I wrote this for a literacy methods class. We were to write a narrative about a personal experience, as we learned to conduct Writer's Workshops with elementary and middle school students.
Our move from sunny southern California to the north
Oregon coast had been a disappointing climate shock from Day One.
In fact, it started before Day One. I had never been to Oregon,
but I was married to a native Portlander and he wanted to move
back. I saw this as an opportunity to realize my dream of living
at the beach, so we compromised and loaded the U-Haul, bound for
Seaside. The first hint of the impending climate shock came
the night before we were to leave. We stayed with family, and my
cousin said to me, “The Oregon coast! Why would you want to
move there? It’s always cold and it rains all the
time!” I remember looking at him for a long moment, feeling
that sense of trepidation mixed with denial when you realize that the
adventure you dreamed of may not turn out as you had imagined it.
However, I dismissed the thought because it was too late to back out
now—our home was gone and all of our earthly possessions were in
the back of a rented U-Haul.
My second hint of the cold dampness that characterizes the Oregon climate came our first day in the state when we stopped to visit family in Newberg. It was mid-July, and we had left California in 100-degree weather. Here, it was maybe 60 degrees. I did not own a coat; I only had a couple of sweatshirts, but they were packed someplace in the back of the moving van. After all, it was summer. After watching me huddle on the couch shivering for about an hour, my cousin graciously built a fire in the potbelly stove. This offered a small, temporary reprieve. I sat as close as possible to the stove and continued to shiver, but soon the fire burned itself out. Everyone else was comfortable, so I suffered in silence. Little did I know that I would live in Seaside for an entire year before I would finally feel comfortably warm.
We drove the truck into Seaside on the evening of July 17, 1982, to cold fog and drizzle. This was not how I had pictured living at the beach. I could not get warm, even sitting next to the Franklin stove. Sometimes in my dreams I would be in California, but then I would open my eyes to the gray skies, and the tears would come when I realized that it had only been a dream.
Gradually I let go of my disappointment in the weather and settled in to making the best of the situation by focusing on the pleasure of living a half a block from the beach—morning walks on the shore, collecting boxes full of sand dollars, and picnics at Shorties, leisurely watching the surfers. We were making friends and enjoying the laid-back culture. The area was growing on me, and I did truly love being close to the beach, but I still had a hard time tolerating the weather.
A guy named Brian lived behind us and often entertained us in the evenings with his stories about the area. He told of waves washing over the prom and down the street, and of an old house that had once stood on the vacant lot on our street that had blown down in a storm. My husband, Greg, and I didn’t doubt him yet… until he told the story about the time he was walking home into a storm and a particularly strong gust of wind hit him. He held on to a stop sign to keep from being blown over. Greg and I exchanged humored glances when Brian claimed that the post tore off at the base and the stop sign acted as a sail, carrying him across the river.
Although I still believe that this particular yarn was spun merely to entertain, my disbelief of Brian’s dire warnings left me unprepared for my first Oregon Coast Sou’wester. Although most of the sky was bright, a dark sky in the southwest was rapidly spreading our way, and the neighbors were busy bringing smaller things in from their patios and tying everything else down. We lived in a 90-year-old house which didn’t have a foundation but was set on huge rounds of Douglas Fir. A sun porch with hundreds of individual windowpanes stretched along the front and one side of the house. As the wind picked up, I could hear the windows rattle and feel the house shake. Coming from earthquake country, this unnerved me a bit. In true Sou’wester style the wind began to gust strongly, with an eerie howl that signaled an oncoming gale. I grew more nervous. By evening we were in a full-blown storm with 80 mph gusts. Each felt as though it picked up the house and set it down again, Wicked-Witch-of-the-East style. I was a mess. My husband was enjoying the storm, as well as the added humor of watching me pace nervously, worrying aloud.
“This old house has stood for 90 years in these storms!” I would hear Greg say more times than I cared to count. He saw that as reason not to worry, but I saw it as the law of averages being stacked very much against us. In the middle of one of my paces across the living room we heard a terrible crash in the kitchen, followed by a roar of wind through the house. We had just lost the kitchen window. We couldn’t leave it like this. Greg got plywood and nails, and we went to work trying to wrestle the sheet of plywood into place over our heads against the violent gusts. I thought of Brian and the stop sign.
Words cannot describe the experience of trying to nail the board over the window, with wind-driven horizontal rain screaming around our heads and stinging us through our light jackets. I wish I had a movie of the adventure because it had to be hilarious, but we were not laughing then. When we finally got the plywood into place, we were both soaked and exhausted. The next day we went shopping for rain gear—you know, the kind you see sailors wearing in pictures. I had never seen any in real life. This was not stylish raingear, it was bulky and drab, but we found it readily available in every store we visited. Serious storms call for serious raingear. Life on the coast goes on as normal when the storms hit, so good raingear is a necessity.
That was only the first window we lost in winter storms. The second one was a bit exciting, and we took the third one in our stride. A couple of weeks after we lost the first window a large, old warehouse on Young’s Bay in Astoria was splintered across the bay by 90 mph winds. Shortly after that I was again pacing the floor during a storm, and Greg started with the standard line, “This old house has stood in these storms for 90 years….”
“So had that warehouse on the bay,” I retorted. That was the last time I heard that line.
Twenty-five years later the old house on 12th Avenue is still standing, and I am still living on the coast. Time changes things. For instance, with the new “modern” square plastic bins, we no longer get to chase metal garbage cans as they clang down the middle of the road. Time also changes us. It may seem odd to some but the storms have become comforting to me in a way. Storms happen on the Oregon coast in the winter just like the sun rises on Earth each morning. It means that I’m home and all is as it is supposed to be. While the Portland news stations show up down here, waiting for something to happen, we go about our daily lives, except for maybe swinging by the beach on the way home from work to watch the storm for a few minutes. There is nothing to get excited about with 64 mph gusts—the official wind speed when a gale becomes a storm. Those rarely bring down branches from our storm-weathered trees. When stronger winds take down trees and put out the power, we get out candles and invite the neighbors for a BBQ. Afterward we sit around the fireplace telling stories of greenhorns with shattered windows and plywood sails.
