Category: Living in Portland

At the Sapphire Hotel

The bar

It was April 5th, 2023 at 4 o’clock in the afternoon when happy hour began. It was just 8 and a 1/2 hours before the pink moon arose at 12:34 am on the 6th.

Coincidentally, I awoke just at 12:34 without prompting. There were no bells that rang. There were no sounds outside of the house nor light that entered my room. I simply awoke.

I wasn’t surprised that it was at just that moment that I stirred and sat up. These things often happen to me. They probably happen to you too and if you’re paying attention you will notice them. Perhaps you look at the clock just at 11:11 or 3:33. I often wake up at exactly 12 o’clock midnight. Always in my mind, the thought arises, and I say, “it is the witching hour”. I don’t want to think those words but there they are.

Without intention, my friend and I planned to get together on this date a week or more before, never occuring to us that there might be significance. Perhaps it did occur to her being that she is deeply knowledgeable in astrology. If she did, she didn’t mention it to me.

I texted her early in the morning wondering if we were going to meet at her house or go out for food. It was then that she said she wanted to go to the Sapphire Hotel having never been there before.

I was excited by this prospect having been there several times previously. I knew the food was good, maybe even better than good and I knew the drinks were exceptional and extraordinary.

The hotel is squeezed between a coffee shop and a framing shop at the end of a busy business district known as Hawthorn. It’s one of those areas filled with bars, restaurants, bookstores, ritual shops and grocers. There’s only a small sign on the window painted in gold announcing it’s location. The windows were dark but I could see the small candles that burned inside and the brooding ambient light, the only evidence that it was open.

The Sapphire Hotel has a dark and shady past, having once housed a brothel. Such is the history of Portland, Oregon. Like most, if not all port cities, they hold deep and dangerous secrets hidden in their past.

We were the 1st to enter. We left the daylight behind us and chose a table tucked against the wall, a candle on the table, already flickering in the dim room. The dark wooden walls and floors, the oriental carpets and red velvet drapery alluded to the mysteries that lay dormant.

“How many of the people who come here know of its history”, I wondered. I could name many hotels and restaurants with seeedy pasts that housed whores and entertained criminals. But Portland has become a city of transplants. Not many anymore have been around long enough to care about its past.

We pondered over the drink menu with its many strange names. Finally I settled on a “Wai Fai password”. Mango with dark rum and heavily spiced. She ordered an “Aquarius”, astringent with Campari, reminiscent of a Negroni but sweeter. We ordered salty, mapley bacon wrapped dates and Korean bbq wings so spicy it took two before my mouth and lips got used to the heat. We lingered over these, leaning into each other, as we shared what we had been reading, studying, doing and worrying about since we last met.

Time passed as we enjoyed each other’s company. Maybe it was an hour when we decided to order our entree. It would be a medium rare steak with chimichurri sauce, roasted and seasoned potatoes and steamed fennel laced broccoli for us both. It is a rare occasion for me to eat beef but knowing what I knew already about the food here, I gave it a try.

The steak was thick and tender, slightly pink in its interior with a spoonful or two of the chimichurri so as not to overwhelm the flavor of the beef. This was one of those times that I thanked the universe that I had given up on veganism.

Still the conversation simultaneously and continuously wandered from topic to topic in some organic way that only we could follow, as again we lingered over our food and our 2nd drink. Perhaps another hour or more passed, we weren’t counting the minutes.

Because my friend had named our dinner out, “fuck it”, having been through a bit of suffering lately, we added dessert and a 3rd drink. Dessert was a dark, appearing almost black in the candle light, lava cake on a large plate surrounded by a scoop of vanilla ice cream, more than a dollop of whipped cream and a drizzle of caramel. We wanted coffee drinks to counter the sweetness but my Spanish coffee was laden with rum, kahlua, tuaca and another coffee liqueur but I declined the whip cream. Her drink of choice was a surprising Campari laced coffee with a whip of Negroni cream. “What?”, You might say, but it was extraordinarily pleasant leaving the mouth slightly dry.

