A new weird vehicle serving as a domicile in the New American Diaspora appeared in the neighborhood not too long ago. Its weirdness factor easily topped the old Madras High School White Buffaloes booster/athletic bus that showed up around the same time. How in the world that 40-50-year-old bus came to housing people instead of transporting football players and cheerleaders to games in Central Oregon is a story I’d love to know but will never know.

The current leader in the weird vehicular domicile in my neighborhood is some kind of former service or delivery truck. It’s colored white, red, yellow and black. Emblazoned across one side in a commanding font is The Productivity Company. The other text that presumably defined the company’s business has been removed. A black and white checkered flag is present on one side of the truck so it suggests the business was automotive/racing related.

Do the inhabitants of this truck ever remark on the irony of the slogan and their non productive mobile existence? Maybe they don’t even recognize the irony. In a way, they are incredibly productive at not being productive. And for their conspicuous non production, many Americans despise them.

I don’t. I want to know the reasons for their current state of existence. I want to know how they acquired the truck and service it, pay for the gasoline. I want to know why they are moving around the neighborhood. What radio station are they listening to while driving? And why all the wood paneling strapped to the back of the rig? Are you paneling the interior? If so, that’s pretty damn productive and making sensible use of a gutted 70s-styled den that some homeowner dumped on the sidewalk in act of benevolent littering. Oh to see the carpet inside The Productivity Company!

I walked the neighborhood on an early Sunday morning. The plan was to traverse the Oaks Bottom wildlife refuge but at the last minute, I changed my mind and decided on a pleasant, tree-lined route along the socialist golf course.

What a fine day! A few walkers and joggers were out. A few duffers hacked it out on the fairways and the greens-keepers did their tidying things with greens and sand traps. It almost made me want to play a round of golf again, something I hadn’t done in over 25 years.

As I walked I thought about the upcoming challenges the upcoming week posed. At some point, the season’s first big storm was coming and I wanted to get away to the coast before it hit and embrace solitude.

My walk took me through one of the toniest neighborhoods in Portland and the houses were old and spectacular. Interestingly enough, not far away down ivy and blackberry infested hillsides and under bridges, were dozens of homeless people living along riparian areas and utterly destroying them. I’d long given up trying to get local watershed council authorities to do anything about it. No one really seemed to care. It wasn’t really anyone’s job although people were getting well paid to address the health of the watershed.

I crossed a bridge and looked down to a degraded stretch of Johnson Creek where approximately 10-15 people live on both sides. The creek was running extremely low and I checked for new evidence of further degradation…

and…

there…

it…

was…

smack dab int the middle of the channel, in fact it stretched completely across the channel, a trampoline. A trampoline! A massive one.

I could not believe it. I actually laughed at the stupendous absurdity of it being there. It must have taken four people to portrait the trampoline to this spot. They would have had to lower it 15 feet down a bridge to the creek: two on the bridge, two at the creek in what must have been a complicated physical maneuver

There was no way a trampoline of this size could have been disassembled somewhere else then assembled creekside.

Where had the homeless crew found the trampoline? Doubtless from a front yard of a brick mansion in the nearby tony neighborhood. The sign read FREE and off the trampoline went with a four-person crew balancing it on their heads and carrying on like Snow White’s dwarves as they sang and walked and vaped to the bridge.

I watched the trampoline for a good minute trying to imagine all the various trampoline/creek/malt liquor/meth related hi jinks that had certainly gone down here this past summer.

They were pretty much unimaginable.

It occurred to me that I was probably looking at the only trampoline in the world stationed in the middle of a creek that was used for recreation by homeless people. I think that counted for something. But what?

I started a part time job as a laborer at a tree and plant nursery in rural Clackamas County. I sought it out because I needed a regular and dramatic change of pace from my Portland life. I also wanted to perform so manual labor and learn some skills that might come in handy if I ever start a homestead.

It’s a 25-mile drive to the nursery but a reverse commute out of the city so the traffic isn’t too bad. I typically drive without any music playing.

