Month: December 2020

In February 2006 there was a forecasted break in the rain on the Oregon Coast and we packed up for a short trip north to Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River.  We left the homestead at noon, right on time for once.  Trip up Highway 101 was uneventful.  Although it was cold it had been dry for several days so there was no ice on the road, but lots of icicles on the frequent roadside run-off water falls that decorate Oregon coastal and Cascade roads during most of the year.  

Judy and I met my nephew Alan and his current lady friend, Colleen at the Blue Heron Cheese factory in Tillamook.  This is not the more famous Tillamook Cheese Factory, where they actually make cheese and suck in tens of thousands of tourists each year, but a much smaller place that sells cheese, wine, bread, and other goodies and sundries.  It also at that time had a petting zoo or at least a place you can stand and pet the goats, chickens, ducks, llamas and a very friendly emu if you hold your hand out with some food in it and are not too worried about losing a finger or two. 

I always thought that emus are nasty birds which peck the eyes out of unwary children, but this one seems to be okay, except that he (at least I think he was a he, but how the hell would I know) and a llama were having words.  More like stare downs where the emu would sneak up to the unwary llama and try to peck it in the ass and the ever clever llama would sense the emu’s intentions, whirl at it then raise its head higher than the emu’s.  I have heard that llamas spit when pissed off and it looked very pissed off.  Anyway the emu apparently had been spit on before and obviously did not like it so it would pretend to lose interest in pecking the llama in the ass and back away to try again when the llama went back to doing its thing which was different than spitting at the emu.  Maybe I was right in the first place.  Never trust an emu as they will peck your eyes out if given a chance.  The dirty bastards.

But I digress.  Back to the Blue Heron Cheese factory.  They may make cheese there but unlike their more famous cousin down the road, I saw no vats of rotting milk, no cheese makers in white coats and plastic hats.  But they did have a wonderful selection of cheeses and wines you could taste.  I would avoid the fruit cheese as that shit is beyond gay.  Judy said maybe if you melted it and did some other shit to it would be yummy, but then again this is the woman that fed me sweet and sour trout when she was two months pregnant with our first and used morning sickness as an excuse not to eat any of it.  Thankfully both her cooking and ability to have little ones improved with age.  The “cheese factory” had lots of mustards, syrups, salad dressings, jellies, and other con-damn-its that you could try by dipping little pretzel sticks in then. That was kind of neat as I am a sucker for free eats, often stopping at Costco for a demo lunch and to save on that 55-gallon drum of maple syrup.

Alan and Colleen had arrived about 20 minutes ahead of us and were already enjoying a glass of wine and were thinking about getting something from the deli, but it had just closed.  Turns out that was not exactly true as you could still get something if you were nice and Colleen was always nice so she got a cheese sampler with some pepperoni, various cheeses and breads.  Judy went around spending my money, but as I would not let her have a shopping basket, she was limited to what she could carry in her arms. Which due to the sore wrist from the quad accident was not that much, praise the lord.  However, when I turned my back, she made an extra trip.  She must also have been watching the emu.

We made it to the Astoria KOA just at dusk.  The KOA is in Warrenton which is not too far from Astoria and right across the road from Fort Stevens State Park.  Fort Stevens is the place that during WWII a Japanese sub fired its deck gun at the continental US.  The only time the lower 48 was attacked by the Japs during the war if you discount the fire-bomb balloon attacks on the northwest’s forests that occurred later.  Anyway the sub surfaced, fired off a few shells at something the captain thought he saw, and our boys did not shoot back as they thought that the sub out-ranged them and did not want to give away their position.  If it had not been for Pearl Harbor a few months before, the whole war might have been called a draw at that point.  Sure would have saved a lot of bother.  Although there were probably many more decisive engagements during WWII, Fort Stevens has a whole museum dedicated to the “attack” complete with a full sized manikin in a Japanese sub captain’s uniform and a Japanese tank which might have landed there if the Japs had won at Midway, captured Hawaii, and decided to invade Astoria by crossing the most dangerous bar in North America.    