Again, we lingered. We had drunk and eaten to our pleasure limit. By now we had spent 4 lush hours and we weren’t done yet but we gathered up our coats and bags and reluctantly departed. We slowly made our way to the car while petting dogs along the way: The big, black 12 year old, with his muzzle turning mostly white, with cloudy, rhuemy eyes and the one year old meat head pittie who wiggled and jumped on me to my delight.

We had a wonderful time at the Sapphire Hotel. But all things must come to an end. If like Buddha says, “Life is suffering” this was a pleasant reprieve. Thank you, my dear friend, for this respite.

Held in Liminal Space

Portland remembering

This morning’s weather reminds me of when I was younger. It shows just how Portland I am.

It’s grey everywhere except for the explosion of some small Spring flowers. It’s cold. It’s raining but not pouring but it’s constant.

The wind is blowing. It’s blowing hard enough that I can hear the bells hanging on the porch.

The trees are still barren with just small buds of green showing. The exceptions are the Magnolia and Tulip trees that have full blooms, now drooping and dripping. The Japanese quince, stiff and thorny, is showing pink.

I walked the dog and I was reluctant to come back into the house. But Yum Yum was wet (her least favourite state) and ready for her treats.

Now, I’m sitting in my room and the rain is tapping on the windows. The big and old trees are swaying slightly against the wind.

I can hear the heater motor and see the fake fire inside my electric stove. Somehow warming.

The cat is sleeping on my bed so there’s no reason to make it up. She has made beautiful swirls in the blankets.

It’s very dim in my room and I don’t want to turn on any lights. I like this gloom and deep shadowed corners that are inviting and welcoming.

I think I will have a cup of tea and a little bit of dark chocolate and slices of the orange sitting in a ramen bowl.

I don’t miss the invasion of the bright rays of the sun that is hiding behind the charcoal clouds as they scud by, pushed along by the wind. There is a brightness in the far distant horizon where the clouds have thinned.

I might even doze a bit today. The gentle pitter and the patter of the rain are the perfect lyric and rhythm that can enduce slumber for any troubled mind.

I’m held in the arms of Portland weather and memories. Let the world go by. I’m not interested.

Summer in October is unnatural here.

Rain. Beautiful rain.

It’s the Pacific Northwest, Portland. We have dry, hot winds from the east out of the Gorge blowing in from the desert-like High Steppes.

Everything is tinder dry and crackling. The ground forms fissures like open mouths waiting for a drop of water to quench its thirst.

For the first time, I’m hearing the Cosanti bell ringing more, as our porch, where it hangs, faces east. It’s so lovely, but I’m wishing for wet, Fall weather with hard winds coming from the southwest, heavy with water from the ocean.

We need days of rain… days and days, maybe even weeks… months. We need cooler, cold, temperatures to make the sap run into the roots of the trees, so the leaves can change color and drop to the ground in soggy layers. This persistent summer-like heat feels strange, unnatural, even.

People… we look at each other in shorts and t-shirts, eating out of doors at sidewalk cafés, strolling after dark as if it were mid-summer. We smile uncomfortably, commenting about the strange weather, attemting to make light of something so unfamiliar.

Will it end? Will we get back to rain bouncing off the pavement, forming puddles, streaming from the roof, filling the gutters. Can we get back to running from the house to the car and into the store, school, coffee shop, trying not to get wet? Will the streams and rivers rise to flood levels again? Will children have to wear raincoats over their Halloween costumes ever again?

Can we get back to sweaters, raincoats and boots? Can we get back to complaining about the dark days and constant rain? Please.

Summer Rain

Happy rain day, dark and grey. I love the view from my window by my bed. Our yard is so green.

I look down on the apple trees, the honeysuckle, the vine maple and the kiwi, that create an arbor covering the patio. They surround and shield us from the harsh sun and neighbors.

And I even love looking over to the neighbors flat roofed garage to watch the puddles grow and the rain drops splashing into them.

