The Last Bartender

I will skip the quote to begin this page, for reasons that should become obvious as I write. We have covered eleven states in ten days and now have a day and a half to put our ducks in a row for the trip across the pond. Buying Luci a crate for airline travel, disposing of the unused one we had for any hotel that might of required it. Losing enough bags to go from SUV packing to checked luggage. Confirming paperwork, paying passage, doing whatever could be done to smooth tomorrow, the day that promised to be the toughest day of Luci's still young and pampered life. I think it is hard to imagine how odd the experience would be for her; while smart, she is a little challenged by higher reasoning and dissecting the meaning of new experiences. Locked in a box, pushed to 500 mph and taken to 40,000 feet, bothered by the whining of the lesser hounds in the hold, bumped by Pacific turbulence and landed in a thoroughly new world. Well, let's just say one of us was a wreck at the thought of it.......

Running the errands to make this happen, I stopped at my first REAL Krispy Kreme (I had eaten their donuts before, but they had been produced, perhaps by Dick Cheney, at an undisclosed location. I expect he doesn't sleep well, and would awake in "time to make the donuts"). Watching Henry Ford's dream of an assembly line take the little cars of dough from parts, to whole, to painted, was mesmerizing. I think I actually ordered "two Model T's" before correcting my self and choosing a maple bar and an old fashioned glazed cake. The latter the Model T, the former more of a Lincoln Town Car with suicide doors (a custard filled Lincoln, that is).

As I alluded to earlier, I had an image of Portland built in the the vast creative studios of National Public Radio. A rolling greenbelt holding in a town of small breweries and communal bicycles, where liberal beliefs and good ingredients are brought together to create better-than the-rest-of-us-Utopia. OK, when you can see past the traffic and the most-strip-clubs-per-capita-in-the-US and the smog, you actually DO see a lot of the stuff NPR promised. But take a deep breath while you drive into to see it.

There are a lot of bikes in Portland. I never saw the orange ones shared by all in the central part of town, but I saw a lot, and I give all the riders credit. With the Willamette cutting a deep valley through town, anyone that rides here needs to handle hills and traffic. There are a lot of cars in Portland. If it is less than in another city of 600,000, I would be surprised. They park atop one another, and neighborhood roads are narrowed to alley-width as driveways per household seem rare. Rush hours rush nowhere. Bridges across the spinal river could charge rent for the time you spend on them.

My first night in town, I stayed on the west side of the river; probably the side I would choose to live on based on my short stay. A nice mix of neighborhoods, although the 'hood of our hotel brought down the mix a bit. I settled on dinner at the Jolly Roger. A good little bar on a busy little corner in nicely mixed part of town. A too loud, too modern, too old to be modern trio started playing while I was eating my sloppy joe sliders, so I finished dinner and bid farewell. But up until nine at night, this place had promise.

As I drove home by various dance clubs, strip bars and gentlemen's rooms, having been informed earlier of the great number of these establishments in Portland , I wondered why. In my state of mind, a month away from Janis , and with no political correctness in my thought, I decided that as most women of Portland (those that don't work in such places) make little effort to differentiate them from the men of Portland, perhaps the men need a little fantasy. I doubt this would pass any real analysis, but it formed my hypothesis that evening.

The next day, a cloudy and cool one, I stopped for lunch at the Barley Mill. A nice pub, and they served a full line McMenamins beer. Unfamiliar with the brand, I learned it was a very successful local chain with 56 pubs, clubs, dinner theatres, spas, hotels and breweries. Mostly in greater Portland, but reaching as far north as Seattle. Turns out the Barley Mill was their first property, and opened just before Portland law changed to allow the on-premise sale of micro brewed beer. So it remains one of their only pubs that isn't a brewery, but they drive the kegs over from a nearby brewpub. It would make a nice vacation to hit several of their properties over the course of a week.

After some more packing and blogging I headed into the afterwork life of a Portland Friday. I stopped in a couple of bars in the business district just west of the Willamette (that's "Willamette, Dammit" in case you were pronouncibility challenged). The first was a massive pool hall. Between Ann Arbor and Honolulu, it seemed a much higher percentage of bars have at least one pool table. It could be that the bookend towns are a bit shy about gambling. This place was unlike the old bars of the plains and the mountains. It was a pay by the hour, eight foot table and $5 beer kind of bar. I would say it was filled with beautiful people, but this WAS Portland after all........well, probably an inner beauty that wasn't immediately obvious.

My next stop was a place called Lotus. I had to shake two new friends; guys who parked behind and seemed to want to get to know me. If the street had had been less busy, I would have worried more, but I think it was an innocent exchange prompted by my Michigan license plate ("I've been to Ludington," it began).

Inside Lotus was a great after work crowd. The place was big, taking up two or three storefronts and a corner. A lot of people eating, the kitchen open to a diner-style counter in one corner, and tables pushed together to accommodate office crowds celebrating the end of another week. I found a seat by the waiter station of the bar, with a view out the window and a sense of the pulse of the place. I immediately alienated the busy bartender by stacking coins on the bar to pay for my beer and her tip. Hey, the rent-a-car had built up some serious loose change as we drove through almost a dozen states, and it seemed a waste to waste it, and a hassle to fly with it. I think that once she counted the well-sorted coins, heard my apology and realized the generous tip (more than the coin counter at the grocery store gets for counting my change), she softened a touch, but soft wasn't really her style.

She was small and athletic with her hair cropped on the #3 setting and wearing a latte tan. I guessed a triathlete, or a serious bicyclist. I later found out it was modern dance for a day job that kept her in that kind of shape. Her name was Eva, and as the now-relaxed office folk broke from their weekday relationships and took their collective buzz home to their other lives, her mile-minute-pace slowed, and the washing of the glasses began. And we had a chance to chat.

She lightened quickly to my story of travel, as many had a long the way. But for her it was closer to home: in a few weeks she was to set out across the country, with her dog, and to take six months to do it. She had worked extra jobs for a year to save for the adventure, and was excited to begin. I asked if she had read "Travels with Charley," and she wasn't aware of it. I told her of my inspiration from Deb, at Casey's in Ann Arbor, and how the book had really informed my trip. It turned out Eva has family in Heartland, 40 miles or so from Ann Arbor. I had a couple of ideas gel at this point, and hoped I was reading Eva correctly. I asked if she would like to read the book and, in return, would consider delivering it back to Deb at Casey's as she passed Ann Arbor. I thought she and Deb were not dissimilar (Deb IS the serious cyclist I thought Eva MAY be), and I saw some closure in this. Would the circle will be unbroken?

Eva seemed genuinely excited about the idea. Enough so that I was willing to take the risk, and give up the ancient paperback that had become a part of me in the past few weeks. I headed back to the motel, penned a note of introduction of Eva to Deb, and delivered the tired tome back to the bar, where the last bartender of my journey bought me a beer ("a beer for a book," she nodded) and accepted not just "Charley," but the responsibility of its safe passage, I hope, and believe.

There was no quote here; the book gone. This may turn out to be folly but here is my thinking: as long as the book is read, the deal is fair. If it inspires, we are both ahead. If it is read, inspires, and completes the circle, well, that would be truly special. Probably too much to hope for that it is more than that, but it could be: a statement about the people we are, our dogs, our wanderlust, our interdependence with others, yet reliance upon ourselves. And it is a true tale of the America that Steinbeck traveled, I've now crossed, and that that awaits Eva.

It also speaks of bartenders. The first and last of this journey are certainly among those who rank the best. But so many along the way were good too. It was my way to see today's America, and I will write more of my conclusions later. But this is a great country of great stories, and I hope I have given justice to this one.