A Marshfield High School runner broke Steve Prefontaine’s school record in the 800 meters. It only took 56 years.

The yard got weed whacked yesterday and now I can go to work.

Fencing bids coming soon.

A routine is emerging—bay beach by foot at 5:30-6:00 and drive to ocean beach at 6:45-7:00.

I built my first driftwood fort on my local beach. Elmer and I encountered a sea lion pup that was bawling for its mother. She’d return with the high tide and all would be well.

So many of the businesses in the Empire district where I live have little or no signage. It’s weird.

There is such potential in this gritty neighborhood. All it needs is 20 entrepreneurs to re purpose all the vacant storefronts. I may do this by starting a literary publication. The idea is gaining momentum. At first I’d rite the whole issue but would hope to attract contributors.

I saw a bartender in my local OTA joint take a pull off a bottle of vodka while standing behind the bar. He saw me see him. Big deal. There was no one else around and 80s glam metal was playing at at a deafening level.

I’m really out of Portland.

We had a last meeting of the Old Crow Book Club. More on that in a future post.

My stuff from Portland gets shipped on the 17^th.

I’ve driven all the back roads in and out of the area and they are wondrous.

Homeless are everywhere in my neighborhood. They look the same and different from ones in Portland.

Some of the houses are derelict beyond dereliction. Elmer and I were on a walk this afternoon and we passed a two storey wreck on a gravel road that had more shit piled around it than I’ve ever seen around a house in Oregon. A bearded man was outside sitting on his ass, cutting something with a hacksaw. Not far away, a junior high kid was taking a dump in the woods. What? I could only presume that the house had no water or electricity, and well, you do what you need to do. Our boys at Valley Forge would understand. But the kid didn’t even wipe and then pulled up his pants and ran into the house. What the hell?

An open mic is going on this weekend at a music store a few blocks from house. I will attend and see the state of the local musicianship.

I am feeling new juice in my writing. I’ve got another Christmas tale cooking for the new book out this fall.

I saw a flier for a punk rock show scheduled for July at a motel. Bands from Seattle, Portland and California are barnstorming through town. I wonder what that scene will look like. I’ll never know.

Someone wrote “Eat My Ass” in big letters on my local beach. Why would you ever feel that way at the ocean and be angry enough to take the time and effort to write such stupidity to the world?

Elmer and I bounded down Bastendorff Beach north toward the south jetty of Coos Bay. Freighters were lit up out to sea, waiting for the right tide to shoot the gap.

It was still dark in the April morning and a full golden moon hung low in a cloudless sky over the ocean.

Sunrise was mere minutes away. I saw stars and planets and heard gulls. Sunrises like this one can change your life, and I would know.

One question dominated my mind: was I going to put an offer on the Coos Bay house 12 miles from here, in the gritty and disheveled Empire district.

The previous afternoon I had toured the house: built in 1959, three bedrooms, excellent windows, covered patio, decent roof, a towering cedar in front, Sitka spruce and aspen in back. The back yard was overgrown to the point of wild and blackberries dominated one fence ready to collapse. The other two sides of the fence had already fallen but hadn’t found the ground because English Ivy held them up.

The back yard would require herculean manual labor. I was too broke to farm it out.

Would I become a blackberry killing man again like I was for a decade in my 30s and 40s as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge?

I am 61 years old. Did I still have it to take on this yard? Blackberry Fields Forever…the b side?

Yes. Yes. Yes. I relished kicking this yard’s ass and whipping it into shape. I have cut more blackberries by hand in this state than any other Oregonian in my lifetime. Not a single application of herbicide. Why not put the record even more out of reach?

No one was around. I let Elmer off the leash and he sprinted to the wrack line to sniff out the signals. I ran straight to the sea. I was feeling it, something extraordinary.

Here came the sun. The moon sunk on the horizon. I looked east and saw contrails ripping through an orange and purple sky.

If I bought the house, this would be my beach with Elmer.

I saw Elmer jetting toward me. I ran straight at him. It was a combination game of joust and chicken. Who would blink?

We collided but neither one of us went down.

I would put an offer in on the house! It would be mine.

We ran to the jetty and Elmer attacked me the entire way. I parried his lunges with forearm shivers.

At the jetty we turned around and made our way to the dunes. I saw a pile of fabric near a massive drift log. It was red in color. Probably shit washed ashore.

Elmer darted over to investigate. He sniffed the pile. The pile moved!

A man stuck his head out of what I now recognized as a sleeping bag. He was young and Latino.

I called Elmer off and yelled out an apology.

“No problem,” said the the man.

He exuded the unmistakable vibe of homelessness.

“Hey,” I said, “you need to get off your ass and see this sunrise.”

I was exhorting a homeless man sleeping on the beach to wake up! It verged on berating.

One sunrise at the beach can change your life.

“Oh man, you’re right,” he said.