Every once in awhile a fresh breeze comes through the window bringing with it the fragrance of the wet earth and plants.

We have so many fragrant flowers like kiwi, lavender and jasmine. Someone should create such a lovely perfume. I would wear it everyday when we so easily forget summers past.

Such beauty I couldn’t imagine if I tried. Or have I?

Bulldozing Montgomery

We lived on Montgomery St., just below Vista Avenue, before Hwy 26 went in. The construction destroyed miles of large beautiful houses built at the turn of the century.

Beautiful large homes, in the West Hills, like this one, were bulldozed to make way for highways.

Portland exemplfies the song “Yellow Taxi” written by Joni Mitchell, which goes, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot… Portland was being raped and thousands of long time residents displaced. No one who was making a killing cared.

Our yellow house was built with four apartments. The front was built at street level on a steep hill leading towards downtown to the East, and to the North, the land was even steeper giving each apartment spectacular views of the city.

I couldn’t find an historic photo of the area but this is the type of house sacrificed for development

Each apartment took up an entire floor. The ceilings were at least 10 feet in height with windows almost to the ceilings. There were at least three bedrooms, a large living room, a kitchen and with just one bathroom. The back door opened out from the kitchen onto a balcony with stairs that led to the ground below.

This is not the house but reminiscent of the types of houses in the area.

This was in the late 60’s. Pure LSD was easily had and weed was $10 a “lid”. Our rent, if I remember right, was under $100/month. We didn’t need much money to live, so we bought pounds of marijuana, divided it into plastic sandwich bags and we put them in a large container just inside the front door. Whoever wanted to buy pot from us could leave their money and grab however much they wanted. The honor system at work.

Marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, peyote and the like, were all illegal. But at the time, we were more concerned that the house would be raided by FBI agents looking for draft dodgers and those who were AWOL. It had happened and it was scarey but if they’re looking for people, they had no jurisdiction to bust us for drugs.

Our life on Montgomery street was mostly peaceful. It was a good time for exploring both internally and the world around us. We were protesting the right of the US and other countries to invade others to procure resources. We were protesting a culture dictated by corporate greed and materialism. We wanted a simpler and more peaceful world.

Unfortunately, our idealism could not, and has not, changed the white and wealthy. We were using psychedelics, meditation and exploration into philosophies both western and eastern, to found a new path to a kinder and gentler world. But what I know now, is what history teaches us: the few wealthy are lords in the earth and the rest of us… well, we work for them and try to keep our heads above water. No one benefits from war but the wealthy and the young are sacrificed to that purpose.

Those were days that I would return to. Those were days when we thought that on that LSD trip, the answer had been given to us but language failed us. The answer slipped away as we “came down”. One definition of reality that I can recall so clearly came out as I sat looking out over the city as “loud tomato raisin”. I’m still looking for the translation. Perhaps one day I’ll be enlightened enough to translate. 🤭

Those were days of infinite sexual energy, which I didn’t experience again until my 40s and 50s. Hormone saturated freedoms. Dancing in the moonlight. Light shows. Live music and open mic poetry readings. Unbridled idealism anchored and tempered by existential nightmares that things always stay the same.

David Byrne sang, “Burning Down the House… same as it ever was, same as it ever was…” and it appears that we are burning down the house. We can see the ashes. But now it’s not just the big beautiful houses that were once our abodes but it’s the planet where we live.

Earth is on fire

As Solstice Approaches

Frost covers everything this morning though it’s not cold enough to freeze the water in the watering bowls set out for those of fur and feather.

The persistent wind has calmed so the old, giant maples, chestnuts, walnuts, fir, spruce and pine are not creaking in protest and the attic doors are not threatening against the hook locks.

The tiny heater tries so hard to warm the air in my room without success. This is winter (almost) in this old house. The furnace heats the first two floors though we can feel the air seeping in through the closed windows. We are grateful for this old house that shelters us.

