Flower favorites!

I will probably be updating this with a couple of pictures from my garden later on today. Until then, read this and droooooooooool with envy.
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I GROW ALL THESE (EXCEPT THE ROSES.)

Iris Chrysographes

There is nothing bad to say about this gorgeous plant. (This picture doesn't show the fine golden 'writing' on the fall, unfortunately) It is very nearly perfect in every way. The leaves are narrow, graceful blades that come up about 24 inches, attenuate like sumeo-e brushstrokes, and steel blue-green. The blossom follows the oriental iris design, a fine, delicate dragonfly shape, velvety blue-black and slightly diamond-dusted. The falls are decorated with the finest, glittering golden line, and bumbles find it endlessly interesting. They wander around inspecting the writing until they blunder into the throat and find the nectar, which seems to surprise them. They'll visit the same blossom three or four times in rapid succession as though they're amazed that this thing really is a delicious flower.
The plant springs from a fiberous crown and forms coronas and tufts. It needs to be divided every 2 years or else the crown will heave itself out of the ground and center kill. It dies down to a mound of fibers in the winter.

Primula 'Velvet Moon'
A primula leaf is not my favorite leaf in the whole world; to me it looks kind of like a mutated lung or something. But these leaves are dark shining green and on the smaller side, and from the center of the rosette rises the most gorgeous blossom; typical single primula in form, but a velvet, deep, black-red with a small golden throat. It is the most gorgeous flower in the springtime when everything else is coming up in Easter egg pastels, and it works well next to those hard rhododendron pinks. The blossoms are carried in clusters of 3-5 above the rosette about 5 inches high on a dark stem. If you can keep the slugs from chewing on it, this makes a wonderful specimen planting. I hold mine in planters that I set on the ground, and when the blossoms die back I clean them out and refresh the medium. This keeps them looking nice. toward the end of the summer offsets can be separated from the main crown and potted up. Let them get a good start. They can be overwintered out of doors; just don't let them flood. They're pretty hardy...but like all primmies, the slugs LOVE them.

Hemerocallis Lilioaesphodelus 'Lemon High'

A beautiful daylilly with a tall form and a large yet graceful, trumpet-shaped flower, that smells good. Yes! The blossom is a hard canary yellow, and it is EDIBLE! It tastes like butter lettuce. The only drawback is, that honeybees find something so attractive about the nectar that they will literally chew a hole through the side of the petals to get at the throat-I've stood and watched them do this. If you've ever grown cabbage roses you know what I'm talking about.

Hemerocallis 'Golden Chimes'

A medium-sized daylilly with a mahagony-brown stem and a mahogany stripe up the backs of the graceful, buttery, cadmium-yellow flower. The leaves are bright spring-green and on the grassy side, at least for a daylilly, and the flowers carry high above the clump on branched stalks. This is the most refined of the daylillies.

Tulip 'Black Parrot'
Big, blue leaves followed by a 15 inch stalk atop which the oddest and most beautiful black blossom opens. The petals are 'parroted', which means that they have an odd, ripped-up or tendrilled appearance. It is a single blossom, so it retains the classic 'tulip cup' shape. The color is deepest purple-black-red, shiny on the outside and super velvety on the inside. This is a plant that no photograph has ever done justice to. In life this is a showstopping flower, proportionate in all it's parts and made for the sun to hit and the wind to sway.

Pulmonaria 'Mostly Boys'

(pictured is 'Blue Ensign'. Imagine this with three pink flowers and you have 'Mostly Boys'.)
A lungwort with a plain, light- green leaf and the most incredible, peacock-blue blossoms, with just enough pink ones to draw the attention. It comes out in April and grows in the shade, so its appearance is a benediction in the rain and the gloom. And what a blue!! This is a sport off 'Blue Ensign', I think.

Magnolia Stellata

Just a glorious little flowering tree.

Papaver somniferum, various colors

The blossoms come in every combination of colors there is, but it's the blue ruffly foliage and the Aubrey Beardsley form of the plant, with it's arching neck and odd seed pod that really earns its place. A drift of these is beautiful in bloom, and just at beautiful when the blossom has fallen.

California poppy 'Thai Silk' all varieties esp. Fire Bush

(This is 'Mission Bells. Imagine this, but with fewer pure yellows and shiny.)
A California poppy is a gorgeous little plant anyway...ferny, delicate blue-green foliage and simple orange cups rising above that. Thai Silk is something special again, though. The foliage is the same, and the shape of the blossom is too, but the petals themselves are crisp and pleated lengthwise, and they shine with the exact luster as silk fabric. The color range is cinnebar and golden yellow and peach-orange and purple-mahogany; a very Indonesian palette. It is simply yummy!!!

" " 'Mission Bells'
Very similar to 'Thai Silk', but without the shimmer. Color range is buttermilk white, clear yellows, oranges and mahoganies.


Artemesia 'Spanish Lace'

(Like this, only without the guys' head in the middle.)
You could call this a crappy shrub, or a sturdy herbaceous perennial. It likes very dry soil and full sun, and the foliage is the main attraction. It will get small round yellow button flowers on it, which look something like a chamomile blossom. You cut them off. The foliage is like a cloud of needle lace and is a bright silver-blue-grey. 'Spanish Lace' is a very apt description. I've had mine in a galvanized bucket directly in the path of the northeaster for the past 5 years and it comes back every year like a champ.

Snapdragon 'Apricot Fire' 'Black Prince'



These two look good together. Apricot fire is a 12 inch bushy plant with green leaves and a blossom that is apricot above and yellow below. Black prince is a 16 inch spiring plant with dark leaves, black stems and a red-black blossom with a lighter red to orange throat. Super striking on their own too, but stunning together.

Nigellia Damascena

Words cannot express. Lacy, delicate green foliage... Beautiful, glorious peacock blue blossom....MMMMmmmmm!!!

Delphinium Blue Mirror

This is a short-lived perennial in this climate, but it comes pretty readily from seed. The blossom and the foliage are a lacier and more refined version of the usual delphinium pattern, and the blue....! Maxfield Parrish would have killed for this blue!!

HTR 'Don Juan, Tropicana


I will never grow them. HTR's are simply too demanding. But I love to see them well-grown in other peoples gardens. They are truly an ornament. Don Juan is a climber-rambler, and the leaves are dark glossy green. The flower is dark, dark red with a glowing red heart. Just dreamy.
Tropicana is like a pillar version of 'Josephs' Coat'. The blossom colors are more pronounced and it carries its red tones more aggressively than Josephs Coat; a variety that tends to run to washed-out yellows and peaches.

Rosa 'The Mermaid'

A well-grown tree of this rose in full bloom is a like a tidal wave of whipped cream. Pretty, simple-double blossoms are on the smaller side, but it flushes in the hundreds of thousands. Imagine an apple tree in spring, but with larger blossoms. That gives you a rough idea of the size and effect of this rose.

gardening

I'm sitting here with my hands swollen up like two baseball mitts, feeling as though someone has kicked me in the side of the neck with a pointy shoe. One hip is seized up about an inch higher than the other one, which puts quite a hitch in my giddyup. I am in pain, and I am lopsided. And I have gardening to thank for this state of affairs. One weeks worth of weeding, digging, cutting, trimming, planting and roaming around with my hands on my hips going 'Huh....' and my shit is RACKED UP.

