Berries, Babe.

It took me one full year and ten months to realize that my alley is a copious farmland. I’ve always enjoyed watching the squirrels chitter and skitter about the fence and yard surrounding my house. But I never realized that there is a definite explanation for their glee.

A few weekends ago I was shut down by my roommate Mitch.

“Wanna go berry picking today?” I asked him, with the biggest puppy eyes and front-teeth baring grin I could muster.

“Mmmmm…..” he said, stroking his faintly stubbled chin, closing his eyelids over his pale blue eyes contemplatively. “No.”

I was sad. It was early enough in the morning that my hair was still standing up all over the place and I was wearing running shorts and a T-shirt — perfect attire to sadly return to my bed and nap the day away. I wanted to go pick blueberries so I could make blueberry salads with goat cheese, and blueberry tarts and blueberry muffin oatmeal. But how depressing would it be to go to a U-pick farm without a gaggle of family or friends? There are a lot of things I don’t mind doing alone, but showing up at a farm and picking berries just for me to eat? That prospect just sounds too sad.

Instead of going back to nap immediately, I wandered barefoot across the alley — Orchard alley — behind my house. At the end of a thirty foot wall of blackberry bushes that I had also previously ignored because of the spiders that like to weave their homes on top of the juice pregnant fruits, I saw some suspicious looking little white berries. I squatted closer to see the bluer berries I thought I saw lurking underneath. I picked one, to make sure it wasn’t some scare-berry that was faking to be a blue berry. Nope — just a sweet, tart, perfectly burstable blueberry.

It’s unclear to me who owns the berry bushes. It could be the semi-sketchy neighbor directly across the alley, who works for the University of Oregon Maintenance crew and has several “caretakers” come and “visit” him once a week. It could be the often absent Japanese family that own the house next door. Or, they could be unclaimed vestiges of what this neighborhood used to be: a spread out, orchard-populated, dominantly white, connected community.

Without a full plan of what I was going to use the berries for, I found myself several feet deep in the  bush. Blackberry vines intertwined in the patch, so my legs were fashionably bloodied by a few sneaky thorns. My fingers turned purple. I filled a recycled yogurt container.

I want to die a little bit for every box of blueberries I’ve bought in the days since I’ve lived on Orchard Alley. First of all, the ones in my alley are free! Second, they taste better, even if mostly just because they’re warmed by the oppressive sun. Third, everything is always better when you put a little bit of your own labor or work or blood or thought into it before you consume it.

I could go to a U-pick farm and be embarrassed about being alone for a little bit, and then come home and stress out about the mass of berries and inevitable other produce I’d acquired. Or, I could do as the squirrels do. Go pick a handful of berries and shove them straight into my mouth, and then get on with the day. I don’t have the time to deal with a bunch of berries right now! And I don’t have a family, or a bunch of carefree friends and time!

I love my alley. I know it’s okay with having me here, too, because it patiently waits for me to keep discovering what it has to offer. As an outsider to Oregon, perhaps I am naively gleeful. But everybody should appreciate what’s free in your backyard, one handful at a time!

The back of my house on Orchard Alley

Besides blueberries, discoveries of this year include cherries, persimmons, domestic strawberries, three different types of plums, raspberries, at least 4 varieties of apples, mint, lemon-mint, apricots, and some anonymous neighbor’s tomato bush in the middle of the traffic blocker in the middle of Orchard Alley. And that’s just what’s edible!

Sharkey’s Pub Will Make You Feel OK, I guarantee it.

 

            “I’m just gonna warn you,” the bartender says as I plop down on a comfy, padded-backed black stool.

Oh god, I think. She knows. I don’t belong here.

            “There is a couple sitting here. You don’t have to move right now or anything… they’re smoking.”

            I smile and say I’ll see her on the other side of the bar. She stands in the middle of an island. The bar wraps around a wide area, where cash registers, hard alcohol, pint glasses, TV’s lottery tickets, and a Jagermeister shot machine lay on various tables and cabinets. I walk over to face the seat I almost stole from the invisible couple.