Solstice approaches bringing longer days but colder months. I welcome the barrenness, the shades of grey. Though Winter settles in, Spring holds promises of life just below the surface and thrusts swords of iris and sprouts of crocus out of the mud and the brave honeysuckle shows tender green buds on seemingly dead and hardened vines.

There is no guilt in rest this time of year. Follow me says the earth, follow me.

The Christmas Boats Parade

Every year Mom went to see the Christmas boats parade on the Willamtte River. Lil’ Mil’, as we called Mom’s friend, Millie Sargent, owned a houseboat just north of the Sauvies Island bridge.

We went with Mom for a few years. What fun! There was spiked eggnog and clam dip and lots of other snacks and a lot of shouting and cheering and waving our arms about. We dressed in warm coats and hats, gloves and scarves and sat outside on the deck. The river there is narrow and some boats come so close it felt like we could touch them. Some would do circles and drills in front of us. We’d wave and laugh and shout just to see the revelers wave back.

Those days are gone. Lil’ Mil’ and Mom have been gone for years now but the memories are just as clear as ever. Before my sister, Kristi, passed on, Steve, Kristi and her daughter, Shauna, and I left my house to relive the joy of being at a parade with Mom one more time… the Christmas boats parade. We wanted to do this for her.

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was howling and blowing the rain sideways but this was not going to stop us. Lil’ Mil’ had sold the houseboat so we could no longer enjoy that wonderful place and we did our eating and drinking at home.

We went to Cathedral Park in the shadow of the St.Johns bridge. There were a few other brave souls out. We walked to the river’s edge and walked the steep plank to the dock. The river was rough and the plank and dock were bucking up and down.

We shouted and waved as Mom would have and cried and held on to each other as the boats passed and circled round and round. We stayed until the last boat passed.

We were drenched and happy because we did it to remember Mom. She loved any parade, no matter how small and that wasn’t the first time that she took us out in the worst weather… remember February steelheading? The muddy, slippery, rocky riverbanks. Claming at the beach even before daylight in the pelting rain? Well, that’s a different story.

I miss you, Mom, especially this time of year. You made everything fun.

A Woman’s Bravery on Display

Brave but Naive in Portland

Has no one heard of soldiers stripping women of their clothes, raping them, cutting their unborn children from their wombs, excising their genitals, executing them, leaving them for dead, buried in unmarked graves?

It has happened and happens all over the world in authoritarian countries where men rule the world,  own all the resources and mandate the military. Very Franco-esc.

She’s lucky she wasn’t grabbed, thrown in the back of an unmarked car and hauled off to jail and/or “disappeared” or simply raped and thrown back in the street.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of women clothed and unclothed die everyday while protesting, while the world watches.

History: read it. It happened in the past, it also happens now. News: read it.

Do you really think that soldiers are afraid of naked women? A womans body is not powerful. It’s vulnerable.

This reminds me a little tiny bit, but much less dramatic, of Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire in Saigon and the student who stood against a line of tanks in Tianamen Square… other than a big news flash and it being documented in history, what good did it do? What permanently changed in the world?

What permanent good has been done by the imprisonment, torture and death of millions of women and men protesting injustice when small groups of wealthy men own the world?

Am I saying give up? No. Adamantly no. Just acknowledge reality before you put your bravery on display.

I’ve Never Lived Any Place Long… Part I

…at least since I have been on my own. As a child, I lived in the same house, except for two years, until I left home at 18 years.

From the age of 18 years old until I was 21, I lived in many places while letting myself marinate into a form of maturity or immaturity. I lived in two different apartments downtown that were lovely vintage brickers with oriental carpets, built-ins with pull out Murphy beds, small kitchens with high ceilings and gas stoves and tiled bathrooms with clawfoot bathtubs and flocks of resident cockroaches. I reached my apartment on elevators like cages that climbed their way up to the 3rd floor.

