A memory

For some reason or another, I once jotted down an incident from my younger years, when we had car trouble upon returning from the Oregon Coast, our annual summer haunt. I was probably about nine at the time. Anyway ---

Returning home from Fort Stevens State Park one year, our truck broke down as we climbed a bumpy section of Highway 26. We barely made it to the side of the road and out of traffic, but we were saved by a tow truck driver who seemed to appear as if summoned (though he hadn't been). He told us it was technically illegal to tow a truck that was, in turn, pulling a trailer but he did it anyway. The truck was tugged up into a gravel turnout, near the driveway to the tow-man's meager machine shop. At some point, he piled the rest of us into a little red Toyota or Nissan, which I remember had speakers covering the floor in the back. (Our chins rested on our knees). He explained the car had been abandoned, so he had nabbed it up and tricked it out. While he took a peek under the truck's hood, we all crossed the highway and commandeered a booth in the restaurant attached to a drab motel - the "Elderberry Inn." We shared a few bowls of clam chowder and I worried that we were almost out of money. It became dark and everyone, except for Dad, sacked out in the trailer, which was now unattached from the lame pickup. Sometime in the night, Dad, the tow-man, and a family friend (who had driven down to meet us) got the truck running again. So we piled back in and set off towards Pendleton in the early morning hours. To stay awake, Mom taught us a Japanese folk song she recalled from her childhood:

Sho sho sho-jo-ji, sho-jo-ji is a racoon.

He is always hungry so he dreams of koi, koi, koi.
Always hungry, very hungry,
That’s why he dreams of koi.

Later, us kids napped in the backseat as my parents watched the sun come up. Cruising down Reith Ridge into Pendleton in the early morning, we stopped and took pictures of a wagon train slowly trudging up the hill – a reenactment of the Oregon Trail. Then onto home, where I finally crawled into bed. But my brother stayed up and went to church.