13. The Apartment with a View

While Que is busy getting settled into his new job, I spend time setting up our apartment.

I wake early every morning, make coffee, enter a few notes into a diary, and watch the sunrise to hit the hillsides outside our 7th floor apartment.


The summer cloud shows are exceptional. "Cumulous mediocres" keeps me entertained throughout the day. I am excited about the prospect of plein air painting and suddenly wonder if this is where [sic]Thomas Cinkaide gets his inspiration.

12. How small is very small?

Today's Culture Shock Level is: RAPIDLY BUILDING

I can't get over the smallness of this place...
The locals like it that way. Since 1900, the population has fluctuated between 12,000 to 12,500, depending on whether the small college is in session.


In example...Que and I are seated in a window of the High Road Cafe, a cafe on the main avenue. The coffee is weak by San Francisco standards, but they serve homemade sesame bagels. Our conversation drifts to errands. Que needs to pick up some work clothes and I need to find some curtain ties. I mention that I saw a grass green Pandolton look-a-like shirt in the window of the department store across the street from our apartment. (the only dept store in town). Just as I'm describing it, a lone, middle aged man walks by our window. He is wearing a grass green Pandolton-like shirt. The shirt is so new that I can see the original creases in the arm.

11. 97 degrees Indoors

It's 97 degrees in our apartment. Que is now working full time. I'm afraid I'll get heat stroke so I decide to venture out and see the air conditioned parts of town.

I go shopping at the local [sic]Safestway food market. Besides the lack of produce varieties and the endlesss throngs of tan, gay men in bicycle shorts chatting each other up in the aisles, the store is almost identical to my old neighborhood S'way food market in San Francisco. Even the layout for the natural food section is in the exact same spot. I practically jump for joy when I see that they sell lemongrass. (The closet big town with aThai restaurant is a two hour drive into another state)

Most of the grocery shoppers seem to be truckdrivers or dudes on their lunch break from the lumber mill. I feel a bit uncomfortable from the unsolicited attention in the bread isle. I look down at my casual California style summer clothes--a brightly colored bare shouldered t-shirt, clam diggers and sandals. In retrospect I realize that I am probably showing a lot more than they are used to seeing from the average local woman in El Big.

Click on above image to see lack of anything green.
***
Later that night, Que and I try to decide to try Mountain Bear's Pizza for dinner.The mushrooms are canned but the pizza is delicious. The place fills up with lumber mill workers with their enormous families. The men wear filthy overalls and caps and the women wear toe-to-ankle tent dresses. Que comments on how young they seem. We play a guessing game and try to figure out which families belongs to which church...

After dinner, we drive 10 minutes north to the sprawling part of town. I have my first mega superstore Val*mart shopping experience. It's much trashier than I expect. We shop for curtains, clothes hangers and an air conditioner. Everything is shockingly inexpensive. I beg Que to buy me the Val*mart emerald...

Again, I take note on how the local folk seem to enjoy staring at us...

A talking/ singing deer head.

Decorations on the wall above the Hunting/ Fishing License counter. This deer cannot sing "I Heard It Through The Grape Vine".
I feel my culture shock taking root.

10. Weedwhackers n' gingham

Que and I make plans so I can see the grounds of his new place of employment. I am surpised that it takes less than 5 minutes to drive there from downtown. I pass by several churches and old charming suburban homes...


Out of the corner of my eye I spot a young woman standing on the garden slope of a 50's era row house. She is dressed in a prairie style gingham gown and bonnet and wielding garden machinery. I look closer and see that she is whirring away with what looks like a Weedwhacker. I almost crash....

That afternoon I go home and do a search for "Mennenights". [sic]

9. "It'll get hectic-"

That evening Que and I walk one block down to the main avenue to buy some cables at the Radio Shak (which doubles as a 99 cent store. Most businesses seem to have a 2nd business within.) Que strikes up a conversation with the young, toothless salesman in a bad suit. "So, you're not from around here, are ya? Welcome. Well, just you wait..." His has an omninous tone in his gentle drawl. "...it'll change here in town..." He gives us a knowing nod. "It'll 'get hectic-you know, once the students return in a month or so."
Hectic? It's hard to imagine. This town seems to move as if it's encased in molasses.

