I was in Oregon Tavern country but I\nwasn’t in Oregon. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Word had reached me about a legendary\ndive bar located along a lonely road that ran through a forlorn\nlocale that had seen much better days, days where one log rode on a\nlog truck and salmon ruled the watersheds, real salmon, not the fake\nhatchery ones. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had hazy directions but I found the\njoint. It looked like it belonged in a Hitchcock movie. I walked in.\nI beheld. Slate flooring. Life-size sculpture of Elvis. Pool table.\nShuffleboard. Saw blade art. Ancient flintlocks and farm implements.\nWooden spear guns and fish clubs. A Pam Anderson Barb Wire<\/em>\npinball machine! It turned me on. I ordered a beer and sat next to\nPam. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three people sat at the bar and sipped\nbeers and vodkas. The television played a show where an asshole boat\ncaptain debases his dumbshit crew. Five sets of car keys rested near\nthe pickled grotesqueries. It was a wild night last night. A couple\nphone calls came in asking if certain keys were there. They were. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bartender placed a call to a diner\nacross the street: biscuits and gravy with four pieces of bacon. Then\nhe gave the woman at the bar $2 to go pick it up. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conversation moved away from wicked\nweather to how to catch and cook surf perch. For several years I have\ndreamed of becoming a surf perch fisherman. While listening to the\nconversation, I vowed to become one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The afternoon drifted away. Every once\nand a while I heard Pam groan and giggle behind me. I watched the\nbartender eat his biscuits and gravy and bacon. I got the history of\nthe joint. The slate floors made sense. So did the kooky mural of the\njoint’s history that was painted on the wall behind the bar. The\nbartender said a previous owner was going to paint over it and the\nregulars revolted and he backed down, probably at the point of a\nflintlock. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n I sipped my ale and took a few notes.\nI’d be back, and maybe with surf perch story of my own. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The joint’s name? It’s a secret, for\nnow. Mystery over journalism is ruling my editorial mind these days. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was in Oregon Tavern country but I wasn’t in Oregon. Word had reached me about a legendary dive bar located along a lonely road that ran through a forlorn locale that had seen much better days, days where one log rode on a log truck and salmon ruled the watersheds, real salmon, not the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-tavern-age","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5113"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5116,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions\/5116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}