secret oregon coast

Oregon Tavern Age: Scenes

NSP Meditations, Oregon Tavern Age , , , , ,

Three Spot, Turkey’s resident OTA cat and chief mouser, emerged from behind the bar and stood in front of the door. He’d just lapped up a saucer of Hamm’s and nibbled some road kill chili and wanted out to go accost the turkeys and hummingbirds. When he herds the turkeys across the bridge or tries to paw the hummingbirds in flight, it really fires up the regulars. It’s better than NASCAR on TV.

I got up to let him out. I opened the door. He wouldn’t budge. I sat down. He returned to his saucer and meowed. The son of a bitch wanted more Hamm’s! I bought him one, cracked it open, and poured some in the saucer. He lapped up the lager and bolted for the door. I got up and let him out. Then we all waited.

The talk at Turkey’s turned to whales, specifically dead ones that wash up on the local beaches, and the legality of harvesting parts of the whales, for say crafting, witchcraft or musical instruments. Whale talk was madly leaping about, and I heard someone down the bar say that a couple of regulars had once cut the penis off a dead whale and brought it into Turkey’s for display! What? I turned toward the general direction of where that story came from and then everyone clammed up. Very hush hush. I didn’t press it. I knew it was true and didn’t need any more details for confirmation.

Gary told me another Osprey story. He was dating some woman and she had invited a tree hugger friend over for supper at Gary’s house. An Osprey dropped a lamprey eel on the lawn. It was still alive! Gary wanted to grill it up right then and there but the tree hugger insisted he put the lamprey in a bucket of water and dump it back in the ocean. Gary complied.

Overheard at the Sea Star Lounge on Free Pool Sunday: “Ancient Egypt. That’s where Bigfoot got sly. They were stealing our women, interbreeding, and we had to strike back.”

A quasi Bigfoot believers club meets regularly at the Sea Star and its members often regale me with stories of their eyewitness accounts and arguments of science that prove the creature’s existence. One of the members said that when he was a youth living in Bigfoot country in Washington, he saw one run down a slope while hunting with his father near Mt St Helens. He also said he had an Native American friend in high school whose mother grew up in a remote area inhabited by a family of Bigfoot. The human family would leave offerings of fresh vegetables so the creatures wouldn’t trample the garden. The woman said the Bigfoot woman had “pendulous breasts.”

A Secret Cove

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History , ,

I rappelled down to a secret cove near a cape named after an explorer from a country that enslaved and practiced genocide against the indigenous peoples of the New World. Just wade ashore and declare it for the crown in the name of God.

I’m not sure we’ve really got away from that in the 500 + years since.

Change the name of the damn cape!

We changed the names of all the US military bases and cemeteries named after racist Confederate generals and traitors. We changed the faces of the Indian killers and slaveholders on our units of currency.

Wait! We didn’t do any of that….just changed a few creek names from Squaw. We changed a few high school and college mascots. I guess that’s a start.

The hike:

I met a woman on the trail. She was coming up. We stopped and talked. She’d lost her job in tech in Ohio. She’d bought an RV and hit the road. A year now. She’s seen the Pacific Northwest Coast and was never going back to the Midwest.

I met a couple on the trail new to the area, refugees from California smoke and taxes. They love Oregon. But do they know it? They don’t want to pay taxes. Is that a reason to live your life and embrace a community? Is that what the golden years are about? Bitching about taxes when you already have it made?

I keep meeting people who seek another American dream, the one that really isn’t American at all. Thoreau dabbled in it. Henry Miller, too. Kesey for sure. I wish I knew a woman writer who espoused it as powerfully. Maybe one did. Enlighten me.

I saw a dead alder wrapped in orange tape emblazoned with the poison symbol. The tape read: “Killer Tree.”

Actually it wasn’t a killer tree. It was full of life in its deadness. It was hosting all kind of life. When it fell and returned to earth, it would create more life.

There is no such thing as a killer tree, although there are killers of trees and killers of life and killers of watersheds. They don’t strap this tape at the entrances to clearcuts.

At the cove, I sat on a bleached driftlog the size of a school bus.

Gray waves broke against the rocks. I felt intermittent spray.

Two seals bobbed in the surf a football throw away.

I whipped out my peanut butter sandwich. I ate and watched the seals and sea stacks.

In my former life, I would have outed this place. Not anymore.

Mystery over journalism I say. In life and love.