There is simply something in my DNA that makes me want to annoy vegetation. I don't always love it, but I have to do it the same way I have to sleep or eat. I don't feel right if I can't.

I had a few forewarnings....once, when I was 13, I started a few flowers on my windowsill that quickly went from mint out of the back yard to a redwood burl to marijuana, and just as quickly got quashed by the parental units (never plant dope in the street side window of a house, kids.)

A few years later I 'got the call' to become a nun. Not just any nun, though; one of the Sisters of Canaan- a cloistered order that was reclaiming unused land for agriculture somewhere in the Midwest. It sounded great to me at the time...of course, so did Elton John.

Years later I asked for a job at a local garden nursery. I was spending most of my time there anyway, so why not get paid? That's where I really learned how to garden-how to pot up plants and take cuttings and make medium and all the other stuff. And I liked it real good.

Now, my grandmother gardened, although by the time we moved next door the main work had been done for years and all that was left was trimming and weeding. My father gardened too, and he did a damn good job of it. The problem was, I was the kid, and so I never got to do anything but tote and pull weeds, which didn't suit me one bit. I finally put my foot down and refused to do another thing after I found a tomato hornworm and made a giant dramatic screaming scene about it.

...EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW.

I didn't want the garden to be associated with punishment or drudgery, and so I didn't insist that my daughter be my yard slave*. She learned to garden from the same woman I learned from, which probably was all for the best. And now my daughter is teaching my grandson, and he goes out into the yard and digs holes so that Grandma will give him a flower to plant in them, and is proud to select a baby flower to take care of at the nursery. So I feel like my job is done.

Gardening can be hard work. I don't mind that. I don't mind being cold or filthy or wet or miserably tired if it's related to gardening. Gardening is also, for the larger part, a sheer joy. I certainly don't mind wandering around the pretty flowers with a pair of clippers going 'snip, snip...la la la....snip, snip' all afternoon with the fat bumbles making circles around my head. And let me tell you, after wasting two years in college on a business degree and another year trying to convince myself that I didn't mind wearing nylons every day and making copies for a living, I can state conclusively that I would much rather be ankle-deep in rotting pumpkins wearing a 'Fuck Off And Die' t-shirt, and drinking cheap warm beer in the sunshine.

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*watch the comments, though. accounts may vary.

NEW POST!!!!

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Nope, still another rerun: Oaks Amusement Park

What was your most memorable amusement park experience?

I'll be honest right at the front here and tell you that I cribbed this idea from another site. Not like either one of us care, but if you should happen to visit the same site and have an 'aha' moment I will have already trumped you. This one goes out to Tazzy the Yorkshire sex god and Piggy the...whatever he his- who never visit any more because there are too many big words. Cunts.

New York had Coney Island, California had Knotts Berry farm. Portland Oregon had Oaks Amusement Park. It was not world famous like Coney and it was not state of the art like Knotts Berry was at the time, but what it was, was stone fucking cool.

This midway area was still present in large part when I was a kid, but most of the buildings were boarded up, gated over and flood damaged. Spooky? Romantic? The very definition thereof, my dear.

I defy you to find another amusement park with as much pure class as the Oaks had back then. Think of the myriad haunted amusement parks in Scooby Doo...bullshit. Think of the best midway you had ever visited...roadkill. The Oaks had it ALL. And all of it was blessed with that perfect touch of dereliction, sleaze and enchantment that all proper amusements parks should have.

It had been built at the very beginning of the 1900s on what at the time was a small island in the Willamette river...far enough out of town at that time so that a special excursion trolley ran out to it on a trestle over the water, hung with strings of lanterns at night.

It was a fantasy of carved wood, Victorian lace, gargoyles, a little Venice, a little New Orleans and a lot pure Americana. Straight out of Dandelion Wine was this place.

The main portion of the old park was shut down save for a very few of the pitches. You had to traverse this entire midway to the far end to reach the remaining few operating rides, pitches and roller rink. All of it was set in the midst of huge oak trees full of swallows and bats and the rich smell of the river and cotton candy and diesel.

in the 1960's and '70's, you crossed over a small bridge and the first thing you passed was a tiny cinderblock radio station on the right hand side down amid the blackberies. KXI, I think it was*. It was painted sea green with glass blocks by the entry and a tall tower rising from the roof with blinking red lights on it at night.
And it was haunted.

The story was, a night shift dj had played a farewell song dedicated to his girlfriend...'Misty'...and when someone came in a few hours later to find out why the same song had been playing over and over they found the dj hanging from the overhead pipes with the phone cord wrapped around his neck. Sometimes, late at night, it was said that the 'On the Air' sign would light up, and you could hear 'Misty' playing inside, but there never was a night shift after the dj died.

Wooooooo!

Next you came onto a huge picnic and outdoor gathering park. The living trees were used as part of the decoration, hung with electric lights and incorporated into bowers, bandstands, and picnic enclosures, all of them fancifully themed with spiders webs and wooden vines. John Phillip Sousa had played here during his heyday.

An elfin railway ran the circuit of the park with a tiny engine and 20 cars, a scary tunnel and a causeway out over the water that crackled when the train passed, making fish jump out from around the pilings to take a look as you chugged by.

There was a permanent midway with carnival games of skill. Most of it was shabby and abandoned and cooler than jeezley fuck. All the joints had been decorated with gilt and glass gems, applied- relief cherubs, theatrical masks and gargoyles, monkeys and pierrots and ladies and gentlemen in domino masks dancing minuets, and all this ornament colored. Everything else was painted white. Most of it was fancy with turrets and widows walks and fretwork and oriental arches all falling into the most delicious, mysterious shadowed ruin!. this pitch still operated intermittantly, the faded origional lettering showing up behind the new signs. later it was gated off and used as a storage area and was full of old ride cars and carnival flash.

At the very end of the place was a funky rollerskating rink that was built on a floating platform. It had been added in the 1930's. The place had a pipe organ for music. The works were suspended over the center of the rink and covered with colored lights. The organist sat in a glass block booth high up above one end, wearing a suit with a ruffled shirt. He rang the skates and took requests and controlled the lights and everyone waved at him as they rolled around.

this is a very spic-and span picture of the pipe organ works suspended over the rink. in my day they were crusted with blowing dust scarves and old crepe streamer fragments. the whole place looks like it got the 'Pine-Sol and paint' treatment, which is all for the good.


The thrill rides, I now realize, were probably as close as I ever came to a horrible death in my youth.

I don't think these things had ever been inspected for safety. I don't think that most of them were built during a time when safety codes existed. The oldest and most beautiful of them all was called The Caterpillar. All it was, was a kind of roller coaster that ran in a circle on a planked runway that dipped and banked. The cars were driven from a single engine in the center from which diabolical blue clouds would billow as it chuffed and blew and gathered speed. A fan of iron spokes ran from the central turbine to the cars.

