AN INTERVIEW WITH THE MAYOR OF THE CROSSING: HIPPY RECIPES

In the early ‘70s, Lydia dreamt of buying a sweet farm house on the golden mounds of land in Vallyford. When her dream house was bought out from under her nose, she sulked. It was a tight market. This single hippie gal working part-time in a bookstore didn’t have a lot of money to compete.

“Have you ever considered living in The Crossing?” a friend asked. Lydia had never heard of the place. “I want to live in the country, not in town,” Lydia clarified. But her friend took her down to show her this place in the city that was not really citified at all.

“This is nasty!” Lydia scowled, looking at the mess of falling-down, garbage-riddled houses and the abandoned cars littering the neighborhood. “Why would I want to live down here in this junky place?” she asked her friend.

A few months later, on an impulse, she went back down to The Crossing. She saw a For Sale sign in front of a burned-down house. Eight dead cars were lined up bumper to bumper beneath the limbs of an old dead apple tree. The only promising aspect of the place was a beehive with bees hovering around.

Lydia scribbled down the number from the faded sign and thought, I’ll just call and see what is for sale. Maybe it was the beehive or the old wringer washer.

It turned out the whole house was for sale.

“How much?” Lydia inquired.

“Fifty-five,” said the family representative.

“Fifty-five thousand?”

“Fifty-five hundred!”

Lydia froze, considering in her head the plot of land above the river. It was an opportunity to have a real place of her own. The original owners had died and left it to their son, who accidentally burned the place down. The house and land was only nuisance to the remaining family.

So for fifty-five hundred dollars, Lydia became the owner of the six junk-cluttered, overgrown lots. The property came with a beehive, three fruit trees, a wringer washer, two ponies, eight cars, a cruddy, rusted-out bus, and a burned-out house.

The upside was that from where she stood from her back porch, she had a magnificent view of the river. The water beneath was shallow, and round river rocks peeked through the surface. It looked amazing straight, and even better when she was a wee stoned on Mary Jane. (It was the 70's.)

At the time, the neighborhood was filled with the most motley of residents.. In the old ferry crosser’s house, now Gus’s, about 10 hippies lived with an equal number of pigmy goats and numerous dogs, cats, and chickens that roamed, ate, and peed and pooped freely about the yard and inside the house. There was Don Riddle with his masses of collectibles piled so high that his house was nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding trash. Everywhere, he had mounds of metal and scrap lumber, discarded furniture, sinks, toilets, bedsprings, and more. Across the street from Don was the cat lady, so called because of the hundreds of stray cats she kept. Daily she wandered about the neighborhood, a cigarette hanging from her mouth, yelling at some ghost man: “Goddamn son of a bitch!”

An old lady named Pearl lived in what for years was referred to as the pink house. Other houses staggered along the area we call the Habitat, which was then called East Crossing. Here lived the real ne’er-do-wells, essentially squatters who just set up house in these abandoned houses.

“I just dropped out when I moved down here!” Lydia explains. “Me and my boyfriend at the time totally gutted the house and remodeled it. Not in a refined sort of way, but we made it livable.”

There were a whole lot of hippies and freaks and geeks who migrated in and out. Lydia didn’t care because it was the ‘70s and this was what being alternative was all about. Partiers came and lived for a while. Lovers came and went, or more often she threw them out.

One of the guys who kept showing up at the parties was Billy. Pictures from this time show him, gazelle-like, leaping across the river, or standing wide-eyed next to a sunflower, lean and naked, grinning happily. There are also pictures of Lydia, angular and with ruffled hair, showing off big barrels filled with ripe red tomatoes, or sitting among the wild flowers which dappled her yard in sprays of blues, reds and yellows.

“One day the cops drove by and I realized I had a whole shed filled with marijuana--150 kilos.” Lydia wasn’t really involved with selling drugs, but when her friends needed a place to store their pot supply, she didn’t see any harm in giving them the use of her shed. “When I saw the cops come down I realized I could go to jail.”

It was time to clean house. She shooed everyone away. “It was ‘Out! Out! All of you, out!”

By then, the Hawaiian guy named Billy had settled in. Pretty soon their daughter Caitlin was born, followed by Nicole. Both of them were born right in Lydia's bedroom with the help of a midwife, surrounded by friends and comforted by the river waters.