My second hint of the cold dampness that characterizes the Oregon climate came our first day in the state when we stopped to visit family in Newberg. It was mid-July, and we had left California in 100-degree weather. Here, it was maybe 60 degrees. I did not own a coat; I only had a couple of sweatshirts, but they were packed someplace in the back of the moving van. After all, it was summer. After watching me huddle on the couch shivering for about an hour, my cousin graciously built a fire in the potbelly stove. This offered a small, temporary reprieve. I sat as close as possible to the stove and continued to shiver, but soon the fire burned itself out. Everyone else was comfortable, so I suffered in silence. Little did I know that I would live in Seaside for an entire year before I would finally feel comfortably warm.
We drove the truck into Seaside on the evening of July 17, 1982, to cold fog and drizzle. This was not how I had pictured living at the beach. I could not get warm, even sitting next to the Franklin stove. Sometimes in my dreams I would be in California, but then I would open my eyes to the gray skies, and the tears would come when I realized that it had only been a dream.
Gradually I let go of my disappointment in the weather and settled in to making the best of the situation by focusing on the pleasure of living a half a block from the beach—morning walks on the shore, collecting boxes full of sand dollars, and picnics at Shorties, leisurely watching the surfers. We were making friends and enjoying the laid-back culture. The area was growing on me, and I did truly love being close to the beach, but I still had a hard time tolerating the weather.
A guy named Brian lived behind us and often entertained us in the evenings with his stories about the area. He told of waves washing over the prom and down the street, and of an old house that had once stood on the vacant lot on our street that had blown down in a storm. My husband, Greg, and I didn’t doubt him yet… until he told the story about the time he was walking home into a storm and a particularly strong gust of wind hit him. He held on to a stop sign to keep from being blown over. Greg and I exchanged humored glances when Brian claimed that the post tore off at the base and the stop sign acted as a sail, carrying him across the river.
Although I still believe that this particular yarn was spun merely to entertain, my disbelief of Brian’s dire warnings left me unprepared for my first Oregon Coast Sou’wester. Although most of the sky was bright, a dark sky in the southwest was rapidly spreading our way, and the neighbors were busy bringing smaller things in from their patios and tying everything else down. We lived in a 90-year-old house which didn’t have a foundation but was set on huge rounds of Douglas Fir. A sun porch with hundreds of individual windowpanes stretched along the front and one side of the house. As the wind picked up, I could hear the windows rattle and feel the house shake. Coming from earthquake country, this unnerved me a bit. In true Sou’wester style the wind began to gust strongly, with an eerie howl that signaled an oncoming gale. I grew more nervous. By evening we were in a full-blown storm with 80 mph gusts. Each felt as though it picked up the house and set it down again, Wicked-Witch-of-the-East style. I was a mess. My husband was enjoying the storm, as well as the added humor of watching me pace nervously, worrying aloud.
“This old house has stood for 90 years in these storms!” I would hear Greg say more times than I cared to count. He saw that as reason not to worry, but I saw it as the law of averages being stacked very much against us. In the middle of one of my paces across the living room we heard a terrible crash in the kitchen, followed by a roar of wind through the house. We had just lost the kitchen window. We couldn’t leave it like this. Greg got plywood and nails, and we went to work trying to wrestle the sheet of plywood into place over our heads against the violent gusts. I thought of Brian and the stop sign.
Words cannot describe the experience of trying to nail the board over the window, with wind-driven horizontal rain screaming around our heads and stinging us through our light jackets. I wish I had a movie of the adventure because it had to be hilarious, but we were not laughing then. When we finally got the plywood into place, we were both soaked and exhausted. The next day we went shopping for rain gear—you know, the kind you see sailors wearing in pictures. I had never seen any in real life. This was not stylish raingear, it was bulky and drab, but we found it readily available in every store we visited. Serious storms call for serious raingear. Life on the coast goes on as normal when the storms hit, so good raingear is a necessity.
That was only the first window we lost in winter storms. The second one was a bit exciting, and we took the third one in our stride. A couple of weeks after we lost the first window a large, old warehouse on Young’s Bay in Astoria was splintered across the bay by 90 mph winds. Shortly after that I was again pacing the floor during a storm, and Greg started with the standard line, “This old house has stood in these storms for 90 years….”
“So had that warehouse on the bay,” I retorted. That was the last time I heard that line.
Twenty-five years later the old house on 12th Avenue is still standing, and I am still living on the coast. Time changes things. For instance, with the new “modern” square plastic bins, we no longer get to chase metal garbage cans as they clang down the middle of the road. Time also changes us. It may seem odd to some but the storms have become comforting to me in a way. Storms happen on the Oregon coast in the winter just like the sun rises on Earth each morning. It means that I’m home and all is as it is supposed to be. While the Portland news stations show up down here, waiting for something to happen, we go about our daily lives, except for maybe swinging by the beach on the way home from work to watch the storm for a few minutes. There is nothing to get excited about with 64 mph gusts—the official wind speed when a gale becomes a storm. Those rarely bring down branches from our storm-weathered trees. When stronger winds take down trees and put out the power, we get out candles and invite the neighbors for a BBQ. Afterward we sit around the fireplace telling stories of greenhorns with shattered windows and plywood sails.
| Site Navigation |
| Home |
| Fun Stuff - Gallery |
| Soap Box |
| Portfolio |
| Contact Me |
| Pacific University |
| PU College of Education |