Cliff

Chapter 1 -- Goose Cove

As you approach the sea from the interior you first descend the western side of a coastal range of mountains. At the bottom of the mountain range, Highway 101 winds it's way along the western coast of North America from Port Angeles on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula to San Diego, on the Mexican border with California. Rich retired people spend really unbelievable amounts of money constructing huge houses at the end of long private roads high above the towns and the cliffs which contain the Pacific Ocean.

Downtown Goose Cove is squeezed into the narrow strip of land between the highway and the ocean. The town is about 500 yards wide and about one mile long.

Goose Cove is supposed to be cute. Every shop, every house, every hotel is "Unique" and would be out of place and even silly anywhere but in a seaside town. Apparently, Tom he sea has the power to suspend reality as effectively as Walt Disney could. This might also explain the fantastic appearance and behavior of some of the inhabitants.

Almost every building is constructed of wood, much of it showing rot and lack of paint. Sometimes things are constructed in shapes other than rectangular. Five sides is unusual, but six, or eight, or even round is not unknown. Almost all of the buildings are more than one story, and all have the principal windows facing the sea.

Colors run to light blue and green, occasionally a light shade of violet, with brown and mold colored trim. Not too much bright yellow or red. A lot of the mold color comes from mold. Sometimes the people get a little moldy, too, and green from the usually dismal weather.

Painting requires fairly good weather, dry and somewhat warm. One house is under construction, and many more should be. Many houses, or cabins, or store fronts, that are seasonal and currently out of season and empty. The residents have followed the tourists out of town and are trying to make a living somewhere else for the tourist-free half year which is just beginning.

Those residents who remain for the winter slow down considerably. Clothes don't get washed, or dried. Floors don't get washed, or swept. The humidity is high enough to prevent dust, so dirt, rather than dust, gathers on any unused surface.

The wet is everywhere. Streets and sidewalks are always wet, so your shoes are always wet, so your floor is always wet, and dirty. Eventually, you stop noticing or caring. This is the onset of depression. Alcohol is the usual treatment, which makes it worse. Everything in the world is sliding, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, towards rot and decay.

The sea and the seasons provide all of the weather. The off season is wet and cold, but never much below freezing. The season is somewhat warmer and somewhat dryer, with longer days making up for the almost daily rain shower. Winter, with its cold onshore wind, constant rain, and short, dark, days, is a very dismal thing and causes no end of depression.

Tourists are a transitory bunch, and have some things in common. Money is one thing. The fact that they are all off work is another. Perhaps Goose Cove is an example of a society with a large leisure class. Many of them are retired from business, but still active. Others are harried couples with children on vacation, trying to put as much fun into two weeks as possible. They think in days and hours, while the retired think more in terms of weeks.

The local people work hard, despise the tourists, and need the money the tourists bring, encouraging them to leave without it as soon as this can be arranged. Occasionally during busy times, this hatred shows through a little bit. Not very much, however, because there are no other jobs in Goose Cove, and unemployment is a serious and practically permanent state. Jobs are scarce, and clung to tenaciously.

Downtown has the usual gift shops and restaurants. Many tourists do not want to cook, or at least, do not want to cook much. Then, for the locals, there are many Nintendo and video stores. You can even drop off videos you have rented at the next seaside resort over for automatic return.

There are two seasons in Goose Cove. There is the tourist season, when the visitors are on vacation, and the off season, when the locals are on vacation. The general feeling is that not much happens around here.

Over all of this there is the sea, providing the reason for all the other activity, and operating with some pretty strict rules of its own. For instance, roads can not go into the sea. This interferes with transportation a good bit. There is only one edge of the sea, where the sea meets the land. This interferes with city planning somewhat. It would be nice if there were sea front available throughout the county, rather than in a single line along the edge of the sea. There is a good deal less congestion out on the water. There are a few boats, and some swimmers near the shore. The occasional drowner a bit further out sometimes, but by and large all the congestion occurs on the land side of the edge. This is where the people rub up against each other and get hot, tired, and out of sorts generally.

They seldom get hungry or thirsty. The locals see to that. In the off season, they might get cold and they might get wet at any season. They will always smell the sea, and they will always hear the sea, making the sound that only the sea makes when it reaches the shore. The sea gulls are a noisy lot too.

There are quite a few too many automobiles present. They make noise and stink. They are also dangerous. You never know when they will be still and when they may suddenly start moving. Since they weigh several tons, they can and will crush you easily. They are forever backing out of somewhere, or nosing into some space that might or might not be large enough for them.

The nicest house in town was the one owned by Stan and Vera Meyer, who owned the real estate office that occupied the adjacent property.

Goose Cove has a tourist economy, highly seasonal, with the ups and downs softened somewhat by the research station, a field unit of the State University of Oregon. The State University of Oregon keeps the town alive, barely, during the off season, providing money to graduate students to do research in oceanography. The students promptly spend it all foolishly on rent, groceries, and whatever else it will cover. The station itself has renovated a disused fishing wharf, adding a building to house offices and a small library. The station provides employment for some of the locals in support roles.

