Oregon Tavern Age: Lawn Chair

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

An OTA man sat at a high table in a Coos Bay OTA joint and told a story to three OTA men and one OTA woman who were sitting with him. They were all drinking cheap and tasteless American lagers.

I sat ten feet away at a table under a stuffed and snarling bobcat, drinking an Oregon ale, and thinking about writing a letter.

The story went something like this: the OTA man had a favorite and ancient webbed lawn chair that was so threadbare in the seat that most of it was shredded and barely supported the man’s weight. It was only a matter of time before collapse.

Until then however, the man liked taking a shit through the hole in the chair when he was too drunk to get up and use the restroom inside the house. He just pulled down his pants and underwear, plopped out a dump, and then pulled his pants and underwear right back up. He didn’t have move all that much and could do it while drinking. Once sobered up, he’d head into the house and wipe his ass if he got around to it.

After hearing this story, his friends exploded into laughter and profane congratulations.

I must assure readers that I never make up anything when it comes to eavesdropping on and later writing up stories in OTA country. There is no need.

Could this lawn chair story possibly be true?

I believed every word of it. Would anyone make up something so practical, improbable, degenerate, absurd and utterly irony-free?

No.

Talking to Ed

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations

“Those fucking Democrats!” Ed said to me, from his 90s sedan with the window down.

It was six in the foggy morning at the Empire Boat Ramp. Elmer the husky and I were standing a few feet away from Ed. He drove here every morning to commune with Coos Bay. Same as me and Elmer except we walk.

I’d met Ed at the boat ramp a couple of months ago and he had displayed a special affinity for Elmer because he used to live in Alaska and owned a few sled dogs over the decades. I also recounted to Ed how I once had ridden a ferry through Alaska’s Inside Passage and had my mind blown by seeing 200 bald eagles scavenging spawned-out salmon on a beach, not to mention black bears doing exactly the same thing at precisely the same time.

He loved that story because he’d seen 200 bald eagles at one time in Alaska once, devouring wild salmon.

I liked Ed. He was country, crusty and sure loved to swear. He also got off his ass every morning to take in nature.

His outburst surprised me. He’d never gone MAGA on me in our previous conversations. We’d always talked about dogs, Alaska and Coos Bay.

In recent years, I’ve grown tired of holding back when a representative from MAGA fires a unprompted broadside at me. It happens all the time in campgrounds or dive bars where I write, but I make it a rule to never discuss politics in dive bars. I’d rather hear stories of the regulars’ utter debauchery. They used to recount them with zest. Now they’d rather talk MAGA.

But dammit, Ed had blasted away, annihilating my sublime mood, and something I drank from the salty air told me now was the time to return fire.

“Hey, I’m a fucking Democrat Ed!”

Ed heard me but didn’t respond. In my experience this is typical of MAGAs when confronted one on one. They can only regurgitate Fox News talking points. He was now off script and could not improvise.

His complaint about Democrats was prompted by some recent actions of Democrats in Alaska (there are some?) who apparently nixed a friend’s plan to develop some property near Haines and turn it into a compound to raise sled dogs. Seeing Elmer had I guess triggered him.

“Those fucking environmentalists!” Ed added for extra measure.

“Ed,” I said, “without fucking environmentalists you wouldn’t be looking at the beauty of Coos Bay this morning. It would have been destroyed.” I gestured with a sweeping motion across the bay as I said this.

An osprey flew overhead.

Seeing this magical bird was like belting down a double shot of salt air (no chaser).

“There wouldn’t be a fucking osprey, bald eagle, peregrine falcon or Canadian goose left alive without fucking environmentalists!”

I said this sentence smiling and pointing to the osprey.

What a performance and everything I said was true!

No response from Ed. He’s lost the ability to respond in moments such as these because they never occur to him.

Until one did. He never saw it coming. Maybe that’s the best way to communicate with MAGA types. Meet them where they’re at and get it on.

Ed began telling a story about bears in Alaska breaking down garage doors to steal meat and fish from freezers. They had to shoot 42 in Haines not too long ago.

It turned into a monologue.

Elmer and I had to go. I said goodbye and Ed waved to us and returned to staring at the bay.

I had gone there with Ed and I would do so again if the situation arose. Why not?

Oregon Tavern Age: Empire Scenes

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age

An OTA man informs the bar he has open heart surgery scheduled for next week. He’s drinking a double vodka in the early afternoon and stepping outside every ten minutes for a smoke break.

