5.02.2003

The year we got married S & I lived in a tiny shotgun shack in the agricultural fields southeast of Sacra-tomato. It was a genuine shack, initially was a farm worker's home near a big old farmhouse. I say "shotgun shack" because if you stood on the front porch, you could shoot a shotgun through the front door, living room, kitchen, and dining room and out the back door.

The two bedrooms and tiny bathroom had been added on some time in the previous 50 years, and the floor was uneven, so it felt like you had to walk uphill to get to the bathroom. The whole house was sinking into the boggy ground right next to the slough, and, also standing on the front porch looking inside, it was possible to see how the four doorways were all leaning either to the right or the left.

There was a corn field behind the house, and a rice field across the road out front, and when the crop dusters came droning, they would often fail to cut the spray before they got to our home. Crickets came in floods inside our house & died. I have never been in a worse place for sheer number of spiders-- I'd check the bed before climbing in it each night, and more often than not I would find a gold-nasty spider, related to brown recluses although not as poisonous, in between the sheets. A big slough with blackberry tangles on the banks ran alongside the house, and there were more kinds of mosquitos than I have ever seen. Our first night in the house we realized a skunk was living beneath the kitchen. That was an adventure.

So, too, was an adventure when the toilet broke and the landlord refused to repair it for a week. Good thing the truck stop at the Interstates 80 & 5 was so close. I won't even tell about the shower, which was not. Nor about the septic tank exhaust pipe, which let out beneath the eaves, right next to the tiny bathroom window.

It was a terrible place, but it was the only affordable home ($600/month) we could rent that allowed us to have the dog.

Our landlord was a parody of nouveau-riche hispanic born-agains, complete with half-unbottoned Izod shirt, too much aftershave, and about ten gold chains, one of which bore a cross, another the star of david. He hammed up his accent, too, especially when saying his name, which was Ernesto.

In the spring we went on a road trip north along the coast and ended up visiting my aunt and uncle in Cottage Grove, OR, which is 16 miles south of Eugene. And when my uncle said, "Come live in our pump house" we jumped at the chance.

The only thing I miss about our first little house in California is the birds. There were snowy egrets, bitterns, herons, hawks, magpies. There were songbirds of all sorts. My favorites, though, were the swallows who had built a nest under the eaves of the front porch, and would sit and chat with eachother in their mud and straw nest during the heat of the day. In the morning and evening they would swoop out of the nest and flit through the front yard, under the branches of a monstrous old walnut tree that had been there forever. They were beautiful, indigo blue backs with gold bellies.

They had a baby that fell out of its nest the same week we moved away.

During my last trip through that valley I saw big billboards proclaiming "10,000 new homes!" to be built along that old farm road. And while I don't miss the shack, I miss the swallows.