So They got this social thing with a high profile in Coos Bay called the wild women of the above title and while the women now involved are undoubtably women and in the eyes of a relatively conservative local culture fairly wild and I give them props for getting out there like that, the real chicks that did this thing are long gone.
Let me give you a list of names. Ellen Eaton, Jeannie Taylor, Cammie Main, Bonnie Joyce, Jannie Vaughan, Blue Dilley, Sky Olsen and Sue Smith-Bailey
Ellen Eaton, known to all as Olive Oil, for her uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character was a pal of Kesey's from the California Days something of a wunderkind and a shoestring budget totally involved and resourceful mom of Ondine who went to Charleston Elementary back in the day. Ellen lived in one of the tiny dilapidated houses that used to line Troller Road where fishermen lived in their noble poverty for many years until rising sensibilities tore them down. I think urban renewal had something to do with it. Ellen was a wild child herself.
Jeannie, known affectionately as Jeannie Big Butt for obvious reasons was a pal of Ellen's from Eugene who married Buzz Taylor a local highline shrimper and tended bar at the Portside where her signature drink was the Dirty Mother made and sold by the pitcher and if you don't know what a Dirty Mother is made from I can't help you.
Cammie Main was a young and talented musician who originally showed up in Charleston as a student at the OIMB, met Ellen and Jeannie and went spectacularly off the rails because, among other dynamics, she was so heartbreakingly good looking. She eventually settled down (by Charleston's standards which aren't very high) married Stan Main, another successful salmon/tuna fisherman and lived for many years in the duplexes behind Kelly Boat works, which has since closed due to hazardous materials in the local tideflats I don't think Cammie had anything to do with that after all proximity is not proof. You still see Cammie with her tuna BBQ setup now and then at the tuna festival although she is quite modest about her fiery beginning ties to the place.
Bonnie Joyce was the better half of the Barry and Bonnie show before Barry quit drinking. Barry was known as the Sheriff of Red's County because he always noticed when somebody was out of line and usually did something noticeable about it. Barry was the first of us to get sober and he pioneered the alcohol treatment scene in Coos County. Bonnie was a teacher at SWOCC (look it up) and a bit of a poet and the most cheerful person in the room until she became the saddest or until Barry did something as usual and everybody was always glad when they took it outside. Sober now for almost 40 years she always will be a wonderful and wise and long-suffering woman.
Jannie Vaughan was another teacher from SWOCC who had a poorly concealed wild streak and another poet published and awarded in fact and a musician of sorts and a fine strong singer and if she had tuned that guitar she would have been great. Jannie had a willful nature. Jannie and her man Spike lived way up Coos River in the old days when they drove to town in an old black Cadillac and she and Cammie and Olive Oil were dangerous to be around but you couldn't help the vortex there was just so much love of experience and such an inexorable appetite for transcendent joy that you couldn't, I couldn't, stay away. And you didn't want to it was like being around the only campfire in a vast cold desert.
It wasn't that the men weren't welcome, it's just they A) didn't get it and B) they couldn't keep up.
You have to sing Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer to get what I mean and there was no Santa Claus but the meme of celebration and exclusion and the way the men considered themselves in those days of gender inequality there was a legacy of unexamined sexism everywhere in every human endeavor and the women felt newly empowered and knew they were better bonded and that they occupied the moral high ground even in this. And the men always thought it was about them and it wasn't and they couldn't see that and us girls felt sorry for them a little and not even that when inevitably some guy would start wagging his weenie and the women would order another round shouting out with glee. So the guys would wander away lost and excluded because they couldn't hang with it they had to make it about themselves. And, make no mistake, these chicks were powerful beings. Those who are left like Sue and Blue and even Cammie blush a little with embarrassment and go into denial but back in the day they were the shizznit for sure even the ones in the back.
No comments:
Post a Comment