My week began with a blow to the head and ended when I woke up on the Oregon coast. Last Monday I attempted to roll a fish tote, four-feet square, up the stairs from my Perkins-Lane-ish beach.
About 40 feet up, I marveled at how even the most daunting task, like climbing Mount Rainier, yielded to steady effort. And then I went down like a skier on ice. I looked up to see it coming and thought "idiot!" when I should have thought "duck!" The ER medic used a stapler.
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You might remember when I warned you that my 100-year-old parents were out driving? My mom, who sees two of you, and my dad, who doesn't see you at all? And neither of whom can hear the word "taxi." Well, Tuesday, my dad asked me to accompany him to the Fix a Dent. He knew the way by heart -- which is a good sign, dementia-wise. But the manager greeted him by name and asked if he had his punch card -- which is a bad sign.
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Another bad sign appeared Wednesday on the forest under the beautiful Miss Picky's bedroom window, announcing that 70 acres of forest would soon be houses. Picky was awakened at 6 a.m. by the rattle of dozer tracks and trees falling.
"Where will the red-headed woodpeckers go?" she asked the dozer driver from Darrington.
He answered: "Get out of my way or I'll take even more trees."
What hit Seattle's suburbs has reached Whidbey.
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Of course it's almost impossible to please some women.
To take Miss Picky on vacation to the Oregon Coast on Wednesday, for instance, I had to wash all my clothes, and suitcase, with her choice of expensive soap; then submit to being sniffed.
She drives, as Dylan sang, "Just like a woman." That is, under the speed limit, slowing down before green lights, stopping in the middle of intersections and not passing in the passing lane.
She bought her Jeep Liberty because it made her feel safe and was cute. It gets 18 miles per gallon. That's six miles less than a 1910 Model T.
She vetoes stopping at places like my grandfather's former house in Kelso or Astoria's Maritime Museum. We found a good pasta place in Astoria, Fulio's. Its owner, Roscoe the Redhead, came over-drawn I suspect by Miss Picky's big brown eyes. Give the woman credit, she's a lovely listener with an even better laugh.
And she seems to be unconscious of the psycho-sexual spell that she casts. Roscoe was soon revealing his innermost fear: That "crafty terrorists will attack an Obama-led America with a germ bomb."
"All the terrorists in the world," I demurred, "couldn't do as much harm to this country as Detroit, or Texas."
His response: "How did you get the child's plate?"
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Our Holiday Inn was ugly, but clean. And I was woken up the next morning by a kick from Picky, who claiming my twitching toe had kept her awake.
So I went out to see Seaside. Awaiting the sunshine and tourists are corny T-shirts, cotton candy machines and garish plastic rides for the kiddies.
The aquarium is nice. But it makes me hungry. Because when I look at that nebbishy black cod, what I see is the finest smoke-able flesh known to man.
On the boardwalk is a fine statue of Lewis and Clark, pointing toward the Pacific, where this morning, diggers are cavorting. Ummm, razor clams, succulent and white, fried in butter and garlic....
The surf drowns out all the sounds of our civilization. Nowhere are there motors heard, nor televisions, radios nor inane conversations. So I can look out at the sea and dream of a Kiwanda dory patrolling those haystack rocks for salmon -- just like 50 years before with dad and grandpa.
Then I turned toward land. What a pile of junk. Nothing matches. And that awful, huge time-share box in the middle.
I thought of Wimereux, a small coastal town below Calais in France, which is like being in the middle of a Monet or Renoir. Everywhere you look is exquisite, and I spontaneously began humming that song from "Oliver" - "Who will buy this wonderful feeling?"
Developers could get rich-and we would all benefit-if only they learned this one lesson from France: "A thing of beauty is a dollar forever."[[In-content Ad]]
