2005-04-26 - 6:53 a.m.
We were living in Ashland, Oregon.
I love Ashland; if I could settle for good in a place of my choosing, it would be there. It's got everything that appeals to me.
To start with, it's a college town - something which brings with it a certain vitality and attitude of ever-changingness (my word). It's also a theater town; there are something like five performing arts theaters in Ashland. Every year the town holds a Shakespearean Festival and the whole world is invited - many of the invitees attend. It's also an artist’s community, home to woodworkers, glass blowers, painters and a host of other kinds of artist.
I think my favorite thing about Ashland is the old hippie populous. One of my best friends had a "No Nukes" sign hanging on the outside of his house and a bowl of mushrooms (yes, those kind) sitting on top of the TV set. His mom was an ultra-liberal, like many of the town's inhabitants. They even have a food co-op...charming.
Something else I really dig is the transient religious population - the cults. There was this one cult that went around in white sheets with big, yellow lightening bolts painted on them; these folks called their group "Jesus-Christ-Lightening-Amen."
The town had a well oiled feeling about it and the air breathed in like music - everything there seemed so sweet. I loved the sun-soaked days I spent sitting in Lithia Park listening to street musicians and watching the broad smiles go by in the green. I miss it still.
We had moved down from Prospect - a little logging town in the Crater Lake Basin, where my mother had married the town drunk. I'm not kidding; marriage number five was to Jim, the town drunk.
Jim was once the All-American boy - high school baseball star, football star, track star...he had it all. He was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers, but opted not to play professional baseball, rather stay back home for a girl that he loved.
A couple of hunting accidents and several bottles of alcohol later, Jim was the town drunk, barley able to walk and living at home with his emphysema ridden mother.
We had just moved to Ashland. I think my mother was trying to get Jim out of his element; he was attending church and "dry" and she wanted to keep it that way. We were living in a trailer, in a trailer park just on the edge of town.
One afternoon my mom and I arrived at the trailer to find Jim and everything in the trailer missing. When I say everything, I mean like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas everything. There wasn't so much as a thread on the carpet - I think whoever took everything must have vacuumed to make sure that they got every speck of life out of the trailer.
It was about that time that Jim stumbled up to the trailer, toting a bottle, drunk off his ass.
He had sold everything in the trailer for $30.00 - the number 30 has not escaped my attention.
There was a brief exchange of loud words. There were tears. There was me, holding myself back with every ounce of my being - I think I would have killed him. It wasn't the first time I had felt that way.
We left. We just left...again.
My childhood was filled with "again."
