"She's Cold Blooded" - Wicked Little Town #1 - Third Friday Post - May 18th

Well, here we go, my new third Friday topic, Wicked Little Town is an inside peek at some of the little things I've noticed about living in a very small town of 800 ppl. All names are changed, of course, and some of the stories may be just a bit of a stretch. . . but then again, maybe not. :)  There's nothing Wicked about the town to us but it's definitely one of those places that the kids can't wait to get away from when they are out of school. :)

I hope you will enjoy these small tales!

"She's Cold Blooded"

We'd lived here barely 6 months when we decided to take our car to a mechanic as it seemed to be having trouble with stalling out at stops and red lights.

Our car is a 1987 Plymouth Horizon hatchback. I am pretty sure I told the story before or at least mentioned but we got Babs (named after the only former owner) from a friend of mine who I knew in Portland. It was his mother's car and it had been sitting in the parking garage of her apartment building for a year and a half. I was told it would not start but had an inkling it just needed a new battery after that long.

Babs (the car) was a true, "little old lady who only drove her to church" story, and had just 16,000 miles on her when we bought her for $300 dollars (blue book value) We put another $500 in on tires, battery and a complete tune-up before we moved.  The stalling had been an issue even then but we noticed it less because we drove so much less in the city.

So we asked around and got a recommendation for a mechanic to take her to. Directions in a small town are often given like this: "Go south on the highway and just before town take a left at the bank
(THE bank) then pull around behind the carwash and you'll see it. . .I don't think there's a sign or anything but the garage door will be open."

Perfect directions by the way. No google maps, no GPS. No highway exits. I love that.

So we pulled up, parked and went on in.

I kind of had an idea what to expect. See, I lived in a slightly larger small town about 12 years before and had the best mechanic ever there. He worked out of his own home and he actually helped me go after an auto repair shop in town who had done some faulty work which resulted in more repairs needing done at one point which is how I found the home mechanic. I was grateful and never went anywhere else again. Plus, one of the usual visitors to this guys house was another local who was quite certain the CIA and FBI were watching his every move. The mechanic would always look at me like he wanted to apologize but I shook my head, I did not mind at all. It was . . . entertaining to say the least.

Now, back to the new small town.

OK, imagine every small town mechanic/garage stereotype your mind can conjure. . . they're all probably at least partly right in this case.

This is a "garage" I was informed, not an auto repair shop. The couple ( I think they were a couple) were both in their 60's and as I looked around, I saw quite a lot you just wouldn't find in most auto repair places today. Benches full of misc tools scattered here and there. Tables with plenty of parts either being stripped or rebuilt. . . hard to know which. Oh, you can get a rebuilt this and that thru an auto-parts dealer but here, in the garage, the guy rebuilds things himself. On site. Goes out to the junk yard and finds what he needs or to the auto parts store and does it right there.

"Cheaper for you that way" he told me.

Look around the dimly lit garage with hanging old fashioned bare light bulbs. Racy calendar on the wall, spare parts in boxes on the shelf that look as old as Babs,  half eaten sandwich on a brown bag on the counter. od fashioned soda bottle on the counter (I meant to ask where that came from!)

Old rags, oil cans that look like they belong to the Tin Man, old fashioned air machine. The list goes on and on.  Ok, getting the picture? Add the smell of gasoline, oil, rubber, grease. . . yep, that's the garage.

We left Babs for a check up and mentioned the stalling problem.
"Sure thing, got it!" we were told.

Three days later we were called to come and pick her up.

When we went in the guy was a whole lot more friendly the second time around, I think because he kind of took a liking to Babs and saw that for an old car, she was kept in really good shape. He liked the story of how we got her. .. everyone in our small town does.

Anyway, that stalling issue? When we went back in the office to pay (cash only!) we were told there wasn't really anything more they could do. "That old girl's just cold blooded." the smoky-voiced lady told us, "You just have to let her warm up longer than today's cars."  adding in "She's a reaaaaal beauty though."

Forty one dollars for the check up and some belts. . . cool.

Small towns. . . Good people.

We went out and got in Babs and drove away and, true to form, she stalled at the first light we came to. Five years later, she would still be doing that regularly if not for my mother reminding me of her old Chevy that she had to ride double footed (a foot on the brake and one on the gas at the same time ) so she could  race/rev the engine slightly at stops. Works like a charm.

So yes, We still have Babs today. Now she has double that original mileage but she's still a great car. Dependable despite her little eccentricities that would probably drive most new car owners today crazy. She's vintage now, after all.  31 years old. And she carried us here, away from the city to this little town.