Through these years, the neighborhood changed. Lydia’s smart and tender stewardship of the neighborhood guided this change. She brought a better class of hippie to The Crossing, people who kept their goats out of their houses and tended to their vegetable gardens.

Lydia slowly replaced her wild hippie garden with a rather stately collection of well-organized flowerbeds.

In the early 1970's, The Crossing was the armpit of Chinook. Today, the neighborhood is no longer “nasty.” Today. it is a sweetly eccentric.

Lydia attends city hall meetings and forums to keep her finger on the pulse of what "those bureaucrats" might be planning that could affect her little river community. Some, I’m sure, consider her a crotchety busybody. I smile at this because I’ve seen pictures of Lydia the free spirit sitting along the river like a naked and beautiful river nymph.

It feels as if it’s only through Lydia’s good graces that we are allowed to be part of the community. She is the Chieftain-mayor of this tribe at The Crossing. It’s a good idea to bring her food offerings. These simple offerings might do the trick . Bring your sarong. You may be inspired to loose your inhibitions and do your own hippie dance on the river's sandy bank.

SPAGHETTI SQUASH AND FRESH VEGETABLE TOSS

Preheat oven to 425

1 medium size spaghetti squash

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cups lightly steamed broccoli florets

1 cup shredded carrots

1 cup chopped green onions

½ cube butter

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon chili pepper flakes

Salt and pepper to taste

1 cup mixed fresh herbs, such as dill, basil, oregano, parsley

Cut spaghetti squash in half and remove innards. Rub with olive oil and bake for 20 minute.

Remove squash meat with a large spoon and place in a large bowl. Separate strands as much as possible. Melt butter on hot squash and add olive oil, vegetables and herbs and parmesan cheese. Toss gently and serve while still hot.

THE ORIGINAL VEGETARIAN HIPPIE SANDWICH

Ingredients:

Thick slices of whole grain bread

Sharp cheddar cheese Slices

Tomato slices

Alfalfa or other sprouts

Avocado

Mayonnaise and mustard

Cumin, salt and red chili (optional)

lime slice (optional)

(It is a matter of taste if you want to keep your avocado in slices or make into a avocado spread. If you want to do the avocado spread then mash the avocado and add cumin and red chili and a dash of life juice.)

Spread mayonnaise on one piece of whole grain bread and mustard on the other piece. If using the avocado spread, then place a generous layer of spread on the piece of bread with mayonnaise. Layer in this order: Cheese slices, tomatoes, avocado and sprouts. Top with second bread slice. Cut in half and enjoy the simplistic, but beautifully complimentary flavor combination of this rustic sandwich.

BROWN RICE, TOFU AND VEGETABLE BOWL

BROWN RICE, TOFU AND VEGETABLE BOWL

Ingredients:

Oil for stir-fry

1 cup chopped firm tofu- dried with paper towels as best as possible.

2 cloves garlic chopped

1 red bell pepper.

1/2cup chopped green onions

1 stalk of celery chopped

1 small zucchini chopped

1 yellow summer squash chopped -(or enough of combined zucchini and yellow squash to make 1 cup

1 cup chopped broccoli

1/2 cup chopped cabbage or other greens

2 cups cooked brown rice

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Vegetarian bouillon cube

4 Tbls soy sauce

1 Tbl honey

2 Tbls rice vinegar

1 tsp chil pepper

salt and pepper to taste

I like to use an old fashioned electric fry pan for this recipe. It has good heat and you can sauté multiple items at once. If you don't have a fry pan a wok or a large frying pan will work. . Start by putting a few tablespoons of your favorite cooking oil in the fry pan. Turn the fry pan up to 400 degrees. Place the tofu cubes in the fry pan and brown on all sides. Push to one side of the fry pan. Add the vegetables, one by one and in order, stirring with a wooden spoon. Turn heat down to 300 degrees. Cook until just tender- about five minutes. Add the brown rice and parsley. Mix vegetables, rice and tofu together. Combine the seasonings, soy sauce, vinegar and honey together in a small bowl. Stir into other ingredients. Stir fry another two minutes to settle the flavors. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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