Now I am not a big fan of KOAs.  I think they are over-priced and crowded with senior citizens that should not be driving 45-foot motor homes with triple slide outs.  But we have gone to this one in Astoria several times.  How do you spell hot tub and indoor swimming pool that is open all year round?   In February you have much of the place to yourself, although I was a little surprised to see that all the good spots next to the swimming pool were taken up by seniors in 45-foot motor homes.  But that was okay as we often like to party, especially Alan, who has a thing for loud music.  He is probably going deaf from listening to it all these years.  In the winter it is also nice to have electric hook ups and we often enjoy taking long showers when we have unlimited water and sewer.  We were even looking forward to using the electric option of our new trailer’s water heater.

The KOA office was closed when we pulled up, but they had maps in envelopes for those without reservations which showed you how to get to their recommended spots.  Alan and I took two envelopes which appeared by the letter and number to be next to each other, which they were.  I pulled into our slot facing the wrong direction so that our doors would open on each other.  This is okay, but it usually means that I can’t hook up to sewer unless I remembered to bring the long extension hose which slips into the one stored in the trailers bumper.

As soon as the sun went down it got colder, a lot colder.  I was outside during this mini ice age trying to get the trailer unhooked, the jacks down, the rock guard up, fetching Judy’s purse which she had left in the truck then having to go back and fetch the stuff she had bought at the “cheese factory”.  As the trailer had been sitting for a couple of months, the cubby locks were sticking, the jacks were slow to move, and one of the spring pins that hold down the window rock guard was not moving. I had to give it a squirt with WD-40 and pull on it with vice grips.   As an aside, I am of the opinion that vice grips, WD-40, and duct tape are three of the more important things that separate us from lower animals, as well as our ability to wipe our ass with our hands rather than having to rub it on the living room rug. Mean time it is getting colder and my leather coat is not cutting it as Judy with $5000 worth of sewing machines has not yet seen fit to repair the zipper,  so I go in and get my old ratty car coat which is warm but I manage to spray WD 40 all over it.  So, everything is going just swimmingly and then I go to hook up to electric.  It freaking don’t work!  I run a cord over to Alan’s site and hook up to his outside trailer outlet, which blows his circuit breaker. Then I try hooking up to his site’s electrical outlet box.  That works but I still have the pick-up problem.  The F250 diesel is a great truck but when it gets cold (40 is cold???), it needs to have the block heater plugged in or it will take 20 minutes to get it started.  As this is a lot of time to contemplate your death when you live in tsunami country, I usually try to keep it plugged in.   So, I go to plug it in which pops the breaker on the outlet box when the water pump on the trailer is in use.  So why am I not hooked up to water?  I pulled in backwards remember and my hose is not long enough and it is so freaking cold that it will likely freeze anyway. Eventually I find a combination of extension cords and outlets that seems to work, running the pickup block heater off Alan’s trailer outlet.

We have a dinner that couldn’t be beat; Judy’s cooking has definitely improved over 37 years of marriage as evidence by my portly physique.  After a few glasses of wine we all swaddled and waddled through the cold up the hill to the pool and hot tub and eventually got kicked out of there at 9PM. Waddled back to the spaces to find that the pickup had popped Alan’s breaker again.  So, I had a Scotch, put the WD40 covered car coat outside to air and went to bed while the rest played dice till God knows when.  Would have slept all night too, if our neurotic cat had not found a door that was closed and spent most of the night trying to open it. 

Just in case you are a little slow, you heard me right, we no longer have a motor home.  Our class A, Gulf Stream was getting a little tired.  After having been towed three times in one year and still owing our local mechanic money from the last fixer-up, it was time to get something new.  Alan, having bought a trailer that he liked, was constantly extolling the virtues of trailers over motor homes and like an idiot I listened.  Judy was a bit dubious but agreed to look at them.  We drove over to Junction City, which is the RV capital of the state and started walking around with a salesman looking at various models.  For Judy, the Arctic Fox 26X was love at first sight.  Next thing I know we have attracted the attention of two salesmen, and they are going at us hard core.  When I tell them that my Ford Ranger won’t pull it, they inform me that right across the highway we can trade it in for a suitable towing rig as they own the car lot as well.  Lets see now… new trailer 33K, new truck minus Ranger trade in 20K plus fancy hitch and braking system more K….  

I awoke just in time from this nightmare.  Grabbed Judy by the arm and got the hell out of Dodge with the two salesmen running after us.  What the hell was I thinking?  Judy was pissed. 

“You said that if I found a trailer I liked….”

“I thought we were just looking for next year”

“But you said we should replace the motor home soon cause it is on its last legs”!

