4/26/5 - Portland to St Helens

It was weird: Things were “different” in town today.
I had parked my rig down by The Klondike and was stretching my legs a bit before headin’ back home. Quietly and without warning, I saw a man wearin’ a long brown trench coat approaching me. He wasn’t making any eye-contact, instead he was looking down at the sidewalk. He also wore one of those old fedoras that men used to wear 50+ years ago in big cities, so I couldn’t quite make out his face. When he passed by me, he suddenly pulled his gaze up from the ground and gave me a crooked-smile and “the message”: It seems I need to watch my back and be careful not to name names.
What year was this…1953? Was I in a film-noir movie from the 50's?
I felt an abrupt pang of fear and became angry as I watched the stranger’s back make a slow getaway. I began thinking to myself that I was now this close to givin’ these Joe McCarthy bastards who are runnin’ things here in town a real piece of my mind.
Instead, I decided to secretly follow the man as he headed down towards the river. I was cautious to stay far enough back so I wouldn’t be detected. Like a spy, I tracked his plodding, slow movement. He headed left, walking so slow that I had to stop and pretend that I was window shopping, all-the-while tracking him in the window’s reflection.
A few minutes later, I watched the man suddenly stop and stand silently in front of the new amphitheater with both hands in his coat-pockets. As I drew nearer I noticed that the amphi-project had definitely progressed - “They” have planted grass on the steps, mowed and trimmed it and I must confess that it looked stunning.
I warily inched closer to the man who was staring straight-ahead in silence at the new stairs. Slowly, I approached his back. I was so good at this spy-game that I knew I could have plunged a knife in his back. Before I knew it, I was standing right beside him, not carin’ anymore that I had blown my cover. He didn’t flinch at all to see who was now suddenly next to him and it became clear to me that he must have known I had been following behind him the whole time.
For almost a minute, neither of us spoke as we gazed at the new stairs in silence. I was struck how stark the concrete stairs looked: completely out of place amidst the artistically designed rock work of Larry Buzbee’s Amphitheater. An unexpected gust of wind blew up from the river and broke the silence.
“You know that they neglected to place any of the buried electrical-conduits that Buzbee designed to be run beneath the concrete,” the man said straight ahead with out blinking.
“That’s unfortunate,” I began quietly, “because Larry certainly knew it would be necessary for any lighting and power-outlets for sound-amplification.” The man suddenly turned and looked at me. His eyes seemed sad.
“Why do you think that these people just didn't bother with it? Do they care about anything,” he said with a cold, emotionless tone and stare. “What we have now, is certainly something usable and somewhat appealing to the eye, but it also has the look of something thrown-together. It’s a piece of slapdash junk art!”
“Too bad, the people couldn’t have had a real work of art,” I empathetically offered back.”
“I guess the only thing artistic the City would have really considered was a giant dog statue constructed out of rebar and plaster,” he said sadly as he suddenly turned away from me and slowly headed back toward old-towne. He had resumed staring down at his feet. “Or maybe a mural of dogs playing poker,” he suddenly said to no one in particular.
“How about velvet pictures of Elvis.” I yelled back to him in my own sadness.
Keep watch and take care of things in this town, ya hear?
-Tom