Before gentifrication (the MAX), this was a really rough neighborhood. A lot of crackheads, gangs, pushers and prostitutes. (Actually, it was my kind of neighborhood.)

Anyway, I was heading home one fine evening on said #5 when 2 young men got into a disagreement. First it started with a few words and angry gestures. Then came the ‘sentence modifiers’ along with angrier gestures. Then wouldn’t you know, one guy pulls a knife and puts right into the other guy’s thigh! The craziest part was that the recipient of the blade didn’t even yell or scream. All he said was:

You sonofabitch.

Now that guy was one tough mofo!

Story contributed by Shyanna

Kick Ass Oregon History podcast volume 4 #7 just dropped: Humanity on Wheels.

In which we learn never to give alcohol to a bus.

Live at the Jack London Bar.

OrHistory’s Doug Kenck-Crispin emceed and regaled the packed house with gruesome tales of Mad MAX, Portland’s death trolley. TriMet Diaries’ very own Doctor Jeff, Bill Reagan, Heather G. and others courageously, and hilariously, shared their stories. Portland Afoot‘s Michael Anderson brought the house down with a story of his own, and many other brave bus riders, activists, and even a TriMet bus driver took advantage of the open-mic. Do listen to the podcast, and do check out the photos from this unforgettable night at the Jack London Bar.

The brains behind the Kick Ass Oregon History project are the crack hustlers of Oregon History Doug Kenck-Crispin and Andy Lindberg. Doug is a graduate student studying Public History and Pacific Northwest History at PSU, and Andy, though a Portland native, is currently working as an actor in New York City. Doug does most of the research and writing for the podcasts with input from Andy, who voices the broadcasts with a thespian’s flair.

Visit ORHistory.com and stay tuned to @Oregon_History on Twitter for further details on specific episodes and the series. Catch up on missed episodes at the Kick Ass Oregon History archives.

“Excuse me,” he said, looking slightly past me. “I need five bucks to get into the shelter.”

He held the booklet close to my face and pointed to a yellow highlighted section. The small print challenged my vision, but the man kept it steady. Yep, there was City Ministries at an inner Southeast address — five dollars a night. I had time to grasp that the publication was one of those free pocket-size handouts listing all the social services organizations and emergency numbers in town.

Handing over a dollar, I said that panhandlers had been hitting me up for money to get into a hostel at $35 a night.

“Fancy,” he said.

“How do you know you can even get into this mission?”

“There’s lots of room. I was there last night.”

What am I to think? That a $5 a night flop is going to have guaranteed space? That this fellow is really going to spend my morning dollar on an evening shelter? That this dollar would be better spent on the lottery?

Doesn’t matter. Anyone who begs money on the street can have my dollar, if I’ve got one. Sometimes I’ve said “Spend it wisely,” to the receiver. No longer. Now I mutter “Spend it any which way you want.” It’s a token of the existence of human kindness, which is not always practical.

The End

© Nick O’Connor: If you had been commuting an hour each way every weekday between Northeast Portland and the Sunset Transit Center at the border of Portland and Beaverton for two years and occasionally woke up, dislodged an earbud, or spoke to a fellow rider, you would have a few stories to tell, too. Nick blogs at Sardines Are Only Packed Once.

It happened to me on the MAX riding eastbound during the evening commute. Coming through downtown, the car was getting full. I was reading a book called “The Anatomy of Peace.” The book tells how to get along with others, which I’d like to do better.

A woman sat down next to me. I glanced over and we exchanged weak hellos. This should have been my first clue that I was in the crosshairs but I was off guard. It’s because people have been more friendly to me lately. Maybe it’s the charisma of my new cap — it’s a nice wool poorboy, which gives the illusion that the wearer has a personality. In any case, I was a little too relaxed, so when she spoke to me I joined the conversation, instead of treating her like an obnoxious drunk.

She asked, “Are you getting off work?” Showing definite interest.

One can ride public transit for weeks without exchanging a word with another person. That is, if you can avoid the fare checkers and signature gatherers and phone blabbers. Silence is the rule. As I write this, I’ve been on the Blue Line for six or eight stops and can see 20 riders in plain sight. I swear that not one audible syllable has eked out of the lot of them.

Wait, I wrote too soon — a woman stifled a sneeze! And there — a passenger excused himself to get past another one!

Thank god that commotion was brief and my heartbeat can get back to baseline.

It is this tendency towards quiet and solitude in the crowd that raises my suspicions when someone does speak up. I knew this woman’s innocent question was not so innocent, but the book was working on me, and, as I say, I was off guard. I closed the book.

“Yeah,” I said. “Did you just get off work, too?”

“Six forty-five this morning.” That fit the face — the blue eyeshadow beginning to smear, eyes working hard to stay focused.

I asked why she’d been up all day. The story fell out like she’d told it a hundred times. Running from domestic violence in Phoenix. Staying with her three kids at a Convention Center hotel.

“How long have you been here?”

“One month and one day and I sure don’t want to go back.”

She was working as a caregiver and her paycheck was due in a couple days. The day after getting paid she was scheduled to move into a place at 70-something and Southeast Foster. For tonight, though, she had a $39 hotel bill and only $9 to pay it.

I received a text from my wife, who was at a restaurant with our young daughter. My wife had mistakenly eaten something she shouldn’t have and was feeling a severe pain. I texted back some sympathy.

For the woman next to me, food was an issue, too. She didn’t have any.

“Where are your kids?”

“They’re at the hotel. The oldest is 15,” she said with a gesture I took to mean child care was the least of her concerns.

