June 23, 2006: Interstate 5

Quick quiz - which of the following are cities in Oregon: Phoenix, Saginaw, Albany, Salem, or Portland? If you answered “All of the above,” you are correct. And these are just towns that lie along Interstate 5, which indicates to me that the state's early settlers were afflicted with a certain lack of onomastic originality. At least the founders of cities and states in the eastern US with European namesakes had the good sense to put the word “new” in front of their names to avoid confusion: New York, New London, New Orleans, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and so on. And while we’re on the subject of unoriginality, whoever named our home state “Washington” was a bonehead!

The morning began with a little guitar recital for Aunt Harriet. Danny’s quite the eager performer. We then said thanks and goodbye to Harriet and, as we headed south, Debbie read aloud to us from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We soon ran into the words “chortle” and “galumph,” which provided me with the opportunity to recite a poem I know by heart: “Jabberwocky” from Alice in Wonderland, a book that gave us those portmanteau words and a number of others. Debbie read until she fell asleep, as she often does, whereupon Danny took over.

We are a bookish family. The shelves at home overflow with tomes on every subject, and we love visiting libraries and bookstores like Powell's City of Books in Portland. We didn't stop on this go-round, time being of the essence today, but everyone should make a point of visiting the store whenever they're in the City of Roses. On the subject of American road trips, I recommend you buy Jack Kerouac's On the Road, John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, and William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, just for starters. Tell 'em Tom sent you.

While Debbie napped between Portland and Salem, I had an unpleasant yet strangely delicious experience. A woman in a red Pontiac Firebird raced up behind us, going at least 90 miles per hour. I was moving a paltry 70 mph, so I started changing lanes to let her by. She simultaneously started to change lanes, so I returned to my original lane, as did she. I said, “Your move, Mr. Andretti,” and stayed put. She tailgated us for a second, then roared past, flipping me off. Sure enough, ten miles later, I spotted her getting a ticket from a state trooper. I’m proud to say that I successfully resisted the impulse to return her gesture as we passed. Nothing ironic about this, but certainly poetic justice, and not a little Schadenfreude.

Danny soon switched to Monster Blood 4, a book in the Goosebumps series, while Tommy finished The Conch Bearer, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. As you might surmise from the name of the author, the novel is set in India. “It’s about a boy named Anand who has a magic conch that helps people, but only people who really need its help. It saves his life when he meets Surabhanu, who used to be the conch bearer but who is really evil.” Tommy’s teacher lent it to us; thanks, Sarah!

In the afternoon, we drove from the plains of central Oregon into the warm rolling hills in the southern part of the state, where we saw at least ten hawks soaring overhead. It’s unfortunate that our friends in Corvalis, Greg and Mariko, were out of town. I’ve known Greg since we attended elementary school together. He met Mariko in college, and they lived for many years with her family in Tokyo. We visited them when we lived in Japan, and we often stay with them on our annual trips to California. Their home bristles with electronics, since Greg’s an electronic music composer and his son Aaron is a computer game developer.

After lunch in Ashland, famed for its annual Shakespeare festival, Tommy played Minesweeper on our laptop while Danny napped. Singing “California, Here We Come,” and feeling a bit like the Ricardos and the Mertzes, we crossed the state line. (Uh-oh - pop culture reference! For those who didn’t waste as many hours as I did watching television as a child: On I Love Lucy, Ricky, Lucy, Fred, and Ethel took a road trip to California; click on the link for a photo.)

We passed the striking profile of Mt. Shasta and stopped for gas in Redding, California, where the temperature was over 100 degrees. It was filled with sunburned vacationers buying cold drinks to take back to nearby Lake Shasta. I decided that the town was appropriately named.

I didn't buy gas in Oregon at all, a point of pride, since I object to the irritating Beaver State law that forbids motorists from pumping their own gas. Attendants must do it for them, a make-work program that doesn't accomplish much more than delaying drivers.

Leaving Redding, Debbie took over as driver while I wrote this posting. She brought us safely to the home of my brother Jim and his wife Cindy in Woodland, about 20 miles east of Sacramento, the capital of California. Like me, Jim and Cindy are college English teachers. We made good time, arriving at 8 p.m. Our boys had a joyous reunion with their cousins Evan and Amanda and spent several hours in rambunctious play.

It’s a shame we didn’t have time to visit our friends Mateus and Heather, who are spending the summer in remote Mendocino County. Mateus is a very talented musician, artist, and independent record producer who lives in Hawaii. His company is called Indi Script Records. He and Heather have two children, Ohmala and Anjah, whom our boys love playing with. We stayed with them on Maui last year, and they stayed in Seattle this spring.

By the way, we finally resolved the problem we were having posting pictures to our blog by using Picasa, the wonderful free photo editing program from Google. If you haven’t done so already, please scroll down and reread yesterday’s posting, to which we’ve added several pictures. Click on the photos to see larger versions.