4A • September 1, 2017 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com
SignalViewpoints
Vacation offers respite
from nation’s angst
F
olks love to remember the
words of former Mayor Don
Larson, who shaped the tone
and tenor of Seaside during
his long and productive time in city
government. A “Don Larson meeting,”
for example, is a city meeting run with
effi ciency and timeliness, without
the baggage and verbiage some cities
endure. I remember the former mayor
commenting that although he loved
Seaside’s events — Hood to Coast, the
volleyball championship — the crowds
here in Seaside set his vacation time in
motion. I can relate.
After settling in Seaside this spring,
I saw fi rsthand the transition the city
takes when June turns the corner into
July and visitors swell the city’s streets
and fi ll the local eateries. A confl uence
of events — including the 90th birthday
of my father — took me out of Seaside
for my summer vacation, a vacation
bookended by national, local and plane-
tary events.
I arrived in Saugatuck, Michigan, a
little tourist town on the eastern side of
Lake Michigan, as events in Charlot-
tesville, Virginia, were unfolding. My
father, a longtime civil rights activist,
was surprisingly calm as we shuffl ed
from the news channels — CNN,
MSNBC, Fox — and watched the hate
unfold, culminating in the violent death
of Heather Heyer. I think I was more
worked up about it — he a veteran of
the March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom in August 1963 and at the
side of Martin Luther King Jr. again in
Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
My father was immersed in a book
on the French Revolution and as the
latest words of our president wound
up my internal coil of outrage, I was
surprised by his relative calm. “People
shouldn’t be surprised,” he said, only
barely raising his eyes above the top of
his book. “They knew what they were
getting.”
After a bit of pique, I decided to
follow his lead and enjoy the vacation,
which with every political turn seemed
to be more and more of a juggling act.
My most recent Signal piece show-
cased Seaside’s newest entertainment
venue, the Inverted Experience, subtly
infl uencing me to feel that the world
right now is somewhat upside down.
Even the “beach book” I had chosen,
“Submission,” by Michel Houllebecq,
was painfully intense and profoundly
political, a dark comedy about a world
where the Muslim Brotherhood accede
to power in contemporary France.
SEEN FROM SEASIDE
R.J. MARX
“
I felt momentarily
relieved — I had
accomplished my
mission. It hadn’t
been easy but I
had lost myself
for a week and
finally turned off
the cable news.
”
Yet vacation time it was and time
to soldier on. Fortunately, Saugatuck
— a sort of amalgam of beach tourist
communities from Cape Cod to Cannon
Beach, with a heavy emphasis on week-
enders from Chicago — offered the per-
fect respite, in fact, one of the local cof-
fee bars in nearby Douglas was called
Respite. Acclimating myself to humid
summer clime for the fi rst time since
my debarquement on the Oregon Coast,
I put down my double shot Americano
and strolled the streets, bouncing from
boutiques to sandwich joints and always
looking for an authentic Chicago-style
hot dog. I took a river boat with 80 of
my new best friends up the Kalamazoo
River to the mouth of Lake Michigan,
drinking a Leinenkugel Lemon Shandy
under the beating sun. I found a hot dog
place in Holland, Michigan, that served
the Chicago dogs, but these couldn’t
hold a candle to Ruby’s in Seaside or
Mudd Dogs in Manzanita. Dad had the
TV tuned to the Detroit Tigers games;
they were dropping a series to the
Rangers. Apparently they’re not having
much of a season.
I read the local paper, The Commeri-
al Record, which was headlining a spat
between the city government and the
district fi re chief over concerns from the
that city offi cials were “subverting” his
authority. In turn, offi cials responded:
“There was no give and take on any-
thing.” And world news kept seeping in
as I lingered on the deck of the Uncom-
mon Coffee Roasters drinking Ameri-
canos and reading the Chicago Tribune
and Grand Rapids Press.
As family began to arrive for a
celebration of Dad’s 90th, I reconnect-
ed with John, an in-law and former
suburban cop injured in the line of duty.
