Post-Otter Bar and then Klamath Falls, Oregon

Well, I did manage to roll my kayak all the way back up on two occasions. That is the good news. The bad news is, I did not really master the roll during my time at Otter Bar. I didn’t reach the point of consistently, and that is the goal. So I’ll have to continue to work on it. Maybe I’ll find an instructor here in Austin, or maybe I can just get on some water and work on it by myself. I tried my best but could not consistently execute the proper technique. My instructors tell me this is the rule rather than the exception. Many people fail to master the role during a single week of instruction and practice.

Still, the Otter Bar experience was superb. It was a beautiful setting, the accommodations and food were excellent, the teachers outstanding as were the fellow students. I departed feeling worn out, with a very sore right shoulder and an ear infection (the result of spending too much time upside down in a kayak), but grandly exhilarated. Everyone asked if I am ‘coming back next year.” I hedged because honestly I don’t think so. There is Kayaking instruction available much closer to home and Otter Bar is very expensive. I think one experience here may have to suffice. While I’m very glad I checked out this particular school and learned basics of white water paddling, it may be my lot to cruise somewhat calmer waters. We’ll see.

I said good-bye to my eight new friends, drove back down the canyon, and turned….north. Being that I was in the general neighborhood, I had this idea that I’d meander a hundred miles or so northeast to a place called Klamath Falls, Oregon, where my dad was stationed in the U.S. Air Force and where I lived and adventured during my 13th year of life. It was a great year, I had many fine memories of the place, and I wanted to see what it looked like after 40 years. Not Klamath Falls proper but our old neighborhood, the ‘base housing’ compound called Falcon Heights. We lived for that year or so in a duplex so small I don’t really see how they got the three tiny bedrooms into it.

But it didn’t matter, there were these enormous back yards there. Not even yards really, just a huge, open swath of green lawn literally the size of a football field. It ran between the rows of street-facing houses, like enormous alleys. There is a Tibetan saying: the best way to ‘control’ domestic animals or children is to give them a very big field. And that’s what we had. I was always playing ball games or wrestling or occasionally fighting, in that big, open, green space. It was one of the best pieces of residential planning I have ever seen, and in truth I haven’t witnessed anything quite like it since. So I wanted to go back to ‘Falcon Heights” and see what became of it (the Air Force Base, Kingsley Field, was closed decades ago).

I arrived in Klamath Falls in the early afternoon on Saturday, and asked around at the visitor’s center. I found out that Falcon Heights is indeed still around; the nice lady referred to it as a “gated community,” and gave me directions. On the way I ended up driving by the old base which has become a local airport and a small outpost of the Oregon Air National Guard. As I followed the driving directions I remembered the familiar green of the rural landscape—still a lot of ranch and pasture land in the area. A lot of water so it’s very green. I continued along the two-lane highway and saw the arched entrance to the ‘gated community’ of Falcon Heights….the gate was stuck open, and I took the liberty of driving right in.

As if prompted from the mind’s backstage, our old address came back to me: 844-A Preddy Avenue. I turned right and followed instinct. It had been forty years.

When they developed the 'gated community' they did not scrape off the original duplex structures as I thought they surely would have. They were all still in place, just renovated. The very same little one-story duplexes! They are “condos” now, however. And yes, the street names are the same—I found Preddy Avenue, and located our old residence at 844-A. Except it wasn’t 844-A. Even if they are adjoined, you can’t name a condo “-A.” That would be too much like a duplex, and condo owners want their own, unique address it seems. So my short-term residence during my budding dolescence is now a 6 digit number. But to me, by God, it is 844-A. And there it was, a condo, and it was for sale. I could have it for $106,000, the flyer said.

The condo versions have private back yards now, and in order to provide those and fence them, the big open fields the size of ten alleys side-by-side had to go. I was saddened to see it. No more armies of kids playing football or 'free-for-all' soccer well after dark. I wondered what the frequency and distribution of morbid obesity, depression and ADHD might be among this child and adolescent population.

