Old Oregon
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Duck Tales: Rockin’ the Bard
MICHAEL KEVIN DALY
Ninkasi co-owners Nikos Ridge and Jamie Floyd at the Skinner Butte basalt columns illuminated with Ninkasi logo spotlight
Talk about a beer buzz.
In barely four years of existence, Ninkasi Brewing Company of Eugene has grown into Oregon’s seventh-largest brewery—no paltry feat in a state where icons such as Widmer, Deschutes, and Full Sail cap a roster of some eighty beer producers.
What’s more, the upstart brewery’s Total Domination IPA is the top-selling twenty-two-ounce bottled beer in the state.
And in the Eugene-Springfield area, Ninkasi products are available on draft or in bottles at almost 90 percent of the businesses where beer is sold, according to the brewery.
“One of my goals was what I call the ‘Chico-fication’ of Eugene,” says co-owner Jamie Floyd ’94, who studied sociology at the UO. “You go to Chico [California], and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company is part of the identity of the people. If Bend and Hood River and Newport are all going to have these big regional breweries, too, it’s cool that we can provide that for Eugene.”
But the hoppy hubbub that radiates from the Whiteaker-neighborhood brewhouse also has spawned burgeoning beer sales across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. Along with Total Domination, Ninkasi’s Believer Double Red Ale and Tricerahops Double IPA are among the top fifteen in the nation in the category of new bottled craft beers, according to supermarket scan data.
Floyd and partner Nikos Ridge have bucked the odds in an industry saturated in competition for tap handles and shelf space, but on their side is a buzz-marketing machine that pumps out swells of growth.
“What we do best is get in on the grassroots level, build brand awareness on the underground, and use that as leverage to bring product to people’s attention,” Floyd says. This brand-building approach involves extensive use of social media sites such as Twitter and guerrilla tactics that include using a Batman-style light projector to cast a towering Ninkasi logo onto prominent buildings.
All the touting, twitting, and bat-lighting have helped propel Ninkasi’s production growth from 2,200 barrels in 2007 to 7,800 barrels in 2008, then to 17,000 barrels in 2009. Floyd expects output to reach 30,000 barrels in 2010, and the company is building a facility with 90,000-barrel capacity.
Brian Butenschoen, executive director of the Oregon Brewers Guild, describes Ninkasi’s ascent as “phenomenal . . . A number of other breweries have opened up in the last ten years, but none that has grown like Ninkasi.”
As a result, “we’re seeing sales and marketing teams at other breweries trying to copy us,” Floyd claims. “That’s the biggest compliment we can get at our young age, that the big dogs are afraid of us.”
In a small office next to a new tasting room, James Book and Winter Gibbs ’09 spend their days brewing buzz via Facebook, Twitter, and rock ’n’ roll.
Book, Ninkasi’s marketing director, tasted the rock-star life as bass player in his former band, The Flys, which scored a top-five hit in 1998 with “Got You (Where I Want You).” Today he owns topsecret, a record label and production company. At a studio in the brewery’s new offices, Book also will record, produce, and promote Ninkasi-sponsored bands.
Working with Book is Gibbs, Ninkasi’s viral marketing specialist, who has a degree from the UO School of Journalism and Communication with an emphasis in creative advertising.
“Not that many breweries have a computer geek on staff specifically for social networking,” says Floyd, who used MySpace in the brewery’s early days to connect with pubs, music venues, bands, and fans.
Today Gibbs continuously nurtures Ninkasi’s expanding online neighborhood, whether at his office computer or on the road with his iPhone. “I use Facebook as my base platform, and I have it set up to post back to Twitter,” Gibbs says. He also receives alerts when anyone writes about Ninkasi on those sites or elsewhere on the web. “Some people don’t even know we have a Twitter feed, and I can go directly to them, answer their question, and get them in the loop.”
Almost 6,000 people are fans of Ninkasi on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ninkasibrewing) and some 1,600 follow it on Twitter (twitter.com/ninkasi). They receive updates regarding new beers, tasting events, concerts by sponsored bands, and more.
Sometimes Ninkasi mobilizes its followers to wield influence in the real world—say, to ask en masse for its beers at a certain bar—and in cyberspace. Last November, fans helped convince blogger Jay Brooks (brookstonbeerbulletin.com) that Ninkasi belonged on his list of the past decade’s top ten new breweries.
