PAGE 13
CHARLOTTE BRUHN
"Everybody goes everywhere nowadays," Katie said
"Not just the rich. It's so much cheaper and faster to travel than
in the old days. People fly all over the world now in jet airplanes
instead of crossing the ocean in ships or across the country in
trains or covered wagons."
Was that what he had seen racing through the sky —
a big airship filled wth people? And "automobiles". She had
to describe to him that they were steel-bodied machines self-
propelled by internal combustion engines fueled by gasoline
pumped regularly into tanks they carried like horses did nose
bags of oats before he consented to ride with her from the jail.
(She also told him the metal grasshopper he had seen was a
"helicopter" that flew as a result of revolving wings that spun like
propellers.) Ufda! Eino shook his head, thinking this crazy world
he had awakened to (or was crazily dreaming about) was crazier
than he could ever dream. His future (or fantasy) granddaughter
seemed intent on explaining what she knew of her world to him
but the more he learned the less he wanted to know.
He was disturbed not only by what seemed to be
happening all around him but Katie's revelations of what they
meant confused and frightened him more. Every new blow to his
sensibility was dramatically unlike his familiar world, which was
itself quite strange (certainly to someone from an earlier century,
he acknowledged, and perhaps also to the people he now found
himself among) but at least familiar to him in form and scale
despite its quickening pace. America astounded him. its vast
ness, its 19th century modemess unlike anywhere else in the
world; the immense factories churning out vast products in
infinite variety and number; the massively populated cities with
their sky scraping buildings; the intricate local and transconti
nental webs of railroads that spanned spectacular prairies,
deserts and mountains — and Astoria at the far and final edge
with its raw and lawless boomtown atmosphere and get rich
quick attitudes, its constant influx of people and merchandise,
was as much a sinister alien menace and threat to his life and
family as it was the new home he labored to make safe and
prosperous.
Katie told him of the drug problems and increased crime
in Astoria, and of a cultural invasion of Spanish speaking people
from the south which created anxieties and conflict. 'The people
who have lived here are prejudiced against them because
they're afraid everything wll change," she said. "So they blame
problems on them that were here all along — like there weren't
any drugs or crime in Astoria until it started wearing a brown
face," she said sarcastically.
Eino said he never went anywhere in Astoria (or even
on the river in his boat) without packing a pistol because of
crimp gangs looking for men to attack and shanghai off to
China, and he seldom left home at night alone He said there
were saloons and brothels all over the wld and wicked city
that were crowded night and day wth rough men from ships
and forests and the crooked saloonkeepers, loose women and
sinister gamblers and crimps who preyed on them like parasites;
vice, crime, violence and murder were rampant and usually
unpunished; alcohol and drugs were openly tolerated and wdely
used, vtfiich caused too much trouble — brawls, killings and
rapes of women and girls. A hard place to raise a family, he
said.
"Drugs are blamed on the Latinos," she said
"On the Chinese," he said, and spoke of the local tongs
and their wars for control of the drug trade
"But your Astoria is what brings the tourists," Katie said
"It's been cleaned up for merchandising ’Gay 90s' stuff. .."
He looked perplexed as she giggled 'You left the Gay
'90s' and reappear in the gay 90s," she said, "but the word's
different now.
She tried to explain the double-entendre but since his
era was not so named until it was long over he had no idea what
she was saying except her reference to homosexuals, which he
did understand though not her sanguine attitude toward it He
shivered. "I don't think I could ever accept it," he said
'You don't have to, because it's none of your business,"
she said gently. "Besides, all of the world's problems are made
worse by overpopulation Maybe homosexuality is nature's way
of cutting the birthrate." She smiled at his shocked expression,
which she was getting used to. 'You don’t know how crowded
the world's getting," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised if Astoria
becomes as big a city as Portland or Seattle in my lifetime."
Not just babies, she said. Even now people are moving
into town or nearby. "Astoria's a city of immigrants, past and
present Everybody who lives here came from someplace else
originally I've lived here all my life, but you started my family
after you got here from Finland.”
"Everybody but the Indians," Eino said. "But I've never
seen any."
Katie laughed. 'There's a large chainsaw carving (a
power saw fueled like a car, she said) on the west side of Astoria
that's supposed to represent the Clatsop Indians — most of us
call it 'Chief Peckerhead'." she said, blushing again, which was
lost on Eino whose knowledge of American slang was as limited
as it was dated She said the city's mayor at the time the totem
was carved (Katie admitted it was "hideous") wanted it removed
from public property because it didn't represent Astoria's Scandi
navian heritage and had to be reminded that Indians were here
long before her ancestors moved them out — not Eino personal
ly, of course, she quickly added
'They were gone before I got here," Eino said. "Most of
them died from smallpox a long time ago ."
