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July 1, 2020

Trump 2020 at the Beach

For your consideration: there exists a remote stretch of beach on the Secret Oregon Coast where a shack sits upon a cliff. Several Japanese glass fishing floats dangle from the eaves of the cabin.

An old man with two angry dogs visits the shack a couple times of year. He sometimes sits outside and looks at the ocean. The shack is old, dilapidated, and badly in need of paint and roof repair. One gets the idea that this man, or his father, built the shack, but somewhere along the way, the always great notion of consistent maintenance drifted away. The cabin now was clearly going to seed.

Not too long ago, on a bright morning, a regular beachcomber walked past the shack and noticed something new about it. He was jolted by what he saw: TRUMP 2020 painted in red on the front of the blue shack. The shack was falling apart but here was a bold and freshly painted political advertisement in the middle of nowhere that virtually no one would ever see. Was the old man trying to convince the ocean to vote for Trump, or the whales and gulls and otters? It was an astonishing and unlikely sight for the beachcomber to encounter and it braced him. It made him think hard about the man’s act and commitment to the President’s reelection. Perhaps the ad was merely for him to read as a daily affirmation, but of course he was only there a couple times a year. Was it wholly incongruous to place a political ad in the midst of such sweeping natural beauty? Where did the fervor to paint the ad originate? Did painting the ad make him happy? Are Biden supporters doing something similar with their ramshackle beachfront properties? The beachcomber’s political beliefs did not align with the old man’s. (The beachcomber was practically a communist.) Still, he sort of admired the effort. The old man had at least got off his ass for a few minutes to declare a political belief. If more Americans did that (and voted), this would be a far better nation.

A final question entered the beachcomber’s mind: once the election was over, would the old man paint over the ad? Or it would it remain and fade and weather and decompose in concert with the cabin’s inevitable demise? Was it all one really big fat metaphor?

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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.