Early morning, a donut shop in Ukiah. I half-stumble from my room at Motel 6, hoping a large coffee will set my internal latitude and longitude back to coordinated. It helps. In the donut shop the few other customers, all buying the fried sugar-and-grease bombs, are Indians. White man gave the indigenous people booze and now, Filipinos are giving them donuts. And they don't look well.
By Eureka, the only non-whites are Mexicans, and native Americans. The farther north you go, the whiter it gets. In Port Townsend WA “you can count the black people on two hands.” And they do. In Poulsbo and on Whidbey Island, big US Navy installations, crosses were burned in the yards of mixed-race couples in 1989. This was part of my introduction to the Pacific Northwest.
Orick CA, at the southern end of the Smoked Salmon trail through Klamath, past Trees of Mystery to Crescent City, is not the California of San Francisco and Marin County. But the post office gives and takes books. Someone in Orick reads. The Palm Cafe has the best peach pie ever. The waitress apologizes for being out of ice cream. “But I have whipped cream.” Okay. Outside, parked in front of the defunct movie theater, a bad-ass-looking dude in a hoodie sits in his big-tire pickup truck talking to a guy in the apartment window above the marquee. No PC or yuppie tentacle has reached up here. I think that stuff ends at Garberville.
Gold Beach OR has a small secret for travelers looking for something decent to eat. I learned this by asking a female gas station attendant where the best breakfast in town is. It’s off the highway, a right turn just before the bridge over the Rogue River. A half mile down this road is the Indian Creek Cafe, the best road breakfast place I’ve found along 101. They serve terrific fried grits with crumbled bacon and parsley, and know how to get poached eggs perfect. A real friendly local diner with excellent food. Recommended.
Best and worst of Oregon: I’d say the state has the best rivers anywhere if one cares for scenic beauty. I usually don’t, but driving Rt. 38 between I-5 and Reedsport, following the Umpqua River most of the way, made me change my tune. The state of Oregon, I’ve found, also has the worst, the most dismal and stupid urban traffic engineering I’ve experienced, with the possible exception of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in Texas.
When Will They Ever Learn — Rest stop just south of Eugene. As usual, a beggar sits by the restrooms with a cardboard sign. This guy’s said “disabled veteran.” Had the look too, definite soldier type. I gave him a box of crackers and five bucks. And I want to know, Why Isn’t the Military Taking Care of These Guys? These kids get killed and maimed to protect Mitt Romney’s investments and Rush Limbaugh’s gold-plated toilet. I want to know what happens when the spotlight goes dark and the politicians are done trotting out the crippled soldier to get the hawk uber-patriot vote. Because The Military is Not Taking Care of These Guys. No one had to literally spit on returning Viet Nam vets. They were shit upon all the way through the process by the people who called them “heroes.”
It’s a good thing I never wrote a great novel like The Grapes of Wrath. Or any novel at all. When Steinbeck started driving around with his dog and wrote about it in “Travels with Charley,” it was so pallid by comparison with his other work, I just couldn’t read it. ¥¥
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