I've had old cars like Babs most of my adult life. One of the unexpected joys about an older car is  that, on any given day, I'll pull into a gas station, or the farm store, or the grocery store, or the library lot and someone stops you and says something like,  "Man, I drove a car just like that one from Seattle to San Diego when I was 19. . . I loved that car."

You can hear it in their voice. They mean it.

We love ours too.

That's Babs!

Crossroads

A few months ago I left the city to return to the Oregon Coast. Leaving the spiraling, urban sprawl of 600,000 for a quiet fishing village of 900.  The return to a simpler place and a less frantic pace has allowed me to breathe for what seems like the first time in years.

I return to the city twice a month, for now, to help out at the coffeehouse I used to own. I work two shifts in a little more than 24 hours and I get to see many people who were part of my daily routine over the previous 10 years.

I am asked time and again "Do you miss it?" and the answer, without hesitation is "No."

Now, I left the urban sprawl and static once before, years ago. And, after five years in a similar small town, I felt I had to get back to where things were "happening".

So what is different this time? Most people would tend to put it down to little more than the fact that  I am 10 years older?

In retrospect, I think it is simply that I realize the site of the crossroads when I am at them now.

In any lifetime, I believe we come to those crossroads again and again.
Many times over actually.
Some large and some small
Some almost daily.

But all of them are marked by choices we make or have to make and then, by the directions we turn. Often we do not turn. We just plow ahead with no acknowledgment that we are even passing through one or slowing to think about where the other road might lead.

We think that the slick, well paved highway we are on must lead to a better place than that little dusty road that transects it.  But that well paved road was once just dirt and gravel too.

When I return to the city, I walk about  25 minutes from the train station to the coffeehouse. Crossing through downtown and then across the river into the old industrial SE area of the city. I pass by hundreds of people going about their day. Some walking firmly with each step a foot-fallen vow to "make it" and some stumbling along just barely making it.

And I fee l this hanging, smoldering presence pressing down on so many of those I pass.

They've all reached the crossroads in life too.
Many did not think to slow down at all.
Most did not turn.
They just kept on going.
They made choices at each crossing whether they know it or not
And they are living out the result and destination of their choices.

Yes, it gets harder to go back each time

I am grateful to have seen the signs
To have known when the time was right
And to have turned down this little dusty road where few would think to turn
Off of the fast track
Leading to a place where I belong
Where I can slow down
And now
Thrive

-nicolas hall

Crows on the Wire

The morning begins, as most do, with the CAW of the crows outside on the wire. . .  even here in the foggy coastal pre-dawn, it is as it was in the city. . .  and for that reminder I am grateful.

Moving from the city to a very small, oft forgotten, coastal town has already brought about the clarity I was seeking in the move. Ten years in a city, albeit a very progressive and nature-loving city, had worn me down. Draining the life out of me, as cities tend to do once we have grown beyond caring about the nightlife, the constant buzz and the exterior fascinations as all are distractions from who we are or where we are going. Or sometimes just reliefs from the truth we know too well.

Three weeks here and I feel compelled to write again. To make imagery. I feel compelled to dig in deeper to my own internal world and bring forth what has been stewing all those years.

To open fully.
To grow.

Looking back at those city years, it was a slow disintegration. I didn't wake up one day and decide I hated the city again. It slowly wore me down. Slowly ate away at the awe I hold for nature around me. And I mean by this, true nature not what many city dwellers, particularly in Portland, consider to be green or sustainable which is, by it's very definition, inclusive mostly of the well being of human beings only.

The truth is, as I began preparing to move, I heard story after story from others who "dream" of such a move. Of such a life. And, though I would often shake my head and smile, I felt like treating these people as I finally needed to with myself and bluntly saying "Then get off your ass and change your life, make decisions and leave things behind so you CAN move and live where you want.

It is cheaper here. Yes, that's right. Living on a clamming and fishing bay 5 minutes from the ocean is cheaper. Much cheaper. In a town set against the quickly rising hills that surround the bay,  I now walk two blocks to the Post Office and two blocks to the local bakery which serves up 3 freshly made doughnuts for one dollar! Three blocks to the local supermarket which FEELS like a local supermarket. . . smells like a local supermarket. . . as those A & P's of my youth always did.

Historic rail cars sit just across the road on their tracks and the local coffeehouse, what I really think a coffeehouse should be, welcomes community and conversation all day long as the proprietor serves up her amazing cranberry scones and freshly made chowder. Not 50 choices for every possible diet or "lifestyle choice". Just one delicious scone. Take it or leave it but don't complain about it.

