Last night I accompanied the Eskimo Wife to the Dive Bar where I was informed that I was no longer welcome in Portland after this visit expired. She did say, “You don’t have to get a motel. You can stay until its time to go.”
I nodded, finished my diet coke, as she wove drunkenly, over-served by her so-called best friend again. I asked, “Are you okay?”
She snarled and it was on.
Driving home, at night, sitting in the passenger seat of a 4-door sedan as a little Eskimo, so drunk she can barely stand, pilots a car like a dog sled down the nighted streets of Portland is something that has often made me cringe, and sometimes smile. She made it into the driveway without clipping the gear head’s car across the street again. [1] I left her sleeping in the car as I went around back, said “Hey, Big Boy,” to Crazy Dog [2] and then refilled his water bowl, which had gone dry. He and his boss dog, Rileigh, an immensely fat Ausie Shepherd, then cornered me in the kitchen as I opened a pack of Trader Joe’s Guoda cheese that went out of date last December, and started sharing it out between we dogs.
As I stood there, where I had cooked for The Chief’s Widow scores of times as she smoked cigarettes and told me of her former life, It struck me that I will miss Portland and its environs, that I understand Kelly’s “In These Parts,” at a short-lived level.
Everything is milder, even the recent heat wave, then back east. Even divorce is easier. On March 24, I thought I had left for the final time. I had, however, offered to finish the house and yard tasks that The Chief and I did not complete as he sunk into sickness. The soul has been ripped from this family. Again, this brought me to recall Kelly, being raised by a wife who had been abandoned by her husband with seven children on her hands.
Leaving is easy when the world is so big and empty, the mountains taller, the road to the next town longer. But, there is something strange and icky that hangs over all of the Pacific Northwest like a pal: government. There is even a town called Government Camp. There is a lot of signage. There might be more laws on the books back east. But that, “there should be a law,” impulse that is so basic to the American mind, waxes strong in these parts, a collective slave impulse Kelly and his friends laughed at.
That makes it more interesting to see private signage here. Earlier in Kelly’s story, he was driving across 82nd, which is a main avenue for everything local in the Southeast, including crime. It is like U.S. #40 in Baltimore, or in Denver: diners, motels, pawn shops, massage parlors. At that time, a young man, less then half his 70 years, wanted to fight him over a traffic incident marked by a mere driving point, not by a collision.
While I accompanied Wife to the bank on 82nd to get money for Gary, who is replacing a beam under the house here, I noted an armed military contractor patrolling the front of the bank. Earlier in the week, there were two of these army guys in a supermarket, with a store detective and a security guard. The day after that two military contractors patrolled Home Depot as I gathered materials for the patio extension.
Vacant homes and store fronts still yawn even as big bugman hives are being built blocks away. The busses are so empty they have to stop and park to keep from running ahead. Yet TRIMET is hiring and offering a $7500 bonus for drivers. This message blinks on every bus!
Who is coming?
What is coming?
Kelly doesn’t want to know, just wants to go down to the coast and fish, crab, clam and relax.
It has been an honor to have this man, and many others, offer to show me their homeland. This is a halting experience, to have men of a kind that are not permitted to be a native of any land, eager to show me the ruins of their transmogrified homeland in hopes that they will be able to reveal some of the beauty that was once there.
Entering the 82nd Bar and Grill, which had the ugliest and meanest [all in the same bitch] bar maid west of Baltimore, I noted a sign that prohibited Masks. Below this was also a standard sign prohibiting backpacks and hoods. I recall some 7 ears ago a bus driver refusing to continue to the end of the line with a masked passenger. He pulled over and told us that he would not continue until the likely robber took off his mask. The government that had long mandated no masks, hats, sunglasses in its facilitates, run by banks that have never permitted facial obscuring wear in its sacred precincts, in 2020, mandated criminal attire. This was done at the same time that FEDS and NGOs transported armies of looters from city to city.
Something is coming.
I walked into the Shamrock—I suppose such a bar exists in every Murkhan city—on 82nd, across the street from the other even less imaginatively named bar, and noted the same NO MASK sign. The bar keep, a nice, tattooed and pierced symbol of the city, and the cook, a middle aged man just learning his trade, were very nice. The prices were low. The place is huge, by eastern standards, 4 pool tables, 2 dart boards, a punching bag game, no gay gaming stuff.
As I went towards the everysex bathroom, I noted a sign:
“God invented liquor to keep the Irish from conquering the world.”
As I nodded agreement. I noted a hand written sign:
“Do not enter the restrooms with a backpack or bag. Store it behind the bar.”
Below this was security print still on copy paper taped to the wall. It was of a tall, blond, whigger in gray hoody, wearing a paper social distance mask, and reaching into a string bag style back pack dangling under and in front of his left arm as he drew a pistol with his right hand, as he approached the restroom from the very spot where the picture was posted.
This recalled that yesterday, at Ross discount store, 4 security men ejected 2 teenage looters of blond, skateboard demi-viking kind from that store while I stood to be “metered” for entry.
When the army of whoever these bug hives are being built for and the barely used mass transit is being expanded for, arrives, I think their might be an indigenous criminal army waiting to do barbaric battle over the crumbling civic safe space of this land that Kelly once worked, hunted, boxed, arm wrestled and misadventured in.
What a pleasant, big-hearted man.
I will miss Kelly, and these parts that have been my winter home since 2019. Here I never expect to venture again after crutching to the bus stop down to the train station this coming Sunday morning.
-James, Thursday, July 11, 2024, 105th Avenue, Southeast Portland
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Notes
-1. She leaves notes apologizing on the windshield.
-2. A hundred pound lab/pit with telepathic powers who has asked me to stay and be his new owner since The Chief died.
