I took a vacation once and my wife and I dropped off the babies at Grandma’s and we took off in the car. We had no destination in mind, just a week off and a drive. We headed north on I-5 and drove. We stopped in Medford, Oregon and had some dinner and looked at the map and plotted our next direction.

We drove to Bend the next day, not sure why, and I got a ticket for going sixty in a fifty-five era speed trap. We got to Bend and it was hot so we decided the coast would be the ticket and we gassed up and drove on.

We hit the coast at Coos Bay and it was gorgeous. The sun was bright, no clouds except a few of those fluffy cotton balls that just make the sunshine show up better. We stayed in Coos Bay at a nice motel and ate breakfast the next day. Then we went out to see the lighthouse at Cape Arago and then cruised north on the Coast Highway. We stopped in Florence and spent a couple of hours wandering, then drove on.

In Newport, we decided we wanted to drive inland and see the capital of Oregon. We got to Salem, drove around, and decided we should roll on up to Portland, so we did. In Portland, I had tired of driving on the freeway so we headed back to the coast and Astoria. That is one beautiful drive and we had bright sunshine for all three days we’d been in Oregon.

We spent a night in Astoria and I fell in love with that town. It’s like a small, exclusive San Francisco. We wandered around the next day and stayed for another night. It was chilly, but it never rained. We headed south back down the coast and stopped again in Newport and found a motel on the beach and stayed there. I think we stayed for two days. we went to the beach, we walked around town, I made a check out to the powers that be in Bend for my ticket and mailed it, and we had fun. And every day was bright blue skies and nice seventy degrees.

We got back to Sacramento and soon decided we would move to Oregon, and Newport was our wish. I did some scouting for job opportunities in Newport and the pickins were slim. But, I did get a line on a job in Coos Bay in a grocery store. I had done some night crew jobs and it was union with pretty decent pay. So I took a trip up to get a job. I was gone for a few days and spent all my time in Coos Bay. I loved it. It was bright blue and sunny, I got a job and I met some friends and told them I was going home to sell my house and be back shortly to resume my family life in Coos Bay, where it is, seemingly, seventy degrees and sunny every day. A nice ocean breeze and everything is dark green and lush. I heard tales of incessant rain, but it was hard to imagine.

We sold our house, and it was no good time to sell, but we got it done. We were set to move and set ourselves up with the new job, in the new town, in the new state, in a new life. We rented the biggest U-Haul truck you can get and loaded it up to the brim, packed the rest in our car, put it on a trailer behind the truck and rode off into the hundred-degree Sacramento desert, searching for Nirvana.

When we drove into Coos Bay it had been raining on us since Roseberg. Not that piddly-ass crap they call rain in Sacramento, real rain, overwhelming the windshield wipers and washing down the mountains. Well, I thought, in everyone’s life a little rain must fall. We were almost to Nirvana.

We got a motel room and bargained a deal for a week stay so we could have time to get settled, get started at the new job, and find a place to call home. We had breakfast at the diner next to the motel the first day and I picked up a local newspaper to peruse the housing options. The headline on the front page said, “Weyerhaeuser on Strike!” I had no idea what that meant for me, but I found out.

It seems Weyerhaeuser employed most of the town and much of the state. We started hearing grumbling everywhere about business and money, and when I went to check in at the store who hired me they told me they were going to be laying a bunch of people off, but would be back in business when the strike was over. No one seemed to know how long that might be.

I was still a young guy and I never had a problem getting a job so I didn’t worry, we went looking for a house and found a beautiful big duplex right on the back bay. It was surrounded by deep green. There were trees, big ferny things, green as a picture lawn, and a virtual jungle behind the house. It was beautiful and I was beginning to believe it was because it rained there. We were on the fourth day of the storm and it hadn’t quit raining the whole first week we were there. But I was optimistic, I would find a job, and it would clear up and bring back all that bright blue I remembered.

My wife got a job as a flag person on a highway work crew. I couldn’t find a job; the car dealerships were closing, the grocery stores were dying, and even 7-11 was laying people off. And it rained. But, they said Weyehaeuser would go back to work soon and the rain would stop. Weyerhaeuser didn’t go back to work but the rain did stop. It got foggy.

It stayed foggy as the summer turned to autumn. It was the kind of foggy that made all the trees in my yard drip water. It wasn’t raining from the sky anymore. It was from the trees. And it was a gusher. And it was bone-chillingly cold. Not a sunshine in sight, unless I wanted to get in the car, strap down the babies, and drive inland where it was bright blue and seventy degrees.

Eight months later, we were wringing water from our skin and anytime I did drive inland to go shopping in the big stores in Eugene, I couldn’t force open my eyes to the bright sunshine, and really couldn’t even identify the air without the rain in it. I was wet, broke, and disgusted. If I could have found a razor blade with no rust on it, I might have used it.

We packed our stuff back up in a U-Haul, dried it all off as best we could, and headed back to Sacramento to try and find our way again. They say the grass is never really any greener on the other side, but they, apparently, never moved to the Oregon Coast. It’s drippingly green there.