Jaci Dawn

Could have been 2nd & Washington. I wasn’t paying attention to what the cross street was: I was intent on yard sale find. The day was Saturday, August 11. The big McLoughlin Historic District Annual Garage Sale was on and I was cruising. I parked my car on 4th and Washington, by St. John’s Catholic Church and private school. I was headed toward the second cluster of yard sales in the oldest city on the West Coast and the End of the Oregon Trail: Oregon City.

The sidewalks are mean. Tree roots have grown under the concrete and pushed it up. Years of ice storms have eroded the concrete. You have to keep one eye down on the ground to walk, otherwise you’ll catch a toe on an edge and tumble.

Here, along Washington Street, it is quiet. The main traffic runs up 5th Street or south on Center Street, one block to the west. The houses are smaller and the yards tinier, but they are still bungalows and Queen Anne style, and ringed with picket fences. They tend to be one-story homes here.

I turned west on the side street. I think it is 3rd, but it could be 2nd. Oregon City is odd in that 7th St is the main east-west thoroughfare, followed closely by 5th and 10th. 1st St is lost somewhere to the south, a narrow little street.

Main Street is on the river level of town; the McLoughlin District is on the first bluff level of town. I live on the next tier.

I crossed the street, jay-walking because there is no traffic here. I can see a yard sale on the corner of Center and whatever street I am on. The street seems to close in on me. I step up onto the sidewalk in front of the garage one house over from the corner. The house it belongs to is a yellow bungalow with a low porch and a 3′ tall chain-link fence in front. The yard is overgrown, the windows closed tight and the yellow shades all pulled as if the house has closed its eyes and lips. It exudes an unfriendly quality.

Next door, to the west, is a low brick building with a quaint picket fence out front. Dry rot has eaten away at the pickets. The whitewash has eroded away. It is old, lonely, sad.

The yard sale on the corner is desolate. No one is sitting outside minding the wares: old VHS tapes, size 10 women’s shoes, mildewy clothes on racks.

I turn and retrace my steps along the sidewalk back to Washington. I wonder about the people who live here and wish I had a camera to capture the worn picket fence. Someone would probably come out and yell at me for taking photos. The pickets hang and the nails rust.

Walking this direction, I can see into the back yard of the sleeping yellow bungalow. Blackberry vines reach up into the air like the vines in a scene from a Tom Robbins’ novel about Seattle. Someone lives here. S0meone old and lonely. A witch from a Harry Potter novel. The trees throw Hallowe’en shadows in the mid-morning summer sunshine.

Around the corner, I pass a set of one-story apartments in disrepair. A tall bush-cum-tree presses up against the building. An air conditioner has been placed in the window and pushed out against the limbs of the bush/tree, anchoring the unit in place. A stuffed brown pillow fills the gap between unit and wall.

As I examine this set-up, I feel as if eyes are on me. I smile to myself.

This is fodder for a very good scary story a la Ray Bradbury. I make a note to myself to revisit this street in the autumn, when the leaves have changed and October beckons.

All I purchase is a pair of black Naugahyde boots for $5.

Tonight, I watched bats swoop into the dimming light. snatching up to pine beetles and mosquitoes.

I want to revisit that street with a camera.