After getting lost in terrain like this for 3 tense hours yesterday, made it out to Cottage Grove last night.
Hot afternoon, went into McKenzie River here. Brrr! About 53 degrees, but refreshing.
Water tower near Prineville this afternoon. Sculptural.
Your guess is as good as mine; this was on the outskirts of Colusa, a wierded-up VW bus.
I’m in Ashland this morning. After I left Colusa yesterday, I drove north about 3 hours, and went to Stewart Mineral Springs, just northwest of the town of Weed, and lucked into getting the last opening of the day. You soak in the heavily mineralized water, then get in fabulous large wood-fired sauna, then in the cold creek. Mineralized, flushed of toxins, rejuvenated, I wanted a beer, walked into the one bar in Weed, Papa’s Bar (Well, YES!) and voilá, Joe Cocker on the juke box (with good sound system), doing You Can Leave Your Hat On. One good song after another, a lot of Stones. My kinda bar. In giving me change, the bartender included a Native American $1 coin AND stood it on edge on the bar.
Then for dinner to Asian-American Bar-B-Q, recommended by worker at Stewarts Mineral Springs. Bingo! The chef, born in Chicago, grew up in Thailand, barbecuing over wood coals, I got try-tip and rice ($12), with coconut juice, it was perfect, smoky, juicy, homemade hot sauce (no mass-produced Sriracha), sat at table out on road watching one 18-wheeler after another go by. America!
Tammy Wynette, Stand By Your Man, came on the radio as I headed out for dinner; what a beautiful voice:
And then there’s Lyle Lovett doing it:
Drove to Ashland, out to dead end road east of town and slept in the back of truck (my 13-year-old Tacoma 4×4, stick shift, 4 cylinder, 130K mileage, my baby…).
Up this morning, latte and cinnamon roll at Pony Espresso Coffee House in the rather precious town of Ashland. Going to have lunch with bodybuilding legend Bill Pearl and his wife, Judy, then head for Umpqua Hot Springs, then Lew and Krystal’s on outer edge of total eclipse zone.
A lotta adventures in just 30 hours away from home!
A great first day on the road. Latte at Toby’s barn + morning bun from Bovine Bakery, and thenceward on Hwy. 37, Sears Point Rd. through wetlands/nature preserve; there were maybe 100 egrets standing, flying diving. never seen so many in one place, heading for 505, then interstate 5 northwards.
The freedom of the road, good to get away from the constraints of Marin County. I get that feeling when I enter Nevada, a sense of release, it’s wide open, not every square inch analyzed and monetized.
I stopped off in Colusa, to visit my friend from 60 years ago, Jim Davison.
My dad had a rice farm 8 miles west of Colusa, and when I was 12, I helped him build a concrete block house there. My job, on weekends and holidays, was shoveling sand, gravel, and cement into the concrete mixer).
Later, in teen years, I started hanging out with Colusa kids, complete with girlfriend, Roxana. Jim played piano and we did duets with me on ukulele; it was such a different experience, hanging out with these small town kids, for a city boy. Population 3,000. We had fun! I worked in Colusa in the summer, bucking hay and driving a truck in the wheat harvest. Plus partying hearty at nights. Alcohol the only drug we knew of.
Yesterday I drove out to see the house. No one was home, but I shot a few photos. It looked as good as it did 70 years ago. When we started it was a barren piece of land.
Above: An almond orchard, with all the nuts on ground, ready to pick up
House my dad and I (plus two masons and one carpenter) built in 1947-48
Foster Huntington quit his job, where he was working 70-hour weeks for Ralph Lauren in New York City, and took off living on the road, first in a (very) used VW Synchro van, later in a Toyota Tacoma truck with a spiffy fiberglas camper shell. He started The Restless Transplant, a blog that became enormously popular. I remember seeing it years ago and thinking this is my kinda guy.
These days he’s living in a treehouse in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington, just northeast of Portland and he has 1 million (!) Instagram followers.
His latest project is this book, and the publishers have printed 35,000 copies. Vans are tremendously popular right now, and this book shows them in all their glory.
