12/27/4 - Salem to Port Wentworth, GA

Well, looks like I'm off on a long roadtrip to Georgia. I sure am hopin' the Weather-Gods will be kind to me.
Before leavin', I figured I'd show y'all the kinds of dumb-ass signs I usually find when I'm drivin' across the States.
See ya when I get back! keep an eye out and take care of this nice little town y'all got here.
-Tom

12/21/4 - Outlet-Mall to Home

I realize that it isn’t a Sunday in the middle of June. And with only a few days til Christmas, I guess this must seem a strange thing to say, so I’ll explain.

On the way home from some last-minute shopping with my friend Rick Moody, we started talking about our fathers. How every year they’d get into the garage and unpack the Christmas lights and hang them in bitter cold, shovel snow out of the driveway, pack all of us kids into the car for the tour of lights on our street, how they’d tell us in that fatherly tone that we would not open a single-present, under any circumstances, until Christmas morning. It seems to me now that all of this was done without much complaint or excitability; unlike Rick and me, who were totally pissed and worn out from our relatively simple shopping-trip to an outlet-mall.

Fathers use acronyms. Fathers refold maps; fathers like to appear as though they have infallible knowledge of direct routes between any two points. Fathers are purveyors of ethics.

My dad was a salesman and never appeared to be quite comfortable at home to me. I always thought he didn’t really appear in my life until I was seven. He was in-residence before that - the early-years, sure - but in a way more erratic than fatherly. I always supposed he flourished at his office but when he got home, he merely made his way around the premises. His most frequent expression was one of furrowed skepticism. He dressed casually but never sloppily. My dad wore Top-Siders and cable-knit sweaters and tweed jackets with patches on the elbows. He had thinning hair and was slim. He was, compared to me, very large. He was a behemoth. My childhood interest in dinosaurs—in the T. Rex or the Pterodactyl—was really a metaphorical interest in dads. My dad dispensed incontrovertible orders. And we executed these orders. But my father was also a cipher to me, a mystery, an enigma.

Fathers may offer standard-issue praise, such as “Attaboy!” “Stick with it!” or “Way to go!” Fathers are able to dispense paternal wisdom even in a semiconscious or unconscious state. Fathers dispense advice that they spurned themselves.

My dad hated noise. The noise of kids, the footsteps of kids, herds of kids. He had immediately married right out of school, spawned his first child ten months after marrying, two more by the time he was twenty-six. He had no idea how he was going to pay. He had no idea how he was going get us through college, how to manage teenage rebellions or any of the unpredictable adolescent stuff. The noise of kids made my dad crazy because he was not actually watching football on TV, or the news, or whatever; my dad feigned watching TV. He was actually quietly brooding about how he was going to pay. Up on the second floor of our house, I would be throwing a pile of shoes and toys, one by one, at my brother and he would be crouched and screaming behind a desk, when suddenly we would hear the sound of my father’s voice in the stairwell, “What the hell is going on up there?” And we would fall into our brief, shameful silence, an anxious silence so familiar as to have preceded our very births.

Fathers appear to us without condition if only we can interpret their complicated language. Fathers move over expanses of time, across abysses of generations; fathers move across impediments, opening out, softening, becoming unguarded, giving away the rules of fathers to younger, angrier men; fathers, over time, become attentive and kind, regretful and warm, sensitive and even, gentle.

He was a dad: clocking in and out, getting vested in the pension-plan, taking the car to the garage for repairs, catching the 5:02, showing me how to throw a baseball, putting up Christmas lights, and eventually, moving somewhere else and writing the child-support checks.
So, why was I stunned this week when he waxed artistic, literary-truth over the phone of Melville, Dickens, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy? Turns out, Dad was a Lit-Major with hopes and dreams way-back when.
Who knew?
“You’re a good writer Tom, keep it up,” he said.
“Thanks Dad,” I told him.
“Sure Tom…it’s true. I sure wish your Grandfather had said that to me.”

The resistance to fathers is honorific, and resistance to fathers is always the last lesson in the instruction of fathers. Fatherhood knows that it is honored by its offspring’s contempt.

A whole sequence of fathers looking backwards for answers, ultimately finding that the most impossible father, with the most draconian set of regulations, was not in a living-room preparing to lecture us, but cradled inside of us and impossible to dislodge.
Happy Father’s Day/Merry Christmas Dad.
-Tom

