40. ✷ A Typical California Driver
[In] the damp afternoon gloom, standing among parking lot oil slicks shimmering like jewels, with no place to go, a cigarette seemed like a good idea.
Oregon has a long history of polarizing conflicts, of which the attitude toward the influx of Californians is only one. In 1810, John Jacob Astor financed an expedition of fur traders to the future site of Astoria. It became the first permanent white settlement in the region and the site of the first conflicts between Native Americans and British fur trappers. Through the years, the state has endured confrontations pitting ranchers versus farmers, wealthy cities versus poor rural interests, loggers versus environmentalists, and supporters of social spending versus anti-tax lobbies. Partly to cope with such divergent factions, in 1902 the state adopted the “Oregon system,” which is direct legislation by way of initiative and referendum. Oregonians spend a lot of time voting.
After a couple of days of winding up and down Eugene’s mysterious grid of one-way streets (except when they aren’t), we pulled into a Safeway parking lot. Without a word, we marched inside and defiantly bought one pack of cigarettes… Salem Lights. We both had quit smoking when I got pregnant. But in the damp afternoon gloom, standing among parking lot oil slicks shimmering like jewels, with no place to go, a cigarette seemed like a good idea. A couple of puffs later, throats burning and eyes watering, we remembered why we had given it up.
The Willamette Valley gets about 50 inches of rain a year, but it takes all year for it to accumulate. The weather service innocuously describes it as “light rain falling for long periods of time.” With the mist curling around us, we began considering the apartments we could see behind the Chevron filling station across the street.
4035 Donald Street, #L
The Edgewood was an attractive two-story complex with four buildings set at angles to one another. Pathways wandered among the buildings, softening their edges. We rented a two-bedroom unit on the second floor. A cement balcony looked out on Spencer Butte, blanketed with Douglas fir except for its bald top, looming in the distance. We retired our two vinyl “kitchen” chairs to the balcony and tucked our miniature Weber grill in the corner. Inside the front door was a stacking washer and dryer — a welcome extravagance after two years of laundromat trips, with their endless searches for quarters and long waits for open machines.
Outside the front door, the gas station below occupied the entire corner, its continual “ding-ding” alerting the attendant as cars rolled over the black hose snaking across the bays. A cheerful sound, it reminded us of Los Angeles. Though not called Motor City, like Detroit, LA was clearly a car town. Occasionally, we would ride our bikes, long before helmets, along Wilshire Boulevard. The sound of cars and buses whooshing by made us feel we were taking our lives in our hands, which, of course, we were. Eugene was much more bicycle friendly, although one unfortunate day several years later, distracted by some crisis in the back seat, my foot slipped off the brake at a stop sign and I rolled into a bicyclist just ahead of me. He wasn’t hurt, but his bike wheel had taken on a peculiar pretzel shape. I apologized profusely, explaining I was still getting used to the roads. It didn’t help. Of course, I paid for his repair. He just muttered, “Typical California driver.”
Unfortunately, I never really mastered the Oregon roads, which says more about me than about their roads. Many years later, on a trip to Portland, I was pulled over by a grim female Oregon State trooper on the freeway south of Roseburg. She asked what I was doing. I earnestly replied, “singing Peter, Paul and Mary songs.” That was the wrong answer. With a scowl, she handed me a very expensive ticket for changing lanes on the freeway without signaling. I protested that there wasn’t even anyone around. She stomped off muttering, “Typical California driver.” I wondered if she was related to the Eugene bicyclist.
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