TRIBAL CONNECTIONS: SALADS

The Crossing has its crossroads. As at all crossroads, magical things happen here. Well, mostly we just sort of congregate near the crossroads on summer mornings in our pajamas, coffee cups in hands, gossiping and admiring each other’s children and laughing about our dogs. And there is plenty to gossip about. The connections and mischief of those that live here is always a fantastic subject.

First, some introductions. When you get to the bottom of hill you pass a slight kink in the road before it straightens and heads due west in the same path as the river. This is Water Ave.

If you stay to the left, you’re on Crossing Street. The Crossing is where the ferry used to run, connecting the North Side folks to the South Side folks before the turn of the century. This little community sprang up essentially as a ferry community. At one time it had double the current number of houses.

Only two houses remain from early settlements on Crossing Street. At the end, an old house of fine wood and stone looks out over the river. The house’s owner, Gus, is our resident doctor. He treats our poison ivy and hand slivers. Gus is soap-opera-doctor handsome, complete with a Dr. Zhivago moustache. He studies Buddhism and is fascinated by mushrooms. Somewhere in the Crossing, enormous Elephant Ear mushrooms grow wild. Gus guards their secret location with diligence.

Gus’s property extends north to a large lot where he has arranged an impressive garden of granite. Next to this is the little white rental house on the corner. The residents here rotate every few years. Right now, a young artist named Ethan keeps strange hours and has an old, rusted bedspring on his back deck that he seems to be fashioning into a sculpture.

Across from Ethan’s is Concetta’s cedar-plank cottage that’s perched on a slight embankment, so you have to climb up little steps to get to her front door. Odd, found objects adorn her overgrown yard. A real stuffed crow lurks in the branches of a tree. A cowboy boot has become birdfeeder. A wrought-iron headboard stands as a gate to a flowerbed. Concetta is a potter who shapes clay into soul-inspired forms that tell her stories of grief, love, and laughter.

The south side of the street hosts the main row of houses, beginning with Lydia’s house, which is really more of a commune than a single-resident home. The “arrangements” of this household are one of our favorite sources of gossip. Lydia’s salmon-colored home has numerous odd-shaped add-ons to accommodate her two raven-haired daughters, Caitlin and Nicole, an ex-husband, Billy, and one of Billy’ four other ex-wives.

Lydia’s large yard has beautiful, well-tended flowerbeds: an assortment of lilies, perennials, and annuals she constantly updates. Rose bushes and dahlias surround birdbaths, stepping-stones create walking paths, and behind the house, a wide deck provides a sweeping view of the river. It is appropriate that she has a yard of such grandeur; she is, after all, the self-proclaimed mayor of The Crossing.

Almost everything and everybody in The Crossing can be traced back to Billy—our handyman. Currently, as I mentioned, he lives with Lydia and one of his other ex-wives, Kathy. But he really just lives everywhere.

Billy has left his mark throughout the neighborhood, through children he’s fathered, women he’s loved, and houses he’s remodeled. Because of his usefulness and charm, women seem to take care of him. A Hawaiian Japanese man who still looks thirty even though he’s in his mid-sixties, he goes barefoot in summer and flirts without discretion with all the women of The Crossing. Appearing at my door with a kitchen faucet to replace my old leaky one, he strokes its voluptuous curves: “It’s very feminine, don’t you think?” he asks me, with his chocolate eyes twinkling mischievously.

Billy has seduced and nurtured the whole neighborhood landscape through his sensuous eye and crafty hands. He is credited with having created most of The Crossing’s unique charm: the picket fences with their angled tops, an assortment of cairns, and especially the wild Japanese knotweed that he brought in from somewhere, that looks much like bamboo, but grows more profusely and is far less manageable. These upward-bound green stalks that we sometimes refer to as “Billy’s penises” sprout up in our yards and flowerbeds to form little Asian-style groves all around The Crossing.

I live in the next house with my son, Marcus. It’s large and dark, cobbled together into cumbersome spaces that are almost unlivable. I rent the house from Brenda, who left The Crossing with a broken heart fourteen years ago when her marriage fell apart. She’s anxiously trying to find a man to move back here with her, a man with a chainsaw and a truck. Despite its dilapidation and awkward layout, I am happy to have been able to raise my son within its walls. It’s been safe and warm.

West of me live Hank and Morgan and their triplets: Nathan, Cody, and Tanner. The triplets tumbled into the neighborhood like a handful of marbles five years ago and delight us all with their numerous antics. Stomping about with nude bottoms and mismatched plastic boots, they make the rest of us, with our matching shoes, seem quite dull. They color with crayons on walls. A reasonable living-room arrangement has been replaced with a concoction of climbing toys and makeshift sheet tents. A large-screen TV beams cartoons almost constantly. The triplets have strained Hank and Morgan’s relationships. This comes up at the crossroads. Is Hank moving out or will they just remodel again? Maybe another family excursion to the Oregon Coast?

