| | J (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small} ekips) wrote, |
- Mood:
content
And a car in every back yard, to boot.
K.;
This is how I remember it.
This is how my life used to be, so long ago, when I would come to Portland and sit around my father's one-bedroom apartment facing the SouthPark restaurant, when the garbage trucks would come by at 2 AM and pick up dumpsters full of glass, waking us up because we couldn't close the window because it always got too hot in that apartment.
I would come down to the library for internet access, because my father didn't have a computer. Then I'd walk around downtown some more, and some more, and some more, and I'd read and I'd drink coffee all day because there was nothing to do, and I didn't know anyone.
Oh, how my life has changed. Now we live across the river, and when I get bored I come downtown and smoke and eat donuts and read the Willamette Week and now I have enough confidence -- rather, am not afraid of getting mugged any more -- to talk to the bums. Sometimes I give them change, but really I like talking to them. The coherent ones can be really nice.
Yesterday, I drove out to Hood River to visit Wren on her farm. It was a blast, the area out there is so beautiful. Hood River is at the confluence of two ecological zones: the Cascades have put a barrier on the Willamette Valley and kept it away from the High Desert, but at the Gorge, where everything flows at sea level, you can see where the two meet and the trees give way to the yellow-brown mountains that make up the plateau. Then, or so I'm told, it stretches on forever into Idaho and onward to the rockies. I've never actually driven out there.
Wren's farm is actually in Underwood, on the Washington side, just up the hill from Bingen-White Salmon. To get to the farm, one drives up a long twisty road, turns left at a green mailbox and drives back down another twisty road until an unmarked driveway just past a grove of Oak trees, at a building with a red roof on it. To get there is confusing, because their mailbox is half a mile before their driveway.
The day was lots of fun. Wren wasn't actually there when I arrived, and Abel was just about to take a nap, so I sat on the front porch halving my time between reading and napping myself, until about 40 minutes later I heard the rumble of a vehicle pulling up the gravel driveway. Wren brought groceries into the house, and then showed me around the farm.
The farm is just as beautiful as the area. It's part of what I love about the northwest. Their chicken yard is also home to a raspberry patch, and just below that are a crop of blueberry plants. The chickens lay when they feel like it, and the day's take was all of one egg. The roosters are friendly, and there's one horse (Jake) and one sheep (Blackberry) who share a pasture together. The sheep needs to be shorn, and the horse is short, uncooperative and unabashedly friendly. He likes to graze. You can lay on him, you can sit three people on him, and he'll just keep grazing.
I tried to ride him, but am unaccustomed to riding bareback with only one rein that has to be tossed over the horse's head if you want to steer him to the right, and then back over to get him to go left again. For a while, I rode sitting behind Wren while she tried to kill me by leading Jake into the trees, where branches like to come down at those of us who sit a little higher than the rest. Oh well, I'm no worse for the wear, and afterward laying down on top of Jake while he grazed and Wren tried to ride her newly acquired unicycle over uneven grassy ground and Amiel -- Wren's little sister -- tried to persuade me to walk on her stilts, which I'm no good especially when I'm not wearing shoes.
The day was turning out amazing, everything was gorgeous and everyone was having fun, Abel and his partner Dow were alternatively watering the garden, napping and eating raspberries while Wren, Amiel and I played around inside. We were getting ready for dinner, and Amiel and Wren were ganging up on me, trying to whip me with damp towels. Amiel was playfully trying to bite me, and when Wren tried to wrestle her off me, Amiel set about biting Wren instead.
We were all still playing around, and Wren chased Amiel outside. Wren hurried back inside, and started to shut the door on Amiel as she came back in after Wren, making like she was going to lock her out. No one was really at fault, but as Wren started to shut the door, and Amiel put her hand out to stop the door, something went awry, and instead of hitting the wood on the door, Amiel's arm went straight through one of the 6"x8" glass panes on the door.
