30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Ten: Eugene, Oregon

Jeep (Kim's dad) lead us through town, past the University of Oregon, down West 11th avenue, and then up Chambers St. to Loraine Highway. Kim was renting a vintage single-wide mobile home on five acres directly across a gravel road from Jeep and Kitty's (Kim's Mom) five acre home. I was told to park my housetruck along side an unfinished shed, in front of an unfinished shop building on the side of the lot. Woodley parked his step van directly across the narrow gravel road at the foot of Kim's driveway.

We toured the properties and were shown a shower and toilet in a nearby office/shop that we would be allowed to use during our stay, and given keys to the building.

The properties were located on a forested hillside, well away from the noise and light of the city, and the gravel road carried only minimal traffic. It was quiet and private there, and about as much as two nearly burned-out city boys could ask for.

The previous owner of Jeep and Kitty's home had been a ferro cement freak of some type, maybe a contractor. Much of the architecture was made from cement of some sort, and there was a big, really big orange ferro cement pumpkin in the front yard. I mean, big enough to be a bus stop shelter, which is what I think it was meant to be. The other interesting feature of the office/shop building where our bathroom was located was that it had an inverted gable roof, that is it was a big "V", with a gutter down the middle. Not the most leak-proof design I've ever seen…

Jeep was the mechanical inspector for the city, and had been making "improvements" to the house, and those will figure more prominently later in the story.

The next day after arriving, Woodley and I were taken into town by Kim's wife, Terri (name changed a bit to protect the innocent, [me], as she has a very distinctive name, and might actually still live in the area), and shown around the downtown area a bit. We saw the pedestrian mall, where the main street and several side streets had all been closed to vehicular traffic and planters and benches installed to entice shoppers to spend time and money with the downtown merchants. Unfortunately, Eugene had gotten caught up in "Urban Renewal" a couple of years before, and almost all of the historic buildings in the downtown area had been bulldozed into rubble and carted off to the landfill. This resulted in many blocks of abandoned, excavated basements and still water pits, as nothing had been built to replace the old buildings.

We saw the Atrium Building, a multi-story modern building with an open, airy covered courtyard in the center, and marveled at the Citizen's Bank building, with it's modern brickwork.

In the very center of downtown was a large, and ultimately ugly concrete fountain in a contemporary design. It had no water flowing, and apparently hadn't for a long time. It was the perfect complement to the stark empty basements of what were once thriving business in the core of the city.

Terri gave each of us a welcome gift, athletic gray T-shirts with the word "OREGON" in green letters on the front. I popped into a coin-op photo booth at Woolworth's to snap some photos of my new shirt, haircut and such to send to my mother, who was now living in Las Vegas (I have the film strip somewhere, but I'm not going to scan and post it, so don't ask).

Of all we did and saw that day, one thing has stayed in my mind clearly. Walking on our way downtown from parking the car on the outskirts of the pedestrian mall, I spotted a small bit of graffiti scrawled on the boarded up windows of a building that no longer stands at 11th and Olive streets, perhaps penned by a bored UO student waiting for a bus. It read:

"I love you, California. I'm coming home, but I'm stuck here for now."

A cosmic message from the beyond, intended for my eyes alone, or simply the ranting of a disgruntled surfer fed up after nine months of rain? Something to ponder until the next installment…