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October 5, 2020

Ode to a CD Jukebox

There you were,

in the parking lot of a dive bar,

strapped down in the bed of a beater pickup,

alongside Ms. Pac Man

and a toy retriever game,

all dead, all going

to the scrapyard.

Oh, CD jukebox, Oh noble Encore,

with the beautiful faux wood finish,

and a bitchin’ speaker system under the hood,

when were you last operational?

What was the song you last played?

I went up to you

and inspected the CD covers.

Steve Miller and Tina Turner.

New releases from 30 years ago.

Some crap. Some gold.

Were the CDs still inside you?

Had no one emptied the belly

of this rock beast?

Oh, the great times we had in the dive bars together in the halcyon days before digital, cashless abominations and their boring clouds of algorithms.

I loathe these internet machines.

No, I don’t want to download an app.

No, I don’t want a suggestion to accompany my choice.

No, I don’t want ads.

No. I don’t want the hive to know where I am when I pay with my Apple Watch.

It was always so great on a date

to give her a sawbuck

and ask her to choose

and watch her saunter over to the jukebox.

You can tell a lot about someone by how they choose songs on a jukebox.

I would wait, wait, wait for that first choice

and see if there was any hope for us.

Bad Company hell yes.

Red Hot Chili Peppers hell no.

Dusty Springfield—I’d propose right then and there.

I wonder if the Sportsman Tavern in Pacific City will ever forget the time I played “Gimme Shelter” by the Stones seven times in a row at the stroke of midnight and then walked out the door.

Doubtless, not one got out of there alive.

So long old friend. Rest in peace in recycle or the landfill.

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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.