8. Our Arrival

Only 56 miles to my new home!

We pass through many small road bump towns. I start to get an overwhelming feeling I haven't had before. I experience my first big whallop of culture shock about 30 minutes from our valley. What in the hell are we doing?!

The terrain is beautiful and strange and full of road signs for fossil beds.


After driving through miles of desert, we start climbing up again.. I'm pleasantly surprised by the sight of pines and snaking, clear rivers. El Big is a basically located on a huge, pine covered plateau--a valley completely surrounded by high mountain desert.



We pull into town around noon. The Farmer's market in the town square is still buzzing, so we stop and grab a couple of surprisingly authentic tamales; drag our tired selves up to our empty apartment and toast to El Big.

7. The Dry Side

Dry, dryer, driest... Our new state is big and sprawling with contrasting values. It's evenly divided at the Kaskade Mountains-- not only geographically, but socially and politically. The eastern portion of is mainly desert and socially conservative. The very liberal Western side often refers to the eastern side with sweet nicknames like No Man's Land, The Armpit, or as I like to call it, The Dry Side...

My first Northwest painting. This is a rare, old style wood chip burner left over from the days when air polution and clear cutting just weren't discussed.

I understand that the locals call them hay turds.

At one point I notice that all the lumber trucks are now delivery trucks for the small town-destroying mega superstore giant, Val*mart. We must be getting closer...

6. The Long Drive North

The drive is long, but we're a day ahead of the moving truck so Que and I try to relax and enjoy the trip. I am easily amused by road side attractions such as this...


We are often flanked by speeding logging trucks...


Sign says, "Please yield to bears crossing." Okay, no problem...



On our way out of Bend I notice the radio station is playing obscure follk music. I'm starting to feel like I'm in a different state...

Wheat, alfalfa, wheat, alfalfa, mystery crop, corn, wheat, wheat, and some more corn...


Since we planned a day ahead of our moving truck, we have time to stop for the night at the gorgeously austere Crater Lake...


A closer look at some beautiful black basalt on the rim of the crater...


...and breakfast with the boys before we get back on the road again...

5. "bOregon or Ust!"

...consolidate our junk piles, throw it all in the back of an eighteen wheeler, say good bye to the friends and loved ones, and drive off to start a new life in a secluded town in the eastern portion of the NorthWest simply known as EL BIG; population 12,000. Well, population 12,002...

4. The Decision

So, when my partner Que recieves the call for a full time dream job in the Northwest, it's a fairly quick decision to pack up and leave California, my residence of 37 years. On August 1, 2005 10:00am we marry in a private ceremony in the rotunda in San Francisco City hall...

...drive down the coast for three relaxing days in one of my favorite Central California spots, Pt. Lobos...

3. Flowers for Jacque

With love

2. Overseas and underpaid

Since the dotcom bust, I find it hard to make a decent living wage in SF. The studio that gainfully employed me for over 10 years eliminates my department without warning and sends our jobs overseas to sweatshops in Asia... By 2002, most of my colleagues scatter to affordable areas, like back home with their folks, back to school to retrain, or overseas to the studios that now contract out our projects. I manage to continue to find bits of part time work and stay busy with my personal work. My personal work flourishes...Unfortunately, most of the freelance jobs I run across are either small or grossly underpaid. What is left of the industry I had adored has morphed into a big, shiny, bouncy overseas commodity...

1. Good ol' SF

We held it out for as long as we could, but my hometown SF has been outpricing us for awhile. Two bedroom flats go for 900 k. One single bedroom in a dumpy, 4 room shared flat rents for $800. The beau and I begin discussing moving out of the Bay Area to find an affordable place to live.

I think a lot about how much I will miss the coast if we leave the area.