Blue Highways: Portland, Oregon

Unfolding the Map

Lots of stuff in this post.  We rarely get to visit a big city with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) because he tries to avoid them.  No avoiding Portland, however.  We'll look at some of the nefarious history of shanghaiing in Portland's past, and relate it to human trafficking today.  There are, count 'em, two musical interludes in this post.  What a deal!  Here's the map to see where Portland sits in the scheme of our journey!

Book Quote

"The river road came off the hills into the industrial bottoms of Portland and left no way but through the city; once committed to it, I went looking for oysters downtown in the area where drinking (Erickson's Saloon formerly had a bar running nearly eight hundred feet), whoring and shanghiing sailors were the main after-dark endeavors a century ago.  It was here that five-foot-tall Bunco Kelly kidnapped, by his own count, a thousand lubbers through his standard method of knockout drops, although his easiest haul was eight tramps he found drinking formaldehyde in an undertaker's basement; Kelly gathered them up and got them aboard ship by passing the dying men off as intoxicated."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 6

Downtown Portland with Mount Hood in background. Photo by David Wieprecht of the US Geological Survey. Click on photo to go to host page.Portland, Oregon Part 1

The description of Portland's Bunco Kelly, in LHM's quote above, led me to do a little bit of thinking.  We currently live in a world where, despite the fact that every country has officially outlawed slavery (the last country to do so was Mauritania as recently as 2007, though the practice remains there), the world has more slaves than at any other time in its history. The estimates range from 12 million to 27 million people living in conditions of slavery, a shocking statistic considering that we live in what is considered a modern and humane world.

In Bunco Kelly's time, slavery had been abolished in the United States for at least 20 years when he started his practice.  And to be fair, his trade in trafficking of humans was not considered slavery, though that might be a quibble.  Shanghaiing was officially known as impressment, and it had been used in official capacity by the British Royal Navy up until the defeat of Napoleon.  Impressment was the forcible recruitment of sailors, and was justified by the king's right to call out people for military service during a time of need.  For Britain, which had extensive holdings overseas, pretty much any time could qualify as a time of need.  Impressment agents would find men, usually those who were considered vagrants, and impress them aboard Navy ships.  Sometimes, individual Navy ships, plying the high seas and in need of personnel, would impress sailors and other men aboard ships that they stopped.  The result was the same regardless - the new sailors were obligated to serve a time aboard the ship and were penalized if they deserted their posts and were caught, frequently by flogging.

While the Royal Navy discontinued impressment after the Napoleonic Wars, the practice continued.  In various American ports a labor shortage of qualified seamen led American merchant ships to adopt shanghaiing, which was essentially the same practice.  However, instead of relying on the government and military agents to provide sailors, ships' captains relied on ruthless and unscrupulous characters called crimps.  These men would find ne'er-do-wells, usually in places like Portland's Skid Road or other such places in other American port cities, and then use various means including drugging them to bring them aboard ships.  Upon bringing the men aboard, the crimps would receive a fee per head after "signing them in" usually by forging a signature.  A successful crimp could make over $9000 a year, which averages out to over a quarter million dollars a year at today's prices.  Once the men were aboard, they could not leave the ship under threat of imprisonment until their time of duty was finished.  On board, ships operated like the company store in mining communities - the sailors were indebted to the captain for their clothes, food and other necessities, which were subtracted in advance from their pay.

Of course, it being an unscrupulous business, the crimps themselves were often unscrupulous.  LHM's quote relates how one of the most infamous shanghaiers, Bunco Kelly, was not above collecting his fee for dead men.  Kelly, whose legitimate occupation was as an hotelier, prowled the streets at night and brought in hundreds of men and women over the course of his dubious career.  Once he found a number of men who, thinking that they had broken into the basement of a bar, drank formaldehyde in the basement of a mortuary and were dying.  Kelly sold the men to captain, telling him that they were drunk and got $52 per head for them.  Imagine the captain's surprise when out at sea he tried to awaken dead men.  Kelly also once sold a dime-store carved Indian to a captain, getting $50 by wrapping him up and passing him off as unconscious.

Musical Interlude One

Here's a Jack White and Loretta Lynn song about Portland.  I usually don't do two musical interludes, but I'm getting into some heavy stuff in Part 2 and I don't want to give the wrong impression about Portland, which I hear is a fantastic place to live and work.

