Traditions

August 8, 2009 by Clair Button.

East-side Oregonians have many traditions. Last week, we went out to participate in a local tradition, picking huckleberries. The following Tuesday, we intended to set off for the Oregon coast to escape the hundred degree heat of early August. This is also a tradition among the town-folk of eastern Oregon.

It did occur to me that it was my civic duty to wash the dust off of my eastern Oregon pickup truck before heading west. Huckleberry picking necessarily means going long distances on dusty gravel roads through the forest. No need to make those big city tourists think we east-siders are all slovenly low-lifers. So, I went to the local car wash, which luckily, happened to have a 50 gallon drum of “pre-wash” detergent and long-handled brushes to loosen up the dried bugs and what not before entering the high-tech automated spraying barn.

It was the “what not” part of the dried material on my east-side truck that turned out to be more of a problem than I had anticipated. You see, my east-side Oregon neighbors have other traditions. Like, at the end of July, the lowland range pastures are totally dried out, and it is time to either take the cattle to higher elevations, or put them on irrigated pasture for the rest of the summer. Over time, this has created the tradition of the “cattle drive.” For you non-east-siders, this does not mean you put old Bossy in the back seat of your car and take her out for a Sunday drive. Actually it means you do a round-up of four hundred or so nameless cows and push them out onto the highway on foot, or on hooves. You then trail behind them down the highway on horses (or more likely 4-wheelers now) for several miles with the help of a few border collie cowdogs while bewildered town-folk and smiling, pointing tourists try to figure out how to get through the whole mess and resume their high speed adventures into the forest without bumping number 432 in the butt or running over her frightened calf who witlessly dodges in front of their bumper every two minutes.

A cattle drive, while appearing somewhat haphazard and disorganized, is really not a mess. Given the difficulty of convincing the cows not to climb into the cars passing through their midst, it is a fairly well organized process. The mess is what the townfolk and tourists drive on, other than the actual pavement or gravel. It has a tendency to be semi-liquid at the time, loathsome olive-green in color, and fulsome in fresh, organic odor, if you know what I mean.

So, bring the tradition of huckleberry picking and cattle drives back to the car wash. I find that one long handled brush is insufficient to remove the dust and the mess, which together, have dried to an indistinguishable splattering of lumps on the side and underframe of my pickup truck. I take a second brush, and using both at once, discover that the lumpy dust on the side of my pickup becomes a slimy, green-brown mud that no amount of brushing will ever remove. The frame beneath the doors of the truck had significantly larger lumps of stuff, which when knocked apart, turn out to be only partially dried. The wheel-wells of my truck turn out to be indescribable – lucky for you.

Another customer pulls up behind me, waiting patiently for me to finish. Returning to the drum of ice-blue detergent pre-wash for the sixth time, I find it has turned a dark, muddy, green-brown, and smells more like a barn than detergent. Rinsing the brushes, I make one more attempt to wipe the smears of green from the side of my truck, but notice the detergent water now leaves an equally dubious film on the door panel, and it smells, well, rather bad.

Returning the brushes to the drum, I wave at the lady behind me and pray that she does not get out to use one of the brushes on her own car. I drive in to the automatic wash, thinking it was very smart of me to have paid extra for the “ultimate” wash. I knew it was going to take some serious spraying on the underbody to get my truck clean.

The soak-down cycle with more pre-wash detergent was understandably dingy as it dripped down the outside of my windows. The flashing light sign let me know the regular high-power wash cycle was going to help, and it did. But the rinse cycle still had a distinct olive tinge to it as it drained down off the roof. When the “clear protective coating” light came on, I had second thoughts about spending the extra money. I was thinking that might mean something like a coat of shellac that would permanently attach any remaining green residue to my nice truck. Not a happy thought at all.  However, the final rinse cycle did not obscure the outdoor sunlight with a fog of green, so I figured everything was going to be OK.

The blow-dry cycle did about as much good as a short popcorn fart. I hardly know why they bother. When I got out to use the old chamois skin to dry the truck, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it did not come away stained green, and the truck did have a nice burgundy gleam to it, fairly similar to the original paint-job. However, I did notice the seams around the wheel wells still had some dark green material packed into them. I avoided those.

It was on the trip over the Cascades when we finally found some real rain. I mean, it rained hard for a little while, nothing like that 20 percent chance rain that they keep promising us out in the eastern hinterlands. We happened to stop at a little rest area on the west side of the mountains as we headed down toward the coast, and walking back to the truck, I noticed some very distinct dark olive green racing stripes on the side of my truck. All that west-side rain had loosened up some of that indescribable stuff from the inside of my wheel wells.

Oddly, the olive color didn’t look that bad against the burgundy paint, as long as you didn’t look close enough to see the fibrous nature of the basic material, now welded to the side of my truck with green slime infused with shellac. “Wow, that is a cool paint job with those dark racing stripes,” an escapee from a Salem nuthouse said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I paid extra for that.”  Funny how those old traditional things are still so popular that even the city folk like them.

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