July 14, 2018

Styrofoam Coffee Novel Notes

Fog grips a convenience store in the middle of Oregon nowhere, a throwback store secretly housing the greatest rock and roll vinyl collection in the state. I sit outside at a tilted plastic table, waiting for my order of drip coffee, two bucks, in a Styrofoam cup. It’s dripping now, lovely Folgers falling into the cracked pot. I love the taste of coffee served in a Styrofoam cup in the foggy morning. It feels like I’m not in a big city.

Blackbirds mass on the power line. Swallows bullet through the fog. Crows caw in the fields. Big trucks are rolling into the parking lot full of men ready to stock up on cigarettes and energy drinks. Many of the men sport the hangover look. But it’s a Friday and they’ll pull through and pour the concrete and hang the sheetrock like the pros they are.

I built a driftwood sculpture at dawn. I wasn’t thinking about anything while building. I did see a harrier ripping apart a dead seal and some otter tracks. I also saw a power couple in yoga pants Instragramming the ocean and their dog chasing sandpipers. They drank coffee from gleaming space-age mugs, twirled them aloft, and Instagrammed that as well.

I’ve made a new friend. He lives in a 30-year-old Chevy conversion van with his goofy shelter mutt. He regaled me with one of the best modern Oregon stories in recent memory. It just sits there, waiting, dying to be told. I’m not the person to tell it, but I think I can find someone who will take on this remarkable project. It’s going to make a hungry reporter’s career, assuming hungry reporters still exist.

It will hit over a hundred degrees in the Valley. That temperature will burn up Styrofoam and fry Instragramming phones. It might hit 55 here and the fog might burn off. I hope not. Fog suits my mood.

People will be driving to the coast after work or non-work to beat the heat. They will check into motels and then turn on air conditioners instead of opening windows. They will complain about the fog, cold, and wind. They won’t visit the beach. They will hunker down in Starbucks or line up at Dutch Bros.

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.)

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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

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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.

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.