“That was before the 60K price tag came up, that is double what I paid for my house!”

“That was 30 years ago! There is such a thing as inflation you know”!

I was losing this argument.  The hour of silence that followed this treatise on the global economy only reinforced that impression. 

After a bit longer I sighed and said, “OK but let me do a little bit of exploring on-line to see if I can find a better price”.

For the next couple of weeks I looked at trailer floor plans that were similar to the Artic Fox and found out the same company made the Nash which is nearly identical to the Arctic Fox substituting wood studs for aluminum and was also about 10K cheaper.

Couple of weeks later we were at another RV dealer eating free burgers and looking at Nash versions of the floor plan Judy wanted.  We soon found the perfect one, but I was still unwilling to commit, apparently a problem common to many men.  The salesman, Frank, however, said he had a slightly used one coming in sometime that was exactly like the one we were in that he could probably get me a good deal on.  Seems like this friend of his had a new wife who was not into RV’s and the guy was looking to unload it.  As this was likely to buy me a little more time I said fine.

Next day we were back in the Willamette Valley at a wedding reception.  Our friends, Mark and Jen had finally tied the knot after living in sin for a decade.  Mark had been trying to get her to marry him for years and she had finally relented.  I told Mark that he was no longer my hero and that he should be kicked out of the man club, but he just smiled.  Somewhere in between the champagne toast and the egg rolls Judy’s cell phone rang.  It was Frank, the used RV was in and a guy was already looking at so if we wanted it, we needed to put a deposit on it right now!   The first time I was aware of this is when I heard Judy say,

“Do you take plastic over the phone?”

That same day we drove into the RV lot to make the final arrangements.  There was our trailer, just like the new one we had looked at the previous week, and 6K less.  It was perfect.  It had the same floor plan, the same comfy sofa and chair, the same bed, microwave, front kitchen.  I was ecstatic.  What a deal I was getting.  Then I felt the icy eyes in my back.

“Something wrong babe”? I asked.

“The carpets darker.”

“We’ll get some throw rugs”

“The sofa’s dead skin beige with black geometric shapes that look satanic.”

“Get some lighter throw cushions”

“The wallpaper has ducks on it”

I’m fucked.  I have a thousand dollar deposit on a trailer that my wife is going to totally remodel at God knows how much expense with me having to do all new wall papering which nearly ended in a divorce the last time I tried it 25 years ago.

We ended up buying the new one that was perfect.  Frank did come down on the price a bit as he felt my pain having been married nearly as long as I.  Now all I needed was to sell the Ranger and our old motor home, buy a larger truck, preferably a diesel 4 X 4 and have it all done within 30 days or begin paying rent on the space the new trailer was currently occupying on the RV lot.

A couple of days later I am telling a buddy, Jim, at work what a fool I was to buy a trailer without a rig to tow it and how I was going to have to try and sell the old stuff in a big hurry to avoid going bankrupt, when this snazzy blue and silver Ford F250 diesel king cab 4 X 4 pulls into the parking lot outside the window.  A little surprised I say

“Jim!  Look at that.  It is exactly what I need.”  Then as it pulls into a parking space I stupidly ask, “I wonder who owns that?”

Jim with a chuckle says, “I could be wrong but that sort of looks like Judy getting out of it”. Amazingly, 16 years later I still have the same trailer, truck and wife.  Would not have it any other way. 

Amazingly, 16 years later I still have the same truck, trailer, and wife. Wouldn’t have it anyother way.

In May, Judy and I visit Schreiner’s Iris farm near Keizer, OR.  The principal reason we do this is that Judy’s brother John is an iris fanatic and no, he is not gay, even though he spent 23 years in the Navy on ships at sea surrounded by hundreds of young men far away from home for the first time.

I am going to stop right here and tell you that I am not homophobic.  I think that being gay is simply fine.  I am in favor of gay marriage. They should have to suffer just like the rest of us.  I am also in favor of gays adopting children, gays teaching our children, gay cops, and gays in foxholes.  I am not intimidated by gays, have gay friends and gay colleagues.  I just don’t want to know what they do in their bedrooms as that is just too fucking weird!  In writing this I have hopefully defused any backlash from the gay community about how anybody involved with growing flowers must be gay, even though it helps.  Having set the record straight on this and once again clearly stating my lack of prejudice toward faggots, I will get back to the iris story.  