This is where I started to never smoke. As a young teenager, I looked forward to staying up late to watch Johnny Carson and to smoke when and if I wanted. These represented to me the symbols of adult freedom. So, the first thing I did when I left home was to buy cigarettes. They made me feel sick but I tried to ignore the nausea, and I tried and tried to be grown up. My boyfriend, on one of his visits, threw my whole carton of cigs out the window. I was saved from a life of addiction by him and a stranger who picked up this gift that fell from the sky before I could reach the street. Apparently, there were no other cigarettes to buy in the whole city.

It was here that I began to smoke a lot of weed and I dropped my first acid. This was a major turning point in my life from which I have never regretted nor have I returned from whence I came. It was this that blew my mind and I have never been able to see the world without realizing that there is much more than meets the eye. It was this that set me on a path of self-discovery. Mind you, I have yet to fully discover myself, but I was well on my way from this moment.

While living here, I worked at Import Plaza. The Nieto Brothers were wonderful to me. Shortly after I was hired, they began to groom me as a buyer and they entrusted me with the keys to open the store each morning. I violated that trust as I began to steal from them, both merchandise and money. “It is grand larceny”, said the detectives as they walked around my small but lovely apartment on 14th avenue. They ignored my marijuana stash, as they rummaged through my drawers, as I pointed out the stolen goods: smoked imported oysters, a rattan king chair from Indonesia, candles, and tapestries.

The brothers didn’t prosecute. I was released on my own recognizance. I was certain it was because I sent them a small card with Jesus ascending into heaven on gold-rimmed clouds. I wrote on the back, “If I have any debts to pay, I’ll pay them to God”. They called, just to say that they would not recommend me for a job working with money, but that I could use them as a reference. I didn’t work again for many years

From here, the chronology gets foggy, though I remember the houses well. Perhaps, it doesn’t really matter the order in which I moved from house to house but the interest might lie in the number of houses in which I lived in three short years. As I have looked back on this time in my life, it is hard to believe that it was only three years from the time that I left home, to the time when I was married and things slowed down considerably but not all together.

For a time I lived in a small Victorian House on NW Thurman St. with a couple that I had known since high school. We smoked weed and cooked and watched the two raise their little son. The house was dilapidated but like many old Portland houses, it was charming with lead glass windows, hardwood floors, and wooden gingerbread decorating the exterior. The story goes that as I was taking a bath when a part of the exterior wall in the bathroom collapsed exposing me to the elements. I don’t remember the incident but it seems that others do. I didn’t stay long at this house.

For a bit, I lived in an apartment just down the street on Thurman Street. Greg Brand, a local musician, while visiting, commented that the appliances lined up against one wall looked like an appliance store. It was true and though the apartment was in a refurbished Victorian, the owners had violated its integrity. Nevertheless, I was terribly embarrassed and Greg didn’t get what he had come for and I didn’t stay there long, as I couldn’t get comfortable with the fact that I was living in an appliance display.

From there, Laurel Lee, the prolific author, whom I met while working at Import Plaza, suggested that I could possibly stay with Jim Wilkins and Roger McKay in SW just across Babur Blvd. from Lair Hill Park. Listening to Jim play his giant 12 string guitar was magical but I couldn’t love him. Roger, an artist, had suspended his bed so it swung 6 feet from the floor of his bedroom. I cooked for us on a wood stove and we heated with wood. We lived in a lovely but funky little Victorian type house in the Lair Hill district. Lots of hippies had moved into this neighborhood and a local artist, Mike Dewade, was our neighbor. Art and music were being made everywhere. Bob Dylan’s first album with the Band blew our minds. 

Here, I contracted, first, a major case of the crabs. Then, after a night of eating with friends while sitting in a ritual circle and drinking peyote tea at a neighbor’s house, I came down with a bad case of hepatitis. I was carried home where I lay unconscious on a mattress on the floor while friends brought me tea and soup. Eventually, I woke up in great pain, I crawled to a pay phone and called Mom, who sent a taxi to take me to the hospital. As it turns out, I had the worse case of hepatitis that St. Vincent had ever seen to date. My liver did not recover for decades.

