Nine-finger typing technique

And Furthermore column, Wallowa County Chieftain, October 2012

I’ve learned to not be surprised when I make bad decisions, but this last one was really kind of impressive. I had half a deer to finish cutting up to get in the freezer, not much time to do it and lots more to do before a Hells Canyon raft trip leaving early the next morning. But I took the time to really sharpen two special knives.

I inherited these and a honing steel from my grandpa, who used them in his butcher shop. The big knife looks like something a pirate would use to board another vessel. The other is small and handy. Perfect for butcher work.

I put an edge on both that made easy ribbons of the freezer paper I was using to test. Happy with the meticulous sharpening, I remembered this was a rush job so I got busy and in no time at all trimmed the very tip off my ring finger.

I had some time to reflect while waiting for the bleeding to stop. Butcher skills are not hereditary, apparently. Professional meatcutters are vital members of society. A chainmail glove from a shark suit might be a wise investment. I’m an idiot. And that thing sure is bleeding a lot. Those were the highlights of my thought process.

Some of the finished product.

Typing is no fun without the end of one finger. I can tell you that. I was just glad I didn’t have a piano recital or any fingertip pushups scheduled for that day. But I did need to row a gearboat and set up camps in Hells Canyon, which involves lots of contact between a finger and things that make you want to scream.

This trip was a joint production with local outfitter Winding Waters River Expeditions in Joseph and Plate & Pitchfork from Portland, run by Erika Polmar who organizes dinners at farms, orchards, ranches and so forth. You go see where your food comes from, meet the folks growing it, then a hotshot chef whips up a blowout meal right there with fancy tablecloths and all. Craig Nichols of 6 Ranch, just outside Enterprise, is also a river guide, so the guests saw Corriente cattle before and after a professional butcher had processed the meat while keeping their hand out of the way of the blade.

We ate well. Real well. Guest chefs were Leather Storrs and Joseph Hickey from the restaurant Noble Rot in Portland. I had a few questions for them about names. Noble Rot has something to do with wine grapes and Leather is on his birth certificate as his actual middle name. John is his first name and he figured there were plenty of Johns, not many Leathers, so he went that route. I’d probably do the same, except my given name is Jonathan Polyester Rombach.

One of the guests on the trip was Rick Steves, as in Rick Steves the travel guy who steers more visitors around Europe than all the cab drivers and train conductors combined, through his guide books, TV and radio programs.

Interview with Steves. Note the bandaged ring finger.

Paul and Penny Arentsen, owners of Winding Waters, met Steves in Europe a while ago and invited him and his girlfriend Trish out here to Wallowa County for this combo trip with primo food on a rafting adventure. It was a great trip and a perfect finish to the rafting season. Although I’m having trouble adjusting back to my own cooking after meals prepared by professional chefs. And I’ve completely lost my appetite for venison finger steaks.

Here’s a couple fun facts – Leather Storrs, the chef, is the son of the architect who designed the World Forestry Center building in Portland. I’m headed to that very place this week, where my dad, Jim Rombach, will be inducted into the Forestry Leadership Hall of Fame. I’m awful proud of him. Dad’s buddy, Bob Tokarczyk, is also becoming a Hall of Famer. I didn’t realize there was a Hall of Fame for forestry before this, but I’ve always wanted a baseball signed by a Hall of Famer and now it looks like I’ll get two autographs. Nice work you guys.

 Jon Rombach, a local columnist for the Chieftain, can type with nine fingers if he has to.

The physics of school time

Forgot to put this up last month. 

"And Furthermore" column, Wallowa County Chieftain, September 2012.

In line at the grocery store the other day, I was next to a dad and his daughter. She was maybe twelve years old and the checkout person smiled at her and asked, “Ready for school to start?”

There was a pause. A brief moment where you could see the girl check her first impulse and sift out the options on how she might answer. Her hesitation right there is the best example I’ve seen of what it is to be civilized. Because the genuine response from any kid asked by a smiling adult if they’re ready for summer to be over should be to immediately attack the adult taunting them. Just a wild shin-kicking, scratching assault to get across the message that, no, I’m not ready for school to start and here’s what you get for reminding me.

Instead, this well-mannered young girl thought it over. Her eye twitched a little. Then she forced a smile and said quietly, “I guess.” The checkout person smiled. The dad smiled. Even I smiled. I’m not sure what we were smiling about. What child is ever ready for summer to end? What kind of question is this? We don’t smile and ask prisoners who were just denied parole if they’re ready to go back in the slammer. Well, maybe we do. I’ve never served on a parole board so I could be wrong about that.