"But you know what I mean," she said. "I think that's the
attitude about the new people coming here — that they don't
belong here. That they take jobs away and increase crime."
"People feel that way about the Chinese here," he said
"Nobody likes immigrants these days," she said "When
you came here immigrants were needed but not anymore Of
course you were from Europe Now immigrants are from Mexico
and South America, and from Asia, and new laws are going to
deport millions of them Did you like the Chinese?"
He shrugged. 'They're all right. They're like me.They left
their homes and came here to America Same as the Greeks
and Italians," he said, thinking of fishermen upriver. He laughed
suddenly for the first time "I don't like the Swedes or Russians,"
Finland's traditional enemies
ROGER McKAY
THE OREGON TRAIL
AT THE NATEL GRANGE
APRIL 4-6,11-13 & 18-20
8 P.M.
A benefit for the Natel Grange
Restoration Project and for the
Astor St. Opry Company, which
is producing the show.
325-6104
"Astoria's been mostly Scandinavian for a century but
it's changing," Katie said "Last summer I knew it was changing
when two little Latino boys watched us rehearse Shanghaied one
night They stared at us like we were from another world. And I
stared back at them realizing we were."
She hugged her shoulders and laughed. "I mean, those
boys gave me a hard look at the future and I knew for sure my
comfortable little world was soon going to be very different."
She shrugged. Most of her friends weren't going to stay
here anyway, she said. They planned to move away as soon as
they were out of high school, to the big cities like Seattle or Port
land, or south to California — some to college (a very few), most
to look for work. There weren't any good jobs left in Astoria any
more. she said. The boys were no longer able to go into the
woods as loggers or climb aboard boats and go fishing like their
fathers and grandfathers, and the girts weren't content any more
to stay home as housewves or mothers or work as waitresses or
bartenders.
He was shocked. Women didn't want to be mothers?
And if there were no fish, what happened to them? (Though he
suspected the answer.)
She answered that women had many more options than
a century ago (on the other hand more were single mothers
whose only options in Astoria seemed to be low-wage dead-end
jobs, such as motel maids and waitressing) And the great
salmon runs were wiped out when the river was dammed
to produce cheap electricity, plus overfishing (which Eino had
suspected), clearcutting the forests, industrial and biological
sewage, radiation from upriver nuclear power plants and des
truction of salmon habitat in the river and streams by irrigation
and incessant development of human habitat.
Astoria thrived for a long time by carelessly exploiting its
once abundant natural resources, she said, but their despoliation
eroded the city's prosperity and more than half the population
left town. "I'm probably exaggerating, but the port only got
through this century because of two world wars," she said The
only business now was sending raw logs to Asia, and that was
about to end. The ships he had seen anchored in the river used
Astoria as a parking lot while waiting for open berths in upriver
ports
Tourism is a poor substitute, she said Only a few
people make money — the owners of restaurants and motels
("motor hotels" for people with automobiles, she said; large
hotels like the J. J. Astor were dinosaurs). The majority were
paid next to nothing as waitresses, motel maids, bartenders,
cooks, janitors or dishdogs
Yesterday, when Eino took his afternoon nap a century
ago, the city's wharves were crowded with the masts of ships
and the stacks of riverboats, and three dozen canneries sent
Columbia River salmon all over the world The fishing fleet was
immense and Astoria's lifeblood But one thing hadn't changed:
the dispanty of incomes between those who do a job and those
who profit from it: fishbuyers were always cheating the fisher
men and underpaying cannery workers That was the reason
fishermen and cannery workers started their owo cannery, which
he was very proud of and bitterly disappointed when she told
him it had been tom down a few years ago and its records
hauled away as trash
"I don't know the whole story, only part of it," Katie said
half apologetically. "I guess it's the same wth fishing like it was
logging Nobody cared too much about putting anything back,
which was really stupid because when there were hardly any fish
or trees left people couldn’t make livings any more. They blame
environmentalists who wanted to save something before it was
all gone but it was their owo fault for being so greedy and not
thinking ahead, just going for the big buck today and to hell with
tomorrow Now it's tomorrow and the day after tomorrow," she
said caustically.
Eino nodded He had seen the wyaste Heaps of dead
fish scattered on the riverbanks and under the wharves Trees
cut dowo left to rot because they were in the way of falling big
ger more profitable trees Nobody seemed to care or worry
about the waste Everybody acted like the abundance and
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