SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2020
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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news@bakercityherald.com
EDITORIAL
City needs
to spend
Baker City has money to spend and a deadline for
spending it.
This is not a normal state of affairs for City Hall.
But then 2020 isn’t a normal year.
City Manager Fred Warner Jr. told city councilors
during their meeting Tuesday that the city received
almost $293,000 from the federal CARES Act, the
coronavirus-aid bill that Congress passed in late
March.
Warner told councilors the city needs to decide by
the end of the year what to do with the money. Be-
cause the city’s budget thus far hasn’t been dramati-
cally affected by the pandemic — most of the city’s
local revenue comes from property taxes, water and
sewer fees and ambulance bills — he thinks the city
should try to disburse the dollars to help people, busi-
nesses and organizations that have suffered.
The Council started by approving $50,000 to Com-
munity Connection. That’s a reasonable recipient. The
nonprofi t, in addition to operating the Senior Center,
helps residents fi nd and pay for housing and utilities,
among other things.
Now, with the year more than half over, the city
needs to start looking for other places to distribute
some of the money.
Both Warner and Mayor Loran Joseph mentioned
businesses. This is also sensible. Many locally owned
businesses, particularly restaurants, bars and some
others that have been most restricted, no doubt could
benefi t from a fi nancial infusion. Helping businesses
can create a sort of multiplier effect, as thriving busi-
nesses hire employees who have more money to spend
locally. Distributing the CARES Act dollars should be
a high priority for the city as autumn approaches.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Your views
Maybe ‘Move Oregon’s
Border’ should just move
I felt so sorry for the Move Oregon’s
Border group. They were unable to col-
lect enough signatures, for their cause,
to qualify as a ballot measure. Appar-
ently they wish to have Idaho’s border
extended to include 17 Oregon coun-
ties. They claim that the coronavirus
pandemic made it impossible for them
to collect more than 389 signatures. I
have a simple solution and a way to put
a smile on all 9,195 members of “Move
Oregon’s Border.” You can move to
Idaho! If I am free that day I can help
you pack. Problem solved! Peace to all.
Mike Meyer
Baker City
Happy to wake up and still
be living in America
I woke up in America ...
Despite all the turmoil, violence and
destruction, it’s still America.
Regardless of the latest pandemic
and fear, it’s still America.
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bakercityherald.com.
For those who don’t absolutely love
it, you have the option to leave.
Let’s not forget the sacrifi ce of those
who fought for our fl ag, only to come
home wrapped in it. Those who left
behind limbs and buddies in the fi eld
to protect us. Those who stand guard
during the night to keep us safe.
Sure, we have problems, no doubt,
but we are a democracy that works.
If you doubt that, show me a socialist
government that works and I’ll show
you people controlled by that very
government.
Let’s honor our fl ag and proudly
wave it, regardless of your ideology or
beliefs. We can still stand shoulder to
shoulder and resist those who’s only
desire is to destroy what we have, the
greatest nation in the world!
Those who are killing and destroying
in the name of “change” only do their
cause harm. Terrorism, local or foreign,
will be resisted by true Americans.
Violence does not bring about
change, only more anger and hatred.
Setting fi re to our fl ag or someone’s
personal property does little to per-
suade people to change. It only hardens
hearts and causes more racial & social
divide.
Protest, if peaceful, can bring about
change, but riots only cause division
and anger. We do no honor to those
fallen heroes by acting in such a way.
I’m blessed by God to wake up in
America, I served and would gladly do
it again.
Thomas Wilcoxson
Baker City
Facebook, for all its faults, can enrich lives
Facebook has much to answer
for in making it simple to sow the
rhetorical poison that has made so
much public discourse so unpalat-
able.
But the dominant social media
platform can also on occasion
induce moments of powerful poi-
gnancy.
I don’t believe this balances the
books for Facebook.
But neither am I so jaded by my
exposure to the torrents of bilge
that often saturate Facebook that
I can’t appreciate its ability to con-
nect people, to help us bridge our
present and past in ways we didn’t
believe possible.
I had such an experience
recently and even now, more than
a month later, I feel that peculiar
prickling sensation in my eyes, that
narrowing of the throat, when I
remember the moment. I suddenly
felt as though the weight of nearly
four decades had slid away, reveal-
ing another era with the crystalline
clarity of new ice on a frigid Janu-
ary morning.
It all started with a Southern
California garage band from the
1980s called the Surf Punks.
And specifi cally with one song —
“Shark Attack.”
I hadn’t listened to the Punks in
probably 20 years.
But several weeks ago something
plucked that particular memory
from my organic fi les — I suspect
boredom is ultimately responsible
— and I hunted up the one Surf
Punks CD I own. Which, I say with
a considerable degree of confi dence,
is one more than almost everyone
else owns. The title of the 1982
album is “Locals Only,” a reference
to the territorial nature of surfers
on the beaches near Malibu, from
which the band hails. The second
track on the record is “Shark At-
tack.”
I slid the disc into the player
JAYSON
JACOBY
in our FJ Cruiser on a Saturday
morning before we left for a hike in
the mountains.
I told my kids, Olivia and Max,
that I thought they might fi nd the
song amusing. I wasn’t exactly cer-
tain of this but I was optimistic, as
the song includes such memorable
lyrics as “Hey mister, where’s my
pup? I threw a stick in the water
and he didn’t come up.”
