Oregon Spring
Who's got two thumbs and loves literal image based humor? THIS GUY!
Maybe you live in a place where spring is marked by milder weather and warmer temperatures. If so, you are a wuss. Please observe what we put up with in Oregon:
Over spring break, we Oregonians had a wind storm, multiple massive downpours, daily snowfall (with accumulation at the coast), darkness, locusts, and blood. Driving from Portland to Eugene to get back to school, my friends and I passed through four separate hailstorms while the sun was shining, interspersed with stretches of completely dry highway. It was as though each county we passed through had its own hailstorm it wanted to show us, each with it’s own special feature that in some unique way threatened our lives. In Multnomah County, the hail accumulated like slush on the road. In Marion County, it blew around like a highly distracting mist. In Linn County, the hail melted into reflective puddles on the road while the sun shone brightly, making for a blinding 15 minutes akin to driving on a mirror. In Lane County, the hail came down so hard that it threatened to smash through our windshield and kill us all. I don’t care how cold it gets in Massachusetts or how often the rivers catch fire in Ohio. In some places spring arrives like a lamb, in others, like a lion. In Oregon, it arrives like Chuck Norris.
Spring also is when great flocks of hobos arrive in Eugene, bumping the city’s hobo composition from 75% all the way up to 138%. Oregon is pretty much Shangri-La to your average hobo: Second highest minimum wage in the country, no sales tax, and a plethora of poorly maintained bridges to sleep under. However, our cold and rainy winters force the hobos down into California until spring, when they hitchhike their way back up the I-5 corridor to Eugene like the grimy, schizophrenic swallows returning to Capistrano. Eugene is Oregon’s third largest city, home to the University of Oregon and 140,000 people, the majority of whom are hobos, were hoboes, or will hobo at some point in the future. Why Eugene? Well, the first and best reason is hippies, who are, in essence, hobos with an ethos. Hippies flocked up to Eugene from San Francisco during the 1960s, likely drawn by counterculture author Ken Kesey. Kesey, a graduate of the University of Oregon’s Journalism program, took up residence outside Eugene after spending several years in California experimenting with LSD and cocaine at the behest of the government.* Hippies settled in Eugene and gave our fair city (and state) its reputation as a den of potheads, and to this day keep the spirit of the 1960s alive by operating rent free communes and selling overpriced scented candles on campus, both of which appeal to hobos desperate for free housing and pleasant aromas to mask their mind boggling stench. The return of Eugene’s hobos always has a distinct impression on our campus. For instance, if you want to hear a crazy rant by somebody who clearly has no idea what he’s talking about, you don’t have to wait for the State of the Union address anymore – just go to a well trafficked public place and you can find a Motivational Speaker Hobo (essentially just a Level 2 Advanced Hobo who used his experience points to buy the ‘Public Speaking’ trait) telling the crowd about the inherent danger of toothpaste and black people.
*Unlike myself, a Journalism major at the University of Oregon who aspires to be a drug addicted author one day, Ken Kesey did not have a blog.
When the sun finally does decide to shine, it triggers the long dormant impulse within the U of O’s California-born students to take off their clothes, which in most cases I won’t argue with. For some reason, literally hundreds of Californians turn their backs on in-state tuition at schools like Berkeley (ranked the 21st best college in the country) and UCLA (ranked 25th) and instead pay incredibly high out of state prices to attend the University of Oregon (ranked 112th – in your face, Michigan Tech!) You can always tell which students at the UO are native Oregonians and which ones are native Californians. On a day like today – sunny, cloudless, and 50 degrees in the shade – the Oregonians were wearing light parkas and walking to class, while the Californians were lying in various states of undress on any piece of grass big enough to spread a towel on. That’s the fundamental difference between Oregonians and Californians – while we’re conditioned from birth to keep our clothes on at all times (to protect ourselves from wayward hailstones) they’re conditioned to take them off at every opportunity just in case a casting agent or Viggo Mortensen walks past. Maybe half nude beautiful people don’t sound as hazardous as spontaneous hailstorms or a hobo army, but drive past the quad when it’s full of bikini clad beauty queens and try to keep your eyes on the road, and see if you don’t almost die.
Truman Capps knows what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. That isn’t a typo in the third paragraph. Hobo is a verb. Not just any verb, mind you, but the best verb ever.