A Most Unusual River

NSP Meditations , ,

I walked along perhaps the most unusual river in Oregon, unfortunately named for an Indian massacre, and I am thinking of giving it a new name, not for the maps, but for the mind.

A gigantic Christian cross erected on a hill loomed over the river. Doubtless, an unwitting penance for the massacre.

Driftwood abounded, some of it ancient and bleached beaverwood sticking upright from the sand, buried deep. It appeared as if the beaverwood was a hand or claw emerging from a graveyard upturned by an earthquake. I tried to free many a piece, but they wouldn’t budge.

This river forks at times, sometimes becomes trapped behind sand dunes, and turns into two or three mini-lakes. It is a marvel to behold when this happens: a trapped river that can’t find the ocean and the metaphors abound almost more than the driftwood.

I have pleasant memories of my dogs here, years and years ago. I need a need a new dog to make new memories.

The beach was fortless. I rectified that.

Rain began to fall as I made my way to the mouth of the river. It is not a fixed place. It moves all the time. No jetties and dredges to contain and channel the mouth. In fact, the mouth will change positions right before your very eyes as you stand inches away from it. That is startling to behold. I like the metaphor in that, too.

I scored a dozen choice cuts of beaverwood and bundled them up for the two-mile walk back to the car. When I returned, the river would be altogether different.

Oregon Tavern Age: Talkin’ Turkey

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

It was a Friday afternoon and sunshine shellacked the windows of Turkey’s. I sipped a local lager and soaked in the ambiance of the greatest tavern in Oregon, which happens to be roughly the size of Thoreau’s cabin.

I almost forgot. Out the window, I could see turkeys crossing a bridge.

The latest preposterous Turkey’s story was Gary’s attempt to fix a portable heater from a resident at a nearby trailer park. She had brought it to the joint, put the damn thing right up on the bar. Gary, a retired electrician, inspected it, diagnosed the problem, and said he would get the part in town, bring it back to Turkey’s, and fix the heater right there! An OTA electrician service call! They set up a time, Gary bought the part, he and Linda showed up, but the woman didn’t and they never saw her again.

An OTA man walked up to me and offered me some beef jerky he’d jerked himself. I had to decline. I told him I was a vegetarian. There was suspicion in his eyes.

Gary told me that in his former life he was a falconer! A falconer! I was sitting next to man who had handled falcons and hearing his stories of falconry! (I might also add he was wearing a $300 Western shirt at the time.) Gary also mentioned that he knew a man who once carried around his money in a pouch he’d made from the scrotum of a big horn sheep.

A man entered Turkey’s and ordered a beer. Outside, his pickup had four flat tires in the bed. He was on his way to get them pumped up at a gas station. Turkey said he he had an air pump in his shop and could rig him right up. The man took up Turkey’s offer.

A rumor is floating around that a hair stylist is going to start cutting hair in Turkey’s kitchen. Cash or barter only. A secret OTA salon. I dismissed this absurd notion at once, but I do need a haircut.

Somehow, because this was Turkey’s, the subject of water witching came up, and Kip or Gary said that Turkey was a bonafide water witcher! And quite a famous one! The word was out in Curry County. For a hundred bucks, Turkey would visit a property, wield his magic willow, and divine where the water lurked in the deep. “He’s never failed,” said Kip. I asked Kip if I might accompany Turkey on a water witching gig because I simply had to see such a sight. “I don’t see why not,” he said.

Linda directed my attention toward a painting of turkeys that was resting on a shelf, above the canned corn and pear halves. I got up to inspect it. Most unusual. The artist, a local man, painted the turkeys on what appeared to be a mushroom of some kind scraped off a tree. “A conk,” Linda said. “They’re called conks.”

I’d never heard the word before or seen it in print. Now Turkey’s was teaching me new vocabulary!

Gary asked if I wanted to hear the story of the time he pulled his friend Bruce’s tooth in the parking lot outside of Turkey’s.

What?

Sure. I’d always wanted to hear a tooth pulling story in OTA country. There was one?

So the story goes: Bruce and Gary were at Turkey’s when Bruce said, “Will you do me a favor and pull my tooth?”

Gary agreed and they went out to the parking lot where Bruce wrapped a string around one of his teeth, and tied the other end to the handle of Gary’s open truck door. The plan called for Gary to slam the door shut and rip out the tooth. Just like in the screwball silent comedies and cartoons.

