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Chance favors the
prepared mind.
Love, Truth and Videotape
♦Note: This installmennt o f your Professor's column is
another in his "Historical Series." In his lazy way, he feeds
two sparrows with one crust o f bread.
I expect its time to take a whack at those hardy souls who
cart and siphon off our unspeakables: the nightsoil engineers
and garbage toters. In pioneer times, all the world was a
dumping ground. Homesteaders simply located a convenient
depression or stream bed close to their cabins and whucked
the trash into the undergrowth. A tangle o f blackberries and
salal quickly healed over any clutter or ickiness, and that was
that! Once the bottles and bones disappeared in the
shrubbery, slipping indecorously from view, they sloughed
out o f mind as well. In the village o f Cannon Beach, a
burgeoning population and civic pride dictated some loftier
end, an exclusive repository for cast- offs.
A dump was established in the hills northeast o f town.
The men who trundled waste from homes and cabins were a
colorful lot. In my youth, the Elsasser family had locked up
the garbage trade. Chris Elsasser owned the franchise and
drove truck. His assistant was a young lanky chap named
Cliff Hickle. The locals all called him "Dirty Knees Hickle,"
an endearing jibe, not malicious, because the incessant drip
o f putrefying garbage scourged his canvas pant legs,
indelibly staining the coarse material. Cliff wore the stains
and nickname amiably, a badge o f his public service and
tribulations.
Our garbagemcn served proudly. In what became a
village tradition, our garbagemcn always possessed a good
measure o f savoir faire, a philosophical nature, jocularity as a
specific against disgust. The men who move garbage form a
unique guild. Like the members o f Masonic Lodges, they
have special knowledge. Imagine your garbageman picking
through the weekly discards! Oooh,La! The secrets they
discover! A keen garbageman can read trash like a book.
Overdue bills, diapers, old love letters, padded
undergarments, girlie magazines, cheap wine bottles, soiled
sheets, all reveal volumes. Like high priests they interpret
these auguries as commentaries on the nature o f life.
Dickie Walsbom took over the route from his stepfather,
Chris. Dickie ushered in the Golden Age o f garbage
collection in Camion Beach. Dick loved a joke, especially a
practical joke, and he revelled in trash collection. He called
his crew "the G-Men." A long succession o f red, hand-me-
down vehicles bore the calligraphed title "Miss Cannon
Beach." If we were working at some job site, Dickie's arrival
signalled a pause in the action. He always shared with us the
latest collection o f blue stories, jokes, and bits o f gossip. As
he drove by, he'd yell at us and make a gesture like someone
milking a cow.
"How long are you boys going to milk that job?" he'd ask.
Dick also initiated the dog treat program. Dick rounded up
all the stale loaves o f bread he could scrounge from village
bakeries and distributed them to the neighborhood dogs on
his route. Dogs harbor some sort o f innate disgruntlement
with garbagemen, and the bread handouts soothed their
beastliness.
My favorite garbage story involves Dick and a failed
batch o f bread dough. Dick got an emergency call late one
night from a local baker, Mr. Berger. Dick had neglected to
empty the dumpster at the bakery.
"Dick," Mr. Berger's voice spoke excitedly on the phone,
"could you come down here quick. I've got a problem in my
dumpster."
Dickie drove down to the bakery grudgingly.
"When I got there, you wouldn't believe it. A huge mass
o f fermenting bread dough had filled up the dumpster and
was moving down the street! It looked like the Blob that ate
Cannon Beach. If we hadn't hauled it o ff right then, I don't
know what might have happened."
When Dick hung up the route, his son Rich, Jim Malo,
and Tommy Misner took over. In their hands collection
became high art and high jinks. The men festooned the
garbage vehicle with found objects. When it rumbled down
a gravelled side street, the truck looked like some tinker
Gypsy's wagon bound for a fair. During one period, the old
red truck sported an enormous red lobster on the left front
bumper and a large naked doll on the right. Life-size cut
outs o f Larry, Moe, Curly, and Rodney Dangerfield shared
the driver's cab. Rodney's head stated a plaint common to
garbage guys "I don't get no respect!" A huge green dragon
affixed to the truck licked the air menacingly. These guys
wore short pants year round. No can drips on short pants.
To lighten the task, the boys would stunt around with your
garbage can.
"Better check your can," they'd tell me. "We were by
today. That fish you left in there must have been two weeks
old! Whew! Paybacks are a bitch."
I'd rush home to find my can hanging high up in a pine
tree, with, maybe, some discarded underwear dangling there
too.
