{"id":7624,"date":"2022-02-16T07:22:57","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=7624"},"modified":"2022-02-16T07:22:58","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:22:58","slug":"oregon-tavern-age-love-letter-in-a-chinese-lounge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/oregon-tavern-age-love-letter-in-a-chinese-lounge\/","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Tavern Age: Love Letter in a Chinese Lounge"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-7624\" data-postid=\"7624\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-7624 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m taking a break from writing a love letter\/valentine in long hand at back table in a desultory dive lounge of a desultory dive Chinese restaurant in a strip of a desultory dive strip mall surrounded by manufacturing plants and auto yards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The farcical Winter Olympics plays silently on various screens. No one is playing the video slots, which is a miracle akin to the Virgin Birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are no windows in the lounge. Five or so OTAs cluster around the bar and shoot the shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGet It On\u201d by T-Rex oozes from the speakers. Yeah, get it on with this crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An OTA man pushes an OTA woman in a wheelchair into the joint. She wants an iced tea, but no go, so she orders a vodka and a whiskey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m drinking a bottle of ale because the joint doesn&#8217;t offer draft beer. It was either that or Bud in a can. I went with the bottle despite it being a brand owned by a once proud Oregon micro brewery that now finances Republican candidates hell bent on murdering Oregon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An OTA man enters the joint and declares that since it&#8217;s above 45 degrees he can drink. He orders a red wine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I look around. To my left I see a red plywood wall. To my right I see a wall of jagged and mismatched paving stones painted black. Patrons or staff has decorated the grouted grooves between the pavers with toy farm animals. It is a wall unlike anything I have ever seen in OTA country. It is, of course, insane, and wondering why someone built such a wall and why someone would decorate it with toy farm animals could drive me insane, so I won&#8217;t wonder about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The wine-drinking man is telling a story about his dog loves his new rig. The dog told him so. Then he tells a story about how he almost got roughed up at an auto garage because he complained about terrible service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBrown Sugar\u201d by the Stones comes on. They&#8217;re still touring, but reportedly not playing \u201cBrown Sugar\u201d anymore, because of its subject\u2014 hot slave women. So be it. I&#8217;ve heard it enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Time to get back to the letter\/valentine. It&#8217;s 50-50 she even reads it. That&#8217;s still better odds than winning a buck on the Wolf Run game behind me, so I&#8217;ll keep writing. Perhaps love letters\/valentines aren&#8217;t dead yet.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m taking a break from writing a love letter\/valentine in long hand at back table in a desultory dive lounge of a desultory dive Chinese restaurant in a strip of a desultory dive strip mall surrounded by manufacturing plants and auto yards. The farcical Winter Olympics plays silently on various screens. No one is playing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7625,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-7624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-tavern-age","tag-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\/7624","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=7624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7627,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7624\/revisions\/7627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}