I think it’s a cruel practice to be asking students, and teachers for that matter, if they’re ready to go sit in that classroom for another whole year. But now that I think about it, we should rub it in more often. It makes a nice incentive for these kids to work toward graduation. I’m all for education, don’t get me wrong. School taught me to cherish the knowledge that I’ll never have to go to school again. And now I get to torment people who do have to sit in a classroom. That’s the real power of a diploma.

Kids, let’s get you started on your exciting new season of learning with a quick science lesson. You may be wondering, as I did when I was your age, what makes the hands of a clock in a classroom not move. Simple. But first, you have to understand the phenomenon of summertime moving faster than other times of the year. Let’s begin.

More sunbeams in the summer come through windows and land on calendars, which heats the molecules on the pages and causes them to speed up. So the days move faster. It’s pretty basic science. And because Ma Nature balances her checkbook, there’s an equal and opposite reaction through something called thermo-time dynamics which reduces the viscosity on the throwout bearings inside clocks during the colder months. This gets pretty technical, but just know that the basic forces at work here are beyond your control and it’s best if you try not to look at the clock. Another basic law of the universe is the Observer Effect, where the act of observation alters the thing you’re investigating. So basically, when you look at the clock in the classroom you stop time.

See, learning is fun. And after you grow up to be big and smart like all of us grownups asking if you’re ready to go back to school, you can apply these lessons to any field you want. Like brain research. You could do your doctoral thesis on the response of children who are asked if they’re ready for school to start. Measure how many pounds of resistance it takes for the child to not say what they’re really thinking, then divide that by how glad you are that summer is over, because now you’re all grown up and can’t wait for your own kids to be back in school.

So enjoy your time in the classroom. It isn’t so bad. You’ve got, uh . . . the holidays coming up. And there’s recess. Crayons. See, there’s lots of stuff to like about school. So learn a bunch and be nice to your teachers. And I’ll let you in on a secret – after you graduate and start working, you’ll find that office clocks don’t move any faster. If you don’t believe me just ask your teachers.

Eating the Scenery

 Furthermore Chieftain column, August 2012

It’s a shame I can’t talk myself into living somewhere crowded or ugly, where the odds would be much better for making big piles of money. I prefer the big mountains, trees and pretty stuff out here over big paychecks. It may not do much for my financial bottom line, but there’s another sort of bottom line and sometimes you’ve got to choose.

 People say you can’t eat the scenery. That’s supposed to be a reason to leave somewhere you like to move somewhere you don’t. Well, I’ve got a cookbook in the works that should put this can’t-eat-the-scenery argument to rest. I might even throw in a recipe or two for heavily populated areas, where there’s no scenery to be concerned about eating but the air is so thick you have to chew it first to get it down.

To eat the scenery in Wallowa County you will need one large mixing bowl, a pair of hiking boots, a dull kitchen knife from Soroptomist, a cutting board made from barnwood at least 80 years old, spices, whisk and an old iron skillet you got from someone you like.

 Allow plenty of time to gather ingredients for your scenery, because just like the grocery aisles in Wallowa County you will likely run into friends while shopping. Visiting with these people will take a while. Don’t rush it. This is the marinade. It’s part of the process. For spicy dishes, try talking about wolves or something to add some heat.

One of my favorite scenery dishes for special occasions is a nice batch of Zumwalt camas cakes with wildflower skewers over a bed of whole grain Hells Canyon. There’s a lot of flavors going on in this one, so don’t overdo it. Too much Hells Canyon can overpower the subtle textures of Zumwalt essence.

 For breakfast, you can’t go far wrong with a Ruby Peak frittata and a side of sesame scree, then add a dollop of Ice Lake snowfield. To sweeten it up, run a drizzle of mountain meadow syrup over the top. Any mountain meadow will do, but I get mine from the aspen grove up by Aneroid.

Chesnimnus hawthorn meat cakes are a stout hearty meal in the fall or winter. Sprinkle on a handful of habanero Hurricane Creek pine nuts, best gathered during a stroll up to Slick Rock on a nice day with a happy dog.

Many of these recipes are seasoned with an all-around spice I’ve developed that includes equal portions of Upper Imnaha, finely ground Bowlby stone, Tick Hill at sunset, Loop Road tamarack, Mount Joseph avalanche chute and pepper. It really brings out the flavors.

 The dessert chapter of the Wallowa County Scenery Cookbook includes Hat Point Road Crispies, Candied Lostine Canyon Fritters, Floating On Your Back in Wallowa Lake in August Bars and Lemon Rattlesnake Grade Sherbert.