            “Alright, what can I get you?” the bartender asks. Her long, blonde hair has a few artificial curls left at the ends, and she wears a black pinstriped dress accented with pink roses.

            “I need a second,” I say. My brain is still shaky from a seven hour shift running fancy food to semi-fancy people.

            “All right, I’m just gonna go flip a burger,” she says. She strides back to the kitchen and I can’t help but notice how tight her dress is. As she goes to flip the burger, I watch her arm jiggle slightly. Her white skin is tinged red, and she cooks without a smile. She returns, and I order a whiskey ginger, unadventurously.

            “Okay. I have seven up and bitters for ginger ale, is that okay?” she asks. I have to repeat the question to fully understand.

            “Yeah!” I say, somehow turning my shock into unabashed enthusiasm. It takes her less than sixty seconds to place the ice cold drink in front of me. It tastes like a whiskey ginger, if I wasn’t thinking about how the ingredients have nothing to do with ginger.

            Outside, Sharkey’s pub advertises that they have the “Best burger in Lane County”. They are hidden in a small strip mall deep in Springfield, OR. On the mall’s directory sign underneath Payday Loans, theirs reads (picture of shark) SPORTS BAR.

            “I was planning on double fisting all night,” says a bald, heavily tattoed man who’s just sat down a few seats next to me. Another mustached man in a grey T-shirt has just ordered a pitcher, and is trying to decide between Pabst, Coors Light, and Bud Light.

            “Well, I brought you a pie,” the bartender says.

            “You know where I live,” the tattooed man says. “You can just drop me off on my porch.”

            The two men decide on Coors Light, the tattooed man on a bloody mary for the other fist. It’s hard to figure out what to pay attention to. Everything is medium-well lit, and three different TVs have sound going. Two people have come up to the bar in the last ten minutes with winning lottery numbers. The bartender has to count out their winnings in ones.

            Sharky’s is hardly tropical-themed except for the few sharks hanging from the ceiling and a few surf boards on the wall. They look like they came free in a promotional shipment from KONA brewing company. There’s a huge map of Hawaii framed on one wall, again emblazoned with the KONA logo. Dispersed between the corporate signs for breweries (Hop Valley to Corona Extra to PBR), are a few vestiges of somebody’s almost realized genuine sense of humor.

            “Free beer! Tomorrow” one sign reads. Another says “Show off your rod. FISH NAKED.” I would never pay attention to these signs if I weren’t trying to get the full experience of this bar. It reflects a philosophical sense that a bar is a place to be when you need one of the following: a place to relax after work, a place to drink your sorrows away, a place to bet on some small sense of hope you have in totally random chance, a place to see a girl that you know, a place to watch videos on your iPhone, a place to build a habit.

            At 11:47pm on a Wednesday August 6th, three people trickle away from the video lottery machines, leaving just two lonely players. One wears a white t-shirt and khaki pants that indicate his profession is something in construction, or something close to the dirt. The only others in the bar are the two with a ¾ full pitcher of Coors, and the bartender.

            “Lets play some John Mayer, like we did the day before,” says tattooed bald man.

            “Shut up,” the bartender says. It’s weird that she’s not drunk, and the guys drinking next to me seem to be able to drink consistently and still engage her in a conversation she seems fine to be involved in.

             A mere two minutes later, faster than I can keep up with, the tattooed man is talking about watching someone shoot himself in the head (a video, not real life). But, it’s someone from the bartender’s hometown, or at least something “close to home”. Suddenly, all sound is silent. It’s intimate time. The jams are about to be chosen from the juke box in the corner, and I have no idea what closing time is. I have never felt more accepted at a bar in my life.

            Jackie (I’ve learned the bartender’s name, now) definitely just snuck a Red Bull from the fridge, and chugged it in the back. I ask her for the WiFi password. It’s their phone number.

            “Can I get you anything else, before I step outside?” she asks.

            “Nope,” I say, with a smile. She’s going to go smoke outside and leave me with the lottery players unattended?

            This bar is too tight. I am so confused.

Sharkey’s pub is open every single fucking day until 2:30 AM. Show them some love – 4221 Main St. Springfield OR 97478.