I’m heading up to Oregon (a state I love in its entirety) on Friday. I’ll be doing these events:
Saturday, Aug. 5, 10 AM, SMALL HOMES at The Mother Earth News Faire in Albany (70 miles south of Portland on I-5)
Sunday, Aug. 6, 2 PM, 50 YEARS OF NATURAL BUILDING at TMEN Faire
Schedule: https://www.motherearthnewsfair.com/oregon/schedule/
I heartily recommend the TMEN fairs, They’re genuine country fairs, with chickens, goats, dimensional lumber mills, a ton of workshops, great food, good country vibes. There are 2 more coming up, September in Pennsylvania, October in Kansas
Monday Aug. 7, 7:30 PM SMALL HOMES at Powell’s on Hawthorne in Portland: https://www.powells.com/locations/powells-books-on-hawthorne/
On Tuesday I’m gonna go hang out with Foster Huntington, surfer, skater, filmmaker, Instagram master at his treehouse/skate bowl complex just over the border in Washington. Back home Wednesday. Then back to Oregon in a week (driving this trip) for the solar eclipse.
My annoyance at all the lame krap floating around now about 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury district, “The Summer of Love,”just about turned to repulsion of late. Yeah, strong word, but man is it bad! We went to the deYoung Museum in San Francisco (an architectural catastrophe) Friday for their exhibit. $25 entrance fee! Most of the exhibit consisted of posters and yes, the posters were magnificent, but the exhibit was mostly ’60s drivel.
The “hippie clothing” was awful. No elegance, no simplicity. People with bad taste and too much time on their hands; bad colors, mishmashes of design. A truly awful crocheted bedspread commissioned by Bob Weir. Two rooms of flashing video montages of blurry dancers — senseless, dumb; not trippy — sloppy.
And the clincher: when you leave the exhibit, they funnel you into The Summer of Love Gift Shop. I kid you not. T-shirts, hats, trinkets, a poster of lame buttons — all made in China.
These curators are giving the ’60s a bad name.
The “Hippie Modernism” exhibit at the Berkeley Museum was way better.
As is the exhibit at the California Historical Society. Really good b&w photos, tracing the ’60s from the Beats-on. $5 entrance fee.
There was a conference this weekend, some 45 presentations on the era, mostly by college professors.
Sorry, I’ve been brooding over all the distortions, all the weren’t-there, don’t-get-it pontificators.
“The Haight-Ashbury was a neighborhood. The ’60s was a movement.” -Ken Kesey
PS The “Summer of Love” (1967) was in actuality a disaster in San Francisco.
Built on a Subaru Brat. Jay got the idea of the tiny wood-burning stove from Bruno Atkey.
From Minor Wilson in today’s mail
Every once in a while, S.F. Chronicle columnist Herb Cain would put together a column of bits and pieces, so-called 3-dot journalism, and he would call it “Friday Morning Fish Fry.” I’m still unscrambling things from my month on the road, so here’s an interim bunch of disconnected facts:
It’s an iPhone world I live in a small-town. Most days I only see a few people. Spending weeks in the cities among 1000s of people, it struck me how everyone is connected via smartphones. I’m not into that level of communication, so the extent of phone calling, texting, googling, is um, awesome. It’s the way the world is out there — yow!
AirBnB I guess I really don’t get out much in the world. What I didn’t realize re AirBnB is that many of these are rooms in homes where it’s like you have a roommate. Shared bathroom, kitchen, living room. My 2 AirBnB experiences were very good, but I think I lucked out. A lot of those rooms on the website look pretty grim.
Dylan fans The Bootleg Series, Volume 12, a 6-CD set is a whole new level. Shows how the ’65-’66 songs were constructed. They’d do 14 takes. Listening to disc 6 today lifted me out of my weeks-old funk. Oh mama, can this really be the end…
Skateboarding Yesterday I thought: realistically, at age 82, I can’t afford any more accidents. This shoulder operation wasn’t due to skating, but the other shoulder and the broken arm were. Plus they’re have been a lot of close calls. I’m thinking of hanging it up, or at least drastically cutting down the frequency. Is that mature or what?
My book on the ’60s I’m fiddling with it, to see if it seems a go. Scanning some of my photos from the ’60s is like stepping back in time. I’ve never seen (i.e. printed) many of these.
At left, The Lovin’ Spoonful, John Sebastian on right, at Cafe Wha’ in NYC, Fall, 1965, shot during my month-long hitchhiking trip across the country
I’ve got a different take on what went on then, as opposed to the frenzy of “Summer of Love” TV shows, articles, museum exhibits.
