Night number three in Grants Pass went by with a lot of dreams coming and going. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember them when I awoke. I do remember waking at around 2:00 am as a guy rode by on his bicycle toward Interstate 5. Not sure if it was the same guy as the night before or not? I thought it quite strange that anyone would try to take the Interstate on foot or bike. So, I figured that there must be a bike/foot trail at the head of the off ramp.
I packed up and walked back into town. In case you ever wondered? Yes, palm trees can grow in southern Oregon...
I waited to buy coffee until I reached Rogue Roasters. As traveled down E Street. I saw an interesting piece of "natural art"...
Where ivy has been removed from a building.
What it must have looked like before.
I worked at Rogue Roasters until the blog was caught up. It was nice there--air conditioned, a friendly spirit in the air, and no pressure to "...move it along, sir." I'm learning to be a fairly good observer of people. Let me give you an overview of the ones who were around me...
I sat at the middle of a 10 foot counter, joined by two folks to my left and two to my right. At the far left was the artist whose works were all over the walls--some, with old looking price stickers, for sale in the $20.00 range. He was a fully gray, bearded gent with a fishing hat and spectacles. I didn't particularly think his work was outstanding, but he was very prolific. He drew rough portraits of the regulars there, including the staff, and gave away a lot of his work. The female subjects were better drawn than the males. They all had slightly larger eyes then the average person, like the supposed Indigo Children.
To his right, and sandwiched between us, was a petite woman with dark red hair, about my age, with a full sized laptop, a tablet with a little stand, and her iPhone, all connected together. It appeared she was working on a spreadsheet of some kind, but I wasn't nosy enough to see more. She periodically tapped her flat palm on the counter with mild frustration when things weren't adding up.
To my right, were a pair of 18 (?) year old girls, sharing a laptop. They were both very pretty and seemed to know it. One was helping the other fill out an online job application. It took them about two hours, as they were also busy receiving and sending texts, laughing at Facebook pictures on their phones and talking about guys. It was really like ya' read about. I wish I had the freedom to make something interesting up about their uniqueness, but it just wasn't there. And, I am here to interpret what is actually going on.
We all faced the street window. Behind us was the ever-present line of six people, and beyond them were the previous six people, waiting for their coffees. Along the edge of the inner wall was a set of three small tables, where two people could sit on each side of each table--there were eight at that time. Except for one couple, the other six people were all strangers to each other. Seems to be a keen tolerability for tighter personal space here.
Like Califonians, Oregonians love to talk to strangers and make new friends. The difference, I think, is that they don't get pushy and all excited about exchanging numbers and such. They can sense when the conversation is about to get old. And, to their credit, they seem to psychically compete; seeing who can put the other at ease first by cutting off the conversation gracefully. I like that.
There are always a couple of people playing chess, strangers and friends mixing it up and taking turns. People take their chess very seriously. The check-mated one is always a bit thrown off and can seem deeply disappointed, no matter how sincerely gracious and self-effacing the winner might be. I listened to a young German guy with thick glasses, a tight 1970's t-shirt with the colored rims on the sleeves, compete against an older Lithuanian guy who held his cane beside the chair tapping it on the floor occasionally--neither having met the other before. They played off the clock, but the game didn't last long. Within ten minutes the German guy had trapped the Lithuanian, who was very upset with himself.
The younger man smiled warmly and said that he was just having a lucky day. But, the older man would not be comforted by this. He stood up, left his pieces there, placed his hat on, and wished the German and his wife a nice afternoon. The wife looked up at the disappointed man and simply said, "I couldn't marry anyone who wasn't as smart as I am." This thinned out the mildly oppressive cloud that hung over their table. As the Lithuanian (obviously a regular) left the place, the staff thanked him for coming and he smiled without effort, giving the impression that he was doing just fine.
The dark redhead to my left kept looking at me out of the corner of my eye, and more specifically, at my Boston Red Sox shirt. And, she seemed to want to engage me in conversation, speaking to her computer, almost trying to distract me. I thought she was really attractive but I had work to do and this kind of thing had happened a bunch of times before with me. Interesting people and conversations are way overly-abundant out here. Whenever I'm ready to have one I only have to look at someone and it becomes unstoppable. But I'd learned over the last ten months that it is fruitless to think about anything romantic. What was I going to do? Bring her back to my nest? I had no money either and... well, you get it... what's the use? So, I ignored her.
When she turned to her left to sip her coffee, the artist beside her told her his name. She told him hers, and the standard gab began. She was from Pennsylvania, there in Grants Pass visiting her mother, with her husband and two kids in tow. They would "soon arrive" at Rogue Roasters to meet up with her. Men - some men, I being one of them - can smell another man's flirt from across the room. Somehow, I knew this was the reason for her talking about her "husband." She handled things quite well. I could tell she wanted to keep working, but made the effort to act interested in his current drawing--which he offered to give her for free...several times. He went down through what was clearly a well-rehearsed laundry list of all of his credentials: a Masters in Education, he was a part-time professor, the town's "local artist", and helped kids do...blah, blah, blah. It was all bunk--or maybe just a bit exaggerated. She knew it, I knew it, but he tried his best to put that lipstick on the pig.
Then, as if to reinforce my theory about knowing when enough is enough, he said, "Well, I know you're busy. I don't wanna keep you."
She chuckled, and reluctantly agreed with him that she needed to keep working, "...cos' my husband will be here in about 10 minutes." That was the end of it.
Without thinking much about it, I just packed up the laptop and took off for the library, which was finally open at 2:00 pm...
It was a small, tightly run place. There was a rather loud Head Librarian behind the desk, obviously "on stage." Humming, singing under her breath, answering people's questions as if she'd been working there since 1975. By appearance, I think that might be a realistic guess.
I got a nice surprise: volume one of my book back from the editor for my review, to accept or reject the her corrections. This took all the rest of my time there. They kicked us out at 7:00 pm. I walked back up E Street past this really nice mural...
The blue is much closer to the real color of the sky than I think I've ever seen in a wall mural.
I was very surprised to find cranberries along the side of the road!
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