Sadly, those times have passed. Some firm in
McMinnville quietly and officiously drags off the ruck these
days. They appear to lack significant imagination.
(Everything I know I learned from
Video Rodeo)
or, H ow the V C R Saved W estern Civilization
by Sarah Vowel 1
Bill M urray was on stage at C hicago's Goodm an Theater last
week. It w as a hom etow n thing, one o f those arm chair
conversations. H e was prom oting his new book "Cinderella
Story: M y Life in G olf." As for why on earth Iris publishers
w ould ask for such a tom e, he said, "You could write a really
bad book about g o lf and it w ould sell a lot of copies. And
they thought 1 had that talent." O ne o f the m ost curious
m om ents o f the evening — aside from playful ja b s at the late
G ene Siskel ("H e got his") — w as w hen M urray's interlocutor,
the host o f a local TV m orning show , asked him about the
enduring appeal o f the 1980 g o lf m ovie ‘Caddyshack.’
M urray, who fam ously played the dem ented, gopher-hunting
groundskeeper Carl in that film , attributed its continued
cultural presence to tw o things: first, its clever social
com m entary, the way it pits the blue collar caddies against the
w ealthy yahoos o f the B ushw ood C ountry Club. 'T a k e away
die candy bar in the sw im m ing pool," asserts MuiTay, "and it's
a class story." Second, he credits cable television. "You can
see ‘C add y sh ack ’ six times this m onth som ewhere," he said.
"These things have a life." It was a beautiful tiling to say,
really, the idea that a w ork o f art could keep on w orking. Not
to m ention that M urray's w ords w ould have been unim aginable
as recently as 20 years ago. Before cable and then satellite
television becam e household norm s, before video, seeing a
m ovie again was a random event. A side from revival houses
or, on television, the late show and — rem em ber this? — tilings
like the "ABC Sunday N ight M ovie," the average citizen had
no say w hatsoever in picking and choosing w hich m ovies to
get (re)acquainted with. M urray's w ords might have struck a
chord in me because "Caddyshack" ju st so happens to be the
first m ovie 1 ever saw on video. That was the featured
entertainm ent at L aura Seitz's 13th birthday party circa 1982.
1 had never seen a V C R before, and now I hope for their sake
that the S eitz fam ily w ent w ith VHS instead o f Beta. I
rem em ber being extrem ely distracted from the m ovie — even
though it was m y first R rating, too - because I couldn't get
over the sheer fact tliat Laura had decided she wanted to usher
in her adolescence w ith an ensem ble cast including Chevy
C hase and T ed K night, and she and her m other went to a store
and brought it home. I was there to celebrate Laura's rite of
passage, b ut 1 co uldn't help but get llie feeling I was moving
on to som ething better myself. Just as our parents were the
last generation to rem em ber a tim e before the fam ily TV , we
w ould be the last generation to rem em ber the first tim e w e saw
a VCR. It w ould have enorm ous consequences - personally
and educationally. T elevision in general and video in particular
have m osdy deserved bad reps. B ut before the V CR, an
inform al film education, especially aw ay from the cities, was
im possible. A nd because my hom etow n had a w ildly
intelligent, revered video store called "Video Rodeo," which
featured sections broken dow n by director or country o f origin,
my tw in sister and I w orked our way through H itchcock and
Scorsese and, for o u r 16th birthday, the scant four films o f one
Jam es Dean.
