The Magic of Digital Night, Interstate 5, somewhere north of Grants Pass, Oregon

By day seven our trip to Oregon was winding down: we’d gotten to know Portland a little bit, just enough to make us want to come back. My wife and I had (rather quickly) gone from pondering a move to Oregon to actually scouting locales—we found that the Greater Portland Metropolitan area has lots to offer, from natural beauty to most of the cultural perks Donna and I enjoy, be they theater, museums, shopping, restaurants ad urbanium.

Willamette River, Eugene, Oregon

But why leave L.A.? Too many people? Because of gridlock which chokes too keenly our illusion of freedom, an impacted colon of traffic that is often followed by the Unleashed Hounds of High Speed who view driving as a maniacal sport—folks who think nothing of flying up on your ass at eighty-five miles an hour as you move around the inevitable slow-moving sedan driven by someone whose car keys should have been tossed into the Pacific Ocean when Nixon was President?

Or perhaps we want out because of police choppers flying overhead every night…or maybe because much of Griffith Park went up in flames—a dramatic and unholy fire that was made worse by the fact that the park had not had a major burn in over seventy years (as we protect ourselves from nature we often merely prolong and then make worse her inevitable wrath). Donna and I were married in a section of the park that we are currently barred by chainlink fencing and warning signs from viewing, though we can see everything around the spot we spoke our vows in—the small canyon, the wooden bridge, the shady trees are naught but ash and memories. So it goes and so it went.

Perhaps our intended move has been spurred along by knowledge that our fair city’s water is pumped in from hundreds of miles away—we Angelenos exist in a burnished, shimmering paradise that was never meant to support this many people/homes/lawns/pools/toilets—the cost, not just in dollars but in environmental impact has entered via reality’s front door and is fast approaching the backyard. Oh, did I mention that the earth shakes from time to time in the City of Angels? Actually, it rocks. And thrusts and jolts and rips and groans and heaves. At least the large earthquakes do. Quite the ride.

My beloved Los Angeles cannot, in-my-fucking-humble-opinion (IMFHO), continue its balancing act of accomodating growth while marginalizing the poor. Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz wrote, regarding our class system:

By criminalizing every attempt by the poor—whether the Skid Row homeless or MacArthur Park venders—to use public space for survival purposes, law-enforcement agencies have abolished the last informal safety-net separating misery from catastrophe.

I remember L.A.’s parks after the last large earthquake, how whole families (some complete with furniture) descended upon those parks, and how more privileged folks snickered at the “fear-based” behavior, forgetting that those in the least safe buildings that more than likely had not been retrofitted were our poor. Of course they went to the parks. A large quake is often followed by large aftershocks, and structures that do not fall in the initial event could tumble later on. Poor doesn’t mean stupid.

A rising tide of bullshit can drown a lot of people: as an Angeleno, I already noticed with some concern that many of our freeways, to increase the number of lanes, had removed the bailout space in the middle and from the shoulders. Our freeways used to be like Polo Fields, now they are more akin to Arena Football’s indoor stadiums, with walls looming on all sides, giving drivers no place to pull over should you experience a flat tire or what-have-you, as trucks and SUVs and speedsters thunder past (ever listen closely to a truck as it passes?—it’s the sound of Darth Vader’s voice box howling in his Galactic Woody). The safety nets, both literal and figurative, are vanishing, and I suspect that when a certain entree of feces strikes a certain style of fan this could pose a very large problem.

