First To Pull Over When The Atmosphere Is Less Than Perfect

 Florence, Oregon 

Not to be a snob, but if you are brown, black, Asian, Latinx, gay, liberal, disabled, or are a woman with little or no hair who could be read as being queer, well, small town America is about as welcoming as a Currier and Ives tableau.  Yes, they too were abject racists. Guess I should toss my sanitized coffee table book of their works.  Florence, Oregon, ostensibly ensconced in a blue county is, well, utterly scary.  We saw Nazi bikers, American flag art (always a dead giveaway), a bar with a sign that said any government inspector would require a warrant prior to entering the premises to inspect.  Meanwhile, here we are bopping along, my brown leftist queer daughter who was instructed by me not to wear her "defund the police" mask and who couldn't quit ranting about Christian Fascists; my other queer daughter with gorgeously died red hair and out and proud; my white wife whose hair has grown back just enough so that she looks super butch; and me a brown dude of diminutive and diminishing height. Of course all of us masked up, like the less than 1 percent of others we saw similarly attired today.  

Lots of boutique art stores here, the retail flavor situated somewhere between that of Ocean Shores and Sun Valley.  Seriously. Absolutely awful glass art gallery that was not just overpriced, but ridiculously so, next to a taffy/t-shirt joint.  So as not to be too hard on the town, there are some lovely restaurants, a few nice shops, and the views are lovely.  But mask-wearing almost non-existent.  I dropped several hundred bucks

at a store where I bought Jenny a handmade and painted porcelain pumpkin from Poland and a resin made kitschy kitchen clock that looks like a Kitchenaid mixer for the new kitchen.  So, not all terrible, but I never felt comfortable.

Jenny was talking in a fugue state tonight, again. Because we are in a yurt, the kids heard her and found it hilarious.  The conversations were classic. She asked about our boat (we don't have one), suggested we discuss the solar pool cover with the snotty rich neighbors (no pool, nor rich neighbors), and was generally hilarious.

I made reservations some weeks ago, and the only place available was a yurt at Thousand Trails.  My mother. I can remember,  trashed Thousand Trails when i was a kid when my sister went to one with friends.  She was a funny working class communist snob, dear mother was.   Don't misunderstand,  I am little better.  I'd rename it Thousand Trailers given the chance. Still,  we have a place to stay and are having a glorious time.  We played cards tonight as a family,  a rare evening together, and had a lovely time sitting around the table in the yurt. Tomorrow, we hike. 

WiFi is spotty, cell coverage worse.