The Merchants of Warm in Everyday Ramblings

“The people with whom you share the suffering of sudden growth are linked in magical ways, and these can be the people who really know you best.” — Jon Adams

This is the iconic house in the little close in neighborhood in which I live. It is a short block down and two houses over. The white house to the right that you can barely see is where “Jane’s House of Prostitution” was in the late 60s and early 70’s.

Apparently, (though I have not confirmed this through secondary sources) in the 60’s one of the young women of the house absconded with a customer’s wallet and he came back with barbed wire and a hammer and a brutal murder took place.

I had the street address from the dissertation of the Psychedelic Supermarket and when I went out to look at it yesterday after writing the previous post I ran into a neighbor I don’t see that often, a guy about my age that takes care of his demented mother in the yellow house on the corner.

As I was baffled by the address I engaged him in conversation. He was a fountain of fascinating information. I was literally standing in front of where the hippie supermarket had been. It was across the street from his place.

Originally a kosher meat shop and slaughterhouse it was torn down in the seventies and a guy from about five blocks up moved his beautiful historic house onto the foundation and the lot. And then he restored it. That is the house (with the huge mimosa tree out front), similar in vintage to the one pictured here.

My confidant explained that the house had been turned from its original orientation.

I have lived here seven years and walk by that house practically every day and had no idea it had been moved there. He showed me the sidewalk on the corner and it is worn down but still visible is a peace sign and a bunch of names all from 1970.

He gave me the name of the family that owns most of the rentals in the area. He told me about the drayage barn down the street.

Oh, and Jane’s name actually was Rusty.

Then I walked down to where the house used to be and talked to the handsome cat Leandro’s mom (who is the gardener responsible for many of the flowers I post here) and she had no clue that another house had been across the street that was still in the neighborhood.

She has a wonderful colorful house with a fig in back that must have been planted by an Italian family. She knows this because the artist who lives on the corner of that block wrote a history of the area!

She told me his name and I found the whole book online.

Then this morning I found a paper written by someone (a much better writer than the guy writing the dissertation and where I found the above quote, which I thought useful for my Caregivers too) the Oregon Historical Society about the coffeehouse folk scene here in the late 60’s. And it turns out that my church was one of a number of local churches that started a series of coffeehouses with a coalition.

The first one of these was called The Catacombs and after that closed the coalition office (also called the Catacombs) moved to umm, right where I am typing this.

Oh, if only I could get that magnolia tree out there to talk! The things it has seen.

I am just absorbing all this stuff but one of the few poems that I have written in the last years that was any good was about the houses talking on the block that my confidant yesterday lives in.

Rich rich material here. The Merchants of Warm was a “Hip self-help organization” that Mr. Uris, the author of the dissertation started.

Oh and the mouse I mentioned a few posts back? Carlo prevailed.

May it have an auspicious rebirth.

Last updated June 07, 2015