Will my wife and I bring our problems to Oregon, where natives have been known to grumble about Californians who move there? With good comes bad: new energy, cash and spirit can be accompanied with presumptions and other nasty habits, so we’ll see. Just in case we find we cannot abide the rain we have decided to rent out our Los Angeles home for the first year before selling. That way, should we cut and run, we’ll have a place to cut and run to…

Enough with my musing. Here are some more pics from our trip with brief descriptions…

ONE LAST NOTE BEFORE WE RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULAR PROGRAMMING: last night around 9:45 p.m. six gun shots rang out less than a block from our house. A 4-door sedan with a boxy-style roof immediately drove from the direction of the shots and cruised by our house—Donna had been outside tending to a cat just minutes before the gunfire. Our neighborhood, with houses valued in the high five hundred thousands all the way up to a couple of million dollar duplexes, has countenanced (largely thru inaction) violence that seems more appropriate for a war zone than for the middle class enclave that it seems to be for the better part of most days. Perhaps a large development firm will begin advertising its latest housing phase as Green Zone Heights or somesuch. Maybe such a community will incorporate businesses that complement the needs of its residents, such as a handy drive-thru mortuary, or a Trauma Pharmacy…

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Amber waves of grain, Silverton, Oregon

We have friends in Eugene who were gracious enough to show us around their fair city.

Black Sheep Gathering, Lane County Fairgrounds, Eugene, Oregon

Downtown Eugene—A Duck of Regal Mien

Saturday Market, Eugene

Calling PZ Myers, Saturday Market, Eugene, Oregon

The Politics of Salmon, Saturday Market, Eugene, Oregon—for more info. check out Wild Salmon

Musicians, Saturday Market, Eugene, Oregon

Apprx. 20 minutes south of Eugene is Cottage Grove, Oregon—we went to the drive-thru at the local Dairy Queen which sits right next to train tracks (just west of Interstate 5)—as we began to order our chocolate-dip cones a train bellowed past with over a hundred cars in tow—unable to hear our own voices, we laughed and simply waited for it to pass before continuing our order…

Grants Pass, Oregon

We headed south out of Eugene in the late afternoon, arriving in Grants Pass after 11:00 p.m. While securing lodging for the night in an area motel the gentleman from India who worked the front desk explained to my wife and me that we were being charged a $150.00 deposit because locals high on meth often trashed the rooms, and the deposit was designed to offset this unfortunate reality. He went on to explain that with unemployment high many folks in Southern Oregon turned to crystal meth use. We had also been given a tutorial about meth by our friends in Eugene. Note: We stayed with our friends in Eugene for three nights, their home being in an attractive hillside neighborhood on the southwest side of town. Each night, between 11:00 p.m. and midnight, we heard shotgun blasts—locals who were poaching the plentiful deer in the area. My friends were a tad embarrassed and unhappy with this situation—Donna and I had left a neighborhood rife with gunfire to visit a neighborhood rife with gunfire. Oregon Duck and Cover…

A large “caveman” sponsered by the Grants Pass Chamber of Commerce greets visitors with a club and modest day skirt. When we arrived in the night Chauncy & Rudy paid him no heed, but when Chauncy got a good look at the giant caveman the next day he began to growl. Rudy, not sure what was going on, gave a sympathy growl but could not figure out what he was supposed to be growling at. I stood some feet away watching dogs I love with all my heart warn a biblically-sized version of a caveman to back-the-fuck-off. It made my day—and Donna’s too.

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One last story, though I am leaving out many pics and such: we spent a night off the 99 between Fresno and Bakersfield, being too tired and cranky to finish our drive to L.A. The next morning we headed out, but pulled over when we saw a large rottweiler walking at the side of the freeway. Nearby were fruit trees and a farmhouse. The rottweiler, after making use of a breach in the chainlink fence, had gone back to the front porch of the farmhouse where he sat in the shade, his mouth open and tongue lolling out, panting in the heat of the day.

99, Tulare, California

After all the miles we drove and the little adventures we had what did the dog wandering on the 99 mean to me? I guess this: that in some places there are still wide shoulders and room to pull over, to fix a tire or to try and help a dog—Oregon is still like that, at least from what we saw. We live in a country where safety nets are vanishing—a place where no one can seem to make our leaders pull over and have them arrested and locked up and put somewhere where they can’t hurt anyone anymore—a simple thing like a wide shoulder and being with someone who tries to help make things a little bit better can make all the difference in the world.

Perhaps we can make a good and decent life for ourselves in Oregon—and save a dog or two in the bargain.

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