30 Years in a Housetruck

Page Eighteen: Country Faire

The next couple of weeks went on as before, we worked in the garden and got recruited for chores around Jeep and Kitty's property.

The acrimony over the use of the facilities at the rental trailer continued, so Woodley and I put additional effort into building a kitchen in my Housetruck. Since my RV refrigerator was functional on electric, we put it in the truck and started keeping snacks, juice and yogurt in it to relieve some of the pressure at the trailer.

If the beginning of June was heavy, the end was sublime. Saturday, the 29th, Sarge and Terri loaded us up into the truck to go out to the country for a festival, held each summer. We didn't know much about it, but were told it was like Eugene's Saturday Market, but held in the woods, and it went on for three days.

What the festival turned out to be was the Oregon Country Fair, known that year as the Oregon Country Renaissance Fair. We paid a modest admission fee, and were thrust into a completely different reality once inside. There were all manner of hairy freaks doing whatever they felt best at doing, playing music, making and eating amazing food, selling handmade crafts, performing juggling and slack rope walking, or just hanging out. Many of the fairgoers were dressed in fanciful costumes, political commentary was displayed openly, lots of beer got drank and the air had a particularly pungent aroma most everywhere you went. There was even a circus! I had found my tribe!

We spent most of the morning and early afternoon completely lost in the maze of footpaths winding among the trees, marveled at acoustic music at Shady Grove, got down loud and hard at the solar powered Main Stage, ate wonderful organic meals, and found ourselves a home at last.

Sarge and Terri had their fill by early afternoon, but Woodley and I wanted to stay a while, so they left without us, leaving us to our own devises to find our way home again.

Some time after that, I was walking along on the Left Bank, looking at crafts when I spotted something that interested me in the rear of a jewelry booth. The crafts displayed were earrings, bracelets, brooches and such, but what I inquired about was a small wood stove that had been imaginatively created from a 6 gallon water heater tank. The jeweler was from Coos Bay (whose name was Bill Gates, no kidding, but not THAT Bill Gates…) said that he did blacksmithing in the winter, and that he had brought the stove along to cook on, but that he might sell it to me. We settled on a price of $70, and I gave him a deposit, with the promise to return tomorrow, the last day of the fair, to pick it up.

Woodley and I made plans to return Sunday with my car to get the stove, but we probably would have come back for another day anyway, being at the Fair was like partying with family after months of feeling like we were restricted to a correctional facility of some sort.

We stuck our thumbs out at the exit gate of the parking lot and picked up a ride in short order, hopping into the back of an eastbound pickup truck for the ride home.

Sunday we went back to Veneta with my car to get in another day's festing and pick up my new stove. While at the fair, we watched Moz Wright swallow swords and breathe fire and saw Avner the Eccentric conduct a collected audience of about a thousand people like an orchestra without ever uttering a word. Artis the Spoonman played his body in a frenetic dance that actually made melodies, and Reverend Chumleigh reigned over the circus at Chumleighland. The Flying Karamatzov Brothers juggled for the masses and performed Vaudeville skits while keeping an amazing array of seemingly unrelated objects in the air. Much good food was offered, and I was somewhat astounded to see a milk goat tethered in Kesey Park. When folks came out to the Fair with the family, they brought everyone along!

At some point Woodley and I bought a bunch of Queen Anne cherries, and got into a spontaneous cherry pit fight, eating the fruit as fast as possible, then using the pits as projectiles by squeezing between thumb and forefinger. About halfway through the battle, we realized that a crowd was gathering around to watch us, assuming that we were part of the scheduled entertainment. The cherries left semi-realistic red splotches when they hit, so it was kind of like a primitive paintball game.

Eventually, the day wore on, and we stopped by the jewelers booth to pick up my stove, carting it out the entrance and to the waiting car.

Back to town and the punishment farm, but with a new insight into what was possible in the way of alternate lifestyles here in our adopted home state.