Social networking yields tangible marketing advantages for the brewery, too, such as the detailed fan demographics in Facebook’s weekly “Insights” report. “When we enter a new marketplace, we can track the relative consciousness and vibe,” and use that to decide when to invest in print advertising or sponsorships, Floyd explains.
“We started our business right around the rise of social networking . . . and there’s an argument that there’s no way we could have broken the 15,000-barrel barrier in under four years without this sort of tool.”
Kim Sheehan, professor of advertising in the School of Journalism and Communication, coauthored a 2008 book, Building Buzz to Beat the Big Boys, with Steve O’Leary ’69. In it, they advise small business owners how to harness the power of word of mouth.
Consumers today want more information, control, and choice, and businesses can serve these needs with an online community that fosters dialogue, the authors note.
Engaging customers in this way has boosted Ninkasi, Floyd says. “We benefit from the honesty of it, and people feel like they have played a part in our growth. The beer is good, but we’re involved in their lives.”
Sheehan and O’Leary also urge business owners to take certain marketing risks to ferment positive word of mouth for their brands.
Floyd and his agents of buzz face some risk as they slink around darkened cityscapes, fire up a portable generator, and use their spotlight to turn night to Ninkasi. “We’re not invading anybody’s space, but there’s a certain amount of ‘could we get thrown in jail for this?’ We’re gonna darn well find out,” Floyd says, laughing. “We’re going to stay as creative as possible in our marketing techniques.”
Inspired and persistent marketing tactics, write Sheehan and O’Leary, are like “bonfires that you build to light the way to your store.”
Soon, a giant “N” might slice through the night and land on the side of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid, lighting the way to Ninkasi for a new Northern California customer base. And anyone passing by with an iPhone will be able to tap the buzz with the latest in mobile Ninkasi-fication—the official Ninkasi app, new for 2010.
—Joel Gorthy ’98
Student Alumni Association
Launched, Gaining Momentum
Students getting involved, learning, giving back
Carissa Surace knows how a bad paint job can bring out her true colors. Upon seeing the Skinner Butte “O” smothered in orange on the eve of the 2009 Civil War football clash—likely the handiwork of some merry pranksters from Corvallis—the UO junior led a small but determined flock of Ducks up the hill with a few gallons of yellow paint to set things right.
This wasn’t just a case of Beaver pest control though. (The UO football squad took care of that on the gridiron, thank you very much.) It was the UO Student Alumni Association (SAA) at work, keeping Eugene yellow and green. If you ever ventured into the campus Duck Store during the week of a home football game last season, you might have seen people swarming a makeshift stand to pick up “Beat T-shirts” (as in “Beat USC,” and so on). Those in the crowd, too, were members of the SAA, at once snagging a perk of membership and showing their school colors.
Promoting school spirit, however, is only part of SAA’s mission. Regan Middleton-Moreland ’05, assistant director for student and alumni relations, says SAA was formed to unite current students with the UO Alumni Association and also to teach them the importance of private donations to the funding of a university education. Although less than a year old, the organization already boasts 900 dues-paying members and has made a mark on campus by taking on key roles in some established programs.
For example, SAA recruits speakers for a Career Center–sponsored panel series called “So You Want My Job.” These “Duck panels” bring UO alums back to campus to talk about their careers—and the often-unforeseen directions their career paths have taken. “We ask panelists to truly share their stories and give students practical indications of what they’ll find in the real world,” says Colleen Lewis, events coordinator for the Career Center.
Amy Lodholz ’05 spoke on a Duck panel about her experiences as the volunteer coordinator for the Newberg Area Habitat for Humanity. “I was happy I had come,” she recalls. “A number of young girls—and my profession is primarily women—came up to me with big, glowing eyes, who wanted to do what I did.”
Carissa Surace attended the panel and was infected by Lodholz’s enthusiasm for public service. “What I took away [from the panel] is that you really have to love what you do,” Surace says. “Amy was very passionate, you could tell by the way she talked about it. Ever since then, I’ve thought about Habitat for Humanity more and more.”
SAA will soon offer its members an even more direct way to connect with UO graduates, called Duck-to-Duck mentoring. Students will be able to e-mail alums for career advice, schedule an informational interview about their profession, or even shadow them at work to experience a “day on the job.” UO grads are already lining up to participate. “There are thirty mentors in [our] database,” Middleton-Moreland says.
