The Oregon Trail

Back in the saddle again

After a brief sojourn into fiction, I now return to the previously scheduled memoir.

Although I was born in Pennsylvania, I think of myself as a Westerner. I once wrote in a cover letter for a job application: “I have been a native of New Mexico since 1968.” I have vowed never to live east of the Mississippi River again. And, more to the point, my version of the west is from the Rockies almost to the Cascades. (It doesn’t include Hood River.) 

This is pretty much what I consider the REAL West. (In gray)
(I guess I would also include the Dakotas, Arizona and Nevada)

I don’t consider much of Oregon part of the West, but it’s the place I’ve lived longer than anywhere else. I’ve been in Oregon since 1998, but I still don’t consider myself an Oregonian. I moved first to Eugene, then Bend, and now Hood River. Maybe because my parents and kids live in Albuquerque, I consider myself a New Mexican. 

Before Hood River, I lived in a lot of places, moving often. 

Pennsylvania (3 homes that I know of — 4 years); Ohio (2 homes 12 years); Albuquerque (at least 3 homes before I left for the Air Force — 3 years); Air Force: San Antonio, Monterey, San Angelo, Korea, Clovis (barracks & apartments— 4 years); then Los Angeles, Grand Canyon, Buffalo, Rochester, Buffalo, Los Angeles, Albuquerque (1975 - 1990 — mostly apartments & a couple of houses); Santa Fe (2 homes in 3 years); Montana (1 home, 5 years), and Oregon — Eugene (1 large property), Bend (moved 3 times), & so far: Hood River (more than 20 years — one old schoolhouse.)

Our move from Montana to Oregon was catalyzed by Elle’s desire to be closer to her aging parents. I began to look for a job in newspapers because that’s what I thought I was good at.

I almost got a job as editor of a state-wide weekly (I don’t remember the name and it may not even exist anymore). When one of Elle’s students offered to set up a retreat center in Eugene, we moved to Grand Street in the Whitaker District. It was (is) a beautiful property on two city lots full of exotic plants and trees with a two-story house on one lot, and a two-story yurt on the other. We lived downstairs in the house, rented the second story to a group of mid-wives and the downstairs yurt rooms to a couple of massage therapists. The upstairs of the yurt became Elle’s group space. It was magical. 

I got a job as a sports reporter at the Springfield News. Mostly it was high school sports. My favorite venue was the Oakridge High School baseball field high up in the Cascades. I sat in the stands watching the game, mesmerized by the surrounding mountain views.

I loved covering baseball and football, but alas, I didn’t really like other sports (wrestling, swimming, tennis) and quit after a few months.

A side-note: shortly before I started at the Springfield News, there was a shooting at Thurston High in Springfield that made national news at a time when school shootings were still rare. The shooter, 15 years old at the time, is still serving a life sentence. 

I really like Eugene. It is full of people with “alternative” lifestyles. In addition it is a college town with great coffee houses. Almost daily, we would have our breakfast (usually a coffee and a pastry) at one of them. I loved walking down to a fish store nearby, or walking to the natural food market housed in a big red barn, or just walking around the neighborhood. I also liked that on Saturdays there was a drum circle on the courthouse steps, full of people openly smoking pot before marijuana was legalized in Oregon. I’m sure they were also vendors and attendees at the annual Oregon Country Fair. In the late 90s the OCF seemed more like a spontaneous party. I went sometime in the early ‘00s and it felt like a hippy Disneyland.

I had a strange experience in Eugene. Just after moving, I went to visit my friends Robert Zakian and Jan Gagnon. They were renting a room in a house near us. I was standing in their room when the owner of the house came up behind me and announced: “You’re Mike Friend!” I turned but had no clue who this guy was. “I’m Cayenne, I was your projectionist at the UNM Student Union Theater in 1972!” I still don’t know why he remembered me more than 20 years later (I guess I should have asked.)

