondering:

No, I didn’t put in an order. I haven’t eaten biscuits and gravy in 20 years.

Next time, though, I will, and shatter the vegetarian within me. And whatever unfolds after that, will become the Legend of Drain Gravy—Part 2

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

Bonnie and Clyde Files 15

Bonnie and Clyde Files, NSP Meditations , , , ,

I wore the Chuck Taylors into the river and Bonnie and Clyde followed me into the water.

Wet canvas molded around my ankles. The cold felt wonderful against my skin. I’d forgotten the feeling. It made me want to camp with a canvas tent again. More canvas in my life!

It was hot and getting hotter. The river barely moved. In fact, nothing seemed to move except a middle-aged man and two old dogs. I stopped in the middle of the channel and my mind drifted:

Movement. Movement. Movement. I crave movement in my time of molasses-colored stasis.

Inertia has paralyzed me. It has also offered unforeseen liberation. By not being able to move forward, I have taken limitless journeys into my heart and mind and the hearts of minds of others. I’ve taken journeys I would have never otherwise taken, let alone conceived of taking.

Journeys such as to this river with these great dogs. Such as to establishing a new indomitable friendship with my sister. Such as the rediscovery of classic novels and an understanding of why they endure as classics. Such as practicing silence and disinterest in the face of outlandish noise and agendas. Such as experiencing the tangible health benefits of purple cabbage and turmeric. Such as learning how to surface from the shallows of my former life. Such as traveling the Klondike Trail to prospect for a new voice for my writing and new service to my community. Such as embracing the idea that I will become a man who knows how to caulk.

That’s a lot of movement without moving. The unforeseen journeys will, I have no doubt, continue.

I heard some splashing and looked around. Bonnie had flopped down in the middle of the river and stared straight at me. Clyde had retired to the bank and was snoozing in the tall grass.

The spell was broken.

We didn’t make it across. Perhaps next time we would, if we felt so moved.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting senior dogs at the Angels for Sara Sanctuary and a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

Oregon Tavern Age: Democracy

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

Oregon Tavern Age regulars were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. There had been a long train of abuses and usurpations and something had to give way, quite possibly explode. They just couldn’t sit on their asses, drink Crown and Cokes and watch whales from the bar. Revolution was in the air! We the People were riled up!

I sat in a dark corner of The Crow’s Nest, sipped a local Pistol River ale, and listened to the straight dope.

The Gold Beach City Council had proposed a new ordinance that required The Crow’s Nest to install 24 surveillance cameras in and around the the bar. They currently had one and it was as antiquated as the notion that the Bill of Rights still exists in this country.

“It would shut us down,” said the bar owner. “I can’t afford it.”

As I said, revolution was in the air, hanging like smoke from a slash burn in a clearcut.

From what I gathered eavesdropping, the OLCC might have been behind the draconian regulation but the rubber definitely would meet the road at a Gold Beach City Council meeting scheduled for later that week. The word shot round the bar was that the OTAs had to pack that meeting and protest. And here they were, in a drinking joint, drinking, plotting how to do exactly that.

They plotted exactly the same way in Boston circa 1770 and look where that led. I might also add the Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in a tavern sauced on Madeira and John Adams drank hard cider for breakfast every morning.

The Founding Fathers were on my mind when the cook emerged from the kitchen wielding a cleaver, strode past the aquariums and slot machines, and went table to table recruiting customers to attend the meeting. They all promised they would and looked pretty damn giddy about the prospect of tanking up beforehand (naturally in the bar) and marching on city hall, which was conveniently across the street! Swinging a cleaver in support of the Bill of Rights is a pretty damn giddy sight to behold. I was getting giddy myself, watching this prep work in the the name of serving up some meaty democracy! I was so fired up I considered ordering a Crown and Coke and reaching out to the whales to join the party. I read somewhere whales practice true democracy. One day I hope to see it in action.

Energy was palpable in the room. It felt strange. You don’t see giddy all that often in OTA country. It doesn’t usually mix well with Oregon Tavern Age life. Rainier and giddiness are mutually exclusive. We like it slow in here. We like it underwater. We like hushed tones for embellishing stories.

But giddy was working well this afternoon in The Crow’s Nest, and perhaps would also work well at the meeting. If it did, the Gold Beach City Council wouldn’t know what hit them. Neither did the British.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

Bonnie and Clyde Files 14

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Just me and Clyde one weekday morning. Bonnie was laid low by an adverse reaction to a medication, but she’ll be back in action soon. I brought along breakfast and guarded it zealously from Clyde’s fiendish status as an aggressive procurer of treats.

Barn swallows dipped and dived above the surface of the river. It ran barely a foot above bottom and the shallow channel invited me to wade across. Thus, I took off my running shoes, used Nikes, black socks, rolled up my pants, and walked barefoot into the water. I hadn’t walked into a river in over 15 years. Absurd.