SAA membership is open to all UO students for a one-time dues payment. When recruiting members, Middleton-Moreland pitches a fact that’s central to the other part of SAA’s mission: private donations cover a large and increasing percentage of the cost of a student’s UO education. To this end, SAA’s next big act will be challenging the student alumni group at Oregon State to a fundraising civil war, through the use of an Internet search engine called GoodSearch.
Like a philanthropic cousin of Google, GoodSearch allows computer users to designate a school or nonprofit organization to receive a portion of its advertising revenue. In other words, UO students (and alumni, see sidebar) can raise money for the UO by doing what they already do anyway, surfing the Internet.
GoodSearch claims that “500 people searching four times a day will earn around $7,300 in a year.” If that’s true, then 900 SAA members can raise a tidy sum for the UO. And if they can encourage all 23,000 UO students to do the same? Well, SAA doesn’t reach that far yet, but you get the idea. They’re thinking big.
In the meantime, count on the Skinner Butte “O” to be in good hands. As Middleton-Moreland says, “It’s up to SAA to keep it yellow.” All the orange paint in Corvallis says they can do it.
—Dana Magliari, M.A. ’98
How to Get Involved
INSPIRE Interested in being on a Duck panel and sharing your wisdom and advice with UO students? The Career Center would like to hear from you. Contact Colleen Lewis at lewis@uoregon.edu or call 541-346-6016.
MENTOR To learn details about becoming a mentor to a UO student, contact Regan Middleton-Moreland at moreland@uoregon.edu or visit: www.uoalumni.com/saa/mentoring.
GIVE (at no cost to you!) Help SAA beat the Beavers by making GoodSearch your Internet search engine. Visit www.goodsearch.com and enter University of Oregon as your beneficiary. One hundred and fifty thousand UO alumni can raise $1 million per year.
Millions of young people enjoy Scouting activities every year, but many leave the organization and its do-good reputation behind as they become adults. Others, like Dr. Tom Macready ’69, take the Boy Scout oath to heart and incorporate that helping philosophy into a lifetime of volunteer activities. Each spring since 2005, Macready has packed his dental tools and trekked to tiny villages in Guatemala with the Cascade Medical Team. Setting up where space is available, Macready offers his healing skills to the poverty-stricken Mayan people who live in the area. Sometimes there’s a school room or patio available for Macready’s use. Other times, a lawn is the best space available. “My first day working down there, my assistant kept laughing at me,” he says. “I kept reaching up, trying to adjust my light . . . but it was the sun! I saw fifty-four people that day, and probably pulled 125 to 150 teeth.”
Living in one of the poorest Latin American nations, Guatemala’s citizens have endured decades of military occupation and civil war, which contributed to the unavailability of medical and dental care. “Imagine an area the size of Eugene-Springfield with only four or five doctors to support the entire population,” says Macready. “That might be an equivalent. And, poor? Extended families, twelve or thirteen people, living in a dirt-floor, one-room shack made of cornstalks and a few bricks. Just a little piece of ground to grow a few crops. They’re just barely surviving.”
Affiliated with the international nonprofit organization Helps International, Cascade Medical Team (CMT) was formed in 2002 to provide all-volunteer medical and community development assistance to Guatemala’s rural population. Hauling mountains of duffel bags stuffed with medical equipment, CMT volunteers depart from airports throughout the United States to meet in Guatemala City. A convoy of buses ferries the team and provisions eighty-five miles over winding mountain roads to a location outside the town of Solola, headquarters for CMT’s five-day mission. There, the hundred-plus crew of volunteers bunk and work in a former military base—think cement-block buildings and bare concrete floors. Dormitories house the volunteers, and a gymnasium provides room for cooking, meetings, and meals. Operating rooms, clinic areas, and pharmacy are all equipped with materials donated by suppliers or purchased with proceeds from CMT’s fundraising events.
Clad in brightly colored, traditional hand-woven clothing, the hundreds of patients travel miles on rutted roads, arriving at Solola on foot or by bus. And for the many patients who can’t travel, Macready and other medical professionals are guided to tiny, isolated villages to provide their services. “There are still guerrilla gangs in some areas,” says Macready, “so we have armed guards to escort us.”
