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November 5, 2019

Oregon Tavern Age: Questions

Oregon Tavern Age begins with a list of questions that I’ve been asked by complete strangers during the course of two decades of OTA investigations…I have often wondered if something unusual about my appearance instigated the asking of these questions, some so random and bizarre that they almost defied answering. Almost.

Here are some of the questions:

Do you want some fresh trout?

Are you the FBI agent who shot Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge?

Do you want to hear a story about Paul Newman?

You wanna craft?

Are you Colin Farrell?

Are you Jeff Bridges, the actor in “King Kong?”

You want to see my pig?

Are you Jim Carey?

Did you know I saw Barbra Streisand wearing sweat pants?

Do you want to die?

Will you dance with me?

Wanna hold my glass eye?

Wanna know why I got drunk on Christmas morning and put my fist through the aquarium?

Did you know Clark Gable had sex in here?

Can I fix your hair?

Do you know how much cocaine Jack Nicholson snorted in here?

Why did Marvin Gaye have to die?

Where do you think the Nelsons are today?

Is cognac from Yugoslavia?

Do you know I built a stripper pole in my living room?

Did you know Lewis and Clark were really gay?

Do you know how drunk I really can get?

Where’d you get all that dirt?

You want some octopus fritters?

Do you want some smoked smelt?

Who would ever want to be a proctologist?

Do you know why I like eating raw meat on a white plate?

You know what it’s like to mow 30 acres on meth?

I’m lookin’ at a real man, aren’t I?

Are you a rocker?

Are you in the rock zone?

Did you know that I learnt pool in prison?

You know how much fun it is to blow the head off a sea lion?

Do I have a purty mouth?

Wanna hear the story of the guy who died on that stool?

Ever had a limb amputated?

What is time?

You like canned corn?

You want a car?

You think a dye grinder would cut off my chastity belt?

You know a man had his ashes flushed down the toilet in here?

You know what it’s like to buy a boat from a dead man?

To order your copy of Oregon Tavern Age, visit nestuccaspitpress.com and thanks for supporting an independent Oregon publisher.

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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.