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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 24, 2011)
s h e e t roots 1 3 June 24, 2011 ESSAY Gomez’ last swim BY JAN BOLLING personal than I thought. It doesn’t really CONTRIBUTING WRITER “belong” to any one person. Pisser. omez was found five days after he It was nearing late afternoon as we left died, seated on the driver’s side of the “secret” jade field. I wobbled over the his old ’73 Chevy pick up with a boulders as people were starting to Busch tallboy between his thighs. They congregate at the beach-access. Beat-up figure he died happy. “They” being the pick-ups and older SUVs emptied. There folks that knew him. I never met him until were a few seagull-voiced children, a baker’s after he was dead and that was by accident. dozen of incredibly well-adjusted adolescents I was hunting jade for the first time on a Big distinguishable only by age from theft Sur beach when I stumbled on his funeral. parents — the same hippies, pot growers, The folks I was visiting in California used to hermits and miscreants mentioned earlier. live in those Big Sur hills and canyons, lived Someone built an altar of gladiolis, as a part of that tribe of dirt-poor old sunflowers, and lilies next to the creek. hippies, pot-growers, hermits and Congas were set up on the sand. The miscreants. Gomez was one of them, and if drummers were young surfers who looked you were one of them, when you.die your better than they played, but then again, ashes are placed in a fast-running creek near things were just starting. A plastic gallon Jade Beach and the wake begins. bottle of Kesseler’s (“smooth as silk”) I didn’t know a think about rock hunting rotgut began making the rounds. There was or jade, so Tamlin, Jeff and theft kids taught also a handful of folks I imagined were peers me as we went along. We found green jade of Gomez; men whose age could be mid-50s and black jade and an assortment of pretty or much, much older, with sun and drug rocks. Jade is formed of jadeite or nephrite engraved wrinkles, deep tans, white-to-gray that has been pressed between tectonic haft and beards, tattered clothes, and plates. Serpentine is a sort of proto-jade. without exception all missing front teeth, Black jade (which I didn’t know existed)' ; giving the impression of brotherhood sometimes has a white webbing called rind involving a powerful thirst maintained over that will come off if it is sanded or tumbled decades. Scruffy looking folks who would but is tenacious otherwise. Kinda like life. I look comfortable under a bridge or in any think about stuff like that these days. hobo camp — odd to see them socializing I’m 48 years old with late stage cancer with children and the younger folk of the complaining about losing the dubious group. Everyone except the surfers wore rewards of middle age — the smug years, the baseball caps. years when you know you’re good, have the An older bald and hearty man who still skills to prove it and the health to enjoy i t had his front teeth — a man pointed out to Pisser. Spent my whole life wasting only to me as the unofficial mayor o f this find my body has already looted my pension community - took a couple belts and fund. Frofn 48 to 65 in just 8 months — me, started the proceedings. the guy walking an 8 inch wide block wall 30 “The first time'I met Gomez,” he said, “it feel high guiding a cement bucket holding was night and Gomez had a campfire with tons of concrete; the guy whose ankles the seven cardboard cartons of wine next to other longshoremen held while I dangled him. He offered, and,it seemed to be the upside down off the side of a 7 stack neighborly thing to do to take him up on it, container barge, loosening comealongs and and by the time we finished those seven dropping retaining chains into Anchorage cartons we were good friends. Turns out he Bay. And now I can’t count on my legs to had more Stashed in the bushes, and then have enough strength to support my next we started the serious drinking arid we step. Pisser. Mortality and me. Brer Rabbit became really good friends.” and the Tai baby — that black stuff seems to Was it significant no one else offered a stick to everything. Kinda like death. testimonial? I don’t know. My friends who Anger might be a great motivator but i t , consider themselves part of this tribe once isn’t living. So I notice life. Life is a lot less said that like the folks in some B neighborhoods of New York City, these people would help you out even if they didn’t like you, simply because you were a neighbor and needed help. Jeff described the first time he met the community: “I was a medic in Big Sur responding to an over- the-side call (240 feet drop from a cliff). One person was already dead when we slid down the talus to them, and the other not so good. All of a sudden there were these wild men and women all around us tin ropes lowering medical equipment and tying off the vehicle I was upside down trying to give medical care to the survivor. My partner, an ex-cop, says ‘what’s this,’ the fucking Hell’s Angels? I said, “I think they’re the fire department” For me, it was love at first sight Maybe that was it. Maybe the mayor summed up the man but the folks were there to celebrate the life. Gomez’s ashes had been placed in a decanter bottle. Perhaps the lack of a screw top was an indication of the occasion. Human ashes are something I know something about and there didn’t seem to be enough to account for a full-grown man. It may be that five-day gap between dying and being found rendered him somewhat.. Perhaps he was a very small man, and maybe his tissues were so saturated with alcohol that he combusted more completely from burning at a higher temperature. It is true, you know, that the color of the deceased’s ashes indicates how hot the crematorium oven was running that night. Gomez’ ashes were the whitest white I’ve ever seen - a titanium white. The mayor took the decanter bottle and waded knee deep into the creek. In coming down the steep canyon the water had picked up whitewater velocity creating foaming eddies behind his knees. He uncorked the decanter and poured Gomez’ ashes into the water. Gomez’ last swim. And the water grabbed Gomez like the dream of a high school quarterback and ran for the Pacific. Gomez stretched out in the current like a titanium javelin, taller than he could possible have been in life, a white anaconda with a date to shed its skin at a tectonic plate, perhaps becoming white rind on black jade. The Sill Fickle Club and Publication Studio present BURNSIDE: A COMMUNITY PDX RE-PRINT is a aeries of publications and free public lectures celebrating obscured and out-of-print books on Portland's visual culture. Date/Time: Thurs. June 30, 2011 Location; Sisters Of-The Road 0 133 NW 6th Ave. Portland, Ore. A Community a sse m b le s p h o to g ra p h s o f ’own 1 C hinatow n a r e a by s e l f - t a u g h t ¡er K a th le e n Ryan. R E G IO N A L Net. G R E E N B U IL D IN G WWW.BUXLDGREEN411.COM greenhotline KATHLEEN RYAN Author ISRAEL BAYER Executive Director SUENN Urban JULIE McCO&BY Housing Organizer DILLPICKLECLUB.COM Office Cat Rooty sends warm, purring thanks to the great folks who donated socks for our vendors. Clean feet area foundation to good health and clean socks are a godsend. Thank you!