Due to lack of infrastructure, water contamination is rampant in rural Guatemala. In some areas, Macready says, bottled water may be more expensive than the soda pop purchased in two-liter bottles. “You’ll see little kids walking around with a plastic bag full of pop with a straw stuck in it. The amount of advanced dental decay we see is staggering. We see children with huge holes in baby teeth. We see young adults missing many of their permanent teeth.” Macready and the other dentists provide toothbrushes and basic dental hygiene education, “. . . and it’s amazing, since the first couple of years we did that, we’ve seen a marked improvement in these people already. They don’t want to hurt; they just didn’t know how to prevent it.” He says that providing clean water also makes a big difference: CMT now sends volunteers who are trained to install simple water purifier systems to ease the clean-water shortage.
Macready says he receives from the Guatemalans a simple and sincere gratitude. Mayan customs are quite conservative—Americans are even asked to avoid wearing shorts and showing affection in public. “But sometimes I’ll finish a procedure, and the patient will turn and give me a big hug; I know that’s hard for them. They sometimes return later with a small gift, a woven purse or necklace they have made.”
Seeing that gracious generosity in the midst of debilitating poverty is what keeps Macready on the Cascade Medical Team’s roster of returning professionals. “I tell people, ‘sure, I have never worked so hard in my life, but really, I think I’m still trying to be an Eagle Scout,’” he says. “I’ve also been a [volunteer] scoutmaster for thirty-five years, and ‘Do a good turn daily’ is the Scout slogan. That’s a lifelong commitment. I followed the Scout oath and law today, but I have to do it tomorrow, too. So, I’m still trying . . . .”
—Katherine Gries ’05, M.A. ’09
On June 23, 1906, running under the colors of the Multnomah Athletic Club of Portland (as UO runners did in those days), Dan Kelly ’08 broke world records in both the 100-yard and 220-yard dashes at the same track meet in Spokane, Washington. And in between the two events he won the broad jump.
Then, at the 1908 Olympics in London, England, Kelly won a silver medal in the broad jump as a member of the United States track-and-field team. Overseeing these victories was famed track coach Bill Hayward, namesake of the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.
Daniel James Kelly was born September 1, 1883, in Pueblo, Colorado, and moved with his Irish Catholic family to Baker City. Kelly grew up working in his father’s blacksmith and wagon-making shop. After he became famous as the king of the 100-yard dash, newspaper articles made much of his small-town roots, including his blacksmith and horseshoeing experience.
By the time Kelly graduated from Baker High School in 1904, he had no doubt set BHS track records for the 100-, 220-, and 440-yard distances, plus high jump and broad jump. News articles described Kelly as “red-headed” and “freckled-faced,” five feet ten-and-one-half inches tall, and weighing 150 pounds. A New York Times reporter wrote, “He is rather stockily built and hardly impresses the casual observer as a sprinter, but second glance shows the wonderful development of his legs, which furnishes him with his great speed.”
Kelly spent his first post–high school year at Columbia University, a Catholic institution, today’s University of Portland. During his year there, Kelly played football but made his lasting mark in track by setting school records in the 50-, 100-, and 220-yard dashes, plus competing in the shot put and hammer throw. One reporter described him as “almost the whole team.”
In the fall of 1905, Kelly transferred to Eugene to study law at the University of Oregon, where he was a halfback on the football team and a standout sprinter and broad jumper under Hayward’s tutelage. (Hayward had become the UO’s head track and basketball coach in 1904, and coached at Oregon for forty-four years.)
At the May 18, 1906, track meet be-tween the UO and Oregon Agricultural College (OSU), Kelly accounted for 18 points in the UO’s 76–46 victory. The sports editor of The Oregonian called Kelly’s performance “little short of wonderful.” Kelly tied the world 100-yard dash record in 9 4/5 seconds, ran the 220-yard dash in 22 4/5 seconds, and jumped 24 feet 2 1/4 inches, making him one of only three American broad jumpers to exceed 24 feet, and tied for first place in the high jump at 5 feet 2 inches. The reporter predicted, “Kelly should develop into a world-beater.”
When Bill Hayward started coaching Kelly, his star as a track coach had yet to ascend. That changed on June 23, 1906, at a track meet in Spokane. “Dan Kelly, the phenomenal boy athlete from the University of Oregon, was the hero of the day,” wrote a sports reporter. “This husky, freckle-faced youth, who hails from Baker City, Oregon, breasted the tape in the 100-yard dash in 9 3/5 seconds . . . beating the American amateur record. He won the broad jump with an astounding leap of 23 feet 9 1/2 inches, breaking the Northwest Association record, and then went without cooling off right out on the track and equaled the American amateur record in the 220-yard dash, doing the distance in 21 1/5.”