An OTA man recalls Myrtle Point back in the 70s. Seven bars on Spruce Street. Then Coos County built a new massive jail in Coquille and had to fill it up to justify the expense. So they targeted drunk drivers. Within six months, so many men and women were in jail or had lost their licensees that the local economy tanked, particularly the logging and fishing industries.

An OTA man stops in for a beer and asks directions to the local VA clinic. Another OTA man draws him a map on a napkin! A real map on paper!

A homeless woman of indeterminate age wanders in with a pizza pocket in her pocket. She orders a double vodka and takes the drink to a table. She pulls out the pizza pocket, unwraps it, and begins to eat.

Two OTA men discuss their various logging injuries they suffered over the years. They’ve never really recovered from them. Alcohol apparently soothes the pain.

An OTA man calls the female OTA bartender his “skank.” She calls him her “bitch.”

An OTA man working on an apartment building across the street enters and orders a Budweiser for lunch. He refuses a taco.

An OTA man drinking a can of Hamm’s bitches about his most recent DUI conviction and sentence—90 days in county jail—and just released. The judge begged him not to represent himself but he did and got creamed by that “bitch” DA. She had it in for him and Christ Almighty! did she give him a boner in court. At least there was that.

Three out of four OTAs sitting at the bar and drinking hard liquor relate their respective experiences of being life flighted to a hospital in the Willamette Valley. Two were in coma and don’t remember all that much. One trip cost $76k. Naturally they couldn’t afford that. The taxpayers did one way or another. And fuck socialism, too.

A female OTA bartender discusses various ways she would torture men convicted of serious sex crimes.

A man bedecked in Grateful dead attire sits at a table and makes bracelets for anyone who wants one.

An OTA man pays for his beer with change. Hours later he is seen searching for cans and bottles along a road.

An OTA and former Oregon logger in the early 70s says he’s never heard of Sometimes a Great Notion, the novel or movie.

An OTA woman wearing Christmas-themed pajama bottoms (in July) complains about DHS trying to take her kid. She then segues into a story about her kid tried to lure one of the wild turkeys roaming around Empire into the house and become the Thanksgiving dinner entree.

Tire Shop Meditations

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations

Waiting for a tire rotation in a tire shop. Maintenance: the subtle key to a successful life. Drinking coffee in a Styrofoam cup. An old obese man wearing suspenders plays on his phone. A young woman tells a tire man she can only afford to replace one tire, the worst of the four. Corporate country music plays quietly on a screen. Country music sells only slick and cliche-ridden fantasy anymore. It used to offer gritty reality. I briefly browsed a turkey hunting magazine. Yes, there is such a publication that continues to print paper editions. I’ve been working a new client’s manuscript. He completed it in 1984 and hasn’t touched it since. He’s paying me in silver coin. I met him in a dive bar. He doesn’t do computers or smartphones. I’ve written a lot in tire shops over the years. The old man just got up and used a cane to walk to his huge truck. How he will drive it in his physical condition seems unimaginable to me. I wrote a Christmas story set in a tire shop about a phony writer and homeless woman and her two small children. It was based on a true story where I didn’t help a woman in Lincoln City who badly needed new tires as Christmas approached. In the fictional version, the phony writer finally acts. In the real version, I did nothing. I’m not that kind of person anymore. It occurs to me as I watch the woman pacing around the tire ship on the phone from the moment I entered, that so many Americans are never alone with their own thoughts because they are talking useless shit on the phone. I guess that’s called coping. If you are alone in your head, that might be scary. A multi racial staff here—in Coos Bay. That’s the future of Oregon and the rest of the nation. Many Americans will never accept that. A gray morning. Elmer and I hit the bay beach at 5:30 and the ocean beach at 7:10. Drizzle fell. At the bay beach I talked to Rick, the homeless man living there in a driftwood hut. He is rapidly becoming Gilligan in demeanor and appearance. (More on this story another time.) When I get home, I’ll start work on the fence. One side to go. It will take improvisations and corrections on the fly. In fits and starts my carpentry is improving.

Fourth of July in Empire

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The mayhem had commenced on my street and dusk had not yet settled over Empire.

Earlier in the day, President Trump had signed the Big Beautiful Bill into law.

I went to my front window to investigate the mayhem and observed two, obese, approximately 12-year-old white boys wearing tight shorts and tight t-shirts throwing snap dragons on the pavement.

One of the boys assumed a squatting position reminiscent of taking a dump in the woods. He raised his arms and clenched his fists in the manner of President Trump on stage at a rally. The friend tossed snap dragons his direction.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

I heard them laughing. Then I heard the squatter yell, “I’m going to fart!” I couldn’t see his face. Did I want to?