Downtown Portland at night. Photo at the Cassie and Dallin blog. Click on photo to go to host page.Portland, Oregon Part 2

What really stands out to me is the connection between shanghaiing, which the United States fully outlawed by 1915, and modern day techniques to traffick humans, especially women and children, into slavery.  Modern slavery is made up of women and girls often sold into prostitution.  Women can be literally "shanghaiied" by slavers who might use a drug like Rohypnol - the "date rape" drug - to sedate the women who then wake up in a nightmare scenario where they are forced to provide services to men for the profit of their captors and kept by various ways in bondage.  We often think of this as being a crime that is perpetrated in developing countries, but in fact human trafficking is present in developing and developed countries.  Europe and the United States both have problems in human trafficking - the United States in 2010 listed itself on the State Department's Report on Trafficking of Persons for the first time ever.  In the major cities, on the streets, the girls and women that you see along the routes favored by prostitutes are rarely ever in the business for themselves, but are at the mercy of pimps who force them to work day after day.  While legalized brothels in the United States and Europe may employ women who choose prostitution as a trade, many brothels, both regulated and unregulated, might have women that have been trafficked and forced into prostitution.  Many women from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia are forced into prostitution each year with promises of good jobs and money in Europe and America, only to find themselves expected to work off the debt of their passage through prostitution with the penalty of physical harm if they refuse to cooperate.

Since the beginning of the human race, people have found profit in buying and selling other humans for their various uses.  It has been called by what it is (slavery) and called other names to take some of the stigma away (indentured servitude, impressment, etc.).  Some places now considered wonderful places to live, like Portland, had these types of activities in their past.  A decade into the 21st century, the world has outlawed most forms of slavery, but paradoxically the world has the highest number of people in slavery conditions ever.  We still have slavery happening in the United States, which fought a civil war partly over whether all humans had the rights of freedom and liberty.  Humanity must now take the next step, and not just outlaw trade in humans, but eradicate the trade in humans that still exists despite all the best laws.

Musical Interlude Two

There are a couple of good songs about human trafficking in today's world.  I found this one with music by Crash Parallel called Rain Delays to be very meaningful.  If you want to see another that is also very meaningful and good, see She: A Song About Sex Trafficking.

If you want to know more about Portland

Concordia University
El.com: Portland
Food Carts Portland
Lewis and Clark College
The Oregonian (newspaper)
Portland's Best Food and Drink Blogs
Portland Food and Drink
Portland Oregon Magazine
Portland Mercury (alternative newspaper)
Portland State University
The Portland Tribune (newspaper)
Portlanders.com: 75 Best Portland Blogs of 2011
Reed College
Travel Portland
University of Portland
Wikipedia: Portland

Next up: Vancouver, Washington

Blue Highways: Salt Wells, Nevada

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) stops into a strange red building to find it's a brothel.  We go in with him, speculate about prostitution and sex scandals and such, have a beer and leave.  It's an industry in Nevada - so what can we say?  Click on the thumbnail at right for the map.

Book Quote

"I stopped for a beer in Salt Wells at a place called Maxi's.  If there was more to Salt Wells than that entirely Chinese-red building, I didn't see it.  An ornamental wrought-iron fence covered the front; the gate was locked.  Turning to leave, I noticed an arrow pointing to a button.  Push me.  I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I pushed, a dark face peered from a circle scraped on a window (painted red too), the gate clicked open, and I went inside where walls, ceiling, curtains, and lightbulbs were bright red.  A sign:

DANCE WITH THE LADIES
50¢
THREE FOR A DOLLAR.

"Below was a sticker, GO NAVY.  A saloon as peculiar as the desert.  That's when I realized it wasn't a desert saloon.  It was a desert cathouse.  Bold and plain, directly on U.S. 50, and flagrantly red from top to bottom."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 10

Closed Salt Wells brothel. Photo by Del at DelsJourney.com. Click on photo to go to site.

Salt Wells, Nevada

LHM is not very observant in this passage.  That this passage, dealing with prostitution and brothels, is the focus of this chapter shows to me that there is some kind of synchronicity in life.  The issue of prostitution has been buzzing around my ears for the past couple of weeks or so.

No, it's not any personal experience.  I've never had, nor sought out, any relations with prostitutes.  I have a tendency to believe that prostitution is taken up by few women who do it because they like it or consider it a career goal.  Rather, I believe prostitution is the refuge of women who, for one reason or another, have ended up in what truly is a dead end job, selling the last item on their life's shelf that can be sold.  I may be wrong, but it seems to be a career born out of desperate life circumstances or desperate emotional turmoil.  Because it is a product of desperation, people engaging in it can be exploited just as any other people in desperate situations.  They often are.  But that's just my personal opinion.  I respect the amazing capacity that we as people have to survive, but I wish for a day when bodies are not treated as commodities but as vessels containing something precious.

