{"id":5407,"date":"2019-09-16T06:01:30","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T13:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=5407"},"modified":"2019-09-16T06:02:21","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T13:02:21","slug":"oregon-tavern-age-rallying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/oregon-tavern-age-rallying\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Tavern Age: Rallying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

A small older man began regularly\nappearing at the Sea Star. Every<\/em> day and almost all<\/em> day\nuntil the sun went down. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first saw him sitting at the bar one\nsummer afternoon, hunched over a large paperback and glass of water.\nHe was not OTA. He wore a plaid short-sleeve shirt neatly tucked into\nblue jeans. He wore glasses and a big watch on his left wrist. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of the next few weeks,\nI observed his curious routine of reading books, drinking water,\ngetting up to use the restroom, leaving the Sea Star for short walks,\nand filling up a water bowl for his dog, who was presumably nearby.\nThe man hardly said a word to anyone when I was there. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was pretty obvious he was homeless,\nbut the pattern of his movements seemed highly peculiar. I’d never\nseen such a thing in OTA country before. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day as I passed him on my way out,\nI studied his face. It was a third vacant, a third confused, and a\nthird forlorn. It was unlike any face I had ever seen in person, on\nfilm, or read about in books. It was almost as if some amateur\nwoodworker had used a router to grind out an original face of utter\ndespair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who was this man? What was his story? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short order, Gary, Linda, and\nMiranda, a Sea Star daytime bartender, got the scoop on the man’s\nplight, or at least tidbits of it, from the man himself. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was local and had recently been\nevicted from his home for non-payment of the mortgage. Apparently his\nfinances had withered because he was sending money to various \u201cwomen\u201d\nin several countries. At least one of them had promised to visit him.\nIt all sounded like a classic catfishing operation but he denied a\nscheme and remained steadfast in his conviction that a woman from\nTurkey was coming soon. Miranda also informed me that he had lost his\nwife to cancer several years ago and had served as her caregiver. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somehow the man had landed at the Sea\nStar and was living out of his mini-van with a Labrador. In the three\nweeks since his appearance, he’d never purchased a single drink,\nalcoholic or otherwise, and never gambled. I never once saw him look\nat a television. Just water and novels all day long and sometimes he\ndidn’t read, but sat there, hunched over, staring into the old\nshuffleboard table that served as the scuffed Sea Star counter. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point, management of the bar\nhad a conversation with the man about his non-paying presence, and\noccasional panhandling inside the joint. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incredibly, at least in my mind,\nmanagement said he could continue his routine (absent the\npanhandling) until the end of the month when a benefit check was\nsupposed to arrive. He was even allowed to park out back of the Sea\nStar!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an extraordinary act of kindness\nfrom OTA country, and when some of us learned of it, we sprang into\naction. It was as if one simple act of kindness broke the dam and\nwashed away the hostility that several regulars had demonstrated\ntoward the man. He doesn’t buy anything! He’s taking up space! He\nneeds to find somewhere else to be homeless!<\/em> He can’t beg in\nhere! Call the cops!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do the actions\nof the poor engender more anger than the actions of the rich? Often\nthe most searing anger toward the poor emanates from poor people\nthemselves. I have never understood this but I keep trying to\nunderstand. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like I said, one\nact of kindness witnessed or heard about second-hand, and the gospel\ngets around. Call the gospel the dynamite of kindness. Watch it blow\nthe dam to smithereens. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone at the Sea\nStar told the man about low-cost motels and a county non profit that\nmight help him with housing. Gary and Linda brought in dog food, dog\ntreats and smoked tuna! There were gifts of garden vegetables. I\nbought dog food, recommended novels from the Sea Star’s library, and\noffered my tent. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We rallied together\nto help the man. In doing so, we rallied ourselves, found fortitude,\nand staved off all the anger that poisons American life these days.\nThere is nothing like rallying on behalf of someone who needs help,\nrallying without agenda. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More of that. If we\ndon’t, we will perish from this earth. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me\nrun with the word perish. An Apache proverb goes: the earth\nwill perish with spiderwebs in the sky. Perish is such a\nbeautiful-sounding verb to describe the act of dying. There is poetry\nin it. There is something transcendent there. Perish is also the\ncornerstone verb of the Gettysburg Address, the greatest 272 words in\nthe history of everything inspiring written about the promise of\nAmerican life. President Lincoln wrote it himself and read it to\nmourners on bloody ground. He wrote it to rally Americans to an ideal\nof what democratic government is supposed to be. He delivered it to\nrally Americans to the idea of healing deadly divisions. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We obviously don’t have that kind of\nPresident today. So let us rally ourselves instead and help men like\nthe one lost in the Sea Star. Let us help women, children, animals\nand watersheds, too. It all begins with kindness and in this case, it\nbegan in a dive bar on the Oregon Coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amen. Now get to work! \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A small older man began regularly appearing at the Sea Star. Every day and almost all day until the sun went down. I first saw him sitting at the bar one summer afternoon, hunched over a large paperback and glass of water. He was not OTA. He wore a plaid short-sleeve shirt neatly tucked into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5407","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\/5407","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=5407"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5412,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5407\/revisions\/5412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}