Oregon Tavern Age: Deer

A large man with the biggest gut I’d ever seen in OTA country entered the South Jetty using a driftwood cane. He sported a white crewcut and wore a black, male equivalent of a mu-mu. I pegged him as post OTA, meaning anywhere from 70 to 200 years old.

He ordered a whiskey soda and wedged his formidable girth against the bar. The structure held.

The bartender remarked about his new haircut. He replied, “I got all my hairs cut, even the short hairs.”

Everyone laughed, including me. Then everyone went back to their business, which for me, was writing a love letter.

The man angled away from the bar, toward the tables, perhaps toward me, cleared his throat by downing his drink, and started telling stories. I stopped writing and listened.

His first story was lewd. The next one was about drunken home improvement. The third, a possible brush with Bigfoot. Then he began narrating the time, when, as a much younger and slimmer man, he stood on the edge of the Columbia River and saw a deer drowning as it swam to Deer Island. He dove into the current, swam to the deer, manhandled its head above water, somehow dragged it onto the island, rubbed its body to get the blood flowing, watched it revive, and then swam back to shore, cracked open a Hamm’s, and rested.

I took a drink of my beer and noticed the glass shaking a tiny bit. I looked around the bar. Nobody had heard him but me. I had just heard perhaps the greatest Oregon river and deer and Hamm’s story of all time and no one was around to confirm it. Who would ever believe me?

The man turned back toward the bartender and ordered another whiskey soda. The show was over. Our eyes had never met. I clapped a silent clap and began writing it up for Oregon posterity, if, in the future, Oregonians care for such stories. I have my doubts.

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