I was surprised, then, and not a
little delighted, when they laughed
— nearly hysterically, in Max’s
case — when they heard “Shark
Attack.”
They demanded that I replay the
song.
I suspect they would have
listened to it over and over again
for the whole of the drive had I
allowed it.
(Needless to say, I did not. And
even if I had agreed to put the song
on a loop, my wife, Lisa, who was
not exactly entranced by “Shark
Attack,” would have intervened.)
For the next few weeks, Olivia
and Max requested “Shark At-
tack” with the dogged insistence
of a beer-fueled audience pleading
for “Free Bird” near the end of a
Lynyrd Skynyrd concert circa 1974.
Max even insisted that I down-
load the song onto the mp3 player
he listens to occasionally.
This is no boon to the Surf
Punks’ royalties — I already own
the CD, after all — but it still
seems to me something of a renais-
sance for a band that is — and I’m
being charitable here — a trifl e
obscure.
Indeed I’m certain I wouldn’t be
familiar with the Surf Punks if not
for a friend I had back in junior
high.
His name is Steve and I can’t,
nearly 40 years later, recall how
we became acquainted. I can’t even
say with any certainty whether we
were fi fth- or sixth-graders when
we met. I suspect it’s the former
because I know Steve moved back
to California before eighth grade,
and I’m pretty sure we were bud-
dies for at least two years.
We had quite a lot in common,
Steve and I.
Music, most notably.
Both our fathers grew up in the
1950s and 1960s and both owned
collections of LPs from rock art-
ists such as The Beatles and The
Rolling Stones, to name only two
particularly prominent examples.
Steve played drums and I played
guitar.
We would get together in his
attic bedroom and try to hammer
out ’60s chestnuts such as The
Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” that
didn’t require especially obscure
chords.
(Albeit chestnuts that were not
quite so well-roasted then as they
are today, so to speak. It seems to
me surrealistic to consider that
when Steve and I were working on
that relatively simple tune, only
about 16 years had passed since
the English band had recorded it.
Today the song is a hoary antique.)
We always jammed at Steve’s
house for the obvious reason that
a drum kit is rather less portable
than my Fender Mustang electric.
The Mustang is sort of a scaled-
down version of the company’s
famous Stratocaster model, and
although one of its pickups was
balky it was a beautiful instru-
ment. I foolishly sold it when I
was in college — a period, to be
fair, when some of us are prone to
foolish decisions, and particularly
fi nancial ones.
We never formed a real band —
we had no bassist, among other
challenges, and I certainly wasn’t
going to try to sing — but we were
content to make a considerable
amount of noise. I plugged the
Fender into a Crate amp that gen-
erated a respectable volume. It also
had an excellent reverb setting
that approximated the distinctive
hollow twang that was popular
during the fi rst half of the 1960s
and makes The Ventures’ instru-
mentals, in particular, instantly
recognizable.
(“Apache ’65” is probably my
favorite.)
Steve introduced me to the Surf
Punks. So far as I know he was the
only person in Stayton, the small
town near Salem where I grew up,
familiar with the band.
Our friendship, as I noted, was
relatively brief. This of course is
typical of the friendships we form
as children, even those that don’t
end because, as Steve did, one half
of the pair moves.
But over the years I’ve come to
understand how profoundly my
friendship with Steve affected the
trajectory of my life.
Those afternoons we spent in
his room, playing and listening to
music, cemented my love for rock
and pop that continues, unabated.
That was a purely analog experi-
ence — LPs and cassette tapes —
but a great share of the megabytes
crammed into my mp3 player, a
device I could not have imagined in
the early 1980s, have some connec-
tion to those days.
I hadn’t thought of that era, or of
Steve, in years.
But my revived interest in the
Surf Punks, prompted by my kids’
affi nity for “Shark Attack,” led me
to the place you go when you want
to fi nd a person, no matter that
you feel slightly soiled doing so.
Facebook.
I found Steve in maybe 10
minutes.
I typed a message. I put my
phone down. It was evening. I
fi gured I might get a response the
next day.
But 5 minutes later my phone
chirped.
It was Steve.
He remembered what I remem-
bered.
He asked about my guitar. He
still plays the same drum kit.
He was delighted that my kids
like “Shark Attack.”
He sent me a photo of himself
with his wife and their daughter.
I gathered Lisa and Max and
Olivia on our back porch and took
our photo and sent it to Steve.
It was a wonderful evening.
Magical, in its way.
I don’t believe I have had an-
other experience that conveyed so
clearly the persistence of friend-
ships, the validity and the value of
memories turned vague by time.
I haven’t seen Steve in nearly 40
years.
It’s quite likely I’ll never see him
again in person.
And yet those distant days,
their details as dim in my mind
as words on newsprint that’s been
exposed to many seasons of rain
and scorching sun, still matter.
They remain vital — as vital as
my son’s joyful laughter when he
listens to “Shark Attack.”
He laughs now because two
other boys met long ago.
And the sound of his chuckles —
another sort of music, to my ears
— is the link between eras, the
proof that when we share a bit of
ourselves with another person the
gift we receive has a value we can’t
measure but which will, in the end,
return to enrich us.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.