I soon moved out to an apartment in a house in NW Portland where two friends were living. We slept in one bed in a small bedroom. While smoking from a hookah, the feds came to the door looking for another friend who was dodging the draft. They’d heard he was living at this address. While the hookah belched smoke in the middle of the table, I threw my bell-bottomed clad legs over the pile of freshly cleaned marijuana on the table in front of me. The feds barged in the open door and came in the back door, looking for the draft dodger. If they noticed the weed stashed everywhere they seemed not to care. Mind you, this was probably 1967-68. Weed was a 1st class narcotic at this time. We were lucky that they didn’t have a search warrant for drugs or we might have all gone to jail.

Then together with several other people, I moved to a very large house, still in NW on Hoyt St. It wasn’t long that I stayed here. This was not a place for the living but rather a place where there was a death wish, it seemed, in every heart. Serious drug folks lived here. I remember seeing a friend tie off with the toaster cord. The upstairs bathroom leaked into the once elegant front door entrance way. One of the residents mounted a flag made of his own underwear on the roof and would stand and salute his homemade flag every morning. There was no sense in buying groceries. People weren’t eating and anyone who wanted my food would eat it. I got a German Shepard while I lived here. It was hit by a car and died.

From here, I moved to a small house in SW Portland, on Corbett Street, where two friends lived. I don’t remember much about this house and I didn’t stay here long but I do remember that here a strange man came into the kitchen handing out pills. He was no hippie. He was a drug pusher. He handed me some pink pills saying, “May the bird of paradise fly up your nose”. Why I dropped one, I’ll never know, but once I came down, I flushed those pills down the toilet. I was not looking to get high. I was looking to get clear. I thought we would stay here, but it was not to be.

The Vietnam war was in full swing and we hated it. I knew a classmate from high school who shot off his toes to stay out of the draft. Others were fleeing to Canada, while still others were hiding out in Portland, getting high, protesting, making art and music, trying to find meaning and trying not to be scared.

Next was a move to a very large house of four apartments perched high above the city on SW Montgomery St. Large windows gave us panoramic views of all Portland. The house is now gone, demolished to make room for highways 405 and 26. What a shame.

It was here that my brother drugged up to appear before the induction center officers. He was rejected, as were many other of my friends. (How they got their 4F classification is a story for another time). Here I sold marijuana making trips to San Francisco to score. Here I learned that dealing was not for the faint of heart and that those big dealers knew nothing of peace and love. But back in Portland, life for me was gentle. I sat on a couch one night looking over the city. We had dropped some acid and there were times when high that all of the answers to life’s questions were clear. The problem was that when one comes down, one can rarely remember the revelations, the insights.  The key then might have been to have someone recording the thoughts and epiphanies that those that are high are having. I can recall clearly a thought that on this night, I announced to all that were within earshot, “Loud tomato raisin”. If only I had a clue. After 50 years, nothing of any consequence comes to me from this message given to me on that night.

But things were changing or I was getting a hint that life was not all roses or it never was. Reality came to my doorstep. We were sorely aware of the inequalities; we saw clearly that oligarchs were running not only our country but the world and that those who own the resources are in charge and it had always been so. I was falling into a pit of despair. I was waking up and I was not happy with what I was seeing and there didn’t seem to be any way to change things. People were trying but the expectation that anything would change was dying inside of me and I could see that others were losing hope, as well. If I was unable to effect change, then what am I doing? What should I be doing? So what if I was searching for “truth”. So what if many sages had asked the same questions for millennia? What changes had they been able to effect?

I walked all over Portland’s streets, and through its parks, went to concerts by Barefoot John Henry, The Great Pumpkin, the US Credenza, the Grateful Dead that were held in the Masonic Temple and the Pittock Building and the Crystal Ballroom and in the Folksinger Coffee House. I was introduced to psychedelic music and light shows. I walked barefoot and read, smoked weed and made and shared food with friends. I was looking for answers but so was everyone else. The Vietnam war raged on. People were dying everywhere to see civil rights instituted and honored. Women were seeking equality. The war machine could not be stopped. It fed our economy; we needed war to survive, and fossil fuels fueled the wars. The ugliness of Manifest Destiny was alive and well. I was giving up the pipe dream of a world where peace and harmony and responsibility towards one another and our planet existed.

