When I left the big city I had lots of good reasons. I hated having neighbors twenty feet from my bedroom. I hated that there was always machine noise; from cars, TV's, sirens, brakes, and leaf blowers. I liked that if I wanted something it was close. I hated that whatever it was I wanted I had to stand in line to get it. I was in my mid fifties and figured I'd spent at least a year in line!
I got lucky. I came into some unexpected money. I decided that all the reading and work I'd done on me deserved a reward. All the years of working at jobs I didn't particularly like deserved a reward. I bought a pick up, sold almost all my stuff including my house near the beach, transferred my mail delivery to my sister's address up in Oregon and went looking for a new place to live.
I pulled out of Los Angeles on a Monday morning. I closed the door of my new truck at 5:30 in the morning with me inside and headed north. I wasn't interested in finding a big city, or a busy city to live in. I like the ocean. Hell, I like water. So I had mapped out a few small towns near water to look at.
Four days later I was in Oregon. Two more days of wandering around southern Oregon and I stopped for lunch in a cute little town. The diner was a store front in the two block town. There were six tables, each with a different colored tablecloth. The waitress was wearing jeans, a western shirt and boots. She was about fifty. On the totally subjective scale of between one and ten I gave her a six, until she smiled. That smile pushed her score to nine.
She came over to my table and said, "Hi. I'm Matty. You want lunch or breakfast?"
I told her I wanted lunch and she told me my choices. No menu. After she told me the five choices I asked price. I was told that whatever I ordered the price was six bucks. I ordered. She disappeared into the back for three minutes and brought back my lunch.
She put the plate in front of me, got me something to drink and then did something I'd never seen before in a cafe. She sat down with me and we talked while I ate.
By the time the meal was over I had an idea about staying in this town for a while. I asked Matty about a place to stay and she left me for a couple minutes, made two phone calls and came back asking if I wanted near the river or closer to town. I picked near the river.
"Well, let's go then."
Matty hung the closed sign in the window and we walked out to my truck. She pointed things out as we drove and ten minutes later we were at a house on a small hill overlooking the river. It was a two story farm house with a porch going around three sides and two rocking chairs on the side facing the river.
"Who lives here?" I asked.
"You do. That is if it's OK with you."
We walked up on the porch, walked the full length of the porch and Matty told me about the place. The nearest neighbors were half a mile farther down the road. The road that got us from the highway only had three farms on it so there wasn't much traffic. Then she took me inside.
The downstairs was out of my memories from childhood. The front door was like the front door I remembered from when I was little. It had an oval beveled glass window in it and when you closed the door the window rattled just a little. The living room had one chair and a small couch facing a fireplace. The dining room had a round oak table and three ladder backed chairs. It looked and felt like the farm house I lived in as a kid.
There was one bedroom and a bathroom downstairs and three more bedrooms and another bath upstairs. We talked rent for thirteen seconds and I took it. When I asked who I paid the rent to I was not too surprised that it was Matty. I gave her two months in cash.
She took the money and stuffed it in her back pocket. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me. There was a little tongue in the kiss. I gave a little back. She asked if I needed a written receipt or if a lip receipt would do. I asked if I would always get a lip receipt when I paid the rent.
"Any time, Honey. Anytime."
She looked at her watch and said she needed to get back to town. She was expecting her regulars for dinner in an hour. I took her back into town and stayed for dinner. I was introduced to the regulars. One of the families lived north of town and they were retired. The other family had the farm at the end of the road where my place was.
They were in their early forties and had their nineteen year old daughter with them. They were dressed in work clothes and those clothes were well worn. Mr. Nilsson said they farmed and I believed him. His wife introduced herself as Sarah and Matty told me that she made the best berry preserves in the county, and had the blue ribbons as proof. Sarah also introduced their daughter, Pam.
At first look Pam wasn't attracting my attention very much. She was wearing a long sleeved cotton shirt tucked into bib overalls. Both the shirt and the overalls looked like they were her Dad's. Her hair was blond and hadn't been brushed since morning by the look of it. She wore no make up. When she looked up at me as we were introduced I thought she would faint. Then I noticed that her mother looked at me again and all the color drained from her face. Matty introduced the daughter to me again and she shook my hand and smiled. She learned that smile from Matty. Now she had my attention. I wondered about the look both she and her mother had on their faces, but I didn't say anything.
I went back to my table and finished dinner. When the Nilsson's were finished they stopped at my table and Mr. Nilsson asked if he could send Pam over in the morning to help me find things and get settled in. She knew my place well as she had been keeping it clean for Matty. I accepted and they said great.
I was the last diner out that night and Matty gave me another lip receipt before I left. She also seemed right on the edge of laughing about some private joke.
When I got to the house I realized that it wasn't locked and I didn't have a key. I found a light switch, went to the bathroom, stripped and went to bed in the downstairs bedroom. The quilt on the bed was handmade, not machine sewed, and was a log cabin pattern that I had on my bed when I was a kid. This one was in about five shades and patterns of green material.
When my eyes opened it was starting to get light outside. Pam was standing in the doorway. Clean shirt, clean bibs, brushed hair. She was blushing. I saw the tent I was making of the covers and turned a bit to take it out of her view.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Nick. No one knocks around here and I never saw anyone sleep in before. I thought you would be up."
"I'm from the city. In the city this is still night. Don't feel badly. I'm not offended. Now, give me a couple minutes and I'll get dressed."
"I brought some stuff to make breakfast for you. Momma said you probably hadn't gone to the market yet." She turned and was gone.
I got up, showered and dressed. By the time I walked into the kitchen she had breakfast on the table. She must have thought I was going to pull a plow through forty acres of dirt. On my plate were five eggs, three pieces of toast and a slice of ham that must have been almost half a pound! She washed the frying pan and then came over and sat with me as I ate.
She told me about life here in southern Oregon and she asked lots of questions about Los Angeles. She had lived on the farm and in this town all her life. She stayed because her parents needed her and she didn't have enough education to do anything but farm, she said. After I ate as much as I could she cleaned up the kitchen and we unloaded the truck. I brought in all my computer stuff and we made one upstairs bedroom my office. Pam thought the one with a nice view of the river would be the best. We put all the computer stuff in there and then put my clothes in the closet of the downstairs bedroom; my books on the floor of the living room and my two boxes of personal stuff went into the bathroom and the kitchen.
Pam worked hard and asked lots of good questions. By ten in the morning I was tired. Pam wasn't. She recommended that we make out a list of things I wanted from town and then she'd show me where to get everything.