It’s been slow going trying to finish this cookbook. One problem is the view out the window of my writing cabin requires a lot of looking at. Then rivers need to be floated, sundowns demand attention and walks need to be taken. City sidewalks are direct, but sidewalks out here can mean you end up meandering off to the side of whatever trail you intended to take. It’s all very time consuming. But if you do it right, the time it takes gives something back. A balanced diet is important.

I’ll get this cookbook done one of these days and hand a copy to anyone who tells me you can’t eat the scenery. The real problem with Wallowa County scenery isn’t whether you can eat it or not, it’s still being hungry for more. So remember to mix in your morels, venison, huckleberries, steelhead and whatever else with where you got them, stir, let simmer and enjoy. Bon appetit.

Radio Dave Nelson

And Furthermore, Wallowa County Chieftain July 4, 2012

Anybody remember that TV show ‘Northern Exposure‘ from the ‘90s? It was set in a little Alaskan town with a radio station that had a guy who just talked about whatever. That struck me as something I wouldn’t mind doing. 

So when I moved here to this little Oregon town I saw the KWVR Radio office and thought I’d give it a shot. Walked in, met the manager Dave Nelson and remember thinking his voice, which sounded like a thunderstorm approaching, had no business coming out of such a compact person. He looked more like a horse jockey than a disc jockey, with a voice like Bill Knox.

Dave asked if I had radio experience. I said yes, I watched a lot of Northern Exposure. He stared at me and said he didn’t understand. I said the TV show. He said he didn’t watch TV. I made my apologies for being an idiot and got up to leave. He said to leave my number in case something came up. And it did. I got a great job at KWVR and loved it. Later on I met some big city radio folks at a broadcasting convention and they shook their heads after hearing how I got into the business. They had seen Northern Exposure but insisted it just doesn’t work that way. Nobody just walks in and gets a radio job. I asked if they’d ever been to the Wallowas. They said no. We all just stood there shaking our heads.

I’ve seen some hard workers in my day. Usually from a safe distance. But Dave Nelson put in more hours than most clocks. He’d be a couple hours into his workday by the time I showed up for the morning news. And he’d usually still be doing paperwork when I shut down a late-night broadcast and headed for home. In the winter I would describe the sun to Dave so it wouldn’t come as a shock once the days got longer.

Live radio can get hectic and Dave would manage a startling number of things in motion all at once. Not multi-tasking but simul-tasking. Big stations have engineers running the controls who just point at the announcer when it’s time to talk. KWVR announcers do it all, throwing the switches, watching the clock, timing the breaks and fitting everything in. I remember watching Dave during my training as he interviewed a Senator while also downloading a weather update, cueing up the crop report and drawing winners for the birthday giveaway all at once. Then he thanked the Senator, switched the mic on just in time and found the good parts in a news dispatch that had just showed up in the booth, reading and editing at the same time. That’s a real trick, to proofread on the fly like that. I could never pull it off. And his delivery never gave anything away during the chaos.

I was asked a lot what it was like to work with somebody who is so serious. But that’s not really the case. Dave’s sense of humor can be so tinder-dry, with a delivery so subtle that a joke wouldn’t combust for minutes, hours, sometimes a day or more. I like to point it out immediately when I think I’m being clever but Dave will wait it out. No telling how many of his jokes flew over my head without being picked up on radar.

Some folks still call him Radio Dave, though he shifted careers a while back and you may know him now as Dollar Stretcher Dave, where he manages the store. Next time you’re in there ask Dave to do a price check on something to hear the radio voice. Then ask him to do a weather report. He loves that.

Dave was a great boss and has been a great friend and I’m just pleased as can be to congratulate Dave and his bride-to-be Kathy O’Meara Shoemaker on their summer wedding coming up. 

For years Dave and I took turns reading the weather, so I’m going to jump in here with a forecast. Wedding meteorologists predict many happy years for Kathy and Dave, with nothing but blue skies and a perpetual happiness front. The forecast does call for one big shower, but it’s bridal. Congratulations, you two. We now return to our regularly scheduled Chieftain.

Oddfellows Secrets Exposed

Community Service With Parmesan

*Couple things . . . Go eat spaghetti Thursday, March 22nd at Community Connections in Enterprise. It costs 8 bucks, I think, but that comes with dessert, garlic bread and the warm glow of knowing you have done a noble deed, chipping in to keep a roof over the bargains at the Soroptomist thrift store (motto: saving the world one quarter at a time . . . not really their motto but it could be.)

