Abrupt switch in focus. The Northwest, not the Southwest. Green, not red. Wet, even when it’s dry. The Bombshell has been shuttling houseguests through our little cottage at tremendous speed. The crowning point of all festivities, of Opening Up the (Indian) Summer House, of Fall in the woods and on the shore, is Oysterfest, in the nearby town of Shelton in the State of Washington. We have made a cult of Oysterfest, Mrs. Bombshell and I, and we annually organize what can now run to twenty people; the Oysterfest Pilgrimage. The night before we get together and shout into the wee hours and the shoutings, the hootings, the Screamings With Laughters, can run to the complex as the years and the subtleties and coincidences of sheer time build up in our lives. Some of us go back to second grade with each other, some to birth, some have barely met.
The road to Oysterfest is a tunnel through the trees, like a San Rafael Swell Slot Canyon, the sky just barely glimpsed above. The big trees, they just grow everywhere. You can cut them down and they just come back. It’s silly afterawhile in the Northwest to bemoan the loss of the old dead-pole, Eagle-scrag forests hanging a hundred feet out over the water and towering three hundred above. The new forest does just fine, even the third forest. The wood just keeps on coming. The big south bays of the world of Olympia and Shelton break out on the sides, like the strange windows cut into the rock tunnels that lead you into Zion from the east. (That sounds like a Mormon remark. It isn’t.)
Oysterfest takes place on the old Mason County Fairgrounds right next to the Ultralite Airport. Thousands of people come to it, stopping traffic on Rte.101 and smiling at each other in one of the greatest displays of Mindless Fellowship I’ve been part of. (And believe me, I know wherof I speak, as Herman Melville probably said at least once.) On a little old county fairgrounds is set out and waiting for you, a hundred stands with oysters cooked a dozen ways, clam and oyster fritters, curly fries, mussels in wine sauces, beer, more beer, strawberry shortcake, draft root beer floats, oysters Rockefeller, beer and the blues. Anyone with a Harley shows up and they all park their bikes in big clusters that look like an outdoor sculpture class just left for lunch. There’s a huge tank where old men with remote controls in their laps pilot model tankers and tugboats. There’s a guy playing an Automotium (I made that up, I don’t remember what it’s called) softly in front of the quonset hut bathrooms, just quietly playing to himself. I think I heard Oh Shenendoah, and if I didn’t I should have.
The Hall of Beer is our social center. You inch sideways through people drinking cups of different Northwest Micro-brewery beers, all shouting and laughing and yelling at each other and you, yelling to be heard over the thumping rythyms of one of the many fine bluesbands the South Sound has to offer. They play beneath a Safeway awning looking down on quickly-tanning Northwesters drinking beer and inching sideways, feet scuffing through three inches of sawdust, dancing slightly as they make their way to the side quonset in which reside the crab-stuffed mushrooms, the geoduck burgers, the oyster shooters and the Thai shrimp on sticks.
It’s heaven. Don’t forget to take home the Squilimuk Tribal Salmon Dinner. On Mystery Island, we tend to get hungry the next day, which is the day we clean the house and get ready for the next flurry of houseguests.
We’re expecting the Lobocos from Arizona to show up next. It’ll be interesting to see what Bebop makes of all this.
