November 10, 2001
Heathens and Bitchy Pioneers
Location: Portland, OR
Today we woke up a bit too late and then drove to Oregon City for the End of the Oregon Trail stuff. Very interesting: we went to the O.T. Interpretative Center in Oregon City, which was constructed of neat buildings like covered wagons. We bought tickets for the show, then looked at the non-show exhibits for a while. They had an arts & craft exhibit with O.T. toys, fabric, butter churning, etc. And also a case w/ some real medical tools from the O.T. period, like really fucked up stuff like a drill to relieve brain pressure when people had headaches, a reall dull saw for amputations, etc. Terrible.
We went to the gift shop then and Mena bought some postcards, a book re: prostitutes in the old west, and a pack of berry gummy bears that she likes a lot (the same pack of gummy bears from which she ate a gummy bear that had been thrown on the floor!). Then we waited for the show, which was good, particularly the bits in the general store. The guide passed around buffalo chips and I didn't want to touch them so I put my jacket over my hands and passed them along. I didn't want to touch some animal's excrement, let alone excrement that had already been handled by who-knows-how-many other people with dirty hands. Mena probably thinks I was just being creepy.
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Then we went into the next room for a video, "Oregon! The Spirit Lives On", which was pretty damn tacky and featured excerpts from 3 real O.T. journals. Writing music about the Oregon Trail = sad.
Anyway, one of the people whose journals was used was this religious right missionary bitch talking about converting the "heathen" Indians. I hate missionaries (like that). She had this nasty smug little look on her face.
After the show we drove over to the cemetery which had graves of pioneers. It was interesting to see the pioneer graves, particularly those that said "Came to Oregon in 18__".
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We planned to drive along the Columbia River Gorge but it was too late so we drove back to the hotel, and now Mena is watching some dorky movie where someone just said "You do your business killing Comanchees (sp?)".
We're hungry.
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