The whole ride was decorated with 'Alice in Wonderland'-y scenes....it had kind of an 'Early Campbell Kids meets Arthur Rackham' look to it. The Caterpiller himself was a cheery, googly-eyed bug with fat green segments for cars and jolly rubber wheels with red centers. As long as you didn't look too closely, this was all very reassuring. Jolly Green Caterpiller was the childrens' friend!

As the ride would gain speed, the fissured, chewed-up tires would begin to skip and sing over the boards, making the cars rattle and bash against one another and tug at the spokes. Faster and faster the ride whizzed around the track, harder and harder you were pressed against the rattling half-moon door of the car, louder and more alarming became the truly amazing creaks, bangs, snaps, sudden jolts and screeches of the machine. Boards would lift away from the racecourse and rattle. Huge blasts of steam would FASSSSSHHHHH! out of the engine unpredictably. The platform of the ramp-in other words, the entire base of the ride- would lift up off the ground on the opposite side and wham back down when the cars passed over it again.
And then, at the height of all this, The Caterpiller Canopy began to deploy.
All along its length it began to unfold from the inner side like an accordian, revealing thousands of brightly colored dots and squiggles, and slowly, slowly, the canvas arched overhead and came down on the other side, latched-
and then the ride REALLY SPEEDED UP.
You were entirely in the dark. Inside the Caterpillar.
The whole thing felt like it was going to wrench itself apart at any moment.
Some of the cars were rattling and skitttering so hard that they juddered back and forth like marbles on a roulette wheel. The platform was lifting off the ground in full earnest now, WHAM!WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM!
Until there was a sudden huge screeching and squealing of brakes and an exhalation of steam, and the entire ride came to a complete stop in the space of a single rotation.
The canopy unlatched and slowly accordianed back overhead; folded itself away with a 'whapkechunk'.

It was the Goddamndest thing!

The Carousel, back then, was a thing of splendour. It had been built by convict labor, horses, decoration and engine, up at Rocky Butte prison**. It was everything the rest of the park was and more. It was a jewelled wedding cake, a castle, a hall of mirrors, a pile of pirate treasure. I have yet to see a carousel to equal it for sheer Victorian glory.
The central pillar was shaped like an octagonal castle tower. Its sides were covered in painted french panels...lady Columbia danced over the river with a star on her forehead that sparkled when the light caught it. Triton rode a sea-chariot pulled by white horses with manes of wave-crest, surrounded by nymphs. A dawn-lit view of Mt. Hood. Men in leather helmets scored a touchdown with a cheering crowd in the background. America the Beautiful, revealed in triumph with an eagle and star spangled negligee; a gorgeous, rosebud mouthed Gibson girl. In fact for years I was certain that this merry go round had really been decorated by Charles Dana Gibson, because that was the style and the skill of the work.

Imagine it!

My favorite mount was a sable charger with patriotic banners and rubies studding its equippage. I loved that horse. It had a real bridle and reins and real stirrups with starred spurs. It was a beautifully executed thing. All the animals on the circuit were-ostriches, kangaroos, sea beasts, zebras, eagles, swans and a jewelled throne for mothers with scared children to circle around in with a little dignity saved.

below is is a picture of the pavillion that housed the carousel taken from a rollercoaster ride that was derelict by the time I came along. unfortunately, the carousel was the victim of a tasteless and unskilled restoration in the 80's.

The other ride that I will never forget was The Mad Mouse.
Remember the Milton-Bradley game 'Mousetrap'? Kind of a Rube Golberg rack of rails and clackety rickety things? That was this ride.
It was based on a roller coaster, but with a twist-the cars were single, and they made right angles. There were no macaroni curves, just ramps and angles. And the whole thing ran at light speed!

The cars got released from a starting gate at intervals with split second timing and passed each other as though they were going to collide. In fact, there was a segment of rail that shunted open at the middle where two cars would suddenly find themselves speeding head on, then at the last possible moment race off at right angles to each other.
This fucking thing scared the living piss outta me. I ALWAYS rode it.

The last time I rode, I was the only rider on the course. That was fine. It must have been about 1969-70. The first stage of the ride was a long, slow incline up from the starting gate, upon which you gained speed until you reached the top just screaming along, came to a dead stop, spun in a circle and headed down a zigzag.
My car gained speed going up the hill. All around me flakes of rust are falling off the track scaffolding, rivets are visibly pivoting, some are completely missing and replaced with wire looped around and around.
My car gains speed. My braids are flying straight back.
My car reaches the top.
It comes to a whiplash stop.
And the entire structure continues to move.
Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaak k k kkk k.
I look out over the marsh below me. My braids are in front of me now.
The car pivots around in a circle and comes back to the starting gate. The operator hands my father his money back.

It took me years to put it all together and realize just how close I came to taking a swim that day.

The Oaks is still there. It's on the national register of historic places and has been completely restored from what I understand.
I will never go back and visit. I like it just the way it is now.


update:
this brought the memories tumbling back. i visited some historic sites for the pictures and was pleased to find that the stories i had heard, and my memories, were pretty accurate. interestingly enough very few pictures survive from the 60's and 70's, when the parks finances were at their lowest point. I did find mention of the midway being haunted by a kid in 70's clothes, though... I remember when that rumor started! the owners were just beginning to think about reviving the place and everyone pretty much knew that it was something they had cooked up. I found the story on a ghost site! But no mention of the haunted radio station.
*if somebody knows, please tell me!!
** the history says that this was a 'noah' ark' style carousel manufactured back east. I recount the story told me by my father and grandmother. they were certain that the animals had been made locally by convict labor. i remember they had to ship in a tiny litle guy from italy to fix the animated musical contraption inside about once a year, too.

RERUN: The DaVinci Code: Fiction or Documentary?

I need to garden and you need something to read. It's either this, or dredge up some more stories about the Meadows family, and NOBODY WANTS THAT, do they.
Have I edited this? Yes, I have. Because I can.
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Anyone who has read 'The DaVinci Code' knows that religious art is teeming with secret symbols and messages; truths only meant to be divined by the initiate; truths consciously withheld from the greater part of mankind by a jealous Papacy and the universal, unswerving complicity of Catholicisms' innumerable adherents. Secret, secret truths. Which are secret.

While I was still too small to give my consent my initiation into the rites of the Roman Church began. Each new year built new levels of esoteric knowledge onto that primary foundation, each stage of indoctrination capped off by rites, obeisances and cryptic oaths administered by black clad virginal acolytes of the inner circle.

By the time I had reached adulthood I was ready to go forth and fulfill my role in the Popes great army of world domination.
My orders: Seize control.
My rank: Uterus.

I have come to the conclusion that to continue to hide these secret teachings from the rest of mankind is to do my fellow man a grave disservice. Therefore let me begin by revealing a despicable incident known as The Suppression of J. M. Barrie:








...'We simply do not see the Blessed Mother battling pirates' says Rome.

The first version of 'Peter Pan' was banned by Pope Pius X.



Oh yes....our obedience was never taken for granted. Here is a surveillance device familiar in all Catholic homes:
The Disaproving Icon.

