5/30/5 McCormick Park, St Helens

Around 10:45 this Monday, at McCormick Park by the VFW Memorial, St Helens veterans, blue/gold-star mothers, and citizens will all gather together to pay our respects and to recognize Memorial Day.
I feel no compunction in saying that it's indeed ironic it is also the one day of the year when President Bush and his administration must acknowledge our otherwise officially-invisible war dead in Iraq.
For the rest of us, recognizing our shared humanity brings home to us the size of the tragedy in every single life lost in war(s), and ideally teaches us that in a real "culture of life" the decision to go to war is never taken lightly.
We memorialize the names and faces of our dead to remind ourselves that each one of them was an individual just like us, who valued his or her life no less than we do, and whose death is a tragedy for those left behind no less than ours would be for our loved ones.
-Tom

5/22/5 - Home to Church to Bar to Home

What on earth are you doing God?
Is this some sort of joke you're playing?
Is it 'cause we didn't pray?
Well I can't see the point of the words without the action...
Are you just hot air breathing over us?
And overall, is it fun watching us all?

Where's your son? We want him again.
And the next time you send your boy down here,
Give him a wife and a sexy daughter - someone we can understand.
Someone who's got some ideas we can really relate to...

We've all read your rules - tried them.
Learned them in school, then tried them
They're impossible rules - you've made us look fools
Well done God...but now please, Don't hunt me down for heaven's sake!
You know that I'm only joking.
Right?

Pardon me - I'm very drunk, but I know what I'm trying to say
And It's nearly night time and we're still alone waiting...
For something unknown...
Still waiting...
So throw down a stone or something...
Give us a sign for Christ's sake.
(with apologies to Robert Wyatt)

5/18/5 - Clatskanie to St Helens

I wasn’t even in town and yet over the past few days, I heard two news items from Columbia County all the way up in my neck-o-the-woods of Washington: a black-bear was loose in Scappoose on Tuesday morning and that the County Sheriff’s Dept. was considering charging inmates $10 per day for daily jail-cell “rental”. Lorraine was outraged by that story until I informed her of the fact that the Columbia County Sheriff’s Dept. has the same number of officers on duty today as it did in 1958. After hearin’ this bit of information, she wondered how somethin’ like that was even possible. Being that we were watching FOX news, I’m not sure what ended up happening to the wanderin’ bear.
So as I was wolfin’ down hot-dogs at the Wayne’s truck yesterday, this was the first question on my mind: just who deals with roaming bears if they invade town? I found out the answer from Randy, the best hot-dog man this side of Chicago.
Apparently, a wounded coyote had crawled under a shed on his property out in Yankton and after clearin’ away his five swarming dogs, he quickly called Animal Control for help. They said “nothin’ doing” for any wild animals and advised him to call the State Police. The State Police told him that an officer would call him back as soon as they could (this was a few days ago and Randy still hadn’t heard back). Randy then phoned his family vet who could only advise a call to the Sheriff’s Dept. - as if that would do anything. They both even had a good laugh over the phone about it.
“Yeah Randy, me an’ Lorraine were just talkin’ the other night about the Sheriff’s Dept. and their lack of manpower,” I told him.
“It’s disgusting,” Randy editorialized before continuing on.
So, out Randy went with a shotgun in hand to finish off this poor coyote with its coyote-mate watchin’ from the far side of Randy’s pasture.
“Ever try an’ do that Tom?”
“What…Shoot a coyote?” I asked.
“Nah, I mean shoot a wounded anything; shoot some living-breathing creature looking straight into your eyes with its mate watching? I might as well have been tryin’ to kill myself. I just couldn’t seem to work-up the nerve to do it.”
Fortunately, things turned out that Randy didn’t have to pull the trigger, because as he was about to, a Columbia County Sheriff’s Car pulled up out of nowhere. Apparently, they had heard of Randy’s trouble over the State Police scanner.
“I’ll be damned,” I told him as he scurried about in the hotdog truck.
“Yeah, the last thing I would have ever predicted,” Randy sighed as he served up a steaming brat and sauerkraut to another hungry customer.
Possibly, the most amazing thing was that the Sheriff’s officers had a some sort of wildlife expert with them in the car as they were out on some other business.
“And these guys, headed straight out to my place to take care of my problem,” Randy said, still somewhat shocked. “I know Phil Derby and most of the guys who work their butts off in the Sheriff's Department and this was one of those times when they went above and beyond their call of duty…their busy call of duty.”
“Wow, that’s somethin’...and just what happened to the coyote?” I wondered.
“The wildlife officer put the coyote out of its misery and followed up by taking detailed notes for the report he wrote up. Turned out that somebody shot it for no apparent reason at all, other than being just another yelping coyote,” he said. “That’s just stupid. I really wonder about some people out here sometimes.”
That’s when another fella around the truck interjected with the fact of a Sheriff Levee due to be voted on this year.
“If we don’t pass it this time around, we really are idiots out here,” he said rather heatedly.
Maybe he was just hungry or maybe he has a point.
Take care of things around here.
-Tom