I didn't realize how much people in the city complain.  How pervasive it is that even in writing it I had to really think if it were true. But it is. It is just that it becomes such a normal aspect of so many people's lives that it seems like normal conversation. But it is not. And I was falling into it as well.

So let's focus on here. . . THIS is where I have wanted to be. The town name is of no importance. It is the place. The setting.  The fact that here, I can reinvent myself and begin again in a place where others may see decay and economic repression, I find the beauty of what used to be, what is and what could be again.

My first day here a woman in the coffeehouse actually recognized me. Not from the city and businesses I owned there but from the small town I lived in on this coast some 15 years ago. From the bakery I owned and the sandwiches I made there all those years ago. It was a bit of a shock and unsettling to be truthful but also, I know it is a part of reinventing oneself. It is necessary to acknowledge all that has come before and to accept it. 

There are,as so many paragraphs that start, "there are two types of people". In this case I am speaking of those that feel compelled to remain in the habitat they grew up in and to do as the rest of the "herd" do those that can wander and move and adapt and who can make change in their lives and leave the past behind. Those who choose what is better for them. Even when "better" means a little harder or more uncertain.

We, of this group are the crows of the human world. We adapt and we move and we find ourselves making our way home in whatever landscape we  have chosen to dwell.

There is space here.
To roam
To breathe
To live out each day fully and to explore how to create a life that I WANT to live for the coming weeks and months and years.

Will it play out that way? Time will tell. . . and I know that the crows will watch it all from their vantage point and caw as they do everywhere, every day.

And I will smile at that here. . . as I always do.

In Every Dream Home A Heartache

I needed a place to stay and my friend Carla told me her boyfriend had a house I could rent. It was the house he grew up in and though it had not been lived in for years, she said that it would be good for Henry to "clean it up and move on."

I was not sure what she meant by that but I was excited by the prospect of having a two story house to live in for under 400 dollars.

Time passed and I definitely got the sense that Henry was in no hurry to have anyone move into the house. He was always too busy or too tired to go over and do the clean up as was needed. Finally, after about two months, Carla said, 'Let's you and I just go over there so you can see the house. That will help Henry get motivated.

When the day came, Henry managed to take off work to accompany us. He said he was going to start cleaning while we looked around.

Entering the house was like entering a moment frozen in time. Nothing had changed from the last time someone had actually lived here which was, by my understanding Some 11 years before. Everything was fairly outdated from the furniture to the calender on the kitchen wall that had not been turned in that same 11 year period.

Henry spoke of his childhood and his family. Growing up in that house and all the memories that were clearly tied to each item he touched and each corner he turned. .His Mother had died first and then, several years later, his father passed. Since then, the house had remained pretty much the way it was.

His bedroom closet was filled with clothes from his college days. The wine cellar had kegs of homemade wine pressed from the fruit of the grapevines in the backyard. The yard, overgrown and rough, still had garden spots marked carefully by sticks and trellis.

The whole thing shook me a bit and left me unsure as to whether or not I even wanted to live there but Carla was insistent. "Henry needs to move on." she said. We will clean it out this weekend and you can move in.

They did.

I did.

I am certain I told this story many times back then to family and friends and, at the time, I am sure I laughed and thought it unreasonable that anyone would maintain a house like that for so many years after their parents were gone and yet, not live there or change it around at all.

Suddenly, the other day, this story resurfaced in my mind. And, as i have battled for many years to find the words to explain to my own mother why I do not wish to live in the city of my birth, let alone in the house I grew up in, it all suddenly looked very different.

The house I grew up in has changed so much.  My mother, after the passing of HER parents took a course of action that was meant to simplify the care of the house. In doing so, she took away all of those things that would make my soul desire to cling, as Henry's did, to the wonderful times passed.

The trees I played in and around as a boy are gone. The giant blue spruces that I hid under and whose thick, spiny branches shaded me on hot summer days are all gone. The mass of ivy along the driveway that held bits and pieces of my childhood imaginings for me to rediscover, like an archaeologist, every year as I helped my grandfather with summer chores into adulthood, is gone. The basement room that, as I grew up in into my teens, that I lived in, created in, dreamed in is now changed completely. The kitchen, the living room, the back yard, the front porch. . . all the places I have such beautiful memories of are no longer as they were.

The things I hold onto in time deep inside of my soul, the old wooden tool chest or the armoire of my grandfather, the sewing machine or the Lowery organ of my grandmother

The lawn mower, the smell of saturday cook fests, the warmth of the house on biting winter days.