Everyone in Turkey’s watched from the bar.

The first attempt failed—too much slack in the string. The second attempt succeeded and the tooth rocketed out of Bruce’s mouth and ricocheted off the truck’s bumper. Bruce didn’t scream.

He went back inside Turkey’s and announced that anyone who found his tooth would receive a free beer.

Turkey’s emptied. The tooth was never found. It’s still out there and I suspect I’ll find it one day after a hard, sluicing rain. Or maybe a turkey gobbled it up.

Linda told me about the local chicken with her 11 yellow chicks and two black ones. A cat had swiped a couple, but at least it wasn’t a fox. She also mentioned that recently a regular had lost a beloved Labrador and walked into Turkey’s and broke down crying. He got hugs from the bartender and patrons. He rang the bell and bought the house a round to honor his dog. I should have done that when my husky died.

I was thinking about my great dog when an OTA man walked in carrying paper plates of sandwiches and cookies and set them on the counter. His wife trailed behind him. They both sat down and he ordered a draft beer and she ordered a Keystone Light in a can and glass of ice. A few seconds later she opened the can and poured the beer into the glass. In all my years of roaming OTA country, I’d never seen such a thing.

They had brought the sandwiches and cookies in because it was a semi-regular Friday tradition with them. I asked Linda what kind of sandwiches—tuna—real tuna off a local boat that the woman had canned herself. And, naturally, the cookies were homemade.

I was starving and asked for a sandwich and cookie. The tuna sandwich was the best I’d ever tasted and had hard boiled eggs in it and a delicious and mysterious relish. The cookie was superb, too.

The sandwiches went fast, and two were wolfed down by a young male firefighter covered in soot and grime who didn’t say a single word or fiddle on his phone the entire time he was in the bar.

As I neared the end of my beer, Turkey’s whiteboard food menu captured my attention. I’d never noticed it before. Chili dominated the choices.

I asked Linda about Turkey’s chili. Linda said it was legendary, concocted from a secret recipe handed down to Turkey from his family. Apparently, folks came from miles around to taste the legend and the joint typically ran out. I suspected roadkill found its way into the pot. There might even be wild turkey in the mix.

Turkey chili in Turkey’s made by a man named Turkey, eaten while turkeys come into view.

One day I will figure out what that convergence means, and when I do, I’ll rule Oregon.

I hadn’t tasted meat in over 25 years but the prospect of a Turkey’s roadkill chili dog roiled my imagination and titillated my palate. I felt my stomach could handle the fresh meat in the chili but that an Upton Sinclair hot dog would probably kill me.

My mind drafted a scheme. I would sneak a tofu dog into Turkey’s and then replace the death dog during a diversion of some kind. It would be a perilous undertaking in Oregon tavern age country. I might get beat up or shunned.

But I had to try the chili.

Right On!

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches , , , ,

The frogs whistled and croaked in the marsh east of the dunes. Hundreds, thousands, singing an antediluvian song. They were my musical accompaniment as I constructed a driftwood fort of an interesting triangle deign. I had never built a fort with frogs singing in the background. I dug it. I should do more things with frogs croaking in the background.

It was my fifth fort on this secluded beach on a secret coast. I’ll resist the urge to name names. Let the secret remain. Mystery over journalism.

A man walking at the ocean’s edge saw me building and altered course to intercept. That’s an exceedingly rare occurrence in my fort building career—perhaps two or three times in a thousand forts. Ninety-percent of the time I don’t see another human being.

He came up to me. He was elderly and evinced a twinkle in his eyes. (Give me that twinkle at his age or give me death!)

He asked me what I was doing. (Give me that curiosity at his age or give me a death!)

I explained my passion and philosophy for driftwood fort building. It took all of 30 seconds.

“Right on!” he exclaimed. No one had ever said “right on” to me in approval of something I was doing right in front of them. I liked it—a lot. How many of us get to experience that in our lives, particularly at work?

Of course I wasn’t at work. I was at play and art.

We said our goodbyes and I went back to building. I saw him walk south down the beach and investigate my four other forts. He went inside one and sat down.

Right on!

Oregon Tavern Age: Talking Turkey

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

I sat at the bar at Turkey’s. Linda and Gary were to my immediate left, Kip to my far right, and two OTA brothers milled around behind me. Turkey was the bartender. A Grand Prix race played on television and the racers were E-cars and barely making a sound. That didn’t go over well with the OTA racing fans.