"The saints are very, very disappointed in you.
The saints are ALWAYS very, very disappointed in you."

The tentacles of the Pope remain a strong yet invisible presence in modern popular culture. Here is the proposed cover art for 'Hallelujia Kid Hitz volume 14' featuring Sir Mix A Lot:

"...I like big butts but I can't deny...that horse is gonna smush that guy!"

Oh yes. The Church is 'Down' with the 'Street'.



The true message of many paintings has long been a subject of debate among scholars. Know them now.

The flying babies failing to arouse St. John's enthusiasm at the prospect of being martyred in boiling oil.



You cannot escape the possibility of uninvited company when you have a glowing baby.


If Mary had owned one of those really big bug zappers history would be different.



Not even matters of the most basic household management or personal life were exempt from the mandates of the Church:


"...Yes I know you're the King of the Beasts and I know you have wings but as long as you live in this house you'll crap in that box."


When the hallucinations get shitty about your spelling it's time to go to bed.


Things you leave outside during a tornado will get blown away.
Know where your grandpa is.


Before you demand that miracle, balance how much you really miss the deceased with 1. how dead he is, and 2. how comprehensively freaked out you'll be when he comes back to life in the middle of August.




In some instances, a spray-on repellent like DEET simply isn't enough to keep away flying baby heads. Sometimes you need a flying teenager with a flail and a grenade.

UPDATED: Excuses

BLOGGER HAS DECIDED, IN ITS INFINITE WISDOM, THAT I HAVE ENABLED COMMENT MODERATION.
I HAVE NOT.
I HAVE CHECKED. NO.
STILL, SOME OF YOUR MESSAGES ARE GETTING BOUNCED TO MY E-MAIL, AND NOT GETTING PUBLISHED ON MY BLOG.
I AM NOT DELETING YOUR COMMENTS.
I BLAME FRANCE.
does anyone know how to fix this? i think one from surly just got lost in space, and a couple from the last post ended up in the nowhere also. WTF?????
HAPL!@
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I love you all desparately and unreasonably. You know that.
But the sun is out, and I'm gardening, and the dirt smells so good....!

He's taken, Back off.

I'm sitting here at 8:30 pm and my Biker is making a country sausage gravy to take for a breakfast potluck at work. He's using organic boar sausage and making the cream gravy base from scratch, whisking the milk and flour and spices about behind me here in the kitchen and making the place smell like heaven.

As I've said before, this man is a genius of flavor. We can confidently hold our own against most restaurants serving American home cooking and better most of them; but its his ability to divine the source of the flavors and knowing how to bring them into the mix that makes what we cook here so goddamn excellent.

It's 9:pm and the sauce is finished. The Biker is in bed. The sauce will mature overnight and tomorrow morning when he serves this at work he's going to have straight men begging to suck his
*ahem*
begging for the recipe. 20 minutes spent, scratch to done. Sausage browned with onion, cream sauce thickened, corrected and finished. Simple and absolutely SUBLIME.

Another guy is making southern style beaten biscuits, and this gravy will go over top of that, with eggs on the side.

You WISH you could be there, bitches.

If Pither can do it then so can I

In this corner, God of rant REG PITHER !















Well informed! As far as I know, anyway;
he writes about British stuff. Sounds good.
Pissed off anyway.

IN this corner: DANGER MUK!

....um.... Heavily medicated!

Waaaaay heavily medicated!
Um....has a corndog!

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I swore that I wouldn't turn this into a relevant topics blog* but dammit some things just gotta get said.

1. Researchers are claiming that they have found the reason the Titanic went down: substandard rivets.

Folks, the Titanic hit an iceberg the size of the Balkans. At that point the quality of the rivets became moot. Get over it already. It sank. It's over. Move on.

2. Was there a US-government based conspiracy to assassinate JFK?

Yes, and J. Edgar Hoover masterminded it. In fact, J. Edgar Hoover ran this country for 48 solid years. He is currently serving eternity in Hell as Satans buttplug.

3. Was there another shooter on the grassy knoll?

Your momma was on the grassy knoll. With J. Edgar Hoover.

4. Was Marilyn Monroe killed by the FBI?

No. Kennedy played hide the salami with every woman who crossed his line of vision. Some of them were married to his political cronies and some of them were the girlfriends of mobsters for heavens' sake. He wasn't exactly scrupulous - OR careful. So out of all the women he ever nailed why kill the one who posed NO THREAT WHATSOEVER TO HIS REPUTATION? (Enhanced it, in fact. The leader of the free world was 'entitled' to bonk Monroe. It was a man's world back then and they're still going 'har-de-har-har' about it the same way they did when Clinton nailed Lewinsky. Please.) Is anyone dumb enough to believe that he laid up in bed with her and gave her a bunch of ICBM fire-codes or something? She was Marilyn Monroe! They weren't talking! The poor woman accidentally did herself with booze and pills. Please just leave in her grave already.

5. Was Princess Di killed by the British Government because she was making squishy squishy with a sand minority?

Princess Di should have been knocked upside the chops for even coming within a city block of Dodi 'Greasy Lowlife' Fayyed, but she was killed in a drunk driving accident. Shit happens. Nobody killed Chuck 'Cardboard Applicator' Windsor and look what he's been...*ahem* up.
To.


6. Did Bush steal the election?

He got Christmas presents that year, didn't he? Well, there ya go. Do you think he would have got any Christmas presents if Santa Claus thought he'd stolen the election?
See, now you're just starting to piss me off.
Did your mother huff Regular or Ethyl? Did she drop you a lot? Have you spent the last 30 years of your life wearing a helmet and eating sugar out of the bag? Jesus CHRISTgrab a CLUE.

7. Should Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Idaho secede from the Union and set up a sovereign nation of their own and call it Ecotopia?

Yes. If y'all hadn't been so busy selling Oregon to the Japanese and mating in public discotecques like a herd of Aquanet-glazed mink with the music all going WHUMPA WHUMPA WHUMPA WHUMPA you would have realized that Ernest Callenbach was a prophet inspired by GOD, and done the right thing. Well, like any prophet Ol' Ernie wasn't honored in his native land, and now his native land is overrun with trash-ass lowland Southern Californians and effete failed New Yorkers who won't be satisfied until this place is just as big a shit-up wasteland as the toxic sewers they left in their wake. You had no excuse. The technology existed. Disney preserved Walt's brain in a jar so they could hook it up to a motherboard and route their payroll department through it; well, you shoulda done the exact same thing with Tom McCall. We could have mounted it in a Dalek-type thing with a toilet plunger on the front and he could have rolled around and been in parades and levitated and shit. We'd all be living in an environmentally pristine, socially enlightened country instead of a place that the rest of the nation considers an inexhaustable grab-bag of natural resources where picturesque Native Americans roam through the forest primeval bapping each other with little sticks and Laura Ingalls Wilder kicks the shit out of gas station attendants and pees in their soup. Tom wouldn't have put up with that shit!! OO! You don't want to pay a reasonable market price for timber? You don't care if our native salmon are getting ground up in the Bonneville hydroelectric dam just so you can leave the Hubble space telescope on all night long and spy on naked broads in Iowa? Is the mean ol' president gonna get pissed off? Is he gonna send some black helicopters? SEND THE MOTHERFUCKERS! OOOOO, IM FRIGHTENED! OOOOO, WHERE DID THESE MYSTERIOUS UNMARKED HELICOPTERS COME FROM! OOOOO, MAYBE I OUGHT TO USE MY DALEK DEATH RAY ON THE HELICOPTERS! HUH? WHADDYOU THINK, BITCH? And he would win!!!! Then we'd all be happy walking through our old growth forests breathing our clean air and drinking our nice espresso behind our nice safe wall and everyone would say 'Thank you, thank you, Tom McCall, you saved us!'
And there would be a big party and you would be invited!
But you'd have to go home after.







