June 26, 2017

Bonnie and Clyde Files 7

We made our way through the mowed pasture, Bonnie to the left, Clyde to the right. They were romping. I was noticing: a wasp nest the color of a rotten lime, streaks of mold decorating a solar panel, neon buds on new Sitka spruces. All three truly remarkable gradations of green that transfixed me until an osprey dive-bombed us and broke the spell. We had the pasture all to ourselves, except for the darting barn swallows and the mowing and baling machinery parked near a grove of 100-year-old willows that looked like a portal to a better realm. It was. I’ve took it.

Monday morning, Probation Meeting Monday Blues, sung off key for sure, but with down home conviction in a windowless room. Come to think about it: maybe more a country tune, with some gospel accents. Whatever the musical genre, hearing it will break your heart, I assure you. I Get My Heart Broken Every Monday Morning—what a song title! Now that I write it, definitely country.

Gray dominated the skies while drizzle fell. It also happened to be a summer morning on the Oregon Coast, or summer mourning as the tourists might say. Bonnie and Clyde were in fine form, hitting me up for treats, coming over for pets and rubs, and sniffing the wet earth for clues.

Thank god I found this crew when I did! They restore my spirit every time we hang out on the river. They chase away the line,“I tested hot for heroin,” or the image of dog food coupons fanned across a table in the lobby of the probation office—25 coupons. No blues or country song in that image, I assure you. Perhaps punk rock.

I took a gander at the river and whipped out the blue book and pen. I tossed treats to and from and Bonnie and Clyde bounded away. I took notes. I took notes on how much this pasture and these dogs reminded me of a mowed pasture and my dogs on the wildlife refuge so many years ago.

Get back I wrote. Get back to where you once belonged.

I’m working on it.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

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The Old Crow

Book Club

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In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

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Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

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In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.