Gone Huntin’ In Klamath Falls
After 7 weeks in Salem Oregon taking care of a lot of unfinished business and spending time with my son Doug, who will be returning soon to Thailand to join his Thai wife, I am finally on my way back to Oaxaca in my new car loaded with stuff.
First stop. Klamath Falls in rural SE Oregon. I grew up 50 miles from here on a sheep ranch just outside of Bonanza (little more than 300 people) and attended junior high and high school in Klamath. Bea and Sal are gone now, but I am visiting with what’s left of my second family that I lived with during high school.
Red Neck country for sure. Of course I didn’t think that when I lived here. Hunting with my dad in the fall was something to look forward to after a summer of haying and irrigating 10 hours a day. He used me to flush the brush in the draw while he stood watch on the ridge. Sleeping out under the stars at night under only a blanket. We’d laugh at the city folk all dressed up in fancy orange gear lugging their sleeping bags, lanterns, cook stoves and such. Lambing time wouldn’t come until February. It is fall now and many businesses are closed with Gone Huntin’ signs on the doors.
I also didn’t notice the neighborly generosity when I lived here. I guess because I was used to it. My mom would trade eggs for ice-cream from the milk man. She was always taking cuttings of her plants and giving them away to anyone who visited.
George makes chorizo and salsa and gives it out to his appreciative co-workers at the lumber company where he works nights maintaining the machinery. His next door neighbor brought over fresh home-grown peppers and tomatoes yesterday. At Christmas, George grinds and cooks his own corn for masa for tamales like his Mexican dad always did…continuing a generational ritual. He will give away most of those too.
George gives me a bag of beef jerky for my trip south. George would give you the shirt off his back.
Last night, after a high school football game (football is endemic here), and while George was at work, his wife Jan, his daughter Melina and her husband and his parents and their twin 17 year old boys and their 20 year old daughter (my god where has the time gone… Melina is the same age as my oldest son…43!) and I gathered at Wubba’s BBQ rustic rib joint for dinner to celebrate Melina’s husband’s birthday.
I was the first one to arrive at the restaurant, so I had waited on a bench by the door…perusing my iPhone for emails. When Melina entered I jumped up to hug her leaving my iPhone on the bench. I was already seated when this young guy comes over to my table. Do I know you, I thought. Then I saw he was holding out the iPhone.
It has been a few years since I have seen Melina’s kids so she re-introduces me to them. Remember Eunice? Then she says I used to live with her dad! Everyone’s mouth drops open. She clears it up. “When Eunice was living with dad and his family when they were in high school,” she says laughing.
The 20 year old daughter squeals with excitement about moving into her own apartment with a friend. Almost everything they need has been given to them but they still need a few things, one of which was a microwave. People are often loud here and the daughter is so loud she could be overheard by those at nearby tables. I had been noticing a big guy with a face so work-dirty it was nearly black in a nearby booth. Suddenly the daughter and Melina’s husband disappear…coming back to announce that the guy with a dirty face had given her a small microwave that wouldn’t fit into the space for it in his work truck. He GAVE it to her. He didn’t ask to sell it to her. It was nearly new.
This morning I am sitting in my car at McDonalds using the only free WiFi I can find in Klamath…of course after having coffee (coffee is surprisingly good at McDonalds) and a Egg McMuffin. An older guy walks by my open window and notices my computer propped up against the steering wheel. He looks at the computer screen showing Amazon.com. He asks who I’m chatting with. Then he announces that he caught his wife talking to these guys on internet chat in kind of a “personal” way. Then he tells me that sometimes he sees naked girls whirling around on his screen. But his wife, he says, tore up his Playboy. I laugh…and he laughs and he moves on into McDonalds.
I’m here several hours (Jan is at work and George is sleeping) when I realize I am hungry again. A young kid with tattoos and a baseball cap comes out of McDonalds and holds up a bag with two chicken sandwiches. For you, he says. I am speechless as I gratefully take them with a big smile. I have no idea why he gave them to me.
What is this? Off the beaten track, Klamath County is one of the most economically depressed counties in Oregon. Gas is 2.99 a gallon here. Jobless numbers exceed national and state figures. Maybe they realize they are all in this together and they have to help each other out. Or maybe they were just always this way…
Tags: Not Assigned To A Category, Oregon, USA
Zoe
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