Saturday 27th June – Hollering and Hooting

They were having a 'Clamboree' over on the west coast of Coos City.  The place is known as 'Empire'.  It was one of the early settlements, and was called 'Empire City', which I think is a very odd name for Americans to use.  But I have quite enough on my plate trying to find out why Glasgow is called Glasgow.

My arrival caused great excitement among the ladies, with much swooning and falling off of piers.  The Coast Guard were kept quite busy.  

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I pretended not to notice.

This point in the bay is called 'Hollering Point', because it's the narrowest bit and people used to shout for the ferry to come and pick them up.

They keep up the tradition with a hollering contest.  I expect it also allows the wise young man to test the hollering capacity of prospective brides.  (What he might expect to hear when she finds out at the reception that the beer has been better treated than she was.)  The ladies were all able to holler north of 100 dBs.  That's in the area where sustained exposure can cause permanent loss of hearing.  So that's why we don't always hear what you say, dear. 

Miss Coos County had been detailed to distract me, but I could see what was going on. [227]

 

Then it was on to the Coos Bay Speedway, for the Stock Car Racing.  This really is local participation in sport: battered cars on a dirt oval.  All indefatigable: they would get bits broken and go off to be fixed and come back again for more.  Some were 'four cylinder', looking like they might have been driven by you and I (admittedly some time ago).  Others were 'Late Models', looking like what Americans call 'muscle cars'.  It was great fun.  The high spot for me was the track marshals, who are probably volunteers.  They were out there on the track shovelling dirt onto oil spills while the cars were still running (under yellow flags, of course).  They even had a golf buggy (presumably souped-up) to push-start stalled cars.

You would have to have a powerful imagination to imagine anything further removed from Formula One: or more fun.  It is a curious paradox about sport that the less money is spent on it, the more fun it is.