I drove further up the hill, staying of Preddy Avenue, and located the old quanset hut that serveds as the headquarters for Boy Scout Troop 101, where I progressed up to the rank of Life Scout. It remains but is shut and locked down. A nearby structure, the Teen Center, still stands, and serves as a community center. A wedding reception was in full progress. I played my first gig as a rock and roll drummer in that very building. I was called at the last minute to sit in for the band's ill drummer--at the monthly Teen Club dance. These were high school boys and my idols as a mere 7th grader. I still remember what I wore to play that gig. I so wanted to be cool. I think I worried more about how I looked than how well I actually played.

As I reminisce and snap pictures it occurs to me to wonder why this is all so important to me. It represents a year in my developmental life; that period when identity and belonging are so critically important. I find myself wanting, still, to belong to this place and somehow to these people of my past. I remember exactly which duplexes my old friends, and some influential adults lived, and which side--A or B. I located Lt. Kendall's place, our Protestant Youth counselor and his very good looking young wife and I'm reminded how much she loved Credence Clearwater Revival, the huge crush I had on her, and how she would dance with me to Born On The Bayou at PYC events. I want to locate them all and chat them up. Even though it's dangerous to do so. Even the ones who stay in places like Klamath Falls, or Alamogordo, New Mexico, and become right wing ideologues and build paranoid, antigovernment web sites: "the Government is not just taking our guns away, they want YOUR LAND as well!!" (an actual site built by one of my high school chums).

Over on Kinchloe street, one block over, lived Sergeant and Scoutmaster Jim Raynor and his family. Raynor was the first embodiment of the princple that leadership cannot be taught, you have what it takes it or your don't. When he was Scoutmaster, I loved scouting and wanted to be a Scout. When he shattered his ankle in an activity-related fall and couldn't lead scouting activities, I lost interest. The back-up leaders just didn't have it. Angry and disillusioned, I left Boy Scouts and made an almost conscious commitment, for the next couple of years at least, to delinquency.

I remain confused and fascinated with the passage of time. My longing, it seems, is to somehow contract time; to travel both forwards and backwards and gather everyone together in the hope that it might for a time be the same and we'd have that formative connection again. The sense of belonging that you have with a cohort of friends when you are 10 or 12 or 13 years old. Like if I could just listen to their stories and tell mine and help, maybe undo some of their hurts; prevent some of the reactive patterns that develop and change people. Ruin some of them.

It is a foolish attachment, I know. Naive, absurd, impossible. You can't go back. There is no constancy, nothing but change. I should not be so mad that they ruined our big open fields. Who would use them now, anyway, and for what? There is only this moment, by itself. And then the next moment, entirely unique and unrelated to the last one. And so it goes, moment by moment, and best to be fully present in this current moment. But even so, how I would love to go back for a moment and play a ball game on that now sub-divided big field. How I'd like to tie knots and listen to Sarge Raynor's bear stories and chase the mosquito spraying truck at twilight. Dance to Creedence with Marsha Kendall and feel the rush of those first touches from women when you learned how they feel and smell up close. And how I'd like to have a snowball fight with Greg Barksdale, and live, just for a time again in the day when I had an African-American best friend.

Falcon Heights is now a gated community alright. Within those gates live retirees and what appear to be a lot of younger people who wear a lot of patriotic apparell--eagles and flags and stuff, and who posess too many vehicles for the amount of parking space allotted each duplex. Excuse me, I meant 'condo.'

I drove out beneath the Falcon Heights archway, turning back towards my room at the Hotel Maverick in the trendy, fledgling 'City Center'. I went to the Creamery Brew Pub and ordered a boutique beer that was not a Guiness because they didn't have Guiness. I felt grateful for arriving at Falcon Heights at the right time, and for they profound way I was impacted--influenced by that place and those people. And then I felt finished with it.