Time To Return

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NEXT EXIT

I was ready. I didn’t tarry, except for a fuel stop in Hood River (ancestral home of Nicky Mustard and Alex Arrowsmith) and a couple old guy rest stops.

I hope I can keep the trip feeling going, unfolding understanding as I go along. I feel like I have changed, that something in me has been re defined. Maybe.

Too tired to nail it down now. It’s ok. I have time.

I took a little time to supplement the 3 hour I-5 trip on Friday the 14th. I do feel lucky, punk.

I went to the town I went to High School, Sutherlin Oregon, back in the 1970’s. I took the route north from Roseburg that my parents used to drive, on state highway 99. Their penchant for side roads probably instilled my urge to wander, and explore byways. So much stuff has changed, but a lot has stayed the same, surprisingly. At least I still recognize the layout. The hayfields were beginning to get filled in by the time I was a teenager, and the orchards were long gone. But the Plats I, K and B are still there, and Mt. Scott still defines the end of the valley.

My brother Jim and I spent a lot of time talking about change. What is better, and what is just different. I used to spend a lot of time bemoaning how life is not necessarily improved by progress, whatever that means. I came to realize that everything evolves and devolves, and that there is no apparent pattern to account for it. It just is, we just are, and whatever happens, we deal. _

RENT THE TURKEY HALL

Oakland Oregon has been trading on nostalgia for as long as I’ve been aware of it. I approve of that. Its downtown core is largely the same as it was a century ago, and it’s glorious, a tribute to obstinance, and being true to your roots. The bones are good. It’s time for the world to catch up. Places like Oakland are the past. And the future. It all boils down to where people find community.

I have numerous ties to this town. Mark Rochester taught at the high school, until he retired. He lives in Sutherlin. His brother Kent works in Roseburg and lives in Oakland. He is on the city council. His wife Jeanne works from home. They are all living lives in flyover/drive through country. They do what they can. Still interested in new things. Still active. It’s a good place to live.

My grandfather preferred it to Sutherlin. Sutherlin was too new fangled for him.

WANNA BUY A DUCK? WHY A DUCK, WHY NO CHICKEN

I went North on 99, across a recently renovated two lane bridge. I’ve traveled this route many times in my life, going to visit Eugene, and later coming back from Eugene to visit family after I moved there. I learned to drive on these roads. I learned about life on these roads. I can still recognize myself here, and the way that the landscape has changed, yet is still recognizable. Kind of like me. Interstate 5 is the artery that not only connects the north and south, it was an escape route for those of us who experienced the twilight of easy motoring, where you could put in a few bucks and cruise Central, or if you were feeling truly adventurous drive over to Roseburg and cruise Harvard. Go to Pete’s Drive-In and have their fries.

Until I met the Rochester boys, I never considered rolling up the 5 to Portland to see a show, which they did on the regular. On school nights even! They were the reason I started to see the world, see possibilities. To adventure. I even considered driving to San Francisco to see the Sex Pistols play Winterland on their ill fated last show. I couldn’t convince my parents to let me drive the car, and since I was 17, and still in high school, with no income to speak of, my options were limited. But, that I considered it? That was a sign of things to come, a world opening up to me.

All because of a road. A highway. That promised freedom. But at a cost.

I’m not done traveling. I still have a couple decades to go.

See you down the road.