The boy’s body contorted as he ripped his fart. Then he abruptly stood up and shook his ass awkwardly.

“I shit my pants!” he yelled. “I shit my pants!”

I believed him. Boys do not lie about such things. Other things, yes.

His friend howled and tossed more dragon snaps at him.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

The boy who shit his pants began to dance.

I was witnessing an American boy shit his pants on the Fourth of July accompanied by the cacophony of dragon snaps (and other fireworks) and dance in the aftermath.

He did not go inside to change. He kept dancing and his friend kept tossing snap dragons.

And thus I was gifted an indelible new metaphor for the current state of American life.

Gifted?

Freedom Laundry

NSP Meditations, Poetry

An old, obese and greasy man wheels a metal basket unsteadily through Freedom Laundry.

His left pant leg is ripped open to the waist revealing a swollen and purple calf. He has gout.

The basket is on a collision course with me and my orange plastic chair.

I’ve never seen anyone with gout. How do I even know what it is? Must be all those 19th century English novels I read. All the rich characters had gout. Now just poor Americans.

I stand up and move away. I fight the feeling of being physically repulsed by his presence. I’m losing the fight and it is the worst feeling in the world.

A large blue tote full of clothes rides atop a large black garbage bag full of clothes. Any second, all will topple to the tile floor.

The man maneuvers the basket to the door. There is no way he can make it out.

He makes it, losing only the lid to the tote.

John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” is playing on a boombox radio hung from the ceiling.

I spring into action and pick up the lid. He doesn’t see me.

Now he must lift the basket off the sidewalk and down to the parking lot, a drop farther than Multnomah Falls.

I notice his destination: a tan luxury sedan from Bill Clinton’s first term that’s no longer luxurious.

An old, obese man sleeps behind the steering wheel. They are living out of the sedan. I’m an expert on recognizing these vehicles. We all are these days.

I am about ready to render aid when the man (insert American verb not yet invented here) the basket to the parking lot…

…and…

the tote tips over and meets asphalt.

“I’ve got your lid,” I say and lean it against a cracked and bald tire.

No response.

There is no way that sedan can drive a mile on that tire.

I return to my chair and watch the man hurl clothes into the back seat. He shuts the door and places the empty tote and garbage bag into the basket.

He’s got another load!

I get up to check my washer. The man enters and wheels the basket toward a dryer. He caroms off a counter and stops. I stare.

He’s got two more loads!

I’m standing at a table seven feet away.

He is bending over to load the tote.

He is gasping for air.

He is going to die.

“Hey, can I give you a hand?” I say.

That means I’ll have to touch his clean clothes. I notice his laundry includes cloth bandages. His wardrobe is pure lumberjack from the Sometimes a Great Notion heyday.

He doesn’t hear me, perhaps because “Jukebox Hero” by Foreigner is now playing much louder than “Jack and Diane.”

The man swears at his clothes but I can’t make out the insults.

He lifts the tote to the basket and places it inside.

I see his face up close.

In documentaries, I’ve seen faces of the Russians who survived Stalingrad and they looked nothing like this face. This is a distinctly contemporary American face carved out by the ravages of American politics. The carving began with a butter knife in Ronald Reagan’s first term. Now his spawn wields a chainsaw.

There were no such faces in Coos Bay four decades ago.

This man’s face should be carved into Mount Rushmore of the Washington Monument or better yet, replace Lady Liberty’s face, or even better, adorn a unit of new currency or new coin we use every day.

Consider this: in the 1972 presidential election Coos County cast more votes for George McGovern than Richard Nixon. What’s happened to Coos County since then? What’s happened to the faces and bodies and minds of so many of its citizens? Why are men and women living in Coos Bay driftwood forts?

The man smiles, a completely toothless smile, and says something impossible to comprehend, but I talk to him anyway, nod, gesticulate, and hold a conversation with him that soon ends.

I didn’t understand a single word he said. This is a first for me with a fellow American.

Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” starts playing.

He’s ready to wheel out the second load. There is no way he can make it.

“Hey, can I help you get this outside?” I say.

Why ask? Just jump in! We need more jumping in.

He says something. The warmth of his guttural voice and smile makes me realize he has declined my offer.

He rolls the basket toward the door.

How do I write this up and provide him dignity?

Well, he was washing his clothes, keeping clean, a homeless man living out of his car in Empire.

Maybe I start there.

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