Fishing used to be a fairly productive industry for the village. In later years the business has fallen off due to a lack of fish. Scandal erupted some years ago when several fishermen were indicted and their ooperations closed down by threats from both federal and state officials. It seems that one of the graduate students did some research on fishing methods and more or less accidentally learned of some practices that were destroying protected fish while attempting to catch the last remaining commercial fish. The student was activist enough and involved enough to document his findings in a very clear and unmistakable fashion and wise enough to publish them after he had left the town and received his degree. Once he arrived at a position of ecconomic and personal safety, he sent his results to state and federal fish and game officials. His timing was good, people were willing to enforce the laws and the practice was stopped. His name became known to the local commercial fishermen and things would have been very dangerous indeed for him to return to Goose Cove. But he never has, and very likely never will for more than a passing visit of little fanfare and the anonymity of a simple visitor. Very few would recognize him by sight, even though his name is well known. Although his picture is not posted in the Post Office, it may well be at the local fisherman's tavern.

One of the commercial fishermen indicted and convicted was the husband of Mrs. Fish. Neither of them ever forgot what had happened and Mrs. Fish especially never missed an opportunity to slander the student population on every social, ethical, religious, or political issue she could raise. The world, especially her world, and Goose Cove, would be a far better place if they and their research station were driven from it. This would, curiously enough, bring back the fish, she believed.

Mrs. Teabody's souvenir shop is an example of the complex arrangements that spell economic survival to small, established villages by the sea. The shop is moderately profitable during the tourist season, selling post cards, local knickknacks and souvenirs of the northern Pacific shoreline actually manufactured in various far eastern countries.

On the upper end, you could buy a watch that gives the time of high and low tides. You read in the brochure that it really doesn't predict the tides, because it can't, but the tourists with the really deep charge cards don't do that much reading, and it seems like such a really good idea that they buy them anyway.

Most buy postcards, many buy tee shirts and sweat shirts, some buy seashells and rocks.

During the off season, the shop does virtually no business and Mrs. Teabody only opens between noon and 4 pm. She never sells enough to pay the rent or the utilities, but by living in Goose Cove for a long time and knowing everybody and everything of value in the local economy, she has been able to acquire other properties during slow times, picking up mortgages which are only just covered by the rent the properties bring. She rents them mostly to students, who are at a decided disadvantage with regard to both money and time. They generally do not expect much in the way of amenities, and as long as the plumbing works and the roof doesn't leak over anything important, they are a fairly docile lot. They are here on business, and because they feel temporary, they are not inclined to pursue long battles over improvements. They have lots of energy and will often paint for a deposit payment--a real boon to the landlord since the deposit is never over $250 or so and actually hiring a painting contractor would cost three times that much. The students don't complain because housing is scarce, and so is deposit money.

Thus does Mrs. Teabody survive in wintertime. She regularly votes against all the government give-aways that enable the students to rent her properties, since everybody should pay their own way, she says. She is 50 and claims less, considers herself a business woman of some importance and spends a great deal of time in the coffee house across the street from her shop. She can watch for people peering into her shop windows and cross the street if they seem really interested, complaining and apologizing that she never leaves the shop, even for a moment.

It has been said that she is the reason the town has no need for a local newspaper. She handles everything from news to classified ads, and never neglects the editorial page. She isn't always accurate, but generally does reveal her sources, in case she is found out.

The coffee house that Mrs. Teabody winters in serves as headquarters for the local people during the off season. It sells baked goods from a family bakery two towns along the highway. Newspapers are available from Seattle and Portland, and the state papers from both Washington and Oregon. Soft drinks and ice cream come from a box. They are more popular in Summer, replaced by sales of coffee and tea for the locals in winter. The coffee house also serves as a telephone answering service for several of the locals, taking messages for them when they are out of their daily business spots, but not actually there in the coffee house.

The community bulletin board offers almost everything for sale or rent in the village, and whatever services available are advertised there as well.

The Coastal bus stops there twice each day, once in each direction.

The Coffee House features mismatched furniture in the very latest style, not done on purpose, as is the current fashion, but done gradually, over time, as the original tables and chairs simply wore out or broke.

There is no radio. This helps patrons and management to have conversations and to overhear the conversations of others. Once they had hired student help, who had installed a boom box behind the counter. He didn't last long, and the boom box left with him. Things operate a little differently in a village than they do even in a small town. Normally, in a larger social group, the customers who couldn't tolerate the noise would quietly move to another place, to be replaced by others who like, or at least tolerate loud music, but in a village there isn't any place else to go, and no new customers to replace those who leave. It is therefore a much more customer-run establishment, more of a commune than a business.

There are flowers on the table. In the summertime they are real. There are usually four or five parties in the Coffee House, but never a crowd. The place is seldom completely empty during open hours.

Goose Cove has a very respectable small town library in a new building. It runs to children's books, as all libraries do now, and has two new computers for the convenience of the patrons. A very small number of them use it two write letters on. The library also has a coin operated copy machine. The furniture is new, birch and glass. Decor includes large green plants, reading islands, and not enough books. Local people come here for out-of-state news-papers, magazines, and to exchange paperback mysteries, bodice rippers, and novels. There are a few, very few, videotapes and CD Rom disks. The entrance is up a short flight of steps, with a ramp on one side. The building had to be modified almost immediately to provide access for Americans with Disabilities. The ramp is handy for rolling carts and book racks.

The only full time employee is the librarian herself, Mrs. Templeton. The library is next door to the Goose Cove Municipal Building, which houses the city administrative offices and the town constable.