The neatest, and by “neat” I mean the house seems to have been constructed using an actual layout and has paint trim that makes sense, belongs to Lisa and John and their kids. The whole family seems sprung from the pages of Sunset Magazine. You can imagine them in a glossy photo on their back deck overlooking the river, all big smiles and blonde hair. Lisa’s son from a previous marriage, Leonard, is one of our neighborhood’s precious people. Stricken with cerebral palsy, and locked into a mind of an infant, he is cared for with great tenderness by these beautiful and kind people.

We miss the man who lived in the tall and narrow burnt-orange house adjacent to John and Lisa’s place. His name was Joe. He was friendly, but not too loud. His prolific tomato plants grew along the street, and he would offer these juicy red globes up to me when I walked by during late summer. But then he sold his home to this rather odd, unfriendly woman who sings opera, AND, who complains about our free-range dogs.

When we gather outside in summer for an early evening barbeque, strains of Bolero accost our ears.

“She must be crazy,” we whisper at the crossroads. “I wish she’d just move out.”

Ralph lives in the last and most dilapidated house of The Crossing, a monstrous green structure teetering on the hill above the river and flanked by a wild bank of land to the west.

Ralph is a recluse.

Once a young man from across the river saw Ralph’s house and thought he needed help. He decided to be a Good Samaritan. He rode his bike into The Crossing just as Hank was loading the triplets in the V-bus. The young man stopped to confirm that he was heading in the direction of the big green house where that poor old man lived. Before Hank could get the triplets buckled into their car seats, the young man was coming back on his bike, looking a bit ruffled.

“He said he was going to shoot me if I didn’t get off his porch!”

All I’ve ever seen of Ralph is his large head covered in a froth of white hair and beard as he drives his van through The Crossing.

The neighborhood is on an edge: the edge of the river, the edge of the city. You could say the people here live on edges as well: the edges of sanity, reason, creativity, society, stability. We feel protected on this shelf of land, like a lost tribe who has found safe haven away from the elements and society’s abrasive intrusions.

This connects us! We are the tribe of The Crossing.

Salads

The secret to creating a good salad is really in making sure it looks pretty. This is true. You’re eyes take in the information from the brain and then the brain tells the taste buds that something really yummy is coming their way. You’ve won them over without taking a bite. There is some sort of weird mojo around color too. If the colors are a nice mix, then it’s going to taste good. More color. More flavor. I don’t care if science does or does not prove this. I believe it and there for, it’s true to me. If you believe, you can prepare salads with confidence. Just by looking at the ingredients spread out on the counter you’ll know what your salad needs: not more tart, smoky, sweet or salty, but more green,more red, more yellow. Oh and then there is the texture palette complimenting the color palette: velvety, cool, pebbly, dry, wet and the 100 different kinds of crunchy- nut crunchy, cool, juicy crunchy, dry crouton crunchy. Expand your salad vocabulary and you’ll never experience salads the same again. Be bold and plunge into the spectacular jungles of flavor variety found in your produce and condiment aisles.

Mixed Green Salad with Grilled Chicken and Blue Cheese

Tomato, Herb and Feta Salad

Spring Asparagus Salad with Almond Couscous

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Mixed Green Salad with grilled chicken and blue cheese

• 4 cups assorted spring greens

• 1 slivered red pepper

• 2 chicken breasts- drizzled with 2 Tbs soy sauce and 1 Tbs sweet molasses, 1 Tbs chopped fresh garlic, 1 Tbls olive oil and salt and pepper. Grilled or broiled about 20 minutes until done in center and sliced into bite size pieces.

• ¼ cups chopped green olives

• ¼ cup blue cheese

• 4 tablespoons virgin olive oil

• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced

• Fresh ground black pepper and salt and pepper to taste

Mix spring greens with olive oil, garlic and balsamic vinegar. Arrange chicken pieces, olives, red pepper slices and blue cheese on top of greens. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Mediterranean Summer Salad

• 1 cup finely chopped fresh basil

• 1 cup torn spinach leaves

• 1/2 cup artichoke hearts

• 1/2 cup kalamata olives sliced

• 4 vine-ripened tomatoes, chopped

• 1 cucumber, sliced

• 1/2 cup cooked pasta (optional- for a more heart saladl

• ½ cup crumbled feta cheese

• Juice of two lemons

• Fresh ground pepper

• Salt to taste

Mix herbs with tomatoes, sliced cucumber and feta cheese. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Toss lightly and add ground pepper and salt to taste.

Spring Asparagus Salad with Almond Couscous

• 3 cups fresh asparagus lightly steamed and cut into 3 each lengths.

• 2/3 cup uncooked couscous

• 1 cup water

• ½ cup yogurt

• ¼ cup virgin olive oil

• 1 tablespoon tahini

• 2 teaspoons ground ginger

• 1 teaspoon cumin

• ¼ cup mixture of lemon and orange juice

• ¼ cup golden raisins

• ½ cup slivered almonds

• 1/4 cup combination of oregano and cilantro

Bring water to a boil and couscous, return to a boil, and remove from heat. Cover with a lid and let sit for 5 minutes. Mix yogurt, olive oil, tahini, ginger and cumin. Mix with couscous in large bowl. Toss in steamed asparagus, raisins, oregano, almonds, cilantro and citrus juice. Chill for 1-2 hours and serve.