He started to stand up, but made it only half way and then tumbled back into the sleeping bag.

“Are you camping too?” he said.

“No, just here with my dog to start the day.”

I wished him good luck and Elmer and I began running toward yet another iteration of my life on the Oregon Coast. Number five had already unfolded.

I am writing this from the Blue Moon Saloon in Coos Bay—classic OTA. Leroy just walked in. He’s wearing black pleated slacks and a blue dress shirt.

I have lived in Coos Bay for three days.

Some observations and impressions:

I can walk to two OTA joints.

I can walk Elmer down a bay beach every morning if the tide is right. This morning, I built a bay driftwood fort. Elmer attacked me and the driftwood as I built.

I live 15 minutes away from an ocean beach and we hit the sand at 6:30 this morning. One man there. We waved and nodded. He gets it.

I have been astonished at how supernaturally unhealthy a vast majority of the (white) locals are: obese, double obese, invalids, canes, motorized scooters, walkers, limps, waddling. I’ve never seen anything like it—a total and irreversible collapse of personal health and a perfect symbol for the American empire: bloated, wrecked and dying.

I lost two bucks in the Indian casino a half mile from my house. It was bracing to see everyone smoking cigarettes while playing.

Homeless are everywhere, particularly in the Empire district where I live. Many are in their 70s.

I met my neighbors and like them. We’ll work together to build a team.

I am refitting my creative mind here.

My back yard is a jungle and I look forward to taming it with manual labor. The old caretaker-of-the-wildlife-refuge persona is roaring back. I still have it 30 years later.

I know no one in town.

I am still managing my dad’s estate but that will end in a few months.

I found a record store! I bought four 70s soul compilations for $20!

I’m listening to the local oldies section with real octogenarian DJs.

I may look for a part time job this fall. I want to meet more locals.

Once I get mu furniture down from Portland I can entertain guests.

I’ll have to return to Portland every now and then but I never want to return to Portland.

I think of Dad often. He would have loved where I landed. True Oregon grit where I live..beautiful vistas, free socialist beaches, juxtaposed with the smashing, depressing reality of the bankruptcy of contemporary American life.

Another iteration of my long and unique coastal life has begun.

Elmer the husky and I snoozed in the car at the Empire Boat Ramp in Coos Bay. Before closing my eyes, I watched a man on the pier toss his crab trap into the water and saw a battered colorless sedan packed with possessions that was clearly a domicile. On the bay, spindrifts rose up, raced southward for several yards, then died.

It was a cold and windy Saturday afternoon and we had an hour to burn before I toured a house for sale a half mile away. If I bought the place, I would soon move from one of the richest neighborhoods in Oregon, Portland’s Sellwood, to one of the poorest, Coos Bay’s Empire. I would be exchanging one liberal county and city’s failed progressive governing for whatever constituted failed governing in a locale that worshiped Trump. I would be giving up a French-themed wine bar that served a $14 glass of house red for a disheveled doughnut shop that also served hot dogs.

I relished this prospect like a Ritalin-free tyke relished Christmas morning. I wanted this crazy contrast and jarring juxtaposition. It would stir my creative mind like the witches in the opening scene of Macbeth stirring their bubbling cauldron. Earlier, driving every street of Empire, I had Nirvana’s

Incesticide cranked and could smell the noir.

No wonder Nirvana hailed from Aberdeen. That bleak coastal Washington town smelled exactly the same as Empire.

Why hadn’t Coos Bay produced a Nirvana of its own? Maybe it had decades earlier with Steve Prefontaine.

A double knock on my window rousted me. Elmer bolted up from the back seat and barked. I looked left and beheld a woman with long red hair whipping in the wind and wearing a red hoodie with some unfamiliar animated character emblazoned across the chest. She had stepped back from the window and waved at me. I cracked the door open and said hello. In no way did she seem addled. Her countenance displayed no evidence of hard drug use.

The gist of our conversation:

No, I didn’t have any ibuprofen.

No, I didn’t have any smokes.

Yes, I had a few bucks to spare.

She was homeless.

She owned no vehicle. She had no tent.

She was living near the boat ramp, sleeping in storefront doorways and alleys in Empire. She semi showered at the fish cleaning station but it smelled pretty bad.

It was dangerous being a homeless woman alone.

She’d lived outdoors in Coos Bay for several years.

She’s struck out with social services and churches in an attempt to obtain shelter or housing.

She didn’t know if there was any shelter or housing in Coos Bay.

She was told by someone in social services that she had a criminal charge pending against her. The woman claimed she knew nothing about this matter. I believed her.

She thought Elmer was a very handsome dog.

Her name was Darlene and she 53 years old.

I told Darlene I was thinking about buying a house in Empire. She wished me good luck. I said we might soon be neighbors. She smiled, thanked me for the cash, and walked away into the wind.