Two steps in and…forget it! Stones made the footing painful and treacherous. I nearly tripped and fell over, but regained my balance and retreated to the bank.

Dammit, I needed real river shoes, not ones made from oil by child slaves that would never dry out if immersed. I needed my trusty Converse Chuck Taylor high tops, canvas, faded blue, sprinkled with paint, a quarter century old, and veterans of multiple watershed recreation campaigns. I almost got rid of them during my recent terrible hospice care of myself, but somehow they survived the purge.

The Chucks were coming to the river with me. I would ford the Lewis and Clark in them, in corduroy cutoffs and a Rainier stuffed into my back pocket. No doubt Bonnie and Clyde would follow me across. Well, I knew Clyde would, because I planned on bringing beef jerky with me next time, wiggling it at him, and the old German shepherd mix with the gimp would undoubtedly lose his mind and follow me to the ends of the Earth. Dogs are like that. That is their only wonderful agenda.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

Contemplation

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , , , ,

A man stood near the South Jetty watching the ocean. He watched four surfers in the water, waiting to catch a wave. The man wore a suit, odd for seven in the morning, but then again, after 20 years of rambling Oregon Coast beaches, nothing really strikes me as odd anymore. I think I’ve seen it all and then witness something new that upends the definition of “all.” That’s why I go to the beach, to get that constant upending.

I approached from the rear and watched him watch. I knew he was a surfer because of the way he looked at the ocean. It was an assessment. I assumed he had driven some distance, probably on lark, probably on the way to a meeting where he probably partook in ruining the planet. He probably had no intention of surfing this morning. The suit gave that away.

Maybe there was penance in his hooky. Maybe he wasn’t ruining the planet at all, and stood at the South Jetty craving to surf, dreaming of finding inspiration for one idea that could save the planet! Maybe he just wanted to empty his mind and feel the mystical liquid the go back to being a cop or brewer.

I came within a few feet of him.“Are you going out?” I said.

He was startled and turned to me. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m contemplating.”

How will you decide?

That takes more contemplation.

How will you know when there’s enough?

I’ll know.

“Have a great morning,” I said.

“You too.”

I left the ocean to return to my current parched reality of living on land. I left the man there, contemplating, meditating, deliberating. He was in no rush to decide whether to gear up and surf. The waves were decent. The weather perfect. He was waiting.

I thought his process of contemplation a good one to emulate as I face an uncertain future on when or where to dive next into the water and start surfing life again.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

A Barn Raising

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a barn raising, a human barn raising. The idea occurred to me recently while watching a B Western. In the movie, the entire community came together to raise a barn for a farmer in single day. It was also a dynamic, free flowing social event where participants of all ages cooked, ate, drank, talked, laughed, gossiped, sewed, danced, flirted and worked to build a lot more than just a structure for livestock. It really is the ultimate in earthy human collaboration, at least the way it’s depicted by Hollywood. Everybody gave what they could and the reciprocation in giving was implicit: somewhere down the line, you would need a barn raising for your farm.

Or you wouldn’t need a new barn for another hundred years. You helped raise the barn without any expectation of reciprocity. You gave because giving is good and deepens our connection with people.

Undoubtedly, the best barn raising scene of all time was in Witness, starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis. It sizzled with smoldering desire and showed in precise detail how the Amish build barns that stand for 150 years.

As I watched the Western, I wondered: was (is) barn raising a uniquely American tradition? I didn’t bother going online to find out, but I suspect it has old European origins. But perhaps not. Maybe the way the American agricultural economy developed and farmland in the 18th and 19th centuries was plotted, sold, owned and distributed, created it. Sounds like a good dissertation topic to me.

A human barn raising though, that’s what truly interests me. Can a community (certainly not limited to geographical proximity) come together and raise a new barn out of a human being who needs help in raising up? I mean, build it solid, build it to last, built in one day in reality or metaphor. One day! And make it an enriching social event as well? I suppose certain Kickstarter and Gofund Me projects qualify as virtual barn raising. But is that the same as showing up in person and rolling up the sleeves, breaking a sweat? No, of course not. Perhaps both in combination can redefine for our modern era what a human barn raising can accomplish.

You could write a whole book about this human barn raising idea as a way to live better and build better communities. That might be my next project. I certainly want to become a consistent barn raiser in whatever community I belong to or try to establish. I want to help raise human barns everywhere around me. I feel like I am doing that with some of the men in probation. I used to do it all the time with my students.

It also crossed my mind that many people the past year helped raise me up as a human barn when there was practically nothing there. I knew a lot of these people, but some were prefect strangers. They showed up in person with food, books, beer, metaphysical medicine and dogs; they contributed to the blog; they took writing workshops; they found me gigs; they wrote me wonderful letters; they withheld judgment and offered embrace; they utterly surprised me and kept my faith in humanity going.

Thank you barn raisers. I still need your lifting up.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book. You would be assisting in the raising of a human barn.)

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