Sunday 28 June 2009

Friday 26th June 2009 – An Unexpected Ceremony

I was looking at the Google map of Glasgow, Oregon, trying to relate it to the old 1890 plat.  Although the streets are now all curved, meandering, and closed off in places, it is possible to see the original shape.  As I focused in on it, I suddenly realised that the street names were based on the original.  The plat showed 'A' Street, 'B' Street, etc.  The present map has them all named after birds, but they're 'Blue Bird', 'Curlew', 'Dove', etc.  The original plat had a curious panhandle on it, which I guessed ran down to the shore line (I had even speculated that the original speculators would have wanted to be sure that the inhabitants only had access to the bay that way).  So now I could go and look.  And there, on a small road behind the Glasgow Store, I found the way down to the old ferry.  At low tide, I could see the stumps of the ferry jetty sticking out of the mud.

[6010]

Later that night, I was privileged to witness an unusual ceremony.  A group of reasonably well-dressed you men came into the bar, rolling a sack trolley with a nice new dustbin on it.  The bin was lined with clean white plastic sheeting.  They vanished into the cooler (that's American for cellar), and emerged with a keg of beer.  The keg was carefully placed in the white sheeting, and surrounded by ice cubes.  They then carefully wrapped it up in the white sheeting and left in formation.

I asked what all that was about.  "Oh, he's getting married", they said.  Even the beer is virginal here.

No comments: