to confuse as sport. My wife worked in Good Sam and studied midwifery for enough years to realize that intervention isn’t a sometimes necessary alternative there but a functional evil, a code-name for convenience on the harried staff’s behalf; they create a lot of “ C” grade deliveries there. Well, Hamil was born at home. Against the advice of. Nine pounds and six ounces after a seven-hour labor. The landlady said no miracles allowed. And so we’re moving. This place is a natural disaster area. I t’s the way the Collier Brothers, those legendary accumulators, lived their final years. In a-maze-ment, a labyrinth of boxes climbing walls. Happy humming needs no maintenance work; broken-down appliance wrap does, so 1 figure that the increasing lack of order will ultimately make vacating easier. I just hope I mailed that postcard and didn’t pack it with the bonfire dip. s The vacancy shingle for this little corner of the world went up and down in a blink; this is a hip salad bar hunk of Portlandia after all, peppered generously with joggers galore to help vacuum up ash, isles of dandy first-hand and second-hand and third-on-a-match stores, lots of fine foodstops and barbelts, aisles of dandy first-hand and second-hand books, unbland parenthoods, assertiveness-trained motorists, and renovated homes that are sometimes swell, sometimes swill, and sometimes pleas for a parking lot replacement. Still, I didn’t think this place would rent that easily. We live in the El Carlos in the Northwest neighborhood, at least we do for a few more days of panicky searches for things like toothbrush cases and other travel alarums. We’ve been here a nudge past two years (though I’ve lived in this building much longer, originally as a basement In this town I ’ve for dweller) and the rent has creeped from $165 to $215 for this unfurnished and unrepaired one-bedroom apartment; plus utilities; plus from no heat payments to a payment of 75 percent of the oil (plus getting to be nonplussed from having no say whatsoever in or control over the when and waves of warmth; our peak freeze months here have had us either sweltering or icepicking our eyebrows). Okay, 1 know a touch of the inflation flu is matter of course, but all the hikes were fumbled with notices of increased maintenance costs while the maintenance never appeared. Three managers and 27 months ago I solicited the same repairs that the upcoming tenant will have to learn to accept as blemishes that hardly amount to charm (e.g., broken window, no freezer door, cracking essence-of-woodrot kitchen wall, striking gaping hole on bedroom wall that we’ve nurtured to artform with poster jumpsuits, unfinished refinished bathroom, et cetera — the alter-ego yet to not come, inevitably forever unknown but paid for). But this is Northwest RoseBurger, an appealing area; the sort of area about which one can say, “ it was either that or flocked wallpaper.” The turnover population is relatively extreme, an upwardly mobile crowd (1 made it from the basement up to the first floor and acquired a wife and child in the process) Mended with a static or downwardly mobile crowd, and all of them are looking for ways to cork the flow. Apartment dwellers still abound, though condo switches (as in whipping rods) have slowed them down, and the unmentionably powerful A Woman's Place Newsletter • Papa ] Fine European Pastr Beer Wine Expresso Lunches— Light Dinners & By Women About Women For Women A monthly publication of information focusing on the local women's community, events and announcements; includes all struggles which affect women. For all women $3.00 PER YEAR NAME ADDRESS 5829 S.E. N Tues-Thurs 11:3 Fri-Sat 11:30a Closed Sunday CITY ZIP PHONE Mail to: A Woman's Place 2349 S.E. Ankeny Portland, OR 97214’ • been mistaken ' a hitman, a hustler, a rapist and financier and cough non-depressant Mt. St. Helens has prompted more available spaces to surface in this neighborhood than ever before. It is a great place to live and a great place from which to watch and guess how the feud between Portland’s Chamber of Commerce and unseemly volcanic aspersions is doing. But it’s becoming an overpriced ticket for a vantage point that shouldn’t have to pick up the tabs of every loitering landlord. And our pocketbook has overstayed its welcome. Yep, the shingle went up and down in a blink. The manager here should be hustling used cars. I sort of decided not to print landlady Celia Ettinger’s name herein because all of the managers have always told me that she really is a nice soul underneath. Well, I’m typing this in her up- above because her niceness has never brushed off on me or even on these walls. Maybe she’s breeding antiques. It’s getting later, almost 8 a.m., and I have to wrap this up. Goodbye Portland. In this town I’ve been mistaken for a hitman, a pool hustler, a rapist, a homicidal maniac, a shoplifter, an arsonist, and a serious person. I am none of these things and I hope that Minneapolis sniffers and snouts are more perceptually adept; though it would be appropriate to be mistaken for a horse thief or one of the Smith Brothers or a train robber or Judge Crater or a volcano-cultist — you know, just to keep the records as unstraight as they themselves require. Apart from job-related crises (I’ve worked in Portland for the entertainment of drunks), I’ve never been victimized in Roseland by anyone but real cops, rent-a-cops, and rent-an- informer apologists. The criminals here may not be my friends, but they’ve never picked on my insecurely locked brain. (In the Dorcas Apartments on N.W. 20th and Northrup, early ’74, I was three-times confronted by a shotgun-toting manager and told that I was a favored suspect in his independent manhunt for an arsonist. Outside Kearney Care Center — a place which keeps getting renamed as the schnorers on the elderly keep getting moved out — I was rudely interrogated by police who wanted to nail me as a rapist; that was ’76, after I’d just escorted a woman home in one of the neighborhood’s earliest rapeprevention schemes; the cops found my answer to “What are you doing?” very unlikely. Something about those strange bodyshops scattered like broken glass panes around Kearney and 22nd had to do with my being a hitman getting propositioned in the Gypsy in ’75. Fall ’79 marked my debut as a homicidal maniac at the Esquire Theater; the manager had snitched on my glasses and beard; when we left the movie we were surrounded by a flock of shoot-to-kill cornerstones of justice. Again, the me that I wasn’t had no value to my cap- tors. Shoplifter in Newberry’s ’75 for pocketing my own glasses, though the year-old ear-wax-sized chapstick with lip shards all over it was also eyed at length as a possible shelf-leaper. I’m mistaken for a pool hustler to date. And too many people always call me David.) One cannot be all things to all people. Revisions. Change that word. Haydn THE ONLY WAY TO BUY CLOTHES ies y SAMPLES ONLY 1^. P s j Vp SC . SAVE 40% or MORE • westernwear • down coats • baskets • accessories : • sportswear dilwaukie 30am to 11pm im to 12 mid y &Monday • 20 N.W. Second Ave. Old Town Tues.-Sat. 10-6 Sun. 12-4 222-1784
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