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Terry McQuilkin
Laura Damiani
Jen Lindsey
Jennifer Rowan
Harriett Smith
Masthead Photo:
Eugene
by Laura Damiani
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LSA News
No. 87, February 2008
Stephanie Midkiff
(continued)
I came out to Eugene a few months ahead of my husband who had to finish
a kitchen remodel on our house and get it ready to sell. So I drove
across country from Kentucky in March with the bare necessities in my
little red Miata and my bicycle strapped to the back. It took me 5 days
because I didn't want to drive after dark, and I even splurged for
motels instead of sleeping in rest areas — which Gary are I are
still prone to do! Coming into Denver on the heels of an afternoon
spring snowstorm, I decided to stop early for the night rather than try
to get across Vail Pass in the snow, in the dark, in a little car with
no traction. As I delayed my departure the next morning till most of
the snow had melted, I heard on the radio that there had been a traffic
fatality on Vail Pass the night before, so I was just as glad I had
waited. I also remember waking up in Baker City to the news of the
Heaven's Gate mass suicide and being fascinated by that and thinking,
"Who is ever going to want to buy that house now?"
The drive west on I-84 along the Columbia River Gorge was very exciting
and beautiful — the sky was that dramatic gray-blue against the
river and mountains, and it all seemed so huge. Finally I drove into
Eugene on a rainy Thursday evening to a house where I'd arranged to rent
a room for a week. After a week, the people said just pay them whatever
I had planned to spend for renting a room elsewhere and stay with them.
Those people are still two of my dearest friends here in Eugene.
I settled in — going to work, to Down to Earth, to Saturday
Market.
The first time I went to Saturday Market, there was a young woman
walking around with no top on. I called Gary and said, "You're not
going to believe this!" He couldn't wait to get out here, and sure
enough, the first time he went to Saturday Market, he was rewarded!
I figured we would rent an apartment while we looked for a house to buy
once Gary arrived, but he said he didn't want to move furniture twice
and to just go ahead and buy a house. We had actually seen an
interesting neighborhood while here for our December 1996 visit, but I
couldn't remember how to get back there, so he gave me vague directions
over the phone. And that's where we ended up buying. I moved in a
couple of months before he arrived, borrowing a foam sleeping pad and
buying a refrigerator. I would sit out on the front porch and eat my
dinner. Gary arrived with the moving van, and the yellow lab —
long gone now — riding shotgun, on the day the radio announced (I
had no TV) Princess Diana's death.
It's funny how events are fixed in time, like Heaven's Gate and Princess
Diana's death. I've been in Eugene almost 11 years now, and while we
still miss family and friends in Kentucky, we've never looked back.
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