What the reporter didn’t know at the time was that Kelly had broken the world record in the 100-yard dash. It wasn’t until November 1906 that the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) certified Kelly’s time as a world-record-breaking 9 3/5 seconds. In those days, runners competed in primitive running shoes on tracks of grass or cinders, and without the help of starting blocks.
Coach Hayward correctly predicted that Kelly’s new record would stand for a long time: no one broke it until Eddie Tolan clocked 9 1/2 seconds twenty-three years later.
Kelly never again ran a 9.6-second 100. In the summer of 1907, he was the favorite to win the 100 at the AAU national championships in Jamestown, Virginia. The sultry heat took its toll on Kelly, who, under Hayward’s watchful eye, finished in fifth place in the 100 and failed to finish the 220. But he didn’t come away empty-handed. He won the broad jump with a leap of 23 feet 11 inches, the best jump by an AAU athlete in 1907, making Kelly Oregon’s first national champion.
In June 1908, Kelly telegraphed his parents from New York: “Chosen for Olympic team. Sail for England June 25.” Coach Hayward accompanied Kelly and two other Oregon athletes to London. Their events: Kelly, broad jump; Albert C. Gilbert, 110-meter hurdles; and Forrest C. Smithson, pole vault. The trio of Oregonians fared well. Kelly received a silver medal with a running jump of 23 feet 3 1/4 inches; Gilbert won gold with a vault of 12 feet 2 inches; and Smithson also earned gold and set a world record running the 110-meter hurdles in 15 seconds flat. Back in the United States, Oregonian reporter W. J. Petrain accompanied Kelly, Gilbert, and Smithson from New York City to Oregon via train sending dispatches about their welcome along the way as national heroes. President Theodore Roosevelt shook their hands.
In June 1909, a headline proclaimed, “Kelly’s Career is Ended.” Hayward announced that Kelly was laid up with a badly sprained ankle. A news story about “the famous red-haired sprinter” lamented, “The news of Kelly’s injury comes as a blow to the sporting fraternity of the Northwest.”
Out of the sports limelight and back in Baker City, Kelly returned to work in his father’s blacksmith and farm implements shop. Six years later, in March, 1914, he again made headlines in The Oregonian: “Dan Kelly Fights, Is Bitten. Fast Sprinter Loses End of Finger in Saloon Brawl at Baker.” Kelly, still dressed as an Irish comedian after having participated in a Saint Patrick’s Day theatrical, and Hollister Bulger, who had both been drinking, “quarreled as to Kelly’s ability as an actor, which led to blows and the biting by Hollister, who fled from the police and is still missing.”
The next, much sadder news story about Kelly appeared in the Baker City Evening Herald April 9, 1920. The headline read, “Dan Kelly, Renowned Athlete, Well Known Baker Boy is Dead.” Around 1918 Kelly had set off to work as a logger in the woods near Fernie, British Columbia. It was from Fernie that his parents received a telegram with news that their son Dan had died April 8 of pneumonia. His body was returned to Baker for burial.
The University of Oregon has enshrined Kelly’s name in its Athletic Hall of Fame: “In 1907, Dan Kelly became Oregon’s first NCAA (then called Amateur Athletic Union) All-American in the long jump. Since then, more than 300 Oregon track-and-field stars have followed in his footsteps.” In 1980, Kelly was in the first group of nine track-and-field athletes inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, located in Portland.
—Gary Dielman
UO Alumni Calendar
Go to uoalumni.com/events for detailed information
March 20
Northern California Chapter
Day at the Races
Golden Gate Fields
Berkeley, California
April 27
Bend Music Fest
Bend
May 11
Medford Music Fest
Medford
May 14–15
Class of 1955 Reunion
Celebration
Eugene
Rockin’ the Bard
Most of us hadn’t been to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. By the middle-1980s, OSF was renowned by Shakespeare lovers around the globe, but from my small Oregon hometown, it might as well have been across the globe. Our parents were either working-class folks who spent what little money they earned on cars or low-earning professionals who had to be choosy about fancy cultural experiences.
But our English teacher made sure we not only knew of the most respected festival in our home state but also visited it before finishing high school. Short, round, bald, and a lover of words, Rick Wetherell would have fit right in during the 1500s. He made us write sonnets, read contemporary song lyrics like poetry, and memorize a quote a day. Then he bought up a block of OSF tickets, figured out how we could afford them, had the school cooks pack sack lunches, and herded us onto the bus, bellowing orders like a director on a stage.
