b>Jump: Silverton, OR → Gervais, OR, High School grounds: 15 miles
LEFT out of the school…arrows to HWY 214 NORTH to Mt. Angel
Follow arrows to Mt Angel-Gervais Road to Gervais
Arrows to the lot…
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm

Pitched the tent on the grounds of a high school. No Smoking, Spitting or Selling Crack on School Property signs were posted in English, Spanish… and Russian. This was Gervais, Oregon, a nondescript little town rising from the hop fields.


In 1987 at the end of the Cold War, 2,000 or so Russian Old Believers emigrated to the farmlands between Gervais and nearby Mt. Angel. I’m not sure what creed distinguishes them exactly, only that back in the middle of the seventeenth century their ancestors objected most strenuously when the Tsar decided the Russian Orthodox Church needed to be more like its Greek Orthodox sister. Persecution, diaspora to Siberia ensued. When the Cold War segued into glasnost, the Old Believers decided the weather was better in Oregon. Today there are more than 10,000 of them hereabouts – the largest concentration of Old Believers in the continental U.S (although I seem to think Sitka, Alaska was actually founded by Old Believers.) A few of them showed up at the circus’s performances – ladies in babushkas, men with forelocks. They’re a little like the Amish I suppose, except they drive cars and send their kids to public school. They’re not supposed to eat off plates that have ever been touched by nonbelievers – a boon for the local Styrofoam-throw-away-using fast food industry.
The Russian Old Believer churches are all in nearby Woodburn, one of the towns I explored on my way into Portland. Woodburn was otherwise distinguished by the fact that the businesses besides the I-5 are Anglo businesses whereas all the businesses in the city center – along the railroad tracks – are Hispanic. In fact, except for the trees, you’d think you were in Mexico in downtown Woodburn.


I love the way the early morning mists rise from the ground in this part of the world:


Portland has history for me. I spent the summer of my twentieth year picking fruit in the nearby Hood River valley, hanging out at a commune in Pe Ell, Washington, making periodic trips into Portland to pick up unemployment checks. This was not my idea of a good time, it was Mark Conly’s; but I was in love with Mark Conly, and Mark Conly was in love with Woody Guthrie, Tom Joad, and their peculiar version of the American dream.

Being lazy and terrified of heights, I was lousy at picking fruit. Also I hated Pe Ell, a ghost town clustered around a long dead mill with a vaguely sinister aspect. I passed my time there smoking dope and walking long distances on the railroad tracks, pretending the single rails were a tightrope and I was balancing 40 feet above the heads of an invisible crowd of admirers and detractors. This allowed me to keep out of the way of the speed freaks in our little hippie collective.

Loved Portland though. Loved, loved, loved it. Being in Portland felt like one long assignation in the lobby of a noir hotel.

Mark moved back to Portland – oh, about ten years ago now. Suspect because of Oregon's liberal suicide policy.

All day long as I scurried about on my various errands – to Powells to pick up reference books for the Great Robin Home Schooling Project; to the Best Mac Store in the world where I spent way too much money on a new battery for the G4, a new wireless Internet thingy for the iBook backup, and an iTouch for Ben’s birthday; back to Powell’s again where I sat in their coffee shop all afternoon, blissfully surrounded by metric tons of books, and wrote – I kept thinking, I must see Mark.

I didn’t want to see Mark. But it was the right thing to do.

Finally around noon I called him – busy signal. What are you busy doing, Mark? I thought. Dying?

The last time I’d called Mark he’d told me the same anecdote three times in a row. Something that happened in Ghana when he was in the Peace Corps. Something having to do with corn crops, economic development.

I didn’t complain. A part of him knew he was repeating himself. Finally he said, “My mind is going, Patreetz.”

“Is that part of the disease process?” I asked cautiously.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell. Docs say it shouldn’t be. Docs say I’m depressed.”

“I wonder why,” I said.

Mark still had that braying laugh. “All I want to do is sleep.”

“Sleep? But why?”

“In my dreams I run,” he said simply.

I called Mark three more times. Busy signals every time – beep, beep, beep, beep. Honestly? I was glad. I didn’t have to have my heart broken but I still got to lie to myself, tell myself I’d made an effort. Sometimes you have to be shallow to survive.

Ninth Coolest Town In the U.S.A.

Jump: Gates, OR → Silverton, OR, Robert Frost School: 45 miles
RIGHT out of the lot…arrows back to HWY 22 WEST
At Sublimity, arrows to Cascade HWY North to Silverton
Arrows to the lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm

Gates is a dot in the Santiam Canyon, a pass that slashes through the central Cascades with its endless dank forests of Douglas fir. Blink: you’ll be glad you missed it. Rained the whole time we were there. Big audience though. During intermission I watched the manly men standing in clusters, puffing cigarettes, casting furtive glances at the mill which you could just see from the grounds of the old school where we circus gypsies were camped. You can tell they’re manly men because they wear their baseball caps bill forward.

Today’s jump – the oh-so-adorable town of Silverton – lay at the end of a rapturously beautiful country road that wrapped itself around the gently rolling hills, cutting through farms and vineyards.

Silverton came in #9 in Budget Travel’s 2009 Coolest Small Town in America contest! A penny buys you 20 minutes of parking time in the historic downtown which consists of three winebars, six coffee houses, five tschotscke emporiums and a tavern where you can shoot pool and play Texas Hold ‘Em till two in the morning. Was not always thus, of course. Founded in the early 1850’s, Silverton was one of the California Gold Rush’s early breadbaskets. A flourmill once stood on the banks of Silver Creek in addition to the ubiquitous timber mill. Outstripped the now defunct town of Milford (two miles up Silver Creek) because the developer was smart enough to market it as a happily-ever-after to the gold miners after they burned out.

