IS POLLYANNA PORTLAND STILL AROUND?

Yes, the other Portland, Pollyanna Portland, is still around.

People either find their way there, or never left.

They all get caught up in some kind of Portland mystery.

The big question is ‘What’s the big deal about Portland.’

City people know the answer when they move away.

“If we still lived in Portland we’d do something.”

Like cities everywhere, Portland has enough people with common roots to celebrate heritage.

On one day everyone is Italian.

On another day everyone is Greek.

Travel Portland lays out every day on the fall event calendar:

 

Whether you’re looking for events happening tonight, tomorrow, this weekend or beyond, there’s never a shortage of things to do in Portland — some free, all fun (and many that may be near you now).

 

Things to do sounds good?

 

No Portland Pollyanna Blogger

Regular readers need no reminder, but yours truly isn’t a Portland pussy with an uncontrollable urge to say something nice about the city.

I’ve lived in her shitty, cheap apartments, watched my neighbors slug it out in a drunken brawl on the sidewalks of NW Lovejoy and 21st.

And met my future wife on that same sidewalk.

When I write about Portland, I’m writing from twenty minutes away.

When I write about New York it’s from forty-five years ago, the late seventies.

I wouldn’t have moved there if I hadn’t been stationed in Philadelphia in the mid-seventies Army as a permanent-temporary-duty medic/ambulance driver in a South Philly civil service clinic.

I had the weekends off and visited an Army buddy who lived in a shitty, cheap (rent controlled,) apartment on E 65th in Manhattan.

Big city fear took a backseat on the subway, on the sidewalk, and on the bus from Brooklyn to Portland.

I’ve conditioned myself to city life from coast to coast and I’m better for it.

By condition I mean avoiding the bad headlines I’d be part of if I didn’t know better.

 

I had a big decision to make when I moved from Eugene to Brooklyn with a short stop in Delaware to not get married. (Hey Anne)

Because of a misunderstanding of the rules, I got kicked out of the first apartment I was sharing.

Apparently no overnight guests were allowed? Come on.

I could either leave town and return to Oregon, go back to Philadelphia, or man the fuck up and find another apartment like a real New Yorker would do.

So that’s what I did.

The apartment in my price range while making $3.75 an hour as an After Settlement Day clerk for E.F. Hutton on the 7th floor of One Battery Park Plaza, was in the ghetto of white-flight Brooklyn called Sunset Park.

It was above a bar, the top floor of a three story building the owner wouldn’t sell.

He moved to Staten Island, but still ran his bar and rented apartments. He was also the uncle of a neighbor’s friend in my first apartment, so I got the ‘family deal.’

Was I nervous being one of the only white faces around at certain times?

No, because I wasn’t out and about at certain times.

I lived on what amounted to a side street two blocks long that dead-ended in a cyclone fence with freeway traffic flying by behind it.

City life, right? Where was everyone going in such a hurry?

Where I wasn’t going was down that dead end side street on Saturday nights.

I know I had every right to, but it just wasn’t the right thing to do.

From my back window I watched a dozen or so people dancing in the dark on Saturday nights around cars on fire.

After asking around I learned about steal, strip, and burn parties.

It was a regular party I was never invited to, but everyone else was having a big time.

 

Join The Fun? No Thanks

If you find the South Waterfront, the ICE building is just to the left.

I was downtown for something and thought, ‘why not take a look?’

For some reason I got it stuck in my map-brain to go up 5th, which is a one way with buses and trains and trains tracks with not enough signage to stay out of the way . . . for Portland road rookies.

I passed over 405 to face a dangerous intersection of cars coming off Barbur that felt like it needed a round-about in a bad way, made it past Duniway to the ‘S’  curves before the ramp to the Ross Island Bridge.

Still little signage if I didn’t know where I wanted to go, which was Hwy 43 to Lake Oswego along the Willamette.

It’s the last exit chance before the Ross, and it dumped me under the cluster-fuck of freeway bridges on Macadam with the ICE building just behind me.

I felt the same thing I did with the burning cars on a Brooklyn Saturday night.

I could go about my business and move along, avoiding the I-5 south jam, or park the car and walk around ICE.

I have the right to do it, but it didn’t feel right to me.

There’s something about big old white boys that bother the men in their hard gear, especially old white men who ought to know better.

You’ve seen our balance and our balls and it’s not good.

I remember the old man who got dropped in Buffalo.

 

 

Another old man got his bones broken in Portland after taking a few strokes from a baton.

 

After seeing the barricades and the use of pepper spray, David said he approached a gap in the line, reaching out to the officers seeking to ask why they were breaking their oaths.

“I was enraged simply because I did not think they were taking their oath of office seriously or they were compromising their oath of office.”

 

He reached out to ask about a broken oath and got a broken hand.

I didn’t turn around, didn’t park the car, didn’t take a walk around to see what’s up.

And maybe that’s the point of pushing the limits.

We live in cooperation with each other, with tolerance and understanding, as social beings living in a society.

When society changes, we change, we the gray old men fearful of adding concussions and broken bones to our already shaky health status.

Where are the fire-breathing baby boomers, the hell no I won’t go baby boomers, the fight the power boomers from the sixties?

I’ve never been one, not one, and won’t be one now.

But, I’ll write about it, blog it, comment on it, and know what’s right. And what’s wrong.

It’s wrong to live in a bubble of our own making? I’m not saying that.

It’s wrong to ignore the plight of our fellow man? Not saying that either.

What I’m saying, and saying, and saying again, is getting your ass kicked in unexpected ways is nothing to look forward to.

 

Unexpected Ways Of Ass Kicking 

On Saturday, under the gaze of majestic Mt. Hood, an eighty-four year old couple took a charge.

In basketball, taking a charge means standing in front of a moving opponent when they least expect it, and taking the hit.

On Saturday outside the ICE building taking a charge meant getting plowed by a rush of big boys in their gear, even if you’re old and gray, even if you’re getting along with a walker.

Even if you’re with your wife because she’s getting road-gradered too.

I keep seeing a football game kick-off with the kicker and everyone flying down field looking for the ball, dodging some blocks, running through others.

I want to think these old people were defending their way of life, their rights, their neighborhood, and not to get over-dramatic, their constitution, our constitution.

Back in the day older baby boomers used to ask, “Who went to Vietnam and died for you?”

Anyone ever hear that asked to draft dodgers? I must have read it somewhere.

Today I’m writing twenty minutes from Portland, three days after a sweet old couple were trampled, and I’m wondering if the guys who ran them down are still high-fiving each other for a good hit.

“Yeah, she’ll know better next time.”

“Next time I’ll take them both down by myself.”

 

I’ve changed quite a bit from the top picture.

This is from today, your faithful blogger full of so much hope I can barely contain myself.

 

 

My big hope is that people understand how much bullshit guys in uniform hear.

In ’75 the Vietnam War was over, so we heard about being deployed to Uganda to fight Cubans.

So be ready?

The men in uniform at the ICE building might hear about young thugs dressed as old people?

They were trained on how to handle the lethality of a man with a walker?

With the emphasis on tolerance and understanding, grinding grandma and grandpa into the dirt serves no purpose.

 

PS: Not everyone had my sweet Grandma who told my Dad, “Your kids are soft for complaining about the brown water and sour milk.”

She would have been tough to tackle.

 

PSS: For the sake of the grandparents and great-grandparents, can you ICE folks be safe out there? All they are asking is give peace a chance. (Too much Pollyanna Portland?)