Eugene, Eugene

We pulled into Eugene, OR today, a city fit for the Dead. Dead heads that is. Tie-dyed T-shirts and sandals, dread locks and bell bottom jeans are the norm. And occasionally, if you look hard, you can glimpse a Jesus Christ look-a-like.

VW buses are popular here and we fit right in with our van (minus the peace symbols and psychedelic paint of course). One young sole even offered to buy it.

"Hey man, I'll buy that camper off ya for a grand."

"Maybe not," I replied.

"Yeah, you guys probably want a lot more than that hu? Maybe when I get to be your age I can afford a nice one like that. What are you guys? 25? 26?"

I looked him square in the eye. "Yeah something like that."

Alas our first offer and we declined. I didn't have the guts to ask our friend with the gnarled hair and cut-off knee length pants, if he was even old enough to drive.

Palatable Pleasures

Mosquito bites and pricker stabs are a small price to pay for the dessert we are going to have tonight: buckets of the plumpest, ripest blackberries I have ever seen.

Somewhere 30 miles outside of Eugene, OR, winding along the Fall Creek Reservoir, we have made our home. We have pulled into the driveway of an abandoned house. Judging by the scattered newspapers and water stained Readers Digest on the floor, no one has lived here since 1987. The house is set back from the road and now lays hidden in the boughs of overgrown blackberry bushes. Branches and prickers have woven their way through broken glass and berries hang in clumps for the picking.

With bruised arms and thighs and purple hands we indulged in another pleasure - a shower. In the driveway of that abandoned house we lathered up and enjoyed the luxury of pouring water over our heads.

Finally clean and spaghetti fed, we tended to the berries. But upon looking in the Tupperware bin that held them and then at the ceiling of the van, we found yet another price tag for the sweetness of this dessert; the thousands of tiny fruit flies that go with them. It became doubtful whether we would have time to enjoy our fruit stew between swats and slaps and scratches.

Finally the berry-stew was eaten and the flies had either been killed or become part of our stew, hence of us and we went to bed. Sometime during the night one lone survivor came close to my head and laughed his shrill cry. I swatted at my ear and pulled the pillow over my head cursing the black berry patch.