Chapter 30

One of my regrets from my future timeline was the fact that I had never actually visited the fine city of Portland, Oregon in any of my excursions around the western part of the country. I had intended to go there one fine summer weekend to drop in on a sweet thing I had met in a Sacramento gentleman’s club that featured topless entertainment. Her name was Connie and she was somewhere in her mid-thirties. Her upper body was toned perfectly because she spent most of her time on the dance pole working out intricate routines in her skimpy costume.

I discovered in talking to her that she was one of the most intelligent people I had ever met and that surprised me because it was difficult to tear my eyes away from her perky breasts that had a pair of swinging tassels dancing a lively tune of promised passion right in front of my eyes.

That pleasant thought was running through my brain housing group as we crested the gentle hill heading into the budding city partially hidden by the lingering fog from the murky waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Of course, one couldn’t actually see the water of the Ocean from the Portland side of the final heights before hitting the coastline below. Rocks were the order of the day and sandy beaches were at a minimum. There was a rainy season, but it was not as defining as the Pacific Coast city of Seattle further north across the border in Washington State.

We had discussed a number of interesting subjects sitting in the dim light of the live girl’s private club down in California’s generally boring capitol city of Sacramento and I always intended to follow through on my promise to visit at a later date. Then I was interrupted by military service and my subsequent brush with time and space as I was catapulted back in time to the American Civil War.

There were two roads that led up into the Portland area.

The maps were really a joke because they were traced from some surveyor’s notes for the railroad construction. Actually with the railroad bed and the blasted tunnels, following along the side of the track was an option that was more dangerous but a lot shorter. We elected to follow that route because there were rumors that the more popular Pacific route was temporarily blocked by a landslide. The random landslides were common in that area and they were worse the closer you got to the coastline.

We ran into a confusing jumble of cattle, horses and unlikely Chinese cowboys driving a herd up into the settled area to exchange for wagonloads of stacked lumber for San Francisco and the booming California Coast. The tired-looking laborers were fresh off the railroad construction project and they impressed me with their hard-working discipline.

When we turned the corner of a welcome downward incline, we saw the city in the distance and the first building on the side of the road was a den of iniquity filled with whores and gamblers moving north away from the deserted gold fields and end of easy money.

It was beginning to look like all of the unsavory elements from California and Nevada were moving north to fill the open spaces of the Great Northwest just like the swarm of adventurers had made the jump by boat from California to the Alaska wilderness.

I had always wanted to see Alaska and laugh my ass off over how dumb the Russians were to sell it to us totally unaware of the vast natural resources of gold, oil and lumber and fish that acted as a northwest anchor to our Manifest Destiny. Of course, the French were guilty of a lot worse with the Louisiana Purchase but they had the excuse of having their backs to the wall in Europe and needing to assume a more defensive posture. In a way, I guess they deserted their French speaking compatriots in Canada and it was not as bad a debacle as the Maginot line or the abandonment at Dien Bien Phu.

We bypassed the red-light district and soon were immersed in the ebb and flow of humanity that filled the streets of Portland. I wondered where all these people had come from and what they were looking for at the absolute end of the Continental Trail.

I saw that our excess of females was drawing attention and we decided to set up camp at a nearby river that seemed relatively empty in comparison to the crowded city streets. It looked like the place was booming with just about every service mankind could devise at that time and place. There was a noticeable shortage of children, probably due to the terrible epidemics of winter fever that had plagued the recent arrivals from the east. It was my fond suspicion that the body counts due to sickness far outpaced the losses to Indian uprisings or criminal activities.

One thing that I had noticed ever since we had passed the Mormon lands was the lack of medical facilities or genuine doctors to tend sickness before it could spread. I thought of all those doctors back east complaining of lack of patients to make their practice lucrative and I came to the conclusion that the west coast had a lot of catching up to do with regard to medical care, dental care, and those matters of education and training that was taken for granted east of the Mississippi.