6—Fax and Copie

A sign on the two-lane wooded road to Oceanside told me I was only two miles from the House on the Hill Motel. My budget allowed only five days for the rebirth of my spirit, so I was eager to discover what wisdom the ocean had for me. As the road curved, the coniferous canopy opened into a scattering of weathered pines against the dank gray day. To my left lay the Pacific—vast, flat, gray, and punctuated along the near shore by dark rocky outcroppings.  

The road inclined downward into Oceanside. To my right, a steep hillside of houses. The main street was a single block lined with two small restaurants, a motel, a tiny post office connected to a one-room community center, a volunteer fire station, a coffee shop with a few weathered motel cabins, and—yep, not a single shop.  A few people moseyed here and there without apparent purpose. High on the hill at the end of the road was my destination.

Before settling in, I needed to send a fax and asked the motel manager if he would do that for me. “The closest fax machine is back in Netarts,” he told me. 

“Knee-tarts?” I asked.

“At the Sea Lion Motel,” he explained. “Two miles down the road. Right next to the Netarts Grocery. You can’t miss it,” he promised. But, it would seem I already had.

Sure enough, two miles down the road, a small weathered village began to materialize out of the trees and drizzle. 

Like Brigadoon, only without the music.

Smoke rose from several chimneys, but I saw no one, the only movement being several fingers of fog wafting in from the sea. On the right was the Netarts Grocery and post office, a weathered tan and green building about the size of a small 7-Eleven. Under the overhang that ran along the front of the store was a defunct gas pump and behind them, two newspaper machines, both empty.  

Next to the store was the Sea Lion Motel, a single row of small unpretentious rooms. 

                                                                                   FAX & COPIE
proclaimed big black letters on a yellow plastic marquee.

A note on the office door directed all inquiries across the gravel parking lot to a white manufactured home. A thin, taciturn woman in a gray sweatshirt and faded jeans answered my knock and nodded me into a long beige living room. As I explained my pressing matter, she glanced over her shoulder at the TV where a young blonde woman in a frilly orange blouse burst into tears. Without a word, the fax-&-copie woman took my document and disappeared into a back room. As Montel finally coaxed the jilted housewife into a weepy calm, the fax-&-copie woman returned to say that while my fax appeared to go through, she’d received no confirmation. The machine had been acting up, she explained, so any appearance of success was deceiving.

“Could confirmation have been delayed?” I asked.

“Anything’s possible,” the woman replied in the tone of a soothsayer finding an unsettling omen in the entrails of an ox. The choice to have faith or wait was mine.

Choosing to wait, I strolled across the gravel to the grocery for some chocolate. Under the overhang sat two plastic chairs on either side of a large wooden crate. On the crate was a shallow wooden box lined with a blue and red plaid blanket. On the side of the box was a sign that said: LUGS—President Netarts Chamber of Commerce. A long arm opened the door of the grocery and out ambled—could it be—the president?

Next: “Walk on Crab Avenue”