It was a brutally hot day along the Rogue River. It was Rainiers-chilled-in-the-river time. Then you sat in the river in cutoffs and drank Rainier. No craft beers allowed.

I asked Turkey about the exquisitely crafted trio of wooden pot pipes on display behind the bar. Turkey told me they were made from myrtlewood, Jesus wood, that only grew on the Southern Oregon Coast and in Israel. Turkey said a regular carved the pipes and gave them away. Turkey said it was a lot safer, germ-wise, sharing a pipe rather than sharing a joint. Everyone agreed. I said I had to own a myrtlewood pot pipe made by a Turkey’s OTA regular—right now—even though I didn’t smoke pot. Turkey said he’d hook me up.

Jesus Pot Pipe—great name for a stoner Christian rock band and believe me, in Oregon, there was such a musical niche.

Kip slid across a few stools and landed next to me. He was holding a homemade gizmo of wood and metal with one hand and a saucer of painted Styrofoam in the other.

“What is that?” I said.

“The Shepherd’s Hawk,” he said.

I got off my stool to better inspect. He handed the gizmo to me.

The Shepherd’s Hawk, Kip informed me, was his latest creation. It amounted to a beaver stick approximately three feet in length attached to a metal housing via screws and clamps (think plumbing). A hinge extended from the housing and fitted into a double-grooved slot on a saucer-shaped piece of Styrofoam that Kip had carved into an aerodynamic flier. The flier was painted yellow and black to resemble a swooping hawk.

I sipped my beer and assessed the gizmo while Kip continued his explanation. The idea was to draw the stick back like a Chuck-it! dog toy and then whip it forward, which released the hawk into the sky. He gave me a mini-demonstration of the arm motion but obviously didn’t release the bird inside Turkey’s, although I wished he would.

Kip claimed it could fly a hundred yards on the beach. He said he was registering the paperwork for a patent on Monday.

I told him I’d give him $15 for it.

He refused.

I raised the offer to $20.

No.

I upped to $25 and fanned the bills.

Kip wouldn’t budge. This particular stick and hawk were the prototypes for the patent. He invited me outside to his SUV to browse the rest of the stock. In the scorching sun, he offered me a sickly-looking stick and red saucer decorated with a German Iron Cross, sort of like the Red Baron.

Forget that! I pressed Kip again and he promised me the hawk after he had successfully registered his patent. We shook hands, and Kip got in his SUV and drove away. I went back inside Turkey’s to beat the heat with cold beer.

The subject of ospreys came up, perhaps because one flew by with a woodland creature in its beak and several of us saw it out the window. Gary recalled a time when he was scouring the hull of his boat in his driveway and he heard a thunk and the boat rattled. He looked up and saw an osprey soaring overhead. He looked inside the boat and saw a black snapper on the deck. The osprey had dropped it. Gary cleaned the fish and fried it up for lunch.

One of the OTA brothers then launched into a story about an osprey dropping an eel on someone’s deck not far from Turkey’s. They ate it for supper.

By this time, Tom had replaced Turkey as bartender and had overheard the osprey conversation.

He had an osprey-dropping-something-from-the-sky story to recount as well. There were six people in Turkey’s and three had osprey-dropping-something-from-the-sky stories. I wanted one.

Tom said a woman living up the road was weeding in her garden when an osprey dropped a five-pound steelhead and hit the woman on the back of the head. “It plowed her into the fucking ground, knocked her out cold. She had to go to the hospital!”

He didn’t know if they cooked the steelhead for supper. They probably did. A steelhead from the sky meant something in Oregon and when it didn’t, Oregon was dead.

The osprey stories drove the joint into a frenzy and Gary told me to ring the bell over the bar. That’s the kind of man he was.

I demurred. I was afraid. I’d never rung the “drinks-on-the-house” bell in OTA country before. Gary insisted and I rang the bell, and goddamn it, the peal felt righteous all the way down to my loins!

I wasn’t taking notes, but after the bell rang, I excused myself and ran to the car for a notepad. Upon my return, Tom had a new beer waiting for me in a chilled glass. I took a deep drink and scribbled notes.

A minute later I said to the bar: “I’ve got five bucks that says the next person who walks in here won’t have an osprey-dropping-something-from-the-sky story. No one took the bet.

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