We just passed through Portland. My secret husband and I (it's a long story if you're interested in reading it here) were unsettled. We left England and spent about nine months visiting friends and family in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. We housesat and did odd jobs in Los Angeles and Mendocino. Our good friends in Portland and Seattle invited us to visit, and we imagined, after zig-zagging across the United States, we had a good sense of where we wanted to live.
Portland was just another stop.
But then, our friend picked up a hitchhiker - hitchhiking still seemed safe in 1978 - who wanted to rent her house for the summer. We jumped at the chance. This despite the fact that I had no concept of a houseboat, so imagine that we would squeeze into the hull of a sailboat for three months.
The boat floated on the Willamette River flowing through downtown. It was rickety, no more than a shabby warehouse floating on giant logs covered in lush green moss. The first summer felt like a vacation. When a neighboring houseboat became available, we dove right in.
Renting a boat was dirt cheap. And, supposedly, the prices were quite high there.
Our Land Land Land, ironically named, owned about half of the nine houseboats on the small mooring, essentially a floating slum. Each boat appeared as if it could, in a strong current, break apart and drift down the river like a pile of broken sticks.
The old timers on the mooring said the houseboats were built in the late 1800s when people moved upriver to avoid paying property taxes. A huge two-story boat near us was said to have once served as a bordello and a floating gambling hall. If the police became suspicious, the outlaws simply pulled up anchor and floated down the river.
Among the river rats, it's hard to tell which story is true and which is fish tale. I hardly cared.