14
Wednesday, August 30, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Breakfast on the
Blue Nile
We like to eat out. We
don’t think of ourselves as,
say, Truman Capote and
Joanne Carson dining at
La Cote Basque, but we do
enjoy the occasional easy
weekend brunch in town,
where we often bump into
people we know and like,
and spend a few minutes
catching up.
And really, that’s all
we had in mind a few days
ago when we were seated,
handed our menus, and
ordered up some coffee at
our favorite breakfast joint.
Sometimes such an easy
thing just isn’t meant to be.
No sooner had we been
seated than a woman,
unknown to us, and sitting
with a companion across
the otherwise empty room,
launched into a forcefully
loud and seemingly endless
political tirade.
It quickly became clear
that she was not directing
the diatribe directly at her
companion, or even directly
at us, necessarily, but she
Great hair
doesn’t happen
by chance.
It happens
clearly felt compelled to
speak loudly enough, and
forcefully enough, to be
heard by everyone.
Because, after a time,
I had caught her referenc-
ing our table after each new
cast of political virtue as if
watching a bobber on the
lake, I couldn’t help but
think that she might have
been triggered by my cow-
boy hat.
The cowboy hat, if you
don’t know, is a notorious
symbol of over-wrought and
ultimately dull machismo,
the historical oppression of
virtuous bank robbers, hom-
icidal frontier loners, and
the indefensible subjugation
of bovines. Nevermind that
some us wear them mostly
because, as in my case, I am
bald, and prefer the luxury
of shade over the risks of
melanoma.
And maybe it wasn’t
that at all. Maybe it was
just an outbreak of “sudden
theater.”
Whatever the cause,
my wife and I ordered our
food and sat looking at each
other wistfully across the
table while being treated
to a somewhat stumpy
harangue on the full litany
of American evils. It came
from a particular side of the
political divide, but in mat-
ters of bad manners affili-
ation hardly matters. The
invective that spilled forth,
while her companion tried
valiantly to bring reason —
speaking in that lower and
slower voice reserved for
embarrassed adults in the
face of misbehaving children
— would have made the
saltiest Navy Chief blush.
We h a d o p t i o n s . I
thought, momentarily, of
addressing the outraged
djinn across the room with a
request for self-restraint, this
being Sisters, after all, and
well before noon, but the
cop in me thought better of
saying anything at all. One
of the first rules of police
work is ironclad: never try
to reason with a drunk.
Not that she was drunk;
she wasn’t, but there is
another rule in there, too,
which has more to do with
letting someone lean so far
into their opinions that they
eventually fall over.
Also, sticking it out was
more in line with our com-
mitment to an ultimate vic-
tory over the purely mun-
dane, a vision of our lives
lived less on the spectrum of
endlessly repetitive and pre-
dictable ritual, and more as
a thoroughly wild expedition
up the Blue Nile.
Mindset matters, natu-
rally, but more importantly
— the food was terrific.
So we endured and pon-
dered the mysteries. My wife
and I ate in virtual silence,
forced into the role of a cap-
tured and unwilling audi-
ence, and instead reduced
to communicating through
a kind of method-acting
pantomime that would have
thrilled Lee Strasberg, and
which every married couple
out in the field knows quite
well.
What fueled this wom-
an’s outrage at the machine,
which had obviously been
bubbling for some time and
which she felt duty bound
@
by appointment.
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presidential campaign chose
to feature debates between
Gore Vidal and William F.
Buckley rather than the stan-
dard “gavel-to-gavel” cov-
erage of the conventions. It
was those debates, which
famously concluded with
Buckley losing his grip and
threatening to punch Vidal
in the nose, which ushered in
the age of televised political
punditry from which we may
never, it seems now, recover.
For our endurance, the
hostess — long-suffering
herself — gave us a thought-
ful certificate for 10-percent
off at our next visit. She
didn’t have to say anything
at all, and neither did we, as
we passed outside into the
strange light and the primor-
dial smoke.
And, with the passage
of a little time, the whole
episode now puts me in the
mind of Wallace Stevens,
who wrote in “The Snow
Man” how important it is
for the unwilling audience
to hear in these kinds of
passionate, theatrical, and
sometimes inappropriate
outbursts, both the “Nothing
that is not there and the noth-
ing that is.”
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to share with everyone in
the restaurant was, I think
now, a kind of rage born of
impotence. There was des-
peration in her vibrato wails
against the various agonies
of empire, but in the end,
though I doubt she could
see it, the result was a spec-
tacular demonstration of
juvenile pathos rather than
a persuasive call to man the
barricades.
It occurred to me, as
I shoveled a beautifully
crafted omelet into my
face, that the larger problem
wasn’t this woman’s opin-
ions because, really, who
cares? It was her obsession
with theater over debate, as
she made repeatedly clear
that opposition to her views,
or even moderation of her
positions, was an intoler-
able affront. It is a common
modern failing: the inability
to distinguish the difference
between highly viewable,
and highly illuminating,
opinions.
I’m tracking a lot more
of that sort of thing lately,
though there is a sound
argument to be made that
the root blame belongs to
ABC News, who in the 1968
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