The Schreiner’s, no relation to the people who wear the funny hats, established their farm in 1924 and have been growing iris on 250 acres of land ever since.  As I sit outside, writing this we are camped in the Schreiner’s back parking lot surrounded on three sides by hundreds of thousands of irises.  For not only have the Schreiner’s been growing iris, but they have also been manipulating the genetics of these plants to produce a stunning variety of colors, shapes, heights and even smells.  They even have one that smells like grape Kool-aid.  Once these new varieties breed true for three years, they put them up for sale at $50 a bulb and give them a descriptive name like Wild Irish Rose, War Chief, Willamette Mist, and Baboon’s Bottom.  So as not to spoil your dinner I will not describe that variety.  There are blue iris with yellow tongues (beards), two-toned iris with purple lower petals  (falls) and orange upper petals (standards), iris that bloom twice a year, some with frilly petals, some with mottled petals (placata), and some with falls that look like the varicose veins on an eighty year old woman’s legs who had a dozen kids.  Needless to say, the Schreiner’s seem to have had a lot of time on their hands, cross- breeding and naming a gazzilion varieties of iris.  After a few years the price comes down to a more affordable 7.50 to 15 dollars a bulb or more properly a rhizome, unless the iris wins the Dikes award (no shit!), which keeps the price inflated for a few extra years. 

Like I said Judy’s non-gay brother lives with his third wife, Sara, in northern Washington in a wonderful Victorian house on two acres.  Here they have planted thousands and thousands of irises of 800+ varieties.  This year he is down in Oregon once again to purchase about 80 more.  Although I think the owners of the garden are nice people, this is probably why we get to camp for free in their back-parking lot. John and Sara spend hours intensely studying iris catalogs then photograph every new variety they find in the display gardens, even though the catalog has professionally taken photos of the same kinds.  But they are not the only ones doing this in the display gardens as Judy is there also.  We might buy three.  I do have a water iris which grows in my fishpond.  Not really much of a pond as it is in a little sun porch we built on the side of our house and there was only room for a 100 gal plastic stock tank with a double water fall flowing out of two 30 gal whisky barrels.  We put some goldfish and koi in the stock tank with a couple of water plants, one of which is the above-mentioned water iris.  Our water iris has unusually long leaves that reach up over six feet then hang down over the rafters an additional two feet.  There is not much light in my pond so the damn thing has only bloomed once and the single yellow bloom was up in the rafters so that you had to get on your hands and knees, crawl out on the side of the stock tank and look up to see it unless you wanted to go for a dip which I inadvertently did trying to check it out.  Scared the hell out of myself and the fish in the process. 

Now I think iris are fine as flowers go.  In our little flower garden, they are planted next to the fence on a raised bed behind the dahlias.  They seem to do well, blooming in May and early June, before the dahlias grow up and hide them in mid-July.  Unlike John we only have a dozen varieties.  Judy would have more if we had more room, money, and I would allow her to buy Baboon’s Bottom.  Apparently, she has a strange fetish for ape asses. 

Last year she did buy the one that smelled like grape Kool-aid, but she gave it to her non-gay bother after I got the giggles.  I also refuse to let her buy a black iris.  Not that I have anything against the color, I think it looks fine on cars, wood stoves, and Halle Berry, it’s just that a black iris from a distance looks like a bat.  A big, pointy toothed, black shiny bat that is resting motionless on a green stalk, pretending to be flower.  There it waits for some unsuspecting iris lover to walk by with a camera.  And then just as they turn their backs and expose their vulnerable neck to take a picture of Sultans Pride or Gnu Feces, it sinks its yellow teeth into their jugular.  OK, so I am exaggerating a bit.  But they do have a particularly nasty looking black iris named Dracula.

