Blown Away

Today I had the misguided notion that vending for a visiting cruise ship on the dock at the good old Port of Astoria at the Never on Sunday Market, part of the Astoria Sunday Market, would be a grand idea. The next time I get an idea involving the port and cruise ships I will slap myself.

I got there around 8 a.m., and everything was just peachy. The ship wasn't there yet, and I unloaded my car, and started to get set up. Then I noticed that I was losing feeling in my toes from the cold ... and that I was ravenously hungry.

So I rushed home, got on some serious warm boots, grabbed an umbrella and raincoat (just in case ... my mother used to say to always bring an umbrella, it would keep away the rain), ran to Mucky D's for an artery-annihilating breakfast, and got back to the pier just as the ship was nudging her way in.

I finished setting up in a jiffy. Everything was cool. Everything was fine. I was looking forward to some serious people-watching, which is a big part of vending at the cruise-ships. I settled into my chair and waited and watched.

Right around noon, the wind suddenly freshened. About 10 minutes later, it hit about 20 knots in gusts. Another 10 minutes later, it was 20 knots normally, and 40 knots in gusts.

I don't know if anyone reading this has ever sat in a 10x10 foot tent trying to protect your merchandise and at the same time keep your tent from vaulting into the river ... but let it be known that there are not enough arms and legs on the human body to keep the tent from trying to take off, and your merchandise from blowing away or being destroyed.

Every 20 minutes or so, I'd hear a crash. Which meant some vendor's goods were being destroyed. There were several crashes in my tent, too. Then it started to rain. The wind blew the rain directly into my tent, which I was already holding down, as the tent started to "walk."

I grabbed more bungee cords, and strapped the tent-frame down even harder. Finally, I had to treat the tent like a sailboat, and reef the side panels, hoping to minimize the surface the wind could hit.

Needless to say, this kind of weather is not exactly conducive to sales.

For the privilege of getting blown to bits, chilled to the marrow, and having merchandise damaged and rained upon, I paid $35. I grossed $80. Nope, it ain't worth it.

Eggsactly

Tonight I was cooking sig-other an egg and sausage omelet, and started thinking about eggs, of all things. How simple, how elegantly shaped, how potentially tasty.

I remember that the very first thing I cooked all by myself, at the age of 6, was a sunny-side up egg in a cast-iron frying pan, on a cast iron stove whose temperature varied with the wind currents that blew down the chimney. My parents were across the little back bay having cocktails with the neighbors, and I called them on the phone to tell them of my grand accomplishment, which left them flummoxed. I wouldn't eat the damn thing, and my mother ate it when she got home.

When I was in my 20's, and newly married, and dirt poor (I think those two things must go together), all I could afford in the protein department, aside from the occasional 1/4 pound of fatty beef to feed the both of us, was eggs. I got them from the farmer down the road. They were 10 cents a dozen, they still had feathers and chicken-shit on them, and you had to bring the carton back to buy more eggs ... unless you brought a bowl.

I made two loaves of bread twice a week with the yolks, and meringues with the whites, and every cheap egg concoction the Fanny Farmer Cookbook could come up with.

I remember putting pin-holes on either end of an egg, blowing out the contents into a bowl, and decorating the eggs to use as Christmas ornaments. And cooking up the eggs themselves in veggie omelets. Waste not, want not, etc.

Years later, I made my first (and only) souffle in the oven of a stove I got for $10. Couldn't make one before that because I couldn't afford the cheese. Nobody was allowed to move, and I remember sitting by the kitchen door with my feet up, several beers at hand, guarding the kitchen floor from anyone walking on it. The souffle was perfect, but boring tasting (cheesy clouds), and I didn't know what the hell to do with it. I think I gave it to the dog.

Then there were the egg-terror years, where eggs were pariahs. I didn't care, I ate 'em anyway. So did my parents, every damn day, and they lived to be 85 and 91.

Now there are those silly ad for eggs that are supposedly better than other eggs. I mean, what? Do their chickens have platinum butts or something?

Oh well, in my dotage, I still love eggs, and still don't give a crap about cholesterol. I just need to find more creative ways to cook them.

What, no LUBA?

Maybe there really is a tooth fairy. Because about now, maybe that's all that can save us from the Astoria City Council (who wants to let in view-blocking condos on Astoria's waterfront in a major good-old-boy coup) and the Clatsop County Planning Commission (who wants to let LNG onto the Columbia River despite common sense and their own staff's recommendations against it).

Wait a minute. How come these people don't have to answer to the voters who put their comfy butts into office? Don't know the answer to that one, except that perhaps a recall is in order.

Okay, that's a fine idea, but the damage is already done. The pathway is already paved in dollar signs for LNG tanks to be built in Bradwood and for condos to be built on the waterfront.