Second thing: I never know whether it's spelled Soroptomist, or Soroptomists. 

Thirdly, it doesn't bother me too much.

Pretty Sure Don Swart Makes Up Spelling Bee Words

Muchas gracias to Zanni, Andi and Sue, the dominating force at the Rotary Spelling Bee last week where Oddfellows Rick Bombaci, Ralph Swinehart and myself were thoroughly trounced and humiliated.

Well, not humiliated. But we lost badly.

Our hope to take home the prize came crashing down. We have to pay for a super-expensive roof and it would have helped. Then, prior to the championship round, the finalist teams were asked what their charity of choice was.

(cue stirring movie music. Something with an orchestra . . .)

"Oddfellows, Oddfellows, Oddfellows" . . . all teams named the Oddfellows roof project as their charity of choice and the lights exploded like at the end of The Natural just because so much amazing was in the air and it was really just a nice moment.

So thanks to Rotary and the winning hospital team.

Now here's my last column, which touches on these matters of Oddfellows and Soroptomisteses' and roofs. Or rooves. I can't believe we lost a spelling bee.

And Furthermore: Chieftain column March, 2012

I have infiltrated a secret society in Wallowa County and worked undercover for the past year to expose the inner workings of the shadowy organization known as “The Oddfellows.” They advertise themselves as a fraternal organization, dedicated to community service. That’s a laugh. I’ve read The Da Vinci Code. I know all about these so-called brotherhoods, with their secret handshakes and hidden stairwells, treasure maps hidden in code on the facade of the courthouse. Ancient symbols. Tom Hanks. Unlikely plot twists. Oh yeah, sure I’ll join your “community service organization,” Oddfellows. Wink-wink.

I have been summoned to monthly gatherings in the underground lair of a basement chamber in the Oddfellows complex. It’s cosy. Entrance is gained by three staccato knocks, a pause, then rapping out the tune of “Chopsticks” with your knuckles. A member inside then grants access with the code phrase, “Just come in, you don’t need to knock.”

These meetings appear to focus on eating dinner and talking about how they need to raise money to pay for fixing the roof. Symbolism, I’m sure. Oddfellow Steve Arment demonstrates a gift for the dark arts of barbecued meats and interesting casseroles. Kim Phelps presents items from his pantry that are more of an anthropology seminar than a potluck offering. I suspect at least one of his cookbooks was authored by Druids.

This Phelps character seems to be the brains of the operation. Also Kendrick Moholt. And Don McAlister. I’ve heard those three routinely use Latin words to make jokes that I don’t understand, but I laugh anyway so as not to blow my cover. Richard Hobbs is also a sharp one. And Ralph Swinehart, aka The Engineer . . . Rick Bombaci, Arment, Getty ‘The Falcon’ Pollard . . . really all of these guys are the brains of the outfit. Which leaves me greatly outnumbered.

I haven’t learned a secret handshake yet, but I keep asking and the guys tell me they’ll teach me one but they have to make it up first. These layers of secrecy are impressive. Like an onion ring. I must somehow gain their trust and keep them from suspecting my plan to let the world know exactly what goes on inside that Oddfellows Hall. I’m juggling with fire. Walking a thin tightrope.

They claim their objective is to keep the Oddfellows Hall open to the public. This seems to hold up. You can rent the building, next to the Enterprise Library, for $10 bucks an hour. So they’re not getting rich there. Just trying to keep up with heating the place. Taekwondo, belly dancing and ballet classes, concerts and lectures have all taken place on the main floor. The Soroptomist thrift store downstairs is where the traffic in treasure and priceless artifacts takes place. This arrangement is curious, because rather than disguise the fencing operation, they openly advertise hours when valuable items can be purchased far below market value. That money is then laundered in a clever scheme where the Soroptomists donate it to good causes and give scholarships. On the surface this Soroptomist ring appears to be run by an army of tireless volunteers who work long hours to benefit Wallowa County. In reality . . . well, that appears to be the reality. 

I’ve decided to go public with my investigation because the Oddfellows are plotting something big. I can feel it. And they’ve been talking about it.

The Oddfellows are counting on a big payoff from a shipment of imported Italian substances to be repackaged and sold to the public. “Operation Spaghetti Feed” is scheduled to go down March 22 at the Community Connection building.

I say we play along with their little game and see where it leads. You can gain access to this Oddfellow and Soroptomist “Spaghetti Feed” and see for yourself what these people are up to. Here’s a code phrase to get you in the door: “psst . . . here’s a little something to offset the hundred-thousand clams it’ll take to fix up that building.”