5/10/5 - North Bend to St Helens

I ran across “Weyerhaeuser Henry” yesterday in North Bend, Oregon.
I always enjoy catchin’ up with W.H. even though lately, he’s been nothin’ more than a self-righteous, bitter liberal. But, what-the-hell, I really can’t get on him too much for that, seeing how things have been going these days.
So, I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that he hadn’t changed much, when after my introduction of, “Well, Godammit W.H., how ya holdin’ up?”, Henry let me have it.
“How d’ya think Tom? Bush and his crony-criminals have taken this country back 75 years, I hafta hear DeLay and Frist’s crap justabout every day, Robertson, Falwell and all of them religious-shysters are completely out-of-control and for-Christ-sake Tom, just what the hell’s going on in that town you’re always bloggin’ about?”
“Whaddya mean?” I asked, happy that he’d been keepin’ up with my blog.
“Well, I’ll tell ya just what I mean Tom: I’ll be up in Rainier, Columbia City and Scappoose next week with SOLV,” he angrily explained, “and I suppose St Helens is now in the league of a Paris or a New York or somethin’? Are they too good for us?”
Wow. I really didn’t know what to say to Henry who has been an active volunteer in SOLV for years. SOLV, for those who don’t know, is a non-profit organization that brings together government agencies, businesses and individual volunteers in programs and projects to enhance the livability of Oregon.
“We’ll be cleanin' up at Datis Park and Pixie Park in Columbia City on May 20th and the next day we’re in Rainer and Scappoose…and NOTHIN’ IN ST HELENS! So I guess we’ll just head down the Columbia River coast line and skip St Helens…I mean, are the citizens of Ranier and Columbia City and Scappoose more enlightened than people in St Helens?”
"Well, some people in St Helens make it as hard as possible to pick up trash and clean things up," I offered back, not botherin' to explain any further.
"It's a cryin' shame Tom, that's all I hafta say."
“Jeez W.H., I’ll hafta let ‘em all know,” was all I could muster back.
So...ahem...
SOLV’s annual Down by the Riverside event has thousands of volunteers build trails, plant trees, shrubs and seeds, create gardens, remove invasive species, and cleaning up litter, and a number of other projects that will enhance parks and greenspaces. If you’d like to help out, you can visit www.solv.org or call 1-800-333-SOLV (7658) for specific site information including project details and date and time listings.
Keep things clean and take care of business in this town y’all…ya hear?
-Tom

5/4/5 - Astoria to St Helens

Y’all know by now that I love talkin’ with just about anybody I meet on the road, and I really love conversations with those folks who leave me wondering what the hell I’d just heard. That being said, I’ll try to recapture just what the hell I heard from the sharp old timer I ran across at the St Helens Marina on Wednesday.
I was down there lookin’ for this Fish and Chips place that in fact, was no longer in business. While at the dock snoopin’ around, I ran into this old guy who was a dead ringer for any prototypical old sea character on that 60's TV-show SeaHunt: with his funny navy-blue sea-captain’s cap complete with a small gold anchor, his bushy white beard and leathery skin. He was quick to informally introduce himself to me with the fact that Fletcher’s Fish and Chips has been out of business for a year or so.
“Too bad too, they served up some good grub,” he said sadly while fiddlin’ around with some kind of nautical apparatus that I couldn’t recognize.
“What the hell is that?” I wondered.
“It’s an old sextant: A navigational instrument,” he patiently explained. “Ya see this graduated 60-degree arc? That’s used for measuring the altitudes of the stars and sky to determine latitude and longitude. Helps ya figure out where you're goin'.”
“Huh, and I just use the maps I buy at any Shell Station,” I joked.
Within two minutes we were like a pair of long lost army buddies, chattin’ away for a good hour. He was one sharp cookie, lemme tell ya, and not boastful at all.
After swappin' stories about gettin around at sea and gettin' by on land, I asked him: “So, what’s the biggest problem here in town?”
He scratched his beard lookin’ skyward and thought about my question awhile.
“It’s gotta be the Port of St Helens mess,” he concluded. “Ya got these local blowhards jockeyin’ for their new open seats, and they don’t give a damn about nothin’ but their own self-importance.”
I was all ears. “Hmmmm, I sure don’t know much about ‘em, or exactly what they do; so what’s the deal?”
“Well son,” he began, in a fatherly sort of way. “We’d be here all day, so I’ll just keep it simple and tell ya that they’re supposed to manage our ports and port-properties in the best ways that serve us citizens who use ‘em...NOW,” he suddenly emphasized, “I’m not sure that happens all of the time, especially when you get the type of people I just was tellin’ you about tryin’ to get in the position to run things.”
A sarcastic grin began to creep upon his old salty face as he continued.
“Now lessee...What is that fellas name…the chair of the Commission?” The old-timer was thinkin’ hard while scratchin’ his beard and looking skyward again. “Oh yeah, Avent! Mike Avent - Top-knotch, smart fella, but you see; he owns a lot of the land that he has to make his Port decisions around, ya follow me?”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
“Well, one of his pals is tryin’ to grab one of the open seats, I think his name is Pulliam…and along with the DeShazer gal, I’m a little worried we got a quorum of folks not necessarily interested in making decisions that are best for the rest of us…ya follow me?”
"It's not like there's a spare sextant layin' around to help navigate through this stuff either," I said dryly.
The old guy liked that joke of mine and let out a hearty belly-laugh.
Like my pal at the dock, keep an eye on things in this nice little town y’all got, ya hear?
-Tom