He had been patrolling Highway 41 in
Lake County, Illinois, and pulled over a
suspect who attempted to fl ee. The sus-
pect was apprehended but not without
resistance; John was to face three back
surgeries, and remains on disability. Af-
ter my own running accident in May, I
was familiar with the pain scale. I asked
John what his pain level — a scale from
one to 10, with 10 being the highest
— was on a day-to-day basis. Was it
a two? No, he said. Four? He shook
his head. Six? He nodded. I couldn’t
imagine living with that kind of pain on
a daily basis. He blamed illegal immi-
grants and lax policy for his pain — the
suspect had been an undocumented
immigrant. The conversation stirred
some complex if controlled discussion
from other visitors, including family
members Bill and Susie from Charlotte,
North Carolina, who had lived through
riots after the shooting of 20-year-old
Keith Lamont Scott was killed by a city
police offi cer. Both the victim and the
offi cer were black. The shooting led to
two nights of increasingly violent pro-
test. Protesters threw rocks and bottles;
police deployed tear gas. Three TV
reporters were assaulted, one of whom
ended up hospitalized.
As in Charlottesville, the narrative
becomes increasingly clouded depend-
ing on what news channel you have on.
Bill urged a more nuanced view than
John but clearly no minds were going to
be changed.
It was a good thing the television
remained muted as we all gathered
together to salute my dad. Among his
guests was a 104-year-old woman:
“And she came to visit me,” he later
said sheepishly.
I closed out my visit with some St.
Louis style baby back ribs at Smokey
Bones Bar & Fire Grill before setting
the alarm for 4:30 a.m. to board the
Delta fl ight from Grand Rapids to Port-
land, with a layover in Minneapolis.
I felt momentarily relieved — I had
accomplished my mission. It hadn’t
been easy but I had lost myself for a
week and fi nally turned off the cable
news.
There was an eclipse here in Oregon,
and with it, I knew, the sun would shine
again.
Finding family where you least expect it
T
here’s something special about
small-town living.
That something special is a
phenomenon I found myself defending
when I made the decision to move to the
Oregon Coast. I was halfway through
my last quarter of college in Bellingham,
Washington, when I took the job with the
newspaper more than six months ago,
and the announcement was usually met
with either some jealous statement about
an opportunity to live on the beach, or
some form of this question:
“Why there? It’s so small. Do you
have connections down there?”
They meant connections in a vague
sense — professional, personal, famil-
ial or otherwise. Six months ago, my
answer was “no.”
Deep down, I was nervous to leave
all my friends and family for somewhere
unknown. But then I would line up my
defenses. I grew up in a small town,
so I know what to expect. You connect
with people stronger and more quickly, I
would argue.
So what if there’s no big strip malls
or large concert venues? So what if
most of the bars and restaurants close
by 10 p.m.? I had faith in having that
small-town, family-like culture carry me
through.
Turns out I was wrong. I did have a
connection to the North Coast. It took
me physically moving here to discover I
had a whole branch of extended family
I never knew existed. And I found my
family through a series of conversations
and connections that only a small town
could provide.
For those of you reading and wonder-
PUBLISHER
EDITOR
David F. Pero
R.J. Marx
LIFE AT THE BEACH
BRENNA VISSER
ing: yes, I am related to longtime North
Coast residents Dan and Sharon Visser,
and their kids Jennifer, Julie and Lori
Visser.
I was fi rst tipped off to their existence
when sources would ask me if I went to
Seaside High School, or if my name was
Jennifer. Apparently we look similar.
They would ask if I was one of the “local
Vissers” in town, and each time I would
answer that I wasn’t sure. After this
happened fi ve or six times , I decided to
fi gure out who these “local Vissers” were
to be able to answer these inquiries .
When I asked my parents about being
related to someone named Jennifer, the
answer was more or less “plausible.” The
description sounded like the daughter of
my dad’s cousin, but he wasn’t sure.
If at this point you are wondering
how I could not be aware of an entire
branch of my family, it may be worthy
to note, I haven’t met a large portion
of Vissers related to me because my
grandfather’s generation had 10 siblings.
Many live all over the country, and when
each of those siblings have babies, and
those babies have babies, the number of
Vissers to keep track of starts to become
quite the task.
Sorting it out
To sort the local connections out, I
found one of my colleagues was a mu-
CIRCULATION
MANAGER
PRODUCTION
MANAGER
Jeremy Feldman
John D. Bruijn
ADVERTISING
SALES
SYSTEMS
MANAGER
Brandy Stewart
Carl Earl
tual friend with Jennifer Visser . I sent
her message saying I thought there was
a chance we were related.
Around this same, an article about
my arrival ran in The Daily Astori-
an, which listed the fact I grew up
in Wenatchee, Washington, where a
sizable portion of the “Visser clan”
still live. Between Sharon reading the
article and the timing of the Facebook
message, dots were connected and
before I knew it I had received an
invitation to Easter dinner from my
new-found family .
