Category: The Applegate Trail

Follow the Applegate Trail

My Dis-ease

keep thinking about those uniformed men at the park back in May, and on my trip to Joseph, and stories I hear around town about military-type excersizes out in the desert. I was chatting with Donnie Wicker just the other day, down at the Germaine Cafe, when he mentioned seeing a convoy of Hummers, complete with mounted guns driving the backroads of Harney County. When I questioned him further, he told me that he had been out “messing around” with Zach Sweet, cruising the hundreds of miles of rough dirt and cinder roads that criss-cross the Eastern Oregon prairie lands.  Of course, I immediately think about drugs when the name Zach Sweet comes up. The sheriff’s son has been in and out of jail since the age of sixteen, mostly for things one associates with drugs and drug addiction. I have to say, I was disappointed in Donnie. He has…

Room 17

Room seventeen of the Restin’ Easy,” Shaharazade said the other day out of the blue, as she browsed back issues of The Germaine Truth. I looked up from my laptop and gave her a curious glance. “Remember you told me that’s the same room Uncle Charlie was in,” she continued. It took a second for me to realize she was referring to The Incident. I started to say, everybody knows that, Shaherazade, but then I remembered that, of course, everybody doesn’t know that. It is an unspoken fact that some people might talk about in whispers, or others might just mention in imagined conversations, and enough folk have thought about it so that it seems like common knowledge. It is the kind of knowledge that is forgotten, because there doesn’t really seem to be any relevence, except to those who are superstitious: The Unlucky Room Seventeen, or The Notorious Room…

Men in Uniform

had to drag Dad down to the May Day event the other day. I knew if he didn’t go, he would regret his decision of last Thanksgiving when he said he would never “cover another of those crackpot events organized by Willie.” But I had heard through the grapevine that EcoSurvival Village was organizing some farmworkers to join the rally, and I knew this would be a real news story.  The size came as a complete surprise to me. I know that forty people isn’t so many, especially if you live in a larger town, but I doubt if there has been a rally of this magnitude here since The Great Depression, or earlier. A visitor from the city would probably see nothing unusual; a few impassioned, but tame, speeches; some interesting and creative signs; some big, colorful puppets of George Bush and the CEO of Malsanto. But I could…

My List

Guest Post by Shaherazade Budreau   I don’t understand how adults think. How could Faith Applegate say she loved her brother and think that he killed the only man she ever loved? And what kind of love is it if she never talked to him again?”  “Keep it down, Shaherazade,” Susie put a finger to her lips.  I didn’t see the point, but I didn’t say anything more until we got back here to Susie’s apartment. I repeated my questions and Susie said that blood ties are complicated and the passage of time confuses everything. That made no sense to me so when Susie sat down and started writing all that stuff you just read about how me and Mom and Susie and Faith met for lunch, I made a list of questions and speculations. Here’s my list of questions:  What happened to Charlie’s car? Where’s that rare saxophone that…