October 29, 2017

A Good Kick in the Ass

I walked south down the beach in a heavy fog. Or was it north? The ocean was there but not there.

Something in the sand caught my eye. I picked up it up: a tiny toy cowboy boot in the sand. It wasn’t exactly Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand” but I’d take it. Anything cowboy, like Thin Lizzy’s “The Cowboy Song” or “Come back Shane” or disseminating my collection of cowboy shirts to homeless men on the North Oregon Coast. It always makes me smile when I see a Warrenton man wearing one.

I raised the brown boot to the sky, then brought it closer for inspection. I stood it on a rock and a driftwood round and a sand dollar. It was a good cowboy boot for kicking someone’s existential ass and I mimicked the boot kicking someone’s ass.

Wait! I thought. Why not my ass? I needed a good kick in the existential ass and I had found the perfect cowboy boot to do so. A lone galosh would never work for the metaphor. Neither would someone telling me to bend over and then kicking me. I needed the kick from within.

There I was, in the fog, wearing a damn cowboy shirt and the cowboy boot began kicking me in the ass. I even told it to: Okay, boot, get to work!

Kick me out of depression.

Kick me out of the past; kick me into the future (it’s not the same thing).

Kick me into 12-hour writing days.

Kick me into facing the faces and walking the walk.

Kick me out of the tiny darkened corners of marginalization.

Kick me into new vistas.

Kick me through the keyhole of a keyhole limpet.

Kick me into the path of a stray dog.

Kick me into realms of new writing and publishing.

Kick me into the place of becoming a kick ass ass kicker in life.

Kick me toward a real ass kicker who wants to help me kick ass in life.

I sat down on a log. Getting repeated kicks in the ass is exhausting. It also hurts. It also feels pretty good.

The cowboy boot found a home in the pocket of my corduroy duster. I carried it home and placed it on the shelf near the toy beaver. I look at the boot every now and then.

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The Old Crow

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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.

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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.

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The Savage

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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.