_________________________
*which is a total lie and not even true. if i felt like it i could do a whole post with just the letter e: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee OH MY GOD I'M OUTTA CONTROL PEOPLE! OH NOES!
SOMEBODY STOP ME!

...See? Theres nothing anyone can do about it. I'm drunk on power, baby.

UPDATED: 12 blocks wide, 3 miles long - the Riviera of the Willamette Valley

...yeah, this place again.
_______________________

Down towards the end of our building was the Death Dumpster.


Unlike Blood Dumpster, which features an Episcopalian in a wheelchair, the Death Dumpster was an industrial sized trash container for the use of the tenants of our building.
The problem was, it wasn't a locked receptacle and it was on the intersection of two alleys; a perfect stop and drop for people with things they had to get rid of in a hurry. Like dead bodies and murder weapons. About twice a month someone would give me the word-"Somethings in there. I ain't fuckin' with it."

I don't think there was a week that went by that the police weren't standing on a stack of milk crates poking around in the thing with a broken broom handle. A couple of times the coroners' wagon came, and that end of the building was cordoned off. A few hours later the tape came down and it was back to the usual wacky hijinks and madcap hilarity.

Every dumpster in the area was 'swap -n- shop'. There were always a few milk crates nearby to stand on, and sometimes an old garden rake too. Re-usable items were stacked alongside the container. Furniture, wiring, prosthetic arms; anything you can imagine. It never remained for more than a few hours.

Early in the morning you would hear the divers would come by with their shopping carts. A lot of them wore a magnet around their neck or tied to their belt loop on a string so they could test metal for aluminum. You'd see a guy throw a couple of crates into a pile, jump into the dumpster and thrash around with the rake for a few moments, and then emerge with a burlap sack or a backpack filled with refundable cans and bottles. Those would go into the cart and they'd rattle off down the alley to the next one.

Fat Mark made a little extra money on the side selling dreg bottles out of the back door of the Union Jack. How this worked was, desperate winos would pay him to take away a case of empty liquor bottles so they could suck the last drops of whatever might have collected in the bottom. Meanwhile Mark didn't have to buck it up into the truck, and the owner didn't have to store it or haul it off to the recyclers. Everyone came away happy.

Aluminum pop cans were the big prize, though. The law was, if you sold recyclable containers of any kind you had to store the empties and return them - and that was a health hazard and a huge pain in the ass for business owners. But street people loved aluminum pop cans and they were more than happy to take them away. Aluminum was light, compactable, and recycled at a higher price than glass did. They made money, and you didn't lose any.

Back then you could actually live fairly comfortably off recycling aluminum. In our area there were a couple of teams of guys who drove around in pickup trucks all night long collecting. They hit everyplace-rail yards, building sites, offices, machine shops, the post office, supermarkets, mom and pop stores, factories, house parties -but they would NOT touch a dumpster. That was icky, apparently (meanwhile they drove around with roaches and rats and nasty old backwash pop spilling out of the gate every time they took a corner.) These were people you stayed the fuck away from. They took their recycling SERIOUSLY. One guy would jump out and collect, while the driver stood in the bed and guarded the load with a shotgun.

I worked at the motel next door, and I ran my own pop can situation. I had an alcoholic buddy* named Duffy who would always meet me by the back breezeway, and I'd hand off a garbage sack full of cans to him every day. In return, he'd flip me a pack of cigarettes he'd shoplifted (which I wasn't supposed to realize), and none of the street guys every gave me any shit. Basically, I was his pet girl.

Another thing I did was let one of the local businesswomen stand on my porch. That doesn't sound like much, but the way the laws were then, if the woman was on private property and had permission to be there, the police couldn't pick them up in sweeps. I was friends with a woman whose street name was Sunshine, and in exchange for standing on my porch (not tricking, now...simply standing on my porch and bullshitting for a couple of minutes) she'd buy cigarettes for me, and keep my name clean when people asked her what was up with my shit.

And this worked.

I was living in the worst part of town by myself, and I was never fucked over by the locals once. I was never solicited once. I was never robbed once. I could walk to the store with money in my pocket, and I could do it wearing a tank top. I lived in the only unit that was never broken into the whole time I was there. Good thing, too, because its not like I would have had any recourse to the law.

The cops would come stifflegging like Doberman dogs down our alley about once a week, two by two. Apparently my sitting out on my porch talking to people was a highly suspicious activity. They'd come put their foot up on my step, and give me the word, like we know who you talk to and we've got our eye on you and shit.
And I gave them the word back: 'You do that. Come at me. The door's right here. See what you find.' Give my screen door a little tap with my foot.

Pissed off? Pissed off? Packs of matches spontaneously burst into flame. Streetlights began exploding one by one. Oh fuck yes; I was pissed off.

In my entire life I've never put a needle in my arm, never turned a trick, never gone on the books, never shit where I eat. Never. But you can't have skid row lowlifes see you walk away after some little bitch faces you up like that; that won't do.** So the police went to my building manager and my boss and 'warned' them about me. I 'consorted with known criminals'.

Everyone howled. My boss bought me a drink! Jesus Christ, ya fucking morons, this is Burnside! You can't help but! Every other goddamn person here is a known criminal!
But to this day? That still ices the fuck out of me.

It gave me an interesting new perspective on things. I'd always been neutral about cops up until that point. When I saw how they were doing people down there, though, I changed some views.

It didn't matter if you never imagined committing a crime. It didn't matter if you ran a business or owned property; God help your ass if they looked at you twice. God help your ass if you were any other color than white, or someplace doing anything but what they figured you should. Due process, Miranda, BULLSHIT. The people who lived there said "This ain't America. This is Burnside. Down here you ain't even in America." Above or below a certain street, the police could do anything they wanted, and they did. That is the absolute honest truth. I saw it. It was disgusting.

Truthfully? To me it seemed like the police were enforcing poverty. You were presumed guilty for where you lived and treated accordingly - like an undeserving criminal piece of shit. "Your car got stolen? Your house got broke into? Too fucking bad. What did you expect, living here?" It was incredible. But I think I have a point, too, in a way at least. When's the last time the police came strolling through your nice suburban neighborhood and put their foot on your step and said we're just waiting for you to set foot out of line?***

____________________________________


Nobody lived in that part of town without a reason. Everyone referred to it as 'down here'. Down Here extended from the banks of the Willamette river up to about 12th back then. This was not the ghetto. This was Skid Row.

