At long last, I sat at my cherished window table of the Sea Star in Gold Beach. What a table! I’d written four or five books here, including a kink Western. I’d met a beautiful woman of the woods and ocean and art here who had become one of my astute readers and taught me a few things about my writing. See what happens when you give creativity away? You never know where it lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d observed or overheard some of the greatest Oregon Tavern Age stories in the Sea Star.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had a storytelling heyday in this joint. It was gone, though, long gone. Donald Trump and the pandemic killed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I drank the excellent local porter and wrote in my journal about the tribute\/eulogy to a deceased RV park owner I’d delivered in a fire hall an hour earlier. It was easily one of the more poignant events of my life and it left me profoundly moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The light and clouds swirled outside the window. I man playing a guitar with a dog on a leash walked down the sidewalk across Highway 101. I’d never seen a man playing a guitar and walking a dog at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I checked the offerings in the library. Not much turnover in three years. Of course, who really wanted to read Jerry Kosinski’s Cockpit<\/em> anymore, if they ever did?<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Latino couple burst through the front door. The female bartender screamed a greeting at the woman. They hugged each other and yelled greetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I gleaned part of the conversation; the Latino woman had just been released from jail or prison on some drug charge. The two woman hadn’t seen each other in a long time. The newly freed was off meth or fentanyl for the moment and wanted to celebrate her release by hitting the sauce in the Sea Star. It was probably a violation of her probation, but fuck it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bartender said she was going to make her a special and tall sweet cocktail. It would probably contain four or five shots of booze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She made the drink and presented it. Joy abounded. The couple retired to play video slots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A young man came up to the bartender. He wanted to know if there was still any of his elk spaghetti in the fridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elk spaghetti?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The bartender said No<\/em>, she’d eaten it and had cleaned up the container.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I tried putting it all together. Why was the elk spaghetti in the Sea Star’s refrigerator?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I stopped trying to put it together. A sliver of classic OTA storytelling had escaped from the coffin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I reveled in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At long last, I sat at my cherished window table of the Sea Star in Gold Beach. What a table! I’d written four or five books here, including a kink Western. I’d met a beautiful woman of the woods and ocean and art here who had become one of my astute readers and taught me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8647","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\/8647","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=8647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8649,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647\/revisions\/8649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}