Elle’s students, Walter and Vivienne Close, moved from Brooklyn Heights, NY to Eugene to be close to her. Walter, despite being at least 10 years older than me, became one of my greatest friends. He was a computer programmer for Chase Bank in the early 1960s and a “bohemian” folky at the same time. He hung out with Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village and smoked pot while also being a “suit” and created an establishment career that left him wealthy. Walter and I and a third partner created a spiritual website called “Seeker’s Way” in the late 1990s — during the early days of the World Wide Web. (AOL was still our dial-up provider.) Alas, it was never finished.

While in Eugene, I got a job working for a computer training company in Portland. They hired me because I was proficient on both Macintosh and PC platforms, but they only used me to teach people how to use a mouse (“don’t HIT the button, click it”) and how to use Windows 95 (It was 1999). Even though they had an office in Eugene, I was sent to Portland almost everyday. I got tired of that fast.

BTW: in 2001 there was a joke about Windows operating systems (beginning with CE, then Me, and NT: https://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/01/25.9.shtml )

After that, I got a job with SkillPath CompuMaster, a company that sent us all over the U.S. to teach computer skills at hotel seminars. Most of the venues were large hotel conference rooms. Sometimes a hundred people came to watch us tell our stories and teach them tricks. Everything was the same, yet each place was unique. 

During a 5-day work week, we went to a different city every day, usually by flying, sometimes by driving. I mostly taught desktop publishing and design (InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator). Our team of three each hauled around computers, books, and a huge projector in a giant Pelican case that got beat up and occasionally lost by the airline. Each trip was an adventure — all of New England by car (and a final flight from Maine to New Hampshire on a small commuter plane that almost landed sideways in the middle of a storm); Georgia and Florida by car (huge billboards advertising “live nudes!” on the drive from Tampa Bay to Orlando, alligator for dinner, looong tree-lined highways in the deep south); North & South Dakota and Wisconsin in the middle of winter; Portland, Seattle and Alaska in one week. As I mentioned, I’ve been to 48 states, many of them thanks to computer training seminars. 

The woman who owned the Eugene property decided to sell, so Elle chose Bend, Oregon to be our next landing spot. It was a quiet town when we got there but by the time we left just a few years later, it was turning into the busy, over-populated city it is today. My favorite memories of Bend are breakfast downtown and hikes in the nearby mountains. One memorable moment on a precipice on Three Fingered Jack (great mountain name) my fedora blew off my head and went sailing away off into the high mountain air. I yelled, “come back here!” And to my surprise a gust of wind blew the hat back to land at my feet. 

It was hard to fly out of Bend for my traveling teacher gig, so I quit. I applied for newspaper jobs at the Bend Bulletin and the Redmond Spokesman. The Spokesman editor interviewed me and offered me a job as the Sports Editor. I had also applied to be a teacher at an outdoor wilderness program for “bad” teenagers called Obsidian Trails. I asked the Spokesman guy if I could give him an answer after the weekend, because I really wanted the other job — which I got offered. On Monday, the editor called. I said “sorry I’m taking another job”. His response: “Oh Shit” and he hung up. I’m guessing, he had already said “no” to the other applicants. 

Obsidian Trails is a story that I shall tell in my next post. For now, suffice it to say, I probably should have taken the newspaper job. The OT job didn’t last long, maybe 6 months, but it was action packed. I got fired from the job because of poor management by the people who ran the company. (I’ll get into that later.) Some good things: I met a couple of truly good people (D’Arcy and Heather) and after getting fired, the unemployment office suggested I sign up at the VA for health benefits — which I still have — giving me free health coverage. I also decided it was time to go back to University and get my Masters degree so I could teach at a college or University. (Alas, now even community college teachers have PhDs). 

My job at Obsidian Trails was sort-of outside and mostly non-wilderness. I was supposed to be teaching “reformed” “bad” teenagers. Turns out the teenagers had other ideas.