John, Sara, and Judy do enjoy the irises and I tag along behind them nodding my head as they ooh and aah at the blooms and mark which ones they are going to buy in the catalog.  Judy keeps trying to get me to show some interest in them beyond the head nod but to no avail.  The garden does have a really nice hot dog stand which keeps some of my interest up, but I can only eat a few of these and they do not have beer on tap.  After an appropriate bit of  iris nodding I pretend to get really tired, a ploy I have been using for a few years now since being diagnosed with a mild heart condition and am able to excuse myself to go back to the RV for a little nap, which I might take after a cigar and a couple of scotches.  The rest of the crew will keep oo-ing and ah-ing till dark and sometimes till after dark looking and smelling the flowers by flashlight and even bic lighter (I am not making that up either).  All this time John is with Sara who is carrying their wiener dog, Parker Jane, in a belly pack under her sweatshirt.  When they first drove in I actually thought Sara was pregnant till the little nipper stuck out its head from between her hooters.  Some dogs sure are lucky.  I almost told Sara that in my next life I wanted to be reincarnated as a wiener dog but thought better of it.

Finally, they came back to the RV and we sat under the awning talking about Yaquina Blue, Blue Suede Shoes and Acne Zit Sucker over dinner and a couple of bottles of wine.  The mood is finally broken as the sounds of a bad mariachi band wafts in from a half a mile away across the iris field.  They are having quite a party from the pressure wave of the base line that even from that distance reminds me of a migraine.  Judy wonders if it is a wedding that they are celebrating.  I pray that this is not the case as the baby will likely be born deaf.  The party goes on till the wee hours of the morning, but with a few glasses of wine and a lot more scotch I manage to sleep through most of it.

John is up early the next day as one of the Schreiners is going to show him how to hybridize iris.  He comes back an hour or so later really excited about showing the rest of us what he has learned.  Apparently, irises are so large that insects, with the exception of giant bumble bees, cannot pollinate them.  This must be significant as John just gushes with that fact.

“You do not have to bag them after insemination”!  

All sorts of kinky images come to mind after John made that statement, but I wisely kept them to myself.  John invites me out into the seed beds to show me just exactly what he means.  Being not exactly sure where this is leading, I ask Judy and Sara to come along.   John then takes the anther (i.e. penis) out of a flower and gently strokes the pistil (i.e vagina) of the flower depositing a few grains of pollen (i.e. sperm).  If successful in a few days, the flowers pistil (uterus) begins to enlarge. This is fascinating stuff as irises apparently do not need foreplay and require a third party, in this case John, to complete the sex act.  Sort of like a botanical ménage á trois.  You know, maybe this iris stuff is not so bad after all. 

Eventually seeds are produced which are planted in the fertile soil producing seedlings which then grow up in the seedling beds.  After a couple of years these seedlings bloom, producing different iris depending on which variety was the sire and which the bitch.  Each of these offspring are slightly different due to the genetic variation inherent in the plants.  The Schreiners then choose ones they like and mark them with a little yellow flag.  The rest are dug up and discarded on the compost pile which reminded me of my senior prom in high school, but that is another story.  Once the lucky ones are selected, they are allowed to reproduce asexually (what is the fun in that) till there are enough to sell.  This requires about 200 rhizomes and may take as long as ten years.  This whole process obviously requires skill, patience, and dozens of illegal aliens to tend the beds and beat off the giant bumble bees. 

We wander through the seed beds, looking at all the new and unnamed varieties, with Sara taking countless pictures of these new iris types making sure that the seedling number designation tag is in each and every photo for later ID.  Just as I think I am about to have another exhaustion episode; I see an iris. 

It is pale blue with deep mauve beards.  The standards are frilled, lace like and translucent.  I stand there transfixed in its beauty, hardly daring to breathe as I fear subconsciously it might evaporate.  Judy sees the look on my face, touches my arm and asks

“Are you okay?” 

I reluctantly turn my face to her and barely whisper “That is the most translucent and delicately beautiful flower I have ever seen in my life.”

There is a moment of awed silence.  Then I hear John snort behind me as he has witnessed and, far worse, over-heard. 

“Iris made you cream your pants huh” he chortles then snorts “Delicately beautiful”!   

Like a tail gunner who jumped out of burning B-17 at 30,000 feet without a parachute I am doomed, and I will have a long-long time to think about it.  For the rest of that day “delicate” and “translucent” became overly used adjectives in John’s vocabulary.  I truly dread Judy’s family reunion this fall.  I will never hear the end of this as John, the gay mother fucker,  will tell every one of my momentary fox paws (the French have an alternative and gay spell of this). The defining moment of my life has happened and no matter how many scientific papers I write, honors I receive, even if it is the Nobel Peace Prize, I will always be remembered as the probably gay guy who got a woody over a delicate and frilly iris.  If you fuck one goat……