I find the morphologies of little cities like this endlessly fascinating, exercises in psycho-economics. Commercial buildings are relatively large capital investments; absent natural disaster, they tend to stand until something more valuable replaces them. Judging from the architecture of its central business district then, Silverton reached the height of its prosperity in the early 1920’s. Today it exists mostly as a charming suburb of Salem, depending upon the kindness of tourists for the occasional handout.

Never Piss Off The Railroad Rep

Jump: Creswell, OR → Sweet Home, OR – 60 miles
RIGHT out of lot… arrows to I-5 NORTH
Take EXIT #216 – HWY 228 EAST to Sweet Home
Arrows to Lot – Rodeo Grounds
Shows at 2pn/4:30pm

Creswell is Creswell because the railroad snubbed Cloverdale. As a result Cloverdale is now just a name attached to a stretch of road, and Creswell an ugly little town bisected by tracks.

At the hottest point in the afternoon I checked out the local museum, a lovingly arranged collection of junk and relics housed in a one-time Methodist church. “Second oldest building in town,” the curator told me eagerly. He was a tall thin man with a handlebar mustache and what might pass for the air of a distressed aristocrat in these parts. According to the guestbook I was the first person to visit the place in six days.

What could that early Cloverdale town father have done to so piss off the Pacific Railroad’s local rep? Boundary dispute? Or had the railroad rep been a Baptist? This was a question for which the curator – following me from room to room – had no answer. A typed inscription beneath the sepia photograph of another gentleman with a handlebar mustache identified him as William Cresswell, the Postmaster General of the region circa eighteen eighty-something, for whom the then newly founded town – minus the amputation of an s – had been named.

Abandoned Mills, Atomic Blizards

Jump: Oakridge, OR → Creswell, Or: 50 miles
Go out the way we came in…RIGHT out of industrial park onto HWY 58 West…LEFT onto CLOVERDALE ROAD – follow signs for I-5 SOUTH DETOUR CLOVERDALE ROAD to Creswell…arrows to lot.
Shows at 2pm and 4:30pm.

The lot in Oakridge was the site of an abandoned mill. Well – not quite abandoned, couple of maintenance people showed up around 9:30, peered curiously at the roustabouts hammering stakes for the tent. Mothballed is more accurate. Probably closed not more than five years ago, and though I doubt that it will ever open again people are pretending it will. The mill made Armstrong hard wood flooring. There was a kiln a few hundred yards away, and a little railroad track – now overgrown with blackberry tangles and spotted yellow purseglove – for carrying finished product to the main freight line a mile away.

Like so many towns hereabouts, Oakridge’s downtown proper is mostly deserted except for a couple of banks and the local Brewers Union:

Such commerce as there is clusters along the route Hwy 58 – the usual cluster of gas stations and fast food joint. I had my first Atomic Blizzard at the local DQ. (Why “DQ”? What was wrong with “Dairy Queen?”) It tasted horrible but did cool me off.

NOT the Roto Rooter Capitol of the World

Jump: Drain, OR → Oakridge, OR
99 → I5 → 58: 70 miles

The circus was camped in Drain, Oregon. Drain used to be a lumber town. I don’t know what it is now.

I got there just after dark. I drove 700 miles in my little red Veedub. I could easily have driven another 700. It was effortless, I was gliding. I listened to NPR, Dr. Laura, Michael Savage. I switched the radio off for the sudden vista of Shasta, listening instead to Sinead O’Connor sing about dead soldiers and the foggy, foggy dew in that mad banshee voice. I was just so glad to be quit of Monterey, of California.

Drain, Oregon is not the Roto Rooter capitol of the world whatever you might think. It’s named after Charles Drain, a prosperous 19th century citizen of the township. I’m unclear just what Charles Drain did to earn the distinction. Perhaps he founded the mill – which is now closed and fenced with large No Trespassing signs like so many mills in Oregon.

At one time Drain must have been a prosperous little town. It has a newish civic center – wood not concrete, true – a library open 3 hours every weekday afternoon. In 1950, in commemoration of a hundred years of Oregon statehood, it paid for a covered wagon to travel the full route of the Oregon trail, starting in Independence, MO. For the first 3 miles, President Harry Truman drove the wagon. The nineteen fifties (we can safely assume) were Drain’s glory days.

Now half the shops in its tiny downtown are closed. Hopeful “4 Sale” signs on a few – the chainsaw store, for example. I’d never seen a chainsaw store before. The remaining stores include two (count ‘em) auto parts stores, two (count ‘em) espresso emporiums and oddly enough a bridal shop in what appeared to be an abandoned barn, Celebrate Christ spray painted on its side.

Living At the Zoo

Jump: Jefferson, OR → Mill City, OR
RIGHT out of the school grounds… go out the way we came and stay off infield
Follow arrows and signs for Mill City out of town…
HWY 22 East to Mill City and on to the community of Gates… arrows to the lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm

Jefferson is a tiny, pretty, rotting little town on the outskirts of Albany. The lot was the grounds of the Jefferson Middle School. All day long teachers led parades of middle schoolers on learning expectations through our RV encampment. This made it difficult to fart, pick my nose or urinate since there could be no expectation of privacy.