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Show Go Love/220 word love-and I find it when I least expect it, just out of blue sky, like the continuing questions about people in caskets: do they get cold? Do they need blankies? Our hotel's plate glass window looks out on the pier with its rickety floorboards stepping out and out into the ocean, a strange ladder out into Cape Disappointment where Vasco DeGama swamped his finest schooner He'd dared the Columbia's treacherous mouth and lost; the site became a symbol for all the failures of his lifetime-Cape Disappointment-that's the story. This morning, a fine bright windswept and chilly Monday, we're touring the Astoria Maritime Museum at water's edge. The place documents, among other things, the history of Astoria's canneries which once supplied the world's salmon. Photographs show how hip-booted men smoked cigars and hauled in nets sagging with silver fish, tons of them dragged straight out of the surf with mule teams and then pick-up trucks. Up to the slaughter houses and canneries where generations of women packed the native's water god into tin cans. Year after year, Astoria men caught the Jesus out of the fish. The whole world glutted on Oregon salmon-then the fish disappeared. Soon the men had to take to boats and fishing vessels, which meant crossing the killer river's mouth. The fishermen's memorial here lists thousands of drowned souls And that's what they call them-drowned souls. We view a film that narrates the invention of Astoria Rescue Vessel, the unflippable lifesaving boat that's saved the lives of fishers from sixty countries Outside, wafting side to side at low tide, a large rescue ship sits with flags unfurled. Renee buys tickets and we walk the planks down into the metal hull, through the door and into the Lifeboat's cramped quarters. "It smells like a ship. This is always how it is " Lara's climbing stairs, bouncing on an off-limits bunk. |