The Long Road To Woodstock: In The Columbia River Valley [It's Gonna Be Like A Novel, Or At The Very Least A Novella, So If You're Not Up For It, Move Along]

I hesitate to say that my ride with the newlywed couple from Arkansas was uneventful, but I'd venture that is close to the truth. We saw one of the waterfalls---I mean, we stopped the car and got out and walked up to get a closer look---but I couldn't swear that we did that---it's just one of those memories. This is a photograph of Multnomah Falls, and I would swear that this is the falls that we walked up to see, but I couldn't swear that this is the falls.

I do remember that from the happy newlywed couple I heard the story about the fellow who went swimming in the quarry and dove in to a nest of water moccasins.They swore that this dreadful event had taken place in Arkansas, and I had no reason to doubt them. Snopes.com claims that this story is an urban myth, but it must be a rural Arkansas myth too. Anyway, it's a fun story, and I kind of hope it's true, though it's a fate I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Snakes were the order of the day, as once, driving along, the husband said he needed to stop to relieve himself. We were in the middle of nowhere, so he just stopped by the side of the road and went down the embankment, towards the mighty Columbia River. I don't by the way, remember being very impressed with the mighty Columbia River. Anyway, when he got back, he told us he had seen a rattlesnake. That was the sum total of our excitement.

And my last memory of the couple is of when we stopped at a Denny's, in Portland, I think. I had never been to a Denny's, so I had no preconceptions, and my memory of it is not bad at all. I had a French dip sandwich, which I had never had before, and I remember thinking that it was some exotic novelty, some newfangled western thing that made me think that the West was a better place than the place I came from, the East. (You have to remember the value of novelty---in the sixties, people from Ohio we went out to Colorado would load up their cars with Coors and bring it back east---Coors being unavailable in Ohio. In fact, I think they would sell it at a profit. Nowadays, me, you couldn't give me a case of Coors)

So that's it---the Happy Newlyweds took me all the way to Seattle, and somewhere I got out, and somehow I ended up at the home of the Selby's, who provided me with a place to stay out at their house, a split-level tract house out in the suburb of Bellevue.

The Selby's treated me with gracious hospitality, me, whom they'd never met before.

I think, though I might be making this up, that they were a rather family-oriented Christian ensemble, but of course I don't remember that either. Growing-up as I did in the fifties, Ozzie and Harriet were my models of domestic perfection, and the Selby's certainly fit that mold. Mrs. Selby especially fit the model presented by Harriet Nelson, calm and unflappable---a model that was not available in my own home when I was growing up. There is no substitute for calm unflappability (in short supply round about my dwelling, btw), and for that I was grateful.

Done