12/11/4 - Longview to St Helens

There's nothin' like a cold Saturday morning with the loadin'-dock forman in Longview. Honestly, I was surprised he was even there and from the looks of things, he was too. "Grab me a cup-a-coffee Tom, willya?" he asked me in a subdued (and somewhat-shocking) civilized manner. And I figured, what the hell - it's the Christmas season: even the loadin'-foreman could catch the 'bug'. So following his first short-sip from a hot cup-a-joe I brought him from the Dispatch-office, why was I actually surprised when he winced at me and said, "Christ T*******," (he usually calls me by my last name) "I could get used to yer brown-nosin'." (followed by his cynical laugh)
I just about blew a gasket. And in fact, I actually did a few minutes later when Lorraine called me on my cellphone to remind me about pickin' something up from Safeway on the way home.
"Just let it be Tom," she advised in her beautiful forgiving voice. "He always likes to push your buttons, because he knows it works...I think it's sweet you brought him his coffee this morning."
And with that, it all went away. Poof - vanished in an instant- courtesy of my wife's beautiful mind and voice. And I'm here to tell ya that a few minutes later, I was still feelin' grateful and lucky after signin' his log-papers and handin' him back his pen with a, "Happy Holidays Jimmy, I'm glad I could getcha yer coffee this morning."
"Screw you T*******," was his reply. It didn't faze me in the least as I climbed into my truck.
Yeah, he knows how to push my buttons, because he 'installed' a few of them over the years.
The day was uneventful in St Helens, except for one brief instance: Coming out of Safeway, I noticed a small group of shoppers gathered around the Salvation Army bellringer. Turns out the 'ringer' was State-Rep. Betsy Johnson from Scappoose. I smiled and threw a few bucks in. To which Ms. Johnson smiled back, looking me in the eye and offering me her genuine, "Thank you, and Merry Christmas!"
I didn't see any news cameras around to film her doin' this. And I know there is a few of you out there in internet-land that might say that what she was doing at a Safeway on a Saturday morning in St Helens was self serving or whatever. I've got news for ya: Betsy was doing this very quietly. No publicity; no ulterior motives.
One thing y'all should all know about me: I'm a man who still believes in Santa Claus. I believe in the 'bug' of Christmas. Because as I see it, if I ever lose that, a LOT goes along with it. I always give it my best every year to reconnect with my childhood wonder. To never lose touch with my inner hopes and beliefs of Mankind's good-will, grace and love for one another.
Happy Holidays Lorraine!
Happy Holidays loadin'-dock foreman Jimmy!
Happy Holidays Betsy!
Happy Holidays Bill, and to all of you sthelensupdate readers!
Happy Holidays St Helens!
This sure is a nice little town y'all got here.
-Tom

12/6/4 - Astoria to St Helens

It always is nice to be back in this nice little town y'all got here. These last few trips, I seem to be makin' a beeline to Wayne's Hotdog Truck every time I roll into town. Besides the fan-friggin'-tastic dogs and hot-sandwiches, I'm usually able to shoot the bull with all the others hangin' around and catch up on the news in town. The talk circlin' round the dogtruck this particular day was about replacin' Sen. Joan Dukes being that she was appointed to the NW Power Planning Council by Governor K. Everyone agreed it was a no-brainer and that Betsy Johnson was the shoe-in. So the question became who will take Betsy's place? They were sayin': Rosemary Lohrke, Rita Bernhard, George Dunkle, Gary Heide, Dianne Dillard, Margaret Magruder. The way the process works is that the Democratic Central Committee with the largest population (Columbia County) puts together a list of people that they would like, and then County Commissioners from the affected regions make their decision. If they can't arrive at an acceptable candidate, then the final decision is made by Governor K.
Of all the people I heard talked about, I was intrigued with Margaret Magruder. Margaret was a former chair of the Oregon Board of Ag. and is the Coordinator of the Lower Columbia River Watershed Council. She also raises sheep and this is where it gets interesting. Turns out that Margaret is a part of a newly formed company of local sheepgrowers, Oregon Shepherd, who are manufacturing a wool insert that is placed into stormwater-drain catch-basins. This wool-insert filters sediment and pollutants like hydrocarbons from stormwater that runs off streets and parking lots following heavy rainfalls and trap these pollutants before they head into our rivers and streams. They tested these wool-filters in storm drains at the Port of Portland, Freightliner Corporation in Portland, and Clackamas County. The successful trial-run encouraged them to begin marketing them. And here's what is really great: most catch basin filtration products in use today are made out of polypropylene—very durable, but non-biodegradable. Margaret and Co.'s wool insert is made of natural fibers that not only capture and remove environmental pollutants, but can then be composted after use—normally about eight months to a year. The wool inserts are also relatively inexpensive—expected to be much less than $100 each.
“The polypropylene inserts have to be put in the landfill, whereas our inserts do not create another source of pollution,” Magruder said.
Ok...now that's one smart lady. Talk about a no-brainer! As I see it: there's the person ya want in Salem watchin' your backs.
Take care of things in this nice little town y'all got.
-Tom

12/1/4 - St Helens to Snowflake, AZ

I'm on a long haul. Listenin' to Moby Dick on tape. I was riveted to Chapter 23, which is short, (six inches long Melville says). Ishmael watches the sailor Bulkington steerin' the Pequod and writes of him as a restless pioneer, fated to die at sea. And he considers this kind of death infinitely preferable to fading away through cowardice and comfort:

"When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.
Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"

Better is it to perish in that howling infinite. Talk to y'all when I get back.
-Tom