AND A VERY WACKY CHRISTMAS TO ALL...

As the holidays continued to be snowed under we finished dinner then repaired to the sofa to watch that great Christmas classic from 1964 “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians” starring that screen luminary Pia Zadora.

The Martians kidnap Santa and two small earth children in order to bring Christmas joy and happiness to all Martian children (who have been brainwashed by watching television signals emanating from earth). After thwarting the evil, Gestapo-like Martian who is set on stopping this decadent course, Santa sets up a toy shop on the red planet and all is well across the universe leaving him free to make it back to the North Pole (along with the earth children) in time for a Joyous Noel here on our small, blue ball.

A strange tale made all the stranger by the budget production values and over-sized space electronics considered state of the art a scant dozen years before Star Wars…

Whereas that was strange, we also watched the 1969 film “The Littlest Angel” which was more truly disturbing… rather like a Monty Python Christmas on LSD.

It starred Johnny Whitaker (the little boy on the American sitcom Family Affair) as a humble shepard boy who falls off a cliff while chasing a white dove sent by God himself. 

Okay now polish up your memory, tighten up your imagination and hang onto your hat… Johnny goes on to tour heaven with his spirit guide Fred Gwynne (yes, Herman Munster) in a confusing attempt to find meaning for his life (and, I suppose, death).

Along the way he meets, among others, Tony Randall, Connie Stevens and Cab Calloway.

E. G. Marshall is God and did I mention it’s a musical? They don’t make ‘em like that anymore…

TRANSITION

Summer has definitely “left the building” here in The Dalles. Cool nights and days that, although not exactly cold and rainy, are grey with mists… not quite rain but not quite sunny. What the Irish call a fine, soft day. There is a full palette of autumnal leaf litter covering the grass and obscuring the sidewalks. Flame red bushes and bright yellow saplings dot the borders of the yards and parks, a nice counterpoint to the lush, rain-watered greens of lawns and cedars. It makes for a most pleasant afternoon stroll around the neighborhoods and downtown environs while killing time and learning one’s way around. With the tang of fall in the air and a feast for the eyes everywhere around, it is enough to make you slip the memories of summer’s furnace heat and January’s howling, sleet encrusted grip.

STREET RACING IN THE DALLES

     I didn’t even know that the Soap Box Derby still existed and yet there they were blocking off the street just below our house while a bevy of young Danica Patricks hurled down the grade on Court Street, stopping just short of the steady trucking traffic on 3^rd.

     In truth it appears to be some distance from the old derby cars built in one car garages and rolling on stolen baby buggy tires but it is still a simple race run by gravity and against another competitor… good, clean fun on a sunny autumn afternoon (disregarding the occasional scandal involving devious parents and surreptitiously placed electromagnets…)

     Of course there are signs of the times; the aforementioned cheating, races like today’s with girl drivers, an advanced division with adult hands in the construction and drivers up to 20 years old and something called the Portland Adult Soap Box Derby which I will assume means sophisticated engineering and not X rated sexual content.

     Long gone are the days when the derby attendance was in the top five of sporting events in the nation. The one I observed this afternoon had an audience of very few, like myself, not directly involved and was a painfully slowly paced affair with youngsters having a load of fun amongst a contingent of very serious-minded adults who were more interested in times and standings than in keeping the wind in your hair and the bugs off your teeth.

     Oh, and a side parking lot full of motor homes, fancy trailers and very pricey looking soap box accessories.

JESUS, LOOK AT ALL THEM CHURCHES...

So here we are living in The Dalles… and the first thing I noticed is a surfeit of houses of the Lord crammed in, cheek by jowl, all over town. We’re talking about a town of just over 13,000 souls but, it seems, a vast majority of them have a place to go on the Sabbath.

I think I tracked them all down at 25 churches but every couple of days I stumble on yet another one. On our Saturday morning ritual walk of three blocks down to the Farmers’ Market, one block over to the library and three blocks home we can cast a glance on 6 churches.

There are classics like the Gothic Revival brick pile (1) of a Catholic church… St. Pete’s with a six foot copper cock atop its spire (tee hee). That, however, proved to be too small so it is now a museum of some sort and the new Catholic complex is on the edge of town (2) and looks ever so like a DMV office. There is a smattering of Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Methodists (and yes, them pesky Mormons) and then a plethora of the lesser forms of worship including a half dozen arcane versions of Lutheranism; Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Evangelical, American Lutheran, American Evangelical Lutheran and so on. And then come the Pentacostals, Christian Science, Baptists many and varied and an odd lot jumble of Four Square Gospel (3) (a small, unassuming building that except for a small sign stating “Sanctuary” would appear to be a storage unit), Assembly Of God and something called The Church Of God-Anderson, Indiana.

Far and away our favorite is (4) which has transubstantiated into a sandwich and coffee shop (oddly, not open on Sundays…)

Lest you think this is all a recent turn of events in the town’s history, two blocks from our house, behind the local High School, right in the middle of 12^th street is a round about that features a towering basaltic upthrust (5) known as Pulpit Rock where early day frock coaters first attempted to banish the belief systems of the local indigenous population by instilling in them the notions of a fearful old testament God.

To date, I must admit, our pagan Sunday morning lie-in has been disturbed by neither an incessant carillon call to worship nor the invasion of well meaning, bible-toting proselytites cluttering up our doorstep. Thank God for small mercies, eh?