Still, there was no easy way to get from North Bend to Ashland. The first 100 miles were the very definition of the path less traveled—unfamiliar and inhospitable, especially to a gigantic yellow school bus. Once we hit I-5, there were still ninety-five miles to go. That trip would take at least four-and-a-half hours, especially if there was a barf stop.
We were used to this. We lived in the middle of nowhere. We had to travel at least 120 miles to partake in the most mundane high school rituals like a basketball game or speech team competition. We grumbled about this basic geographical unfairness, but despite early wake-up calls, queasy tummies, and sleep deprivation, we loved road trips. The bus was where it was at. Close proximity to one another, limited adult supervision, greasy snacks, and soda cans wrapped in tinfoil so they’d stay cold—for a sixteen-year-old, it didn’t get much better than this.
After we indulged in major bus antics, we settled in and read through two pages of field trip instructions. Information Wetherell deemed necessary about Ashland included warning that the water from the fountains in the plaza tasted funny because it came from a mineral spring, what time to absolutely be in line for the play, and this strange directive, hinting at dastardly deeds from years past: “Feedeth not whole oranges to the Lithia Park swans.”
From a twenty-first century hyperprotective viewpoint, it’s amazing that fifty teenagers were set loose in a strange city with little more than strict instructions to not gag swans with our fruit. But we were let off near the park, where the bus had room to turn around, with a good two-hour window in which to do as we pleased. That was part of the fun. At Rare Earth we pored over bins of trinkets. In Lithia Park we explored wild crannies and the serene grove of sycamores. We tasted the above-mentioned water and agreed that it tasted like medieval poison. But before long it was time to get in line. We were here for intellectual stimulation, or at least intellectual simulation. Our scholarly inclinations may normally be buried under the need to be hip, but today we were all in the same cerebral boat, so we might as well embrace it. It was Shakespeare, dude. So retro he’d reachieved cool. We got his groove. We were here to rock the Bard.
Our luck was like a shiny gold shilling. If there was a perfect Shakespeare-live experience for teens, this was it. In 1988, the Shakespearean play on the Angus Bowmer stage was Romeo and Juliet. This story we knew, and not because we’d read the play. We lived Romeo and Juliet—if only metaphorically. I surely felt as if I was kept from a romantic partner by a tragic, unbridgeable gulf. If that chasm was my own nerdiness rather than a centuries-old family war, no matter. The emotions translated.
Such was the beauty of narrative, the art of story. Such was the brilliance of Shakespeare. Even if we didn’t know what in the heck he was saying half of the time, we still found a place in his stories that felt like a mirror to our soul. I couldn’t wait to see this might-as-well-take-place-under-the-bleachers-back-home story set to life before me.
As the actors took the stage, a ruffle of excitement fluttered through our little crowd. What was going on here? What was up with Juliet’s couture leather miniskirt? A quick squint at the program answered our question. “Romeo and Juliet is staged this year in modern dress.”
We would never have known this phrase referred to contemporary clothing in an antique play, but we could figure it out. This wasn’t any kind of modern dress we recognized, anyway. We wore Guess and Levi’s. We’d never heard of Bloomingdale’s. The only way Juliet’s four-inch heels looked familiar was that we’d seen them in Cosmopolitan.
To see Cosmo slam straight into Shakespeare in a little town in southern Oregon was something else. Romeo was hot in that three-piece suit. Even better was Mercutio in skin-tight denim and a gold chain. But the women were the real eye candy. Taffeta skirts, billowing. Hair done up Julia Roberts-style in a million curls. We sat captivated, jacked up on hormones run amok by impetus of Ralph Lauren and iambic pentameter.
So it was really no surprise that after we came down from our Shakespeare-induced high, after the sun set and the bus filled with a steamy, dark warmth, two souls entwined in the back seat of the bus. In their own minds, each was no longer a junior from provincial North Bend High School, but instead a love-struck teenager who knew no era. They shut out all others and seized the moment, for tomorrow—who knew?—they may be forbidden to ever meet again.
Kim Cooper Findling is a writer living in Bend. A longer version of this essay will appear in Chance of Sun, her book about growing up in Oregon, scheduled to be published later this year by Nestucca Spit Press.