There, that's my big admission. I lived on Skid Row. For a year and a half. Gasp! Clutch the pearls!

People would ask me why. At first I'd tell them it was because it beat the hell out of the alternative.**** The sad truth of the matter was, it did. I was treated better, I was safer on Skid Row, than I was in the home I grew up in. How fucked up is that?

After awhile I just got tired of people trying to figure out what my 'problem' was. I started spreading my own rumors, whatever goofyass thing came to mind at the moment, and let the theories run wild. At least it was more interesting than the truth; which was, I had no idea what my problem was. All I knew was that even after the childhood drama was left in the dust, something kept knocking me back and it was out of my control. It would keep me in bed for days at a time, unable to walk from the door to the street or use the phone, forget things, transpose things, make me blank out in the middle of conversations, miss entire hours or days, make me lose jobs, lose friends, keep me awake for days at a time, or make me sleep for 20 hours at a stretch, drag me down into hell at a moments notice and keep me there for months at a time, and I had no idea what it was or how to fix it.

Anyway, there I was. Clean as snow. I lived in a shitty apartment and ate Top Ramen and tried to earn a living working a straight job. A lot of my neighbors did the same: you'd be surprised how many people on Skid Row work two and three jobs and never touch a controlled substance.

A lot of my neighbors lived in abandoned cars and broken down campers and caves in the middle of blackberry patches, and operated completely outside the money economy too. I'll tell you something true: a lot of those people living rough worked harder than I did, and they worked longer hours. Scrapping metal, busking, returning bottles and cans, scouting around for things to re-sell or trade; they busted ass. And I'll tell you something else: a lot of the people who lived rough were not insane and did not do crimes. They viewed themselves as nobility. They were living completely outside the system by their own rules, and that meant that they won.
Interesting, huh.

I'm not saying that we ran in and out of each others homes, or trusted or admired one another, but we treated each other like neighbors, at least.
That isn't to say that the working poor were in the majority; we weren't. We were vastly outnumbered by junkies, the mentally ill, the career criminals, and the feral. They had their own thing; they went their own way. I'd give a pack of matches to anyone that asked, but I'd walk to the other side of the street to avoid a junkie. General consensus. Even the raving batshit neighbor lady avoided them. A junkie would cut your throat and lick the knife. They were the walking dead.

_______________________________

Look real hard in the upper right.


...See where it says 'Death chair'? Ok then.

The longer I lived there, the more 'street' I was becoming. Not that I was all 'bad'; Jesus no. I had 'mark' written all over me and my safety was as much a matter of luck as it was treating people right. It's just that my values were beginning to slip and I was beginning to get comfortable in a type of life that I didn't want to live. it was squalid, depressing and degraded and you were paranoid all the time. It felt familiar. It felt a lot like home. And 'home' was what I was trying to avoid.

The thing that made me take a new look at myself was when one of the men in my building died.

He was just an old guy. Nobody knew him or knew anything about him. He lived there, and then one day the coroners wagon came and they loaded him out.

And deliberately left his front door open.

One of the Pillsbury Sideshow Fetii was talking to the driver. I heard the driver tell him "We're all done in there now. Wait till we roll, though, but yeah; it's OK to go in."

The meat wagon rolled off. As I sat there, every door in the building opened up and people began heading down the alley towards the now-vacant apartment.

I turned back toward my screen door and told my girlfriend "You gotta come see this. You won't believe it."

People were going in and out of the open door carrying stuff.
They were looting the apartment.

The Pillsbury Sideshow Fetus grinned up at me as he passed by carrying an electric coffeepot. "You better hurry! All the good stuffs' gonna be gone! Come on!"
My girlfriend looked at me and said "Are you gonna?"
"Hell, why not?' I replied. "I'll go down and take a look at the death apartment; sure."

It was like a garage sale. I went inside and pushed my way through the people opening drawers, checking the mattress, looking inside the cupboards and raiding food out of the refrigerator. "Anybody like microwave popcorn?" called someone from the kitchen. "He's got some."

There was a round table and a loop-backed chair in the corner of the front room, and the telephone was still lying there off the hook.

"That's where they found him. Had a massive heart attack calling 911" said the building manager as he walked by. "You need a chair?" He laughed.

I looked.

Well shit. I did need a chair, in fact. I sauntered over and looked down at the chair, looked at the table, put the phone back on the hook. A couple of people took the phone off the table, put it on the floor and carried the table away as I stood there. Then someone else stepped over, said "You need this phone?" then unplugged it from the wall and carried it away when I shook my head.

So I picked up the chair and carried it out.

My girlfriend was appalled.

"Oh come on. It's not like he had the plague or anything; he died of a heart attack," I said. "It's just a chair. We needed one for the kitchen."

"Yeah, but you looted it," she said. "And you're going to put it in our kitchen. A chair that a guy died in."

The building manager walked past helping one of the tenants carry a mattress.

I got some bleach and a rag and I washed off ever single inch of that chair, underneath, the bottoms of the feet, everyplace. But I never did get over feeling really, really strange about what kind of things I didn't really care about any more.




So what did I do?
I got my shit together!
I took up with a guy who belonged to a cult and married him!


Yeah, shit.


___________________________________

...and the update was, I quit being all cute and added the word 'girl' to 'friend' there. May as well be straight up.



*That was actually how they referred to themselves, and they were very particular about it too. An alcoholic drank hard liquor and would work for his money. A wino was a passed-out bum who shit himself up and begged for change.

**No, I don't know what I was thinking either. It sure impressed my neighbors, though. But to this day I remember them putting their foot up on my step and it just enrages me, and I'd probably do the same stupid thing.

***obviously this question isn't being directed at either MJ or Knudson.

****That's why I got along with Sunshine. When I told her that, she got exactly what I meant. She never ragged me to 'go home'.

Walking around like a nut in the dark

One of the symptoms of clinical depression is an inability to sleep for an extended period of time. Up until I started on Prozac, then, unless I was seriously exhausted, I got four hours at a stretch, tops. Most of the time I had something to read nearby and I passed the time that way, but other times I was so restless and my brain was racing so fast that I had to get out and move.

I started midnight rambling when I was eight years old. During the summer my parents would let me sleep outside in the back yard sometimes. As soon as I could hear snoring coming from the house I was out the back gate and off.

For some reason I was fearless in the dark. I went places that I had NO BUSINESS going and would never have dreamed of visiting during the daytime. God only knows what the police would have said, but I was never hassled once.

The rambling, and that luck, continued up into my adult years. The only problems I ever had with anybody, I had in daylight. Once night fell, the town was mine.

Portland was an incredible place to ramble. The disconnected mixture of modern buildings with old carpenter gothic residences, mature trees and bare paved lots, derelict neighborhoods and haphazardly placed masses of urban infrastructure was already exactly like a dream landscape. It was sleep walking with your eyes open.