F or obvious and tragic reasons, electronic m edia arc under
fire for their undue influence over diildren. I understand
concerns over the depiction o f sex and violence, but 1 feel
obliged to say that in m y youth, cable TV and video were a
good tiling, a saving force. Even a moral one. 1 didn't realize
how m uch until the other day. I was flipping channels and got
sucked in to "Reds" on Show tim e. I had seen the film only
once, on H BO w hen I was m aybe 13, around the lim e o f my
friend L aura Seitz's birthday. It all cam e rushing back. I had
forgotten, m aybe never know n, how much influence this
m ovie had o ver me. A nd not the political plot, when W arren
B eatty's John Reed q uits jo u rn alism to jo in the Russian
R evolution. I was enorm ously sw ayed by the small stuff,
how D iane K eaton's L ouise Bryant m ade her way in the world
T here is a series o f vignettes in w hich Louise, a libertine in
her native O regon but John Reed's blushing shadow in New
Y ork, is asked her o p inion but doesn't have one, and says she's
a w riter bu, doesn't really write. I ler constant em barrassment
and frustration galvanized me. A t 13,1 resolved to never be
like that, to always have an op in io n , to stick up for m yself
w hen a bully like E m m a G oldm an isn't taking m e seriously. I
didn't w ant to go through that, and I didn't w ant to be in some
m an's shadow , even a man as appealing as W arren Beatty
T hat w as Fem inism 101 But the deeper lesson I learned from
"Reds" was more traditional, and more profound I have never
forgotten K eaton's scenes with Jack N icholson as Eugene
O 'N eill. Louise and G ene, as he's called, have an affair w hile
(C ontinued on back page)
I
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W A S H IN G TO N ft OREGON COASTS
199 9 Corrected for PACIFIC BEACHES
HIGH JULY
W
Dili------
DAT
GUIDE
- - n
FT
2:02 8.4
2:42 8.2
3:25 8,0
4:15 7.5
5:14 7.0
6:26 6.5
7:47 6.2
9:07 6.2
10:18 64
11:22 6.7
TIME
1 Thur ■
2 Fri •
3 Sat •
4 SUN •
5 Mon •
6 lues •
7 Wed •
8 Thur •
9 Fn •
10 Sat •
11 SUN• 12:20
12 M o n *
13 Tues • 0:31
14 Wed • 1:22
15 Thur • 2:12
16 Fri • 3:02
17 Sat • 3:52
18 SUN • 4:46
19 Mon# 5:44
20 Tues • 6:50
21 Wed • 8:01
22 Thur • 9:11
23 Fri • 10:15
24 Sat • 11:10
25 SUN • 11:58
26 Mon • 12:42
27 Tues •
28 Wed ■ 0:31
29 Thur • 1:11
30 Fn • 1:52
31 Sat • 2:34
A M TIDES
UTE TYPE
7.1
9.5
9.3
8.9
8.5
7.9
7.2
6.5
6.0
5.7
5.7
5.9
6.2
64
6.7
8.3
8.3
8.3
8.2
rT
nt
THE
3:43
4:20
4:58
5:39
6:25
7:15
8:08
9:02
9:55
1048
11:40
1:14
2:04
2:52
3:37
4:21
504
5:48
6:32
7:19
8:07
8:55
9:42
10:26
1109
11:51
1:23
201
2:36
3:10
3:44
FT
7.2
7.3
7.4
7.6
7.7
8.0
8.4
8.7
9.1
9.3
9.5
7.4
7.6
7.7
7.8
7.8
7.8
7.7
7.6
7.6
7.6
7.7
7.8
7.9
8.1
8.2
6.9
7.1
7.2
7.4
7.6
LOW JULY
HUE
9:09
9:43
10:18
10:58
1143
0:41
1:51
3:01
4:07
5:06
6:01
6:53
7:42
8:28
9:13
9:55
10:36
11:18
0:00
1:01
2:05
3:08
4:06
4:57
542
6:24
7:02
7:38
8:12
8:45
9:19
H.
---------n 1■
TIME
FI
0.8 9:09 2.7
0.7 9:52 2.6
0.5 10:40 2.5
0.1 11:36 2.3
0.3
1.9
1.4
0.7
0.1
0.9
•1.5
•1.8
■2.0
■1.9
•1.6
■1.1
12:36
1:35
2:39
3:42
4:44
5:43
6:39
7:33
8:26
9.18
10:10
0.5 11:03
0.1
1.7
1.6
1.4
1.0
0.5
0.0
04
0.6
0.8
■1.0
■10
0.9
0.8
' BIGGER THE DOT - BETTER THE FISHING *
DAYLIGHT TIME
12.-01
12:49
1:42
2:39
3:35
4:29
5:19
6:05
6:49
7:30
8:11
8:52
9:35
0.8
1.3
1.7
2.0
2.1
2.1
2.1
2.0
1.9
1.8
1.8
1.8
0.8
1.5
2.0
2.4
2.6
2.7
2.7
2.6
2.4
2.3
2.1
1.9
1.6
PM TIDES
BOLD TYPE
It is every citizen ’s duty to support his governm ent,
but not necessarily in the style to which it has been
accustom ed.
Dr. L aw rence Peters
D18Laiie<Ia Avenue
M a n z a n ita ,O r e non
5 0 3 -3 6 8 •
The Cubs continue playing bungee baseball,
diving for the cellar they springing hack to
second or third. Sosa is still hitting for the
fences, and we aren’ t even to the halfway point.
UÎFER LtFT EM& 3HW W1
4