My first day I pulled leaves off potted fig and persimmon trees preparing them for dormancy. Apparently there is a resurgent market for persimmon trees and that struck my as interesting. I have never tasted a persimmon. My only association with the tree is that it was once used to make drivers and fairway woods for golf. In fact, my dad played with a 4-wood made from persimmon.

I was working inside to large greenhouses and it rained most of the time raising a wonderful racket on the roof.

I get to use some of my very rusty Spanish with some of the workers. A very nice crew probably wondering what a guy like me is doing there. I’m not.

This job differs considerably from my construction job in that you are largely working alone and have to primarily talk to yourself. So I did, for roughly eight hours as I moved up and down the rows of trees.

I like the smell of persimmon trees.

The owner of the tree nursery has two large dogs and one of them visited me in the greenhouse. He was soaking wet and happy.

One morning, a frog croaked in one of the greenhouses and kept moving closer and closer to me. I looked for him, but nothing. Then the pleasant sound stopped.

While laboring, I think a lot about past relationship. I wonder where many people are. I also think about a couple of stories I want to write. I even conjured an idea to help homeless people that seems absurd, but maybe isn’t. There is a previous version of this idea that assisted in the production of nursery stock and other agricultural commodities in Oregon. More on this later.

I have no idea what wage I’m making an hour. I don’t care.

I need rain paints and some boots.

It feels so freeing to walk around the nursery and admire the plants and trees. I like being around trees and plants a lot more than most people.

I was sore after one hour of labor.

The production manager of the nursery has worked there for 27 years! I had a fascinating conversation with him about the nursery planting new stock of trees that normally wouldn’t fare very well in the Willamette Valley. It’s called climate change and he knew all about it because he was on the ground and seeing the changes. Oregon may very well be growing a lot more citrus fruits and olives and not just for ornamental landscaping. An Oregon olive tree! I want to see that sight! I can’t wait for the martini!

I give thanks for:

My friends and family

Having played in the Danner family Thanksgiving football games for so many years (picture here is from 1976)

A reunion with my book designer

Fitness of mind and body

Squirrels, dogs and beavers

Bebop jazz

Thrift stores

A new job at a tree nursery

Leaves

Loyalty

Trees

Birds

People who converse without cliches

Oregon’s socialist ocean beaches

Kindness

The awesome underpaid caregivers helping my dad

Corduroy

Driftwood fort Tarot readings

The Old Crow Book Club

Sane politicians

Books, especially those by Jim Harrison

Good journalism (because it so hard and time consuming to execute)

People who seek deeper truth about other people

People who follow through

Soups

Simplicity

Posters on power poles advertising events and looking for lost pets

People in government who govern well

People engaged with others around them instead of their phones

It was a cold Tuesday in November and Dad’s 91^st birthday. I walked to the assisted living center to join him for breakfast and to celebrate his longevity.

I carried with me three books of poetry, collections of Frost, Dickinson and Wordsworth, as gifts. I chose the children’s format for the volumes because they’d be easier for him to handle and read as his dexterity declines. The print was also bigger and they contained wonderful illustrations.

Dad had rallied of late and was waiting for me in the dining room. He’d made it there on his own, which was quite an accomplishment.

I told him “happy birthday” and presented the books. I started with Dickinson and began reading one. Dad listened and then recited two more Dickinson poems including one with the line: The soul selects its own society / Then shuts the door

Our reading of Dickinson’s poetry prompted a discussion of her life and poetry. We debated the wisdom of “telling it slant” as Emily advised in one poem. Dad told me a story about teaching career where he connected with a truculent teen via a Dickinson poem and I knew it was true.

I presented the Wordsworth book next and dad recited “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” We discussed the poem and the beauty and importance of noticing daffodils.

Next came the Frost book and we discussed our favorite Frost poems.

After that, we talked about T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and how neither one of us could get through it. I told him I’d just read a long essay commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the poem and that perhaps I might try it again, but with no footnotes.

Breakfast was served and the staff wished dad happy birthdays. So did some of the residents.

It was a great morning together and great poetry was part of it.