I realize my timeline of stories is being told in a bit of a Pulp Fiction mold, but Im trying to provide context for future stories for those that don’t know my dad or myself very well, while telling the stories I remember best.
Today, we go back to roughly 1980. I am heading into my Sophomore year at the Mighty Columbia high school in Troutdale. Dad and I have moved out of the house from Leslie and Wade, into a duplex adjacent to the high school property. This is where our relationship really began transitioning to friends/buddies. It was steelhead fishing every weekend, hunting in season and just spending a lot of time together as buds.
At some point after that though, a new woman came into his life. Susan was a woman he worked with at GTE. He had recently transferred from Gresham to a central office in Beaverton called the SSOC center and they worked together. She wasn’t much older than me, maybe 5-8 years? He drove from troutdale to Beaverton every day for work so I didn’t have to change schools. But now we all know the other reasons why he didn’t mind the drive. hahaha
Susan began hanging out with dad in troutdale occasionally, which became more often as time went on. Here we go again, I thought. While I don’t recall a lot of details about them during that time, it was determined that after graduation, we would be moving to Beaverton and getting a place with Susan. This is about to open a chapter of life that was about as bizarre as it gets.
Not sure if it was before or after we moved, but they got married and soon after, Susan was pregnant. I was 18, Dad was 40. I am about to have a baby sibling at 19 years old. What the actual Fuck??!How do I even process this. I am losing my best friend again and he is about to be a new father. Im sure none of this was in his plan, but, here we are. In time I might reveal some of the conversations about this Dad and I had, but for now, to protect feelings, I wont. He did everything he could to keep our relationship intact, while “managing” the Susan and new baby situation. If I seem a bit dodgy on this, I am. It was very tricky for all involved with the relationship dynamics of Dad/Susan and Dad/me and the coming baby. Im getting anxious just trying to put this all together for this story. But hey, the duplex we moved to in Beaverton by Sunset high school got cable shortly after we moved in, so that was new/cool. I saw MTV and HBO for the first time.(timestamp.) Looking back, Dad was really endeavoring to spend quality “man” time with me, so away from home we could really talk about the home situation.
I had established myself as a good fisherman amongst a group of dad’s friends, so when dad had marital obligations, I would get asked to join one or more of his friends to fish with. One guy, Mel Ando, lived in Beaverton, but we knew him from fishing the same spots on the upper Sandy river. Mel would often come and pick me up and we would make the drive to the sandy and fish. There were others as well, probably a group of 4-5 that I would frequently catch rides with to hit the river. I was really maturing in some ways, spending all of my time with men much older than me. I had buddies my age, but they didn’t fish, or weren’t any good, so….
My Weird-shit-o-meter is pegged right now, so, until next week…