An Oregon City Legend

After spending an afternoon at the library reading the current edition of The Atlantic, and trying not to lose my cool over the unceasing noises generated by employees and patrons to the point of making a formal complaint, I retired to a local dive for a beer. Can’t people shut up in libraries anymore?

I entered the joint and walked up to the bar. Three plates of chocolate cake with green icing graced the counter. The bartender informed me someone was having a birthday party. Did I want a slice?

No, I certainly did not. Beer does not go with cake. Crown Royal perhaps.

I ordered a local IPA and sat near my usual table because it was occupied by a woman drinking a pink cocktail and playing on her phone.

Hits from the 70s and 80s played over the PA. Duran Duran didn’t sound half bad.

Little League baseball played on television and the kids kept muffing ground balls while everyone in the stands watching them were watching their phones.

Zombies worked the slot machines. Three people sat at the bark and worked their phones.

I had brought along my notebook and thought I might write a letter or some drivel.

Inspiration wasn’t forthcoming.

I wished for the appearance of a homeless man or woman, which typically happens here. They always liven up the joint in ways people fiddling on their phones never can.

It was a weekday afternoon. I felt listless. I reflected on the morning’s news that a friend from high school was almost dead from pancreatic cancer. In fact, he was probably dead as I sipped my beer and eavesdropped on the woman’s conversation about caring for her truculent mother in a manufactured home somewhere in a nearby rural area. It wasn’t going well and she wanted out.

My dead classmate was a legend at Oregon City High School, a true daredevil who had ridden a motorcycle or climbed over the arch of the Conde McCullough arch bridge in downtown Oregon City, who had run the Seaside Marathon in Chuck Taylor’s after a night of drinking, and so on and so forth. The stories were legion and I didn’t a tenth of them.

I once bicycled the Oregon Coast in the early 90swith him and three other guys and I saw this madman sneak in behind a full log truck barreling down a steep grade somewhere just north of Coos Bay and draft inches behind the truck. He must have been going 70 miles an hour and was screaming like a berserker the whole time.

Rest in peace Steve Connolly. You were a true Oregon original and sucked all the marrow out of life.

I finished my beer and left. Outside a homeless man and woman sat at picnic tables and played on their phones as a dog looked on.