obvert
Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011
From: PDX (and now) London, UK
Status: offline
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November 24, 1941
2330 SW Nebraska Street, Portland, OR
Martin eased his new black ‘41 Chevy Special DeLuxe sedan out onto the slimy pavement at 5AM on a wet Monday morning. Coffee was just starting to have its effect. The house had been quiet. Elsie and the kids still asleep. Only the sound of starlings and chickadees. The smell of percolating coffee. The soft patter of rain on the shingles. Oregon in November.
Martin was an experienced shop foreman, mechanic and construction specialist after years working dredge and sluice gold mines just outside Fairbanks, Alaska. He’d gone up at age eighteen, shoveling coal in a locomotive to pay his way off the farm in Hockinson, WA. He’d grown up one of twelve; picking, plowing, threshing, thinning and pruning, maintaining and fixing just about anything with an engine. The family led a minor agricultural industry, renting out drying houses, the first threshing machine in the county, tractors and power saws and anything else a farmer might need to get jobs done. All of the Holkkola children worked hard, long hours.
Yellow globes of the sparse streetlights glowed through the mist as he eased onto Hwy 26 and drove drove out of town to find work in the timber country of Clatsop county. They’d come down from Alaska a month ago and he couldn’t find anything but mechanic work since. He liked to think he was worth more than a few dollars a day, and after the wages up in Alaska, working as a foreman in a machine shop, cleaning carborators and changing tires didn’t seem appealing. They’d had a good life up north, or at least he thought so. Elsie wasn’t so convinced. She missed family, missed light in the winter, and didn’t much like the harder life in a cabin miles from town. She was a city girl, from Portland, and she finally convinced Martin to give it a shot in the lower forty-eight. Now that wasn’t looking so good.
If he found something they’d have to move out of Portland. He didn’t like that much. They had savings. He’d made good money, and didn’t have much to spend it on other than a new car every few years and drinks at Ivory Jack’s on Fridays. He liked the countryside up north, but down here it felt dark. Trees too big, air too damp, men too shifty. In the city they had people, too, and that wasn’t all bad. It meant they had a few nights to themselves when Elsie’s sister could take the kids.
The day was shaping up like most. Slow, constant drizzle pushed aside by the wipers and damp air that went right through a wool jacket. He’d felt warmer in forty-below. The road was empty this time of day other than a few logging trucks. His heart sunk lower the farther he drove. Finally, nearing the small timber town of Elsie (which he found unusually funny) he turned into a trucker’s café and had another cup of coffee and a piece of pie. In spite of the marionberry pie, which was fresh out of the oven, and the coffee, which was black and strong, it just didn’t feel right out here.
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< Message edited by obvert -- 4/4/2014 11:26:04 AM >
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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
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::Felix, Ferdinand and FRUPAC:: obvert (A) v Greyjoy (J) - 
At least I will know if I´m right or wrong about PDU OFF. I still think this is the way the game is supposed to be played. 
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