fallcreek

February 1, 2019

Elk Drive-Thru

I stop in for some elk drive-thru. There they are, all males, 20-30, old dudes with lots of points, lounging in a pasture with some geese.

I just put in a call to an old friend, someone I deserted years ago in her time of cancer. I will work hard to reclaim a friendship that began in the 1980s. I will have to earn her trust and follow through. Follow through. That’s what it’s all about—in everything.

What a place to write, on a bench with elk a hundred feet away.

Random non-elk thoughts enter my mind:

How come I can’t find a real wool or fake wool crew or v-neck sweater in thrift stores? There used to be hundred, thousands. Not a single one in years. (I have one left and it is unraveling as I write this.) All fleece and shiny acrylic pullovers! Fleece totalitarianism! How did this style ever take over (white) men’s outerwear fashion? I don’t want to look like a martinet college football coach on the sidelines or lying at press conferences. I want to look like a writer or old fishermen or scotch sipper!

You can’t make art wearing fleece! You can’t tend a burn pile wearing one!

In the big city, I will meet a woman I met on a mountain. I’d never met anyone on a mountain before. It’s sort of a thrilling prospect to see where such an initial meeting might go.

Reunions are afoot. New work might be materializing. I want to work.

My beach installation has reached nine forts.

I assisted a woman on the beach who had lost her dog. Mission accomplished, but not then. We didn’t find the dog. She did later, but thanked me in a text for the attempt.

Reading two Westerns at the moment. One is by a female author, Jessamyn West. Her Massacre at Fall Creek, published in 1975, is a minor classic in the genre. Relevant today. Funny. Smart.

I want to write a modern Western. They still sell! None of the new ones published are ever set in Oregon. Why is that? And you never read about Westerns set at the ocean. I think I’d call my Western Meth Town.

I look up from my notebook. An elk is coming toward me. I put the notebook on the bench and wait. Waiting for elk.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

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

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

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.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

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.