Day 4: Reading Lolita In Therain
On Tuesday, the weather turned a lot less “changeable” than Monday; unfortunately, its needle got stuck on “nasty”, and we spent most of the day reading and watching the regimental waves roll hypnotically ashore. This was fine with me, as I’ve carted several half-finished books along with the intention of getting them finished and off my mocking nightstand. For a current book club read, however, I was in the middle of re-reading Nabokov’s Lolita - a nicely annotated version I bought in the 70s - and left it on the floor next to the bed at home. The lodge has a large library of books, but they’re mostly naturalist’s guides and environmentally inspirational testimonials of various sorts - not much fiction, and no nymphet lore to be found. I asked one of the owners if she had a copy, and she said she didn’t, but called a friend who had a used bookstore and found one available for $2. She seemed to welcome the excuse to run into town, and the book was waiting at my door that evening. It wasn’t my annotated edition, but it’s a “complete and unabridged” ca 1960 printing, with a sorta lurid cover, and I’m nearly finished.
We did get to scramble down to our beach here, visit the seals and collect a few agates. Later, we gathered up my mother in law, who is here with us (more on that later) and headed into Yachats for dinner at a restaurant that has become a favorite of ours called the Drift Inn. I know, it sounds like it should be full of smoke, fishermen, their lies and their molls, but it’s just this really laid-back place with reasonable prices and a terrific menu. On this night, there was a heavy-set 60-ish fellow with a Santa Claus beard playing acoustic guitar VERY nicely. His tune selections were an eclectic pastiche of 50s-60s-70s stuff, like some Peter Paul & Mary, some James Taylor, delta blues, the “If I Only Had A Brain” song from Wizard of Oz. My wife said he was like a sort of timeless jukebox, and told him so on the way back from the bathroom. He said, “yeah, but I don’t take no dimes.” The tip jar loomed at the door.
You never know when one will hit you. It might be while you’re in an elevator, or the supermarket, or a rental car whose radio is stuck on an AM band. And you can’t predict what song it will be - Hall & Oates, Harry Chapin, some country thing you’ll never ever hear again. But you’ll be in a mood or situation, or have been brooding about something, and this song, with exactly the right lyrics or evocative of some point in your past, will come screaming out of the ether and hit you right in the gut. On this night, it was Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game, played by our jukebox friend.
As I’ve noted, we’ve been coming to this same lodging on the coast for almost 20 years, beginning when our son was 4. Almost everyplace we go here, there’s some memory of him associated with it: hauling logs to build a crossing over a creek, hunting agates, playing catch on the beach to keep his arm fresh for Little League, hikes he hated to do (loves to hike now), the image of him perched on a window seat with earphones in, reading or playing his Game Boy. The last time we brought him here, he was 14. We brought along his best buddy, partly because the kid’s parents treated Andrew so well and partly as an insurance policy against his being terminally bored by us. Our bad - boredom in teenagers is a multiplicative art form, and these guys were a dream team. It didn’t help that the weather socked in, much worse than this week, and just hosed us constantly each day. The friend had brought along a 9″ black-and-white tv that he’d rescued from a dumpster and revitalized, and a vcr, and they spent almost the entire week, in this very room, playing Forrest Gump and the Star Wars Trilogy in an endless loop. Talk about your Circle Game. We ended up leaving two days early, and for the next three years spent spring break on Maui.
Since he’s been in college, our spring breaks haven’t coincided (my wife teaches in elementary school), and we’ve been coming down here without him, and there’s a certain freedom to do things we like to do without regard for teen angst. Then some song comes along in a seaside restaurant and it’s all you can do to keep your tears in your head:
We can’t return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
