You Have Died of Dysentery

I happen to live quite close to the end of the Oregon Trail.

Yes, that Oregon Trail. Covered wagons, food rations, the gold rush, and that super awesome game we all know and love that was made in the 70s, but captured our hearts in the 80s and well into the 90s.

Today, we went and visited the quite lovely and very kid-friendly museum located approximately where the wagons came to a halt and the log cabins started going up.

Part of the exhibit was about all the indigenous populations that were totally driven out of the area (either physically displaced, or by disease), and I was glad to be learning about that on Black Friday instead of participating in some mass demonstration in consumerism.

I’ve been living here in Oregon now for almost exactly 6 years, and going back and re-learning about the Oregon Trail was particularly exiting for me because all the places and landmarks at the end of the trail are places I actually know and some on which I have actually set foot!

The Dalles! I know where that is! I see it on the weather map each day on the morning news! HISTORY HAPPENED THERE.

Everything is cooler when you can put it into context.

Anyhoo, I was so jazzed by the museum that I came home and found the old game on the interwebs and played it again for old times sake. Dude, it was such a fun blast from the past! I had forgotten so many intricacies of the game, like the shitty, plunky music you hear at each landmark you reach, or that you get to raft down the Columbia River at the end!

 

My husband didn’t stand a chance. Sorry, love.

I encourage you all to carve out some time in your day and some room in your hearts and play this game one more time.

Not for me, not for Oregon, but for yourself.

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90s Music Nostalgia: Peaches for me

It started with peaches.

I was feeding them to my daughter when I started singing.

Movin to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches…

Dylan thought it was a funny song, a song about peaches, so we put it on.

Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man, in a factory downtown…

We started talking about music from the 90s and how some songs can just bring you back…in my head. She’s lump, she’s lump, she’s lump, she might be dead.

It got me all nostalgic, remembering middle school dances and feeling socially anxious and awkward. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in…

Most of the songs we listened to weren’t our favorites, but they were those songs that were always playing in the background. We know them, but may not know who sings them. We don’t know all the words, but just hearing the first few notes transported us back to age 15 or so, depending. And we hadn’t heard them for years.

We said, tell me all your thoughts on God, cause I really want to meet her. Ask her why we’re who we are.

And this is what s/he said: Well I guess what you say is true, I could never be the right kind of girl for you, I could never be your woman, I could never be your woman. (all you need to remember from this one is that high-pitched dee-do-dee-dee melody at the very beginning.)

But don’t worry about asking God, because we all know that goats go to heaven, sheep go to hell. I saw this one performed live on a sunny day in San Francisco.

I been downhearted baby, I been down, I been downhearted baby. Ever since the day we met, ever since the day we met. (for this one, the memory was just of the sound of the voice singing these lyrics. I’m not even sure I knew the exact words before looking them up just now.)

I wasn’t the coolest middle school kid on the block (hard to believe, I know), and I was very slow to catch on to all the hip music the cool kids were listening to. Music trickled down to me via my friends with higher cool factors or older siblings or both.

Just remember, Love will lead us, alright, can you hear the dolphin’s cry?

To end the night we can drive it home with one headliiiiiiight…

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Did any of these lyrics jog your memory? All the band names are tagged on this post.

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NaBloPoMo Day 14