We cried and we marched and we tried to live differently. I cleaned the weed from the plastic wrapped kilos I brought home from San Francisco, measuring it generously into baggies called lids, while hand rolling fat doobies to turn on my friends. I put the lids into a large, Oriental vase by the front door where people could come and grab a lid and leave me $10.00. I stopped selling when on a run, I had to meet the dealers on the docks of the bay. It felt criminal, it felt dangerous. I stayed in a dirty crash pad in Haight Ashbury, sleeping on the floor beside a man with a gun. Someone had died there the night before. On the way home, the car died and we threw the kilos off the side of the road while we slept in the car waiting two days for a part to arrive at a small podunk town gas station without a motel in the middle of nowhere. When I got home and broke open the weed, it was nothing but stems, seeds and shake. That was it. No more. Not for me. This was not getting high. This was about crime. Things were changing.

Where did I go from there? It’s vague but I remember living in North Plains for a bit. This was not for me and I got out of there pretty quickly even though there were animals and a lovely organic garden. It just never felt like home. So far, nothing had ever felt like home. I remember as a child feeling the same way. I have never felt like I knew where home was.

Then there was a place in Estacada, a small house on a creek in the country. What stands out to me there was a wildly ornate wood cook stove decorated in bright chrome and polished to a jet black, where I made fresh bread and my friend made pies. It was here I began to eat a macrobiotic diet… just brown rice and onions. I would lay down by the gentle creek, breathing in the fresh air and watching the clouds scuttle by overhead.

We made a huge mistake here. I’m not sure I can or should even relate this story here. Perhaps I will save it for another time and another place.

We had an old car and a Vespa. The car had a back seat like a living room couch and I would lay back in the lap of luxury while my friends drove us to and fro along the country roads. Gas was 25 cents a gallon in those days and we could drive for miles and miles on pennies. We would ride the Vespa to pick up bottles and cans to be able to fill the gas tank.

From here, I don’t know how or why, I moved to Grandma’s for a short while. While living here, we heard that the producers of the movie, Paint Your Wagon, with Lee Marvin, was hiring hippies as extras. So off we went to Baker City where we followed the roads to the movie location. I left Portland wearing a short flowered skirt, a t-shirt and a sued leather jacket and a pair of sandals and carrying not a lot more than that but perhaps a sleeping bag.

We hitchhiked over the Cascades and into the Oregon steppes. The landscape flattened out and you could see for miles. A local rancher in a pickup dropped us off in the middle of nowhere where ranches of thousands of acres stretched out forever. We stuck out our thumbs. Suddenly, you could feel the temperature and the barometric pressure drop and black clouds gathered on the horizon. There was nothing we could do but hope for our next ride. Lightning and thunder crashed from the clouds and rain was fast approaching. The late afternoon light turned rapidly into an ominous sky.

I was suddenly cold in my measly clothes. I wished out loud that I had a pair of pants and a bandana. A car was approaching but going in the wrong direction. As it got closer, we could see that it was a long black limousine with blacked out windows. As it approached, it drew up next to us. A little old woman stepped from the back seat of the car and said, “Here, I thought you could use these”, as she handed me a small packet. I took it from her and she got back in the car and drove off again disappearing down that long stretch of empty road. You guessed it. It was a pair of pants that fit me perfectly and a bandana. I had those pants and bandana for many years. I don’t remember what happened to them.

The storm bore down turning the sky as black as night, drenching us in a flash until we looked like two drowned rats. Why hadn’t I wished for a car? There was nothing to do but to stick out our thumbs again and hope for our next ride.