Though she was missing some teeth, a good sign of drug abuse, and though I know I’m gullible, having emptied my wallet for strangers in the past, I believed her story. She seemed to be what she said she was — a poor, desperate mom with three kids who was trying to start over in a new town — and not a junkie lying her ass off to get money for dope.
“My name is Nick.”

“Miranda.”

The phone buzzed. My wife was saying the pain was worse. I texted back, “Is there something I can do?” She thought she could make it home to lie down. She wanted me to pick up some groceries.

Miranda’s stop at the Convention Center was coming up fast. I gave her the $11 lollygagging in my wallet. As I handed over the bills I realized that eleven bucks wasn’t going to do the job, was it? I got off the train with her to make a phone call to my church.

Miranda readied a notebook and pen while I tried to reach Pastor John. He was out but would return soon. I gave her John’s contact information, which Miranda diligently wrote down, like a rookie reporter at a White House press conference. Five minutes later, I boarded the next Max.

When I got home, my wife was lying down, watching a video. She said she was feeling better, and in a couple hours was up and about.

The next day I learned from Pastor John that Miranda had called him. He had delivered a box of food to her at the hotel, and paid for her room for one night.

I’m pretty sure now that Miranda was not scamming. And I’m glad I was generous. And sorry I led you on. And sorry if the story is “So what?”

© Nick O’Connor: If you had been commuting an hour each way every weekday between Northeast Portland and the Sunset Transit Center at the border of Portland and Beaverton for two years and occasionally woke up, dislodged an earbud, or spoke to a fellow rider, you would have a few stories to tell, too. Nick blogs at Sardines Are Only Packed Once.

Between me and the Gateway Transit Center each morning are obstacles large and small – the last few deep warm hypnagogic breaths of slumber, the sum of human motivation and desire coupled with the American Work Ethic, the reluctance to leave her side, a steadfast tree in my front yard. Obstacles, yes, to be overcome on the first leg of the long journey to work each day via foot and train and bus.

The tree is ripe with the promising buds of spring, and its top branches are losing their grip on a fat full yellow moon slung low in the early morning sky. The moon must be a pretty desirable prize, as the tree seems to really be trying, clawing at the last buttery edge, fighting a losing battle but resolute in its desire to not let go. I descend the two slick steps from the front stoop and stride across the unmown grass of my front lawn, on a path to intersect the moon should it fall low enough to touch the horizon. Like the tree, I’m destined to fail. Like the tree, I’m resolute, and I shall make the attempt no matter how predestined the outcome. This is what I do.

There is a squirrel who greets me most mornings. I like to entertain the notion that it’s the same squirrel and that he has somehow been given the honor of guiding me to Oregon street from 108th. I envision a tiny doorman’s costume, maybe a bejeweled walking stick, toothpick-small, and a monocle. I bow to the squirrel, almost imperceptibly, but squirrels are social creatures and I know that I can see him bow back. Together we share admiration for the tree’s attempt to corral the impossible moon. I bid him adieu. There are places for me to be, and I’ve shared as much of my morning with the squirrel guide as I can. I wish good health to him and to his family and I continue toward the transit center and my awaiting train.

These mornings, I can see my exhalations hanging for a moment in front of me before they dissipate. This is water, and carbon dioxide, and a thousand other things, and it’s a small miracle that an immutable law of physics can somehow render visible something so fleeting. How is breath not a miracle on any morning, though? How can we be so lucky as to possess within us a machine that is wonderful enough to pull life from the air around us? Some morning I’ll leave the house early, and I’ll stand with the squirrel, and together we’ll ponder this, and discuss the nature of true love in full knowledge that there can’t be an answer to such questions. Not today, though. I have a train to catch.

Oregon street, 107th, Pacific avenue. The asphalt ribbon of 102nd awaits, stretching unbroken from the southeast almost to the Columbia river. It’s the recent recipient of beautification and fresh new pedestrian features. Street lamps, old style, with humming chemical bulbs that poorly mimic the color of this morning’s moon, stronger, harsher, without comfort. No cars at this time of day, as the only people up are the early commuters and the potato chip delivery guy I always see. We’re on the same schedule, he and I, and he pulls out of the driveway and gives me a nod. I wonder if he has a squirrel in his neighborhood who sees him to his car before he climbs into his car, and I wonder if he cares. For one minute, the potato-chip-guy’s imagined squirrel is my muse. What a sweet and complicated world it is.

Once I leave the tree-lined confines of my Lorene Park neighborhood, I’m swallowed in an endless sea of concrete. 102nd gives way to the Gateway Shopping Center parking lot, and for a while I feel as I once felt in a Greyhound bus ponderously cutting across west Texas, hours piled on hours piled on hours, no relief, no change. I feel as you must have felt, flying toward me, toward the unknown, miles falling away between old life and new. The parking lot never ends until it ends, and I’m nearly at the train station, and I’m a little sad that the walk is almost over, and I’m a little glad.

Here’s where you live. You live in that moment between inhale and exhale, in that heartbeat, in that acknowledgement of breath and bone. You live in the tree that grasps at the full moon. You live in a river of concrete. You live wherever your gaze takes you, to the last sideways crescent sliver of moon as it dips below the horizon line, to the rain-slicked train platform that serves to take me farther from you as you sleep, to the indigo sky that warms as the sun slowly climbs up behind you. You live in every step I take. You live forever in every fold of my clothing, under every fingernail, in each laugh line that I’ve earned. I take you with me on my morning walk to the train station, and I bring you back, and then I find you alive and real in my warm home, and I know what real happiness is. And in the morning, as the squirrel steps out to find me and guide me to Oregon street, you live in me again.