jello1

November 23, 2020

The New Joys of Jello Chronicles Part 1

My friend Gary gifted me an old book his ex wife left behind. Gary, his partner Linda and I had discussed the subject of this book several times in a dive bar with some hilarious nostalgia.

I opened the slim hardback New Joys of Jello. Hardback! That alone should have tipped me off to the tome’s delicious historical value I opened the New Joys of Jello and thus opened a slippery portal that transported me to 1979 when Jello was King, Queen, Jester, cool, far out, groovy and…yes, sexy. It was also that brief moment in time when Jello escaped Christian potlucks, funerals and holiday gatherings to get out and strut. Oh yes, what a golden gelatinous era that was—Jello could get you laid! Let me repeat that in all caps: JELLO COULD GET YOU LAID! I might add it was a time when one could eat the equivalent of a ham and egg sandwich in the form of a Jello dish with actual ham and egg suspended inside. Now that dish might not have gotten you laid at a swingers party, but it would have got you somewhere. I might also add that certain Jello dishes might have even made you better pass bowel movements, and in a suave way, too! Nothing like a laxative served in sherbet glasses!

It occurs to me that I am most likely the only writer in the world writing about the halcyon days of Jello.

It also occurs to me that if you are an American of a certain generation, you will have a good or bad Jello story. God do I have one! It involved green Jello and a booze cruise, I think. I was pretty drunk at the time.

I might add that a story about something that happened in connection to consuming Jello shots (a total vulgarity of a phrase) in a bar or party or camp out is not a Jello story that interests me in the least. Those are fraternity and fishermen stories of Fireball-infused Jello that bore me to death. They are not sexy or suave like Jello once was.

So on with the New Joys of Jello Chronicles, which will chronicle my mind meandering through this choice little book to speculate here and there where we once were as a culture and where we are now.

A final note: I haven’t eaten Jello in over 25 years and have never consumed a Jello shot.

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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.