The synchronicity comes first from cooking.  Recently I agreed to make a spaghetti sauce that I've been preparing since the early 90s for my co-workers so that we could share it at an office lunch.  The sauce is called puttanesca, and if the history that I read about it is true, it's conception was just as interesting as the sauce is tasty.  I read that puttanesca was created during a time in Italy when any kind of promotion or advertising of prostitution was declared illegal.  Before, a red light or lantern was put in windows to alert prospective johns where to find the brothels.  Without advertising, what were the madames and prostitutes to do to lure in business?  The answer was to create a aromatic, pungent, full-bodied sauce for pasta that would feed johns, for a fee of course, but also give them a guidepost to the brothel.  Now, all johns had to do was follow their nose to get to a place of ill-repute.  The pasta is named after putta, the Italian word for whore.  Of course, if you read Wikipedia, you'll get a different story where it was invented in the mid-20th century at a restaurant.  Regardless, I love making the sauce, partly because it tastes so good, and partly because it may have such an interesting story to it.  Without the story, it would just be another kind of sauce.  With the story, it has something extra!  Even if the story isn't true - I prefer to think it is.

I also see synchronicity with this quote in one of the lead stories in Albuquerque's news.  The story originally started with the discovery of a prostitution ring centered in Albuquerque and encompassing Arizona and Colorado.  The organizer was a physics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University who has a summer home in Santa Fe, and who was arrested while online at a Starbucks in Albuquerque.  He apparently bought a website and turned it into a prostitution clearinghouse for an exclusive group of men.  Potential members were recruited by word of mouth.  New male members were put on probation until they had relations with a prostitute, and on the site the prostitute reported what happened and how much she was paid.  Members then moved up to "verified" and "trusted" status.  Prostitutes were recruited by a "Hunter's Club" made up senior members.  It was a complex ring, full of security members to foil police.  But eventually, the police were able to work a few of their detectives into "trusted" positions.

When the hammer fell, one of the people caught in the ring was a political science professor emeritus and former president of the University of New Mexico.  It was revealed that he was one of the ring's moderators and was a member of the "Hunting Club."  His office at the university was searched, and was found to contain pornography and sex toys.  His case is currently starting to work its way through the legal system.

Of course, now everyone is on edge because at some point, the names of the johns who utilized this service will become public.  Given that prices for a prostitute ranged between $250 and $10,0000, I'm sure that some pretty big names in town will be revealed to have been involved in this ring.

This episode tells me a few things.  One is that as long as there's a market for prostitution, it will continue to happen regardless of the penalties.  Men who use the service might be sexually addicted, emotionally hurting, or morally bereft, but they provide the demand.  On the other hand, prostitutes, for their own reasons, provide the supply.  It's a market exchange - no, excuse me, it's a black market exchange.  As a society, we attempt to reduce the supply by busting the prostitutes.  However, as long as the demand persists, fueled by social problems, the practice will continue.

Second, I'm a political scientist, and I never realized that we could be that interesting.  This political science professor, whom I've probably run into once or twice in the political science offices at the University of New Mexico, was living a double life unknown to his colleagues, his friends, and his wife.  True, it was kind of a sad double life, but still.  It makes you wonder what goes on with the people you know.  I realize that we only are allowed a chance to truly know a few people, and most of the time, we see the facade or the act masking the reality.

Back to Salt Wells.  I went through the place on my trip across US 50 in 2010, and never even noticed a red building.  I wonder if it's still there, 30 some odd years after LHM passed through?  I could see myself, at one time, being naive enough to blunder in, just like LHM, thinking it was just a strange bar.  Now, after years and lots of experiences and stories like the one above, I'm a bit jaded.  I realize that people are capable of anything that will hurt others and hurt ourselves.  Fortunately, I also believe that we are capable of doing great kindnesses to each other and that even in the midst of prostitution rings, there are those with the proverbial "hearts of gold" helping others in the best way they know how.

Musical Interlude

This song doesn't have to with prostitution, but it does have to do with sex.  It's My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult's Sex on Wheelz.  The video is one they did for Ralph Bakshi's Cool World movie.

If you want to know more about Salt Wells

It's a small place, and I couldn't find any mention of the brothel where William Least Heat-Moon stopped.  But, if you're interested in such things, here's a list of brothels in Nevada.