Instantly, glass was everywhere, Amiel was screaming and Wren was at once yelling at me to call the paramedics and hollering for Abel to come down from the upper garden. As I put the phone to my ear, I saw Abel cover amazing ground in about 5 great bounds. The regional medics were, thankfully, up just a couple miles from us dropping someone off at the local hospital (otherwise they would have had to drive all the way out from Stevenson, a ways away). We called the medics because no one was quite sure how to deal with it. Wren's father had just taken off on a plane bound for Georgia, so Wren was in charge of the farm, and there were no bandages of appropriate size for the gash that the glass had given Amiel. We covered up the wound with rags, and Abel tried to fashion a tourniquet out of a dish cloth, and we did the best we could, the four of us hunched around little eight-year-old Amiel as we waited for the ambulance to come.
The wound wasn't life threatening by any means, and mostly everyone was flustered and panicky. The glass had managed to cut through the fatty tissue and leave a wide spade-shaped gash that didn't cut so deep as it did across. Nothing major was severed, and Amiel was really lucky. There were two major cuts; one shaped like a spade, about two inches wide at the surface, having separated most of the tightly-held tissue at that spot; and a second incision, a long line where a smaller shard had dug in but not separated the tissue in the same fashion as the first.
The paramedics arrived after what felt like forever but was probably realistically about 10 or 15 minutes at most. They brought gauze and patched everything up and their air of actually knowing what they were doing calmed Amiel down. For all our posturing, I'm sure the group's panic had shown like light through cellophane. Only proffesionalism, detachment can mask that. They recommended we take Amiel to the hospital ourselves, in part to save us the cost of an ambulance ride, and they took off leaving us with extra bandages and directions to the hospital.
Getting to the hospital was no problem. It's up several windy roads, and is aptly named Skyline Hospital, with a view out over the Gorge that most millionaires would pay big bucks for. By the time we got to the hospital, Amiel was back in good spirits, and was probably more together than anyone else. The doctor came in to take a look at her, and said that nothing major had been cut, that mostly the glass had just severed the adipose tissue, and then took an X-ray to double check that there were no shards left inside her arm.
The doctor said the stitching would probably take around 45 minutes. Due to the nature of the cut and its width, they'd have to use several small, internal sutures to make sure that everything healed properly. (I just talked to Wren. Amiel got 68 stitches in total.) We were at the hospital upwards of two hours before they could even start the stitching, because the doctor had to deal with other more pressing patients after he examined Amiel at the outset. Abel, Dow and I went into town to get burritos for everyone, although Amiel couldn't eat beforehand because they weren't sure if they were going have to put her under for the stitching or not. Karma smiled on us, and the waitress undercharged us by almost $10 for our meal, although Dow felt bad about it. I tried to leave a big tip to make up for it a little.
We got back to the hospital and ate our burritos and Wren came outside to get some fresh air and some food and make a couple phone calls. She had just finished her burrito when they came outside to tell us they were going to start stitching, so Wren rushed back inside to be with Amiel during the procedure.
I left shortly thereafter, without having a chance to really say goodbye, because I was supposed to get back to Portland that evening and wanted to make the drive back before I fell asleep. As it was, I managed to get back to town around quarter after midnight, and fell asleep almost as soon as I got into bed.
Today I should give Wren a call and make sure everything is alright.
It was a remarkably complete day: from the highs of perfection and beauty to the lows of trauma and the somber aura of a small-town ER, and the sort of bonds that panic forms in a strange way. It was a good visit. I felt sort of helpless, especially since I had never been out there before and had just met Amiel, Abel and Dow and really didn't know what to do or where to get anything on the farm, but I was glad to be there for moral support and to do what I could.
What a strange way to start out the week.
Friday, Maggie and I are driving to Roseburg and going antiquing. Apparently, there's a store down there that specializes in old campaign pins. We're taking orders. I'm getting a "Who but Hoover?" pin.
This summer has been nothing but perfect; I hope Oklahoma has treated you the same.
-John
July 21 2005, 06:40:37 UTC 6 years ago
Pleeease
July 21 2005, 06:47:09 UTC 6 years ago
July 22 2005, 19:54:12 UTC 6 years ago
:P Reagan just for fun
July 21 2005, 13:57:21 UTC 6 years ago