The clamor of great aunts and uncles visitng and playing cards. The trips to the mall with my mother, the sound of the old rotary phone ringing, the days spent creating worlds of my own choosing. Playing make believe games and winning make believe championships. . .

The truth is, if these things were somehow still present there, I would likely be drawn back. I would want to dwell within them for a little while longer.

But I know things change. They have to.
I realize this.

Today, I owe Henry a huge apology.  All these years later, the house that I thought so odd and so unusual. The way I probably spoke of it all then. . .

No Henry, YOU had it right. To hold onto what is good and precious to you as long as you can is always to be an honored decision. Maybe it WAS time for you to "move on" but that should always be up to the person who is living with those memories and within that reality. Especially a reality that was so comprised of love.

It's one thing you can truly call your own, after all.

Image from myantarctica shop on Etsy

In Every Dream Home
Copyright 2010 nicolas hall

Turning Points

There are moments that, in retrospect, seem to be a turning point in your life.

I left the Oregon coast 11 years ago.

At the time I made that decision I felt that I wasn't quite as ready for the small town life as I thought when I first moved there in back in 1995. I had picked up my life and taken it across the country to be near the ocean, near THIS ocean, and to experience the natural world as I never had before. I moved there because, upon first visit in the spring of 1995, everything had seemingly just aligned itself and I was offered a job and a chance to do what I love.

I moved there because life was going to be simpler and, much to my surprise as an East coast boy,  a whole lot more affordable. I moved there as a stepping stone. I could never have seen beyond that first step. . .

The next five years were to be both the best and worst of my life.

When I made the decision to leave the coast, I felt I really needed the diversity and bustle of the city again to inspire me and to move energy around me. I had done a lot there and accomplished things I never would have had I not lived there. I found my voice in many ways but I still felt that I needed to be where things were "happening" and people were creating all the time.  I felt i needed to balance my life between my creativity and a job and being around people I could relate to. I thought that my work would be best served in a place more like the East coast cities I grew up in.

Basically I had a lot of excuses for what I hadn't been able to do.

When in truth, the reasons I was leaving had more to do with the fact that I had lost sight of the beauty surrounding me, and within me, and I simply wasn't ready to accept the need for the deep silence of creating. Looking back now I can see that I was actually exactly where I needed to be for my creative work to really flourish and thrive. I had the time. I had the space. And, most importantly, I had the silence.

But I left.

Now,  flash forward 11 years later, (oh I'll get to telling you all those experiences in between in time) and I really do not have any regrets. I will tell you that I have felt something missing these last 11 years but only in the last few has it really reared it's head in front of me.

I am returning to the Oregon coast in one week, albeit to a different town. I think for the last few years I have known that I've needed to willingly walk into the deep end of silence to further my work.
This is life work. Work that began years before that first relocation. Work that began in the silence of my childhood days among those wildly varied Pennsylvania skies and seasons.

Work that began in the limitless imagination of a little boy.

I've also realized that "balance" is a very delicate concept in and of itself and, for each of us, it is unique. For me, this will never again mean trying to juggle an assortment of pursuits and things that I like or fell I should be part of socially, but instead, to really pour myself into the few things my soul craves and thrives upon. Just as I did all those years ago.

So ok, I can admit that I needed these years in the city too. I needed to reach this point where I can face my own limitations and mortality and realize that the clock never stops ticking and that whether I live the life I know I am drawn to live or not is a matter of my choosing it. Nothing really stands in the way but me.

But that first step is probably going to be a doozy again . . .

Most of all I realize that what I needed was to learn how to find that deep silence here in the midst of the never ending urban cacophony of so many people with so much angst and so many stories they are dying to tell. I needed to temper my will and my desire so that, when I return to the silence of the coast, to the lull of the timeless ocean and the simplicity of nature, I will not allow the outside noises to move in again.

I will not listen to those voices INSIDE that love to tell us we can't, we won't, we shouldn't and that we aren't worthy. The same voices I now realize the noise and static of the city drowns out momentarily in many unhealthy ways.

I want to close the door on them myself. . . forever

Life turning points are like the tides of an ocean, they cycle too, which means that what we think is gone is just in the midst of a cycle and it will return.

 I started this blog to remind myself of,  and to share, the experiences I have had across these 40+ years with anyone who wants to follow along. I started it as a place to collect my thoughts and my inspirations from the past and the present. I started it as a place to speak from the silence that I am now choosing to embrace.

I hope a few of you will follow suit. . . and share your experiences too.

But for now,
Shhhhhhhhh

nicolas

"To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence." -  Louise Bourgeois