Travels in American Southwest: Bordellos and Brothels
Wikipedia: List of brothels in Nevada

Next up: Fallon, Nevada

Blue Highways: Ely, Nevada

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe turn onto the Loneliest Road in America with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) as he travels the bluest of the blue highways.  In Ely, at least when he went through, we find that the loneliness pervades his perception of the town.  My experience in Ely was of a quiet place, but not necessarily lonely.  But, we'll examine loneliness through the prism of a Nevada industry - the oldest profession in the world.  Click on the map thumbnail, to your right, and make Ely a little less lonely.

Book Quote

"Not everything that happens in Ely happens at the Hotel Nevada, but it could.  The old place is ready for it.  But that night the blackjack tables were empty, the slots nearly so, and the marbelized mirrors reflected the bartender's slump and a waitress swallowing a yawn...."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 5

"Tradition persists in Nevada.  You can see it, for example, in the whorehouses of Ely.  Prostitition is legal in White Pine County because miners, in order to work efficiently in the ground digging for this and that, traditionally require whores."

Blue Highways: Part 5, Chapter 6

Hotel Nevada in Ely, Nevada. Photo by Megan E. Kamerick.Ely, Nevada

So far along this virtual journey we have been taking with LHM, I have come across only a few places where his journey and my actual experience intersect.  Ely, Nevada is one of them.  In a previous post, I mentioned that I had persuaded my wife to drive to California to see my family.  Our route took us through Utah and then into Nevada on US Highway 50 to Ely, where we got a motel room and spent the night.  I'll include in this post some pictures we took there, including some of interesting public art murals that are sprinkled downtown.

It's interesting that LHM paints Ely as being so initially...unexciting...with his description of the Hotel Nevada and then turns around and writes about prostitution in Ely.  Prostitution is prurient, and somewhat exciting to read about, right?  However, I read this as a way of indicating the loneliness that is part of the Nevada experience.  Okay, maybe that's not LHM's intention but that's what his description brings to my mind, which is really the point of this blog.

Downtown Ely, Nevada. Photo by Megan E. Kamerick

As you drive into Nevada on Highway 50, the signs unmistakably identify that road as the Loneliest Road in America.  In addition, US Highway 6 joins Highway 50 near Ely, and my only other awareness of Highway 6 was in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, where way back in the state of New York Sal waits in the rain for a ride at the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River, intending to hitchhike Highway 6 out west, and has to take a bus back to New York City berating himself for a fool.  Standing at Bear Mountain Bridge in the rain, Sal feels a loneliness and, not being able to handle it, heads back to New York City to start his journey in another way.

I am also struck that prostitution, seemingly out of touch with a lonely hotel and the loneliest road in America, is an occupation that caters to the lonely and for the lonely, often by the lonely.  Prostitution has been labeled the oldest occupation on Earth, and has been a symbol used throughout literature.  We have a lot of archetypes of the prostitute, such as Mary Magdalene in the New Testament, or the whore with a heart of gold.  However, I am often struck by the other side of what I read about prostitution - the difficult circumstances that lead people to turn to the world's oldest profession.  Dysfunctional families, personality issues, emotional issues.  Those gateways to the dark and lonely side of the human soul that I, who suffered family dysfunction and sexual abuse, know all too well.  I'm not a prude - in fact I have a history of difficulties with sexual addiction (pornography) related to my history of sexual abuse - but it strikes me that my experience is probably similar to that many prostitutes in the commonality of loneliness.

Mural on AT&T Building in Ely, Nevada. Photo by Megan E. KamerickI was reading a book recently called The Art of Racing in the Rain.  It is a touching book about the loyalty of a dog named Enzo.  Enzo, who is the narrator, reflects upon the difference between loneliness and being alone.  Being alone is a reality.  When one is the only person in a room, he or she is alone.  However, loneliness, according to this book, is a state of mind.  One can be lonely, despite the fact that he or she is not alone.  One can be alone, yet not lonely.  Being lonely is very difficult, and I've known people, including myself, that despite the presence of those who care for them and love them, remain lonely.  People seek out aloneness at times.  Nobody seeks loneliness and prolonged loneliness can lead people to desperate things.  After all, we are all social and want human interconnection.

Miners, out in the wilderness around Ely, found themselves lonely for companionship.  They might have wanted someone to talk with, be a companion, to love them even for a short while.  Of course, that meant a business opportunity existed, one in which the providers could justify their actions as a type of public service.  Giving up one's body in prostitution is an opportunistic business transaction performing an act that should be the complete antithesis of such transactions.  The sexual act in a normal, healthy way involves putting much trust in one's partner.  As a