PORTLAND SUBURBAN LIFESTYLE DREAM: “LEAVES?”

Inner-city life boils down to one dream about changing to a suburban lifestyle, even a Portland suburb: To lay in grass that isn’t a urinal, a spittoon, or a goose crapped landing patch.

It’s a big dream for big people. Some make it, some don’t.

How does a Portland suburban lifestyle dream begin? I’ll tell you; I’ll tell you how it ends, too.

It all started with basketball. I was a single guy in my mid-twenties living in Northwest Portland off 21st and Lovejoy.

My sports drive had changed from wrestling to running, which isn’t much of a shift since wresters run all the time. If you ever wrestled, you know the sports drive; wrestle in North Bend, Oregon and it’s a life drive.

Long story short, I took runs all over NW Portland’s flatlands, West Hills, out in Forest Park from Lower MacLeah under the Thurman Street bridge to the back side of Pittock Mansion and down the front.

The route sometimes took me by the huge field at Chapman school, the place where clouds of birds swarmed in patterns before flying down a chimney in back. Click Portland Living On The Cheap for more bird info.

Besides birds and a huge field on 26th, an array of basketball courts were laid on the Raleigh side. A running buddy and I started shooting around there, and like always, we got into a game.

I lost to a 5’7″ guy. He got lucky, may have cheated, but he was good.

S.E. Portland Basketball

I like to make small wagers. It took Michael Jordan’s documentary to help me understand my bets.

The Bulls were on a plane and Jordan said to Steve Kerr, “Let’s play cards.”

Kerr: “I don’t bet like you. It wouldn’t be any fun to play me.”

Jordan: “Doesn’t matter how much I win as long as I’ve got your money in my pocket.”

I once played a guy for his watch. It wasn’t about the watch, it was the win, but I still took it.

Betting on yourself in one on one basketball is a natural thing. Who ever bets against themselves? When I moved to inner-SE, I played at Abernethy on an outdoor covered court.

Over the years I had imagined an idealized opponent because the guy I played against the most always won. Every. Time. It started on my driveway in 7th grade. We continued our series at Abernethy.

The difference this time was the bet. He put up his new bright green UofO hoodie against my non-bet. We both knew who would win, so I bet nothing, but he bet the hoodie. Confident guy inspired me.

I played the best game of my life and took the hoodie. We were so fired up that we played against some high school hotshots on the next court and whooped them.

Youth League Basketball

My first son is a Portland baby. In my mind I saw him dominating the courts at Chapman and Abernethy. I didn’t see a suburban lifestyle in my future. My wife interrupted my vision with, “I don’t want to raise a family here.”

She had a good point.

We lived around the corner from a steel-bar window drug house. A woman had jumped/been pushed out of a speeding van and died after bouncing off a telephone pole across the street.

Most important of all, my girl went to school under an LAX flight path where the teachers paused while jets roared over. No flight path for her babies, or me. (I’ve never told her I went to school under a flight path, too, with Bangor School and the North Bend Airport as neighbors.)

It was the right time to move and we found the right town in Tigard. It’s still the right town, just enough and not too much. Instead of Vancouver, Gresham, Beaverton, Tualatin, Lake Oswego, or Sherwood, or Wilsonville, or Hillsboro, or Troutdale, Tigard is the winner of the BoomerPdx, “Where To Live,” search.

Both of my sons played Tigard youth league basketball until I forced them to wrestle, (according to them.) One played Classic League, the other made the summer team before high school. The boys had game.

They played rec ball in college, and gym ball at 24Hour until they were thirty. They joined leagues, played after work, got a team together and won a city championship. Now they’re making plans of their own for posterity. What kind of plans?

Portland Suburban Lifestyle Dream Plans

The cement and asphalt of even the greenest city gets old, and Portland is as green as it gets. Once the city covered the trees on the bus mall in yellow plastic to show what it would look like without trees. It looked like a Christo installation and killed the nesting birds trapped in plastic.

The suburban lifestyle dream always includes trees.

Evergreen, deciduous, nut, or fruit trees, the more trees the better they say. No one mentions the leaves often enough to home shoppers.

Trees and leaves make oxygen for all to breath, then the trees and leaves are breath taking in their autumn beauty, then it takes all of your breath to keep them corralled. So we get leaf blowers.

It comes with the territory, like making a Costco run if you live close enough to a Costco. After all, a Costco run is part of the suburban lifestyle of big box, cement wall, tilt up construction. They look like Soviet-era apartment buildings without the windows.

City escapees descend on the Costco parking lot, load up a big cart so full it takes two carts to get it all back to the car. Extra points for doing it in the cold, rain, and wind.

How’s it sound so far? Keep in mind no matter where you are, you have commitments to keep, vows to live by, and loved ones to share with.

If you’re doing that, you’re living your best life, brother. That’s living the real dream, suburban lifestyle or not.