CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY MUSICAL ROOTS By Lori Perry Extinction of the 606 S.W. BROADWAY 223-2327 • NOW SERVING BEER A N D WINE • ORDERS TO G O • HOME DELIVERY TO THE N .W . • OPEN SUNDAY EVENINGS Direct from the Saturday Market, Artquake and points East authentic, handspun New York pizza Hero sandwiches Calzones as well as a selection of pasta and fine Italian cuisine PIZZA EN REGALIA 302 S.W. 9th (& Oak) 224-8349 Pizza or Sandwiches 1401 SWYamhill □omething bothers us these days. We feel restless and don’t know where to look. The wind blows the clouds in from all directions. Look north through the window; a leaf jumps, and you jump, thinking something’s happened. But the real trouble’s coming from the east. You climb to the rooftop, try to see past the city. That doesn’t work either. But you don’t give up. You sit down with your vague thoughts, turn them into pictures. Then they start to lose their vagueness. It’s Sunday morning. We’re lying in our beds. The novelty of the volcanic ash has worn out fast. Now the deserted streets appear to us, not as snow might, but as the Aftermath. If It had happened, wouldn’t we be lying here the same way? It wouldn’t help to run around and try to hide, Maybe things would be a little different, though. Maybe they’d open up the bakeries. We’d be calling up our friends to say good-bye. It’s ridiculous to think we’d act the same. The bakeries would be the first to go. We’d break the windows, walk into the stores, and take what we wanted. There’d be music, dancing, cats on fire! A real Independence Day celebration, with prayers in the parking lot. Koko the Clown wasn’t everybody’s favorite. Of all cartoons he was the most blunt. Betty Bop had savoir faire. Bimbo had a pure heart. But Koko was a bullet-head; under that clown hat was a crew cut. He was the one, naturally. He escaped from the inkwell dragging his little dog. He climbed to the North Pole. There in a room at the top of the world, he found the switch to the end of the world. Now, the proper way to take a nuclear blast is to lie face down on the kitchen floor without thinking. In a dream they tell us this is Newberg, where we all are waiting. It’s just a nightmare, of course. Who’d want to bomb Newberg? No need for us to be alarmed, when the real target is some big city 3,000 miles away. We were all surprised the ash didn’t fall on us the first time. It was all a matter of the wind. But imagine the surprise of the Nantucket Islander who found it on his doorstep two days later. We congratulated ourselves on our luck. The ash would sweep around the world and fall on Canada, missing us completely. O western wind, when wilt thou blow? The wind is a king of sash tying up the world. Life blows around on it. Seeds and spiders scatter three miles high, and come to rest on faraway islands. O western wind, when wilt thou blow, That small rain down can rain? The seed from Moscow, blown into the air, will sift down onto Washington. The flake of a flame of Mexico City will hurry toward Peking. Meanwhile, we here wear masks when we sweep the later ashes from our doors. How much longer will the mountain swell? Koko’s dog tried to keep him from it. He bit him on the leg —what more can a dog do? Still Koko crept closer. The lever strained toward contact. Suppose it’s not a button at all? It couldn’t possibly be a button. It’s a complex message in code, completely unlike other codes to avoid mix-ups. This is typed on a kind of keyboard, which inspires impulses, which run along the wires until they meet a switch. A switch. Let me restate that. There’s a whole bunch of secretaries in a room. Not ordinary secretaries, you understand, who would get an attack of hormones and make a mistake. No, these secretaries are men. They each have a keyboard, and when the boss gives the order, they all play the secret code. A little tune plays in their earphones, an impulse goes dancing up the wire... I guess there’s no way out after all. There still has to be a point somewhere along the line. Between the war head and the warhead there has to be one mechanism. And if the men secretaries are only extensions of keyboards, without hormones of their own to confuse them, just doing the will of their boss — then there has to be one clown. “ The danger wasn’t that great,” informed experts reassure us. “When the computers said the Russians were coming, of course we double-checked them.” You think just anyone could give the order? (The three minutes passed; we didn’t know them.) The President Himself must give the order. 12 Layout by Eric Edwards
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