I showed up the next day with a bot-
tle of wine and a lot of questions. We
had 22 years to make up for, anyway.
Over the course of dinner, we found
that Dan was my dad’s cousin, and our
grandfathers were twins. I left Easter
with fewer questions and fi ve new
lovely people to call family.
Looking back, it’s uncanny to think
of all the intersecting, moving parts
that lead to this culmination of events.
I often wonder if this situation had
unfolded in a place like Los Angeles or
New York would I have ever met this
family.
One of my greatest fears moving
here was the possibility of feeling lone-
ly. But by moving here I not only was
able to connect with biological family,
but also with the tight -knit North Coast
community that allowed me to fi nd
them in the fi rst place. There is a lot of
power in knowing your neighbor, and
in small towns like this, a lot of impact.
And taking the energy to know your
neighbor is what makes small -town
living so special.
STAFF WRITER
Brenna Visser
CONTRIBUTING
WRITERS
Skyler Archibald
Rebecca Herren
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Esther Moberg
Jon Rahl
EVE MARX/FOR SEASIDE SIGNAL
Writing at the coff ee shop. Living in the sticks might not
provide such amenities.
Not ready to live
off the grid yet
‘I
came for the coffee,” Dave, a Gearhart friend,
relayed. This Washington state native shared this
information after making me an artisanal Americano
at the shop called By The Way. At the time, I’d only been
on the North Coast about three weeks and was doing the
hard work of pinning down a range of coffee shops to
write in.
As I write this, I am sitting in the window of the
Seaside Coffee House. It’s midweek and fairly quiet. This
coffee house is a
neighborhood hub
and there is a lot of VIEW FROM
talking going on.
THE PORCH
The mood is con-
EVE MARX
vivial. Michelle,
the owner, knows
all the regulars.
Doodling notes for this column, I’m reviewing a
conversation I had last week with a friend. After just over
three years, Nancy is ditching the area. I met her when
she’d been here just a year. She’d moved from Austin to
be closer to her son who works at Timberline. We met
two years ago at an art event in Cannon Beach. I started
talking to her because I admired her jewelry. When we got
together last week, she was 24 hours away from her move
to the Tygh Valley. Her son had married; a grandchild is
on the way. The plan is a year or two of communal living;
my friend will take care of the baby while the parents are
working during the day. She will be doing the laundry and
very likely a lot of the cleaning and the cooking. My friend
is hugely looking forward to this great change in her life
where she will be a modern pioneer. They will be raising
chickens. They will be growing much of their own food.
“The goal is to get off the grid,” Nancy said.
Sipping this excellent café au lait handcrafted for me
by Michelle, I pondered my own interest or ability to live
off the grid. I’m a person who is still mildly freaked that I
have to go all the way to Astoria to get my shoes repaired.
For me, the upside of living in this “remote” area is the
easy availability of cleaned and cooked Dungeness crab.
When my friend suggested her biggest concern about her
move is low winter temps and frequent power outages and
that her fi rst purchase for their new communal home was
a battery-operated generator, I thought, “You are a brave
woman.” I wondered, ever so briefl y, how she would keep
up with her chic haircut and pretty pedicure.
Last night the husband and I went to see “Dunkirk”
at the Seaside cinemas. The fi lm takes place in 1940 as
Germany advanced into France, trapping Allied troops on
the beaches of Dunkirk. Under air and ground cover from
British and French forces, troops were evacuated from the
beach using every serviceable naval and civilian vessel.
Driving home from the cinema, a substantial amount of
our large buttered popcorn still in the bag, I thought how it
would be much the same should there be a military battle
here. Every fi shing vessel would be deployed to lend a
hand. It was a comforting thought, far more comforting
than embarking on an off-the-grid adventure in the Tygh
Valley without a talented barista anywhere near.
LETTERS
Plan deserves support
We are residents of south Seaside living on Holladay
Drive and want to enthusiastically support urban renewal
for many reasons. This is an area that has long been ne-
glected and forgotten, particularly after the highway recon-
struction had been defeated by a close vote 10 years ago.
Not only do we have just about the trashiest entrance
to the city possible, but it is also an extremely unsafe area
to live. Each day I witness walkers attempting to cross
Highway 101 to shop, risking life and limb to do so as the
only cross walks occur at Broadway and Avenue U.
If the “the big one” occurs and we should need to seek
higher ground because of an impending tsunami, there are
no bridges that would survive the earthquake. Now we
have the opportunity to build new bridges and make our
residents safer and secure.
See Letters, Page 5A
Seaside Signal
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