Marine Drive Golf and Homeless Novel

I drove Marine Drive to a golf and country club. The club was hosting a memorial celebration for my recently deceased uncle. Earlier that day, I read my poem about him at a graveside service. It was 107 degrees when I read.

My mind felt fatigued as I drove. I was also in a somber mood. There has been so much death in my life the past six months. I’ve learned a lot about how different people react differently to death. Some are simply ill equipped emotionally or intellectually.

I didn’t stay long at the event. I got in my car and began driving out of the parking lot. Where I should have turned right toward home, I turned left, to head north up Marine Drive, toward a homeless encampment that I knew existed there. The encampment had made big news in recent days because the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) had decided to move the Portland Classic from a golf course near the encampment to a golf course in West Linn. LPGA officials claimed the move was made for player and fan safety.

Yes, safety from reality. As if golfers and their entourages wouldn’t see such unsettling, unseemly and dirty things driving in limousines from the airport, along Highway 205, 84, over central east side, and of course around downtown, where undoubtedly the golfers and their entourages will be staying in luxury hotels. Seeing homeless encampments surely isn’t good for your golf game and spoils the view from high above.

A prominent Portland sports columnist and sports radio host ripped Portland city officials for not sweeping the encampment around Marine Drive and other sports venues where fans and visitors have to see such places before they attend professional sporting events and downtown Portland tourist attractions. It was the columnist’s contention that these such important places should be prioritized for clean-up, because, well, it’s bad for business, and really bad for the tourism business.

Sports are conducted by humans and this column was easily the most inhumane piece about sports I’ve ever read. Had the columnist even visited the encampment he was writing about? Talked with the residents about their alleged role in the cancellation of the tournament? Now that possibly could have made for the column of the year.

As I said, it was hot, almost 109 when I approached the encampment on Marine Drive. I had to see it.

I saw it, some 50-70 battered and beaten and bombed-out, RVs, trailers and other assorted vehicles, parked single file on both sides of the road for a mile. Mountains of trash. There was no access to water there that I could see, nor any portable toilets. I saw very few people milling around the domiciles.

I passed through the encampment and rolled past some wetlands. I approached Marine Drive’s terminus. The Columbia River came into view.

I had just witnessed the most disturbing scene I’d ever witnessed in my country and I wanted to see it again.

I whipped the car around and saw the encampment again.

It was three times worse with the second viewing.

Thoughts filled my mind. I wanted professional golfers to see this encampment while playing in a tournament with a purse of $1.4 million. How would such a sight affect their swings and putts? Would playing professional golf in such intimate proximity to an American moral and public policy disaster induce grave doubts and deliberations inside the minds of any of the golfers?

I thought about writing a novel about that one golfer who did experience such a dilemma. The golfer would be on the verge of winning her first tournament but she just couldn’t swallow the privilege with so much squalor right off the fairways. Maybe she’d been homeless, once, and lived out of a van, trying to make the tour. Yeah, that was good! So, she quits right then and there…

That wasn’t the novel. The novel is about how the tournament is played on the golf course near the homeless encampment along Marine Drive and not a single golfer pays it one second of attention. No announcer mentions it. Not one rig or homeless person gets shown on TV. Everyone shoots great rounds. No one shanks or hooks a drive into the squalor. And when they do, a tour official runs over, picks up the ball, and tosses it in the fairway. No penalty stroke.

Yeah, that’s the novel all right. I’m still working on a title.