Green Eggs and Crap

Casa d'Chernaik
Portland, Oregon

The dietary habits of the young and the greasy... resetting the mind... setting out Sketchytown... north to the motel of the stars...

One maladjusted evening, in the throes of annoyance about trying to find a new and wonderful place to dine, a very good friend once told me "you know, if you listened to music the way you ate, you'd listen to fuckin' Whitney Houston and Michael Bolton and shit." It's true. I have pretty bland culinary tastes. There are a couple of things that I really like and I tend to stick to 'em: burgers and fries, chicken noodle soup, chicken terrayki, roast beef on white with ketchup, and a couple of other staples.

Recently, though, I've been trying consciously to eat more creatively. One reason is just because I want to expand my palette. It's not that I'm so much bored with the stuff I like, but more that I've been thinking "well, why not? It's just food. It won't kill me. That's why it's edible." Another reason is because, I think, if I'm open to more foods, I think it'll be easier to adapt my diet into something a little healthier -- which is something I drastically need to do.

So, I've been working on it. A lot of it involves little things. On the way out of the Bay Area, we stopped back at Haight so I could pick up a CD I spotted at the SF branch of Ameboa Records and decided later that I needed. We ducked into a noodle house for lunch before hitting the road. I ordered a soup that I usually get at the Thai place in Oberlin, made with rice noodles, chicken, and assorted greenery. Normally, I pick my way through the soup, trying to avoid the green crap. This time, I - a little squemishly, at first - ate the green crap.

And it wasn't that bad. In fact, it was pretty goddamn tasty. In the days since then, I've tried some sushi that I hadn't really tried before -- some of which I hated and some of which I loved. Yesterday, we ordered a pizza and got an "everything". So I ate everything: mushrooms, peppers, and all. I'll turn into a real eater, yet. Most of my preferences were made when I was a child, I think, and I've stuck with them because they're more instinct than anything else. It's time to retest them.

I've also been attempting to use chopsticks -- which, again, sounds like a pretty simple thing to do, but it represents a major shift in the workings of my brain. All of these small goals, once achieved, become monumentally insignificant and already seem so. It's just that I'm getting to a point in my life where it's about time I start shrugging off some notions that have masqueraded as logic in my brain for just a little too long.

***
Our goal for the evening was to make it across the Oregon border. The drive up the coast was, for the most part, fairly boring. We passed through some gorgeous territory in the north though, and once we got into Humboldt County, things got particularly beautiful -- giant redwoods lining rolling hills. We found ourselves in a small traffic jam of particularly heady cars. It took us a little bit before we realized we were in line to get into Reggae On The River, a huge reggae festival.

We pulled into the town of Arcata around dinnertime to get gas and food. A couple of microbuses were parked in the lot of the gas station, some kids were playing with devil sticks, and a couple of dreadies sat on the stoop hanging out. Behind the counter was someone who looked like he'd just stepped off tour and cut off all his dreads specifically to get the job at the gas station. We took this as an omen of at least impending weirdness and decided to head on into town for dinner.

Arcata itself looks like what one would normally describe as "extremely pleasant". It's got a village green with rows of commerce situated on all four sides. It looks not entirely unlike the Hill Valley of 1955 from "Back To The Future". Except, it seriously appears as if all of the adults have abandoned the town to the heads who seem to have taken over. As we drove through, kids in patchwork clothing wandered around. No sooner had we gotten out of the car did two kids wander by asking "hey, do you guys need nugs?"

We walked around all four sides of the green looking for a place to eat. The population of town seemed to be made primarily up of the sketchy part of tour -- the part of the lot where that one intrepid friend of yours ventures to when he absolutely can't find the drugs he needs anywhere else. It's not recommended and I've seen people burned, scammed, and twisted by the savages. Nonetheless, they're there. And some of them seem to be in Arcata. (The more respectable part of tour - the ones in the North Face jackets - seem to have gone to Boulder.) A lot of this perception could be based on the fact that we only saw the town after dark, of course. Light has a lot to do with it.

On the way out of town after dinner at Tomo, a cool Japanese joint just off the main drag, we got back on the highway. Huddled near the entrance ramp was a group of heads, some with their pointer fingers in the air, some with thumbs held up, all looking for rides out. It was terribly bleak.

***
North of Arcata, the road cruised along the ocean for a while in a straight shot up the coast. Soon, though, the road began to wind; more and more and more, until we found ourselves going 40 miles an hour up hills and around curves. By the time we realized that it would take a while more to get across the border, we decided that we might as well just find someplace to sleep. I pulled off at the next exit with a lodging sign.

Just off the ramp was a sign indicting that the hotel was four miles off, with an arrow to send us on our way. The curviness and general unpredictability seemed to double that of the highway. I found myself extremely tired and fighting the urge to go above 15 miles an hour, which seemed extraordinarily dangerous at the time. By the time we found the motel, we were both falling asleep. We followed the vacancy sign in and pulled up. There didn't seem to be any cars there.

Attached to the motel was a small house. A sign outside read "night check-in". We knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I leaned over and could see people in the front room watching television. We knocked again, a little bit louder. Still no reply. The door looked like it might be unlocked. I put my finger on my nose. Jon sighed. "Fine." He twisted the door quietly and pushed it open.

A husband and wife sat in the living room. The woman was dozing in an easy chair. The man stood up. "Excuse me!" he said harshly, in response to the sudden invasion of privacy.

"I'm sorry," I stammered.

"We just wanted to check in," Jon explained.

The woman snapped to consciousness. "Oh, I'm sorry. Don't worry about a thing. Come right this way." She walked out of the front door and across the parking lot to the entrance to a restaurant I hadn't noticed before. She unlocked the door, ran in, and disabled the alarm. She turned on a small desk lamp.

The room was lit eerily by the glow of the small light. We found ourselves in an old bar and restaurant made out of old wood. Animal heads hung on the walls -- moose and deer, mostly. A "Louie The Loud Mouth Bass" hung by the door.

We checked in.

Jesse Jarnow can be reached at jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu or by his homepage. Previous tour journals are located here.