So my next question is ... Has anyone filed an appeal about either one of these demented decisions by local politicians with the Land Use Board of Appeals before the time limit expires??

I understand one group said that it was "too soon" to file an appeal. Ummm, well then, does that mean it's better to file when it's too late?

Ass kissing and dollar signs.

It works in big towns, and better yet in small ones. The "Welcome to Clatsop County, bend over" signs should start appearing shortly.

Hospital Dazed

This rube has had enough. I'm too busy tending to sig-other to keep up the dialogue the original post caused. Now that the VA doc has run off to Seaside, I don't know what the options are. And right now, I'm too tired to care.

Labor Day Ruminations on Ruination

Just as summer was tentatively getting under way with balmy summer days, it's over. That's if you're like most people, including me, who consider Labor Day to be the pre-solstice official start of Fall.

When I was a kid, Labor Day was the day we got our town back. The fife and drum corps would march up and down the streets merrily fifing and drumming, then go out on a boat with a stout keg of beer and fife and drum their way around the islands, most likely in celebration of the departure of the "islanders."

The "islanders" were "summer people," who were all from nearby inland cities or Manhattan, and they would invade us "townies," beginning every Memorial Day to "camp out" on the islands they bought just off-shore.

The husbands would commute to Manhattan on the local train for the week while their wives and children stayed out on the islands. Their gaudy Cadillacs with enormous fins took up two parking spaces in the already cramped town, and their expensive inboard and outboard boats made an annoying racket all day.

On the islands, they had no running water, no electricity, and their outhouses dumped directly into the water, causing unpleasant tidbits to wash ashore at most inopportune times. The dog crap just went directly into the water without the pretense of an outhouse. They would take all of their bottles and cans out in a boat, fill them, and sink them in the water just off-shore.

In the 1960's, the "islanders" started putting ear-splitting generators on the islands so they could have electricity. The only good part of all this "progress" was that they started putting in septic tanks in the grass lawns where they could (most of the islands were solid granite).

So it was with a great sigh of relief that we celebrated Labor Day each year. The income from the "foreigners" kept the town going through the bitterly cold winter months, but we always wondered if it was worth it.

And you know what? It wasn't.

Now the town is owned by the children, grandchildren and friends of those "islanders." The original island houses, once built by Victorian craftsmen who built them in the winter by going out there over the ice on ox-carts, are mostly all gone. In their place are modern glass and steel structures. Islands that cost $20K to $50K in the 1950's now go for from $3 to $20 million.

The invaders also bought up the homes of the fishermen and oystermen, tore them down, and without a care in the world for their neighbors, put up three-story 5,000 square foot view-hoggers. They bought up the small stores and tore them down, too, and built more multi-level monstrosities in their place. (Is this starting to sound familiar, Astoria?)

The little town club-restaurant, on a granite shelf overlooking the harbor, and with a jaw-dropping view of the islands and sunsets, was where the few "locals" who were left used to meet and greet each other. The business fell on some hard times, and the locals were working together to get financing to buy it.

A New York couple with money to burn came in and way over-bid the asking price. They got it, tore down the clubhouse, and built an enormous private residence with an 8' high fence around it. They just had to make sure they had that view all to themselves. (By now, this should really be starting to ring a bell, people.)

The marshes have been filled in so palaces on stilts could be built on them. The woods, once privately owned, but open for all to use, have been sold and sub-divided, and the whole woods are off-limits now to all but the very privileged few who coughed up millions to build there.

Property taxes, even as short at time ago as 1998 were reasonable. But once the town hall realized that all the new residents had pockets even deeper than the seemingly bottomless granite quarries, they decided to tax by the waterfront foot.

An example: Taxes that were $1,200 a year in 1998 for a 2,000 square foot house on the shoreline jumped to $9K a year in 1999. And there is a lot of waterfront footage there, as the place is full of peninsulas. I would not even dare speculate what the taxes on that same house must be now, but last I heard, in about 2002, that same chunk of property generated $12K a year in tax revenue for the local stiffs at town hall.

The point of the property tax increases now isn't even greed any more. It never was to provide services, as the town has none to speak of. It is to keep people OUT. And just take a wild guess at who all those town hall folks are now? Hint: They aren't locals. I don't know of one single family that lived there when I was a child that has a relative living there now. They have all been bought out or driven out by the punishing cost of property taxes.

The town is gone. In its place is a travesty of what once was.

This is a true story, and should be taken as a cautionary tale for what's going to become of Astoria. The proposed condos are the beginning of the end. Take it from someone who's seen their home town shamelessly destroyed by greed.

Wake up, Astoria. Stop it while you can.