I ran into very, very few people out walking at night. Any homeless person you saw was so far gone and close to death that they didn't bother to hide up for the night any more. The few working girls left out at that hour were usually haggard and dope sick. When they asked for a cigarette that's all they meant. They'd pay you a quarter.

I carried a claw hammer anyway.

I could not stay away from abandoned buildings. And I discovered a strange and interesting thing: there wasn't a row of identical houses or businesses that could hide its secret from me, because you could pick the abandoned ones out at night by smell; an exhalation of old paper and leaves and dirt and damp. You could literally feel it on your skin as you walked into it, an invisible chilly stream with definite boundaries, and you could follow it easily to its source.
I'd squeeze between chained doors and peer inside old ice warehouses. I'd try doorknobs and step though empty window frames, stand in the moonlight coming down through rotted shingle roofs and rafters and read the old newspapers peeling off the walls.
______________________________

The amount of wild animal life in downtown Portland was a thing that never ceased to amaze me. I liked to walk out and stand in the center of the Burnside bridge, or the Hawthorne, smoking a cigarette and watching the water. Bear in mind that this is the literal, geographical center of downtown Portland, too; yet not a single car would pass you for minutes at a stretch. And in the quiet you could hear horned owls call to each other from one side of the river to the other, up and down it's length, in turns...north and southeast, south and northwest.

Although Oregon had a huge problem with feral dogs at the time I never ran into trouble. Brave tame dogs would bark as you passed their fences, but dogs about town would sidetrot down the center line of the street and give you a couple of wags and a grin as they passed, maybe say 'wuf' in a conversational way.

Back then-and it probably holds true today-it wasn't uncommon to see a doe and fawn ambling down the middle of a residential street, or 23rd and Burnside for that matter. Raccoons tightrope-walked the sagging ridges of abandoned meat packing plants, feral cats slept in the engine compartments of parked cars. Skunks left eerily human, infant-sized footprints in the dew that kept alive a persistent urban myth about 'little people'. Down by the river in the steel yards, the masts of cranes and old towing rigs and logging booms, draped with rags of old morning glory, were hunting posts for barn owls who stretched their wings and flicked them as you passed. There was a kind of bat, one the size of a peregrine falcon, that hunted from building to building over the lighted intersection on 5th and Morrison, soaring like a miniature pterodactyl, long translucent wings stretched across a rack of skeletal fingers, small head turning inquisitively as it called and listened.

___________________

Portland was a large town that had expanded and engulfed many smaller ones, like any city does, I guess. A modern neighborhood development would be built up around the remains of the cities old horse-drawn trolley barns, the old wood buildings swaying and bellying, the vented cupolas laying on the ground. In the middle of the grimmest industrial district you would run into half a block of empty old Carpenter Gothic homes with scalloped shingles and wooden lace. Often you'd find a small section of abandoned shops...one or two blocks of false fronted buildings with weed maples growing out of the sandstone foundation blocks, plank siding painted with advertising for Bull Durham Tobacco, Liptons Tea or Fischers Mills, the corner gingerbread decorations wadded with old robins' nests. The coved shop entrances each held a windblown drift of dirt, accumulated leaves and trash. I would sit on the ledge out of the breeze and light a smoke, lift the old leaves and papers and find small frogs fast asleep like little square cut emeralds, or tiny fat salamanders black and shiny as patent leather.
And not a sound. Not a soul. Not a single car.
_______________________________


One evening just after the sun went down behind the tall buildings, when the sky was still violet and orange I was walking through an abandoned neighborhood, enjoying the incredible heavy perfume of the old cabbage roses that wanded out out over the sidewalk. I'd stop occasionally and peer through rusty spear tipped fences at the old Victorian residences, walls of blind wooden bay windows sagging into the grass, roofless Queen Anne tower houses through which swallows circled and drifted like schooling fish in the gloom. I always walked along with a sense of something cool waiting just up ahead. Mysterious statues listing in the fireweed, unexpected garden flowers emerging beneath overgrown trees. Once I saw a whitetail deer standing on a sagging porch, sniffing the places where someone last laid their hand, on the railing or the post or the door.

I stopped in the bay entrance of an old shop and lit a smoke. The flare of the match lit up the interior for a second. I could just make out what I took to be old scenery flats or lobby cards or advertising of some kind ranged along the walls inside.

Well well well.

Now I'm not a thief, but I also knew without even pausing to think about it that I'd be coming back with more than a clawhammer to do a little nocturnal antique collecting.

I tried the door and looked up at the transom window, sat back down and finished my smoke.
While I sat there the last sunrays came out from between some concrete warehouses and lit the interior of the shop behind me.

It wasn't lobby cards leaning against the walls; it was stretched canvasses.

It was a huge empty space, bare wood floors, with the old mercantile counters and shelves still intact along the walls, a couple of old, peculiar chairs here and there, the original gas fixtures still protruding from the walls. There were easels and tables in the back and jars all over the floor full of paint brushes and palette knives, buckets of varnish and thinner.

And the most amazing painting.

It was a huge, very lifelike painting of a very familiar man in a business suit, with details that revealed themselves by degrees and made you stop and re-examine the whole while you tried to believe what you were looking at. The composition came straight out of Medieval Christian iconography, and the execution was extremely sophisticated. Imagine a Dali, if Dali had studied with Jan van Eyck.

It was one of the oddest moments I've ever had in my life, standing there in the coming evening in the middle of an abandoned Victorian street, looking at the last thing I'd ever expected to see.

As I was walking away it suddenly occurred who the familiar-looking man in the painting was. The governor. Well, the dead governor, anyway-of Oregon.

The next time I saw it was in the Oregon Journal, headlined 'Controversial Tom McCall Painting* To Be Put On Public Display'-something along those lines. People were having a cow that their tax dollars had paid for 'psychedelic hippie art'.
I felt kind of proud. Way to go, art dude!
It almost made up for the fact that it hadn't been a stack of old movie posters.

___________________________
*and here it is!
http://www.orgov.org/McCallbeach.jpg
this obviously does not do the thing justice, but you can see that its not exactly your typical state portrait, either. the real thing is almost lifesized, and the colors really glow.

9th and Pine

I had a number of adventures while I was living in the Pine St. rat hole.


Most of these adventures involved the picturesque inhabitants of my building, although the surrounding neighborhood was filled with 'local color' as well (that color being kind of a weird brown with corn stuck in it.) Gosh, where to start?

-One evening I was walking down the sidewalk towards my place, carrying a sack of groceries, humming a little tune, smoking a cigarette. I noticed, a couple of blocks up, someone sitting in a doorway on the stairs. Not uncommon at all on a nice summer evening in Portland. Kind of uncommon in an industrial district, though. Probably a street person.

As I walked closer, several things became clear

1. This was not a street person.
2. Neither was he an employee of the nearby machine shops, because
3. his black Porche Targa was parked nearby, and he was wearing a dress shirt and a tie
4. but no pants
5. and was furiously whacking off.

As I approached he just kept on flailing away. I could actually hear it across the street: whappitywhappityfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfap.

He gave me a friendly smile. "Nice evening, huh?"

I nodded. "Yup. Have a good one."