Before long the storm passed overhead and the air cleared and it was crystal clear as dusk fell. We saw the lights of an old pickup truck slowly approaching going in our direction. When it pulled over we were surprised to see an elderly man at the wheel. We asked him where he was going and he said, “home”.

We had hoped to get as far as Baker City but we were not willing to turn down his offer to take us home to feed us dinner. When we saw the small ranch house, we thought we had stepped into a fairytale. He invited us in and his wife, a perfect salt and pepper shaker match if we ever saw one, welcomed us to sit at the table, “dinner is ready”, she said with a gentle smile on her face, as if she was expecting us. We had fried chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans and we ate until sleepy eyes told them we needed a place to sleep.

We had been on the road a long time and had been soaking wet way too long. We washed up and she showed us to our bedroom. There was a feather bed, with feather pillows and a feather handmade quilt to cover up with. Really… she tucked us in and said sleep well and we will see you in the morning. We woke to the smell of fresh biscuits and eggs and bacon. I wonder who these people were. Were they real or had we really stepped into a fairytale? The old man took us to Baker City where we made our way into the woods where the movie was being filmed. What happened on site is a tale for another time.

When we returned to Portland, I stayed with Grandma for another short while until I moved into the House of Rainbows. What is the House of Rainbows? How in the world did I get there? I had seen enough at the movie site to make me want to change directions but where was I to go? What was next? Enlightenment and not even personal peace or satisfaction were in weed or in LSD or in the music or in activism or in study or in denouncing my parent’s lifestyle or in any of the other avenues I had been down. I felt like I was at a dead end. I needed an open door.

The House of Rainbows was in NE Portland, one of the many houses that were eventually torn down to the ground and what a shame it was to have the many beautiful houses in the Albina District destroyed to make way for the Memorial Coliseum, Emanuel Hospital, and the I5 freeway. For a long time, as the city and private investors displaced hundreds of families, many houses sat abandoned. We salvaged several stain glass windows from these houses, which we have to this day.

Obviously, it was called the House of Rainbows because of the many stained glass windows that reflected a myriad of colors throughout the house. Many young people lived here as did I for a short time. We were one of the many “hippies” invited to go to Maranatha Church by a young man who felt it was his mission to proselytize the “flower children”, the lost generation. Since I had been a spiritual seeker for years. I say spiritual seekers meaning that I wanted something different than what the American dream promised. We didn’t want a 9-5 or a materialist existence. We didn’t want war, we didn’t want exploitation, we wanted to see justice and fairness and love in the world. We weren’t necessarily seeing any of what we hoped for materialize so, when Adrian asked us to go to a church service, over and over again, we decided to go… why not? Let’s try the next thing.

Reverend Wendall Wallace was a fiery preacher and the music was really out of this world. When Rev. Wallace said, “Anyone who wants to come forward and accept Jesus as your personal savior, come on up.” I had smoked some pot and I was, as was customary for me, barefoot, in red corduroy pants and a beautiful red and blue button-up cotton shirt. I felt like I had tried everything else, why not this? I walked to the front, knelt at the altar and had an out of body experience. I was flying in the clouds so fast. I said, “Jesus if you are who you say you are, do something for me.” Something did happen. I don’t know what but I had been high enough that this was pretty much the same thing. When I finally stood, a rush of people hugged me including hippies and black church folk, everyone crying and laughing and shouting and singing. I was taken into a community that included a room in the House of Rainbows.

Staying in that house was not for me nor was staying in that church… or any church for that matter. But we had food and a roof over our heads until we figured out our next move. While there, I got married. I’m not saying that was a mistake but it was not my idea nor was it Jack’s. In fact, we probably never would have married. That’s not to say that we wouldn’t have stayed in a relationship, or that we wouldn’t have had more children. We just would have been on a different trajectory of our own choosing.

Church put us on a difficult path for the next decade. And here is the place of divergence for this story. Yes, we continued to move about from house to house and from place to place but we were forced into a mold that we could never fit into. We could have left Christianity earlier but guilt is a devious and dangerous power.

The End of Part I

Part II upcoming…