"Oh, I will," he said.

____________________

I was two doors down from a tavern called The Union Jack. It was just exactly the kind of place you'd expect in that area; doorway nailed and re-nailed with boards and patch steel, black and shiny with old piss. You didn't want to walk too close to the building because unwelcome customers regularly came cannonballing out the doors. This place was so disgusting, so sleazy, in fact, that the owner actually tried to 'class it up' by billing it as a 'biker bar'. It was not a biker bar. It was a derelict bar. But that did not stop its habitues from trying to class themselves up similarly by billing themselves as 'bikers'.

One of these 'bikers' lived in my building and called himself Fat Mark. Well, he was fat; round as a bowling ball in fact. It was clear to everyone but Fat Mark that the closest he had ever come to riding a motorcycle was clothespinning a bunch of playing cards to the spokes of his Schwinn. He made himself a 'cutoff' to hide the 'patch' on his (vinyl ) 'leather' , and ran around talking about his 'hawg'.

The owner of the Union Jack had given Fat Mark a job. Fat Mark claimed he was employed there as a bouncer. And strictly speaking he was; if you walked past the back of the building around 10pm you could see Fat Mark bouncing garbage cans into the back of a pickup truck, or bouncing cases of napkins in through the kitchen entrance while somebody inside screamed 'get a move on you fat fuckin' punk!"

That was not punk as in 'punk rock'.
It was punk as in 'spent six years up in Rocky Butte hanging off someones belt loop '.

Every Friday, when Fat Mark was feeling flush, he used to like to pay a couple of local businesswomen to come up to his place and sex each other down. During this encounter he never did a thing; never even seemed to enjoy it much, according to them. What he was doing, essentially, was buying advertising. He wanted a reputation as a bad man; and most of all he wanted a reputation as a straight man. He figured that if the word out on him was that he went through two women at once then everyone would think 'Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang!"
The word that went out on him was "Cash Friday means he's ready for plucking without any fucking."
______________________________

-Over a period of a couple of months an extended family of eleven souls took over the entire streetside end of our building. That they were family was never in question. The whole lot of them looked exactly the same.
What did they look like?
Imagine if you will that the Pillsbury Dough Boy had committed an unspeakable act with Little Poppy, and that the result was a Pillsbury Sideshow Fetus.
Kinda like that. Only not bakers.

There was something so repellent and fascinating about this group that people would stop and look. Dead in their tracks. I saw it happen. Cars would slow down and the passengers would gape out the windows at them. In a neighborhood full of the sordid and the bizarre, these folks turned heads.

When they talked to each other they lapsed into a slurring, baby-pitched singsong. You could nearly understand them, but....not quite. You had to get the hang of it.

They were often clearly excited about things...a bug in the kitchen sink, a commercial they'd seen on television, a red car...it didn't take much. Something would set one of them off, and soon they were all up in each others faces, spit flying, flapping and lolloping like lobotomized elephant seals. "Wow! Did you see that guy in the red car? Yeah, that guy was fast! It was a red car! That guys car was red. Did you see that go by? That was a fast red car with a guy in it! Yeah, he was in that red car!"
For 45 minutes at a stretch.

It was better than television. And when they argued, which was frequently, it was simply not to be missed.

...yeah, well. Ya take your funny where you find it.

A late spring evening in Portland is something you savored. Everyone came out and sat in the yard, and the poorer the neighborhood the more people were out enjoying the air.
The Whateleys* were no exception. They barbecued all spring and summer long, out on their porch by the street, and you'd have thought the circus came to town. People would drive around the block to catch another glimpse. I used to sit out on my rail and smoke, and I frankly watched them almost every single evening.

Two of them would be smooching so loud and enthusiastically that the saliva ran down their faces and stained their shirts. The others would smoke and mill around, occasionally getting right up in each others faces suddenly and exclaiming 'Gnwe gonna have gnot gogs! Gnou wike gnot gogs? Yum! Gnot gogs ah good! I gnove gnot gogs! Gnwe gonna have'em!"

Another would be turning the hot dogs on the grill with tongs. They frequently landed on the porch and rolled off onto the sidewalk. Then he'd hang over the railing and yell at passers-by to hand them back up to him.

One evening a cat slipped out from under their front steps and snagged an errant sausage, that quick.

Holy fucking Pandemoniac Hell broke lose.

Mutants were leaping off the porch and over the railings, hooting and freaking, trying to fit through the plumbing access and getting caught, running up and down the sidewalk, trying to lift the porch up, trying to stop passing cars. The one on the porch with the tongs overturned the barbecue in his excitement, and then hopped around trying to pick up briquettes with his fingers, yelling "Gnammit, gnriqettes! Gne' back heow! " dropping them and flapping and then trying to pick them up again.

One of his buddies down on the sidewalk yelled up 'Gnickem widjo shoes!' Barbecue Guy obliged by kicking the whole red hot pile of them straight into the guys chest.

In this building, in this part of town, if you heard anything out of the ordinary outside, you STAYED THE FUCK INDOORS UNTIL IT STOPPED. Nonetheless, people were now opening up their windows and coming out on their porches to gape in amazement.

A pack ran past where I was sitting on my porch, exclaiming "Da gnat got owah gnot gnog! A gnat got owah ho gnog! Godda go gnach da gnat!"

"He probably went down in the basement," I said.

"Gnasemen! Gne do ina gnasemen!" they exclaimed to each other. "Weh da gnasemen'?"

"It's that big pair of doors around back that looks like a garage," I said.

Soon I could hear a whole host of feet kicking at the padlocked double doors at back of the building. I ran through my apartment and looked out my bathroom window-sure enough, there they were, kicking the doors, beating on it with their fists and shouting. "Gnopen uh! Gnopen da do! Hi' won gnopen! Wha we gon do?"

When I came back outside barbecue guy was hollering down to someone on the sidewalk "Ca oo get doze gniquettes? I needem! Gnose gnriquettes! Hanem up!"

This is when I saw Gnran'ma Whately waddle slowly out of their front door.

You seldom saw her. When you did, it explained a lot. She was bald and her arms and legs were wrapped in ace bandages. She always wore a flowered house dress and it was always shredded and hanging in thin strings in the back. You felt like looking away when you caught sight of her scalp, the flesh of her arms or her chins... translucent white, with clearly visible veins and capillaries, creased with grey waxy accumulations of dried filth. You felt like it, but you couldn't.

Gnran'ma was carrying a dish.

She waddled down the steps and disappeared around the corner.

When she came back, the dish was filled with charred black hot dogs.

She heaved herself back up the steps, leaned over the railing and bellowed "Gni go da gnot gogs! Gni go da gnot gogs! Gome eet! Is' gonna be gon iffen you gon gome ee!"

And the whole group came racing around the sides of the building and down the alley like a herd of mutant sea cucumbers. Straight into the house, slammed the door.

The entire building busted out into hysterics. Junkies, winos, whores, schizophrenics, everyone. We just howled. It was awesome.


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*Not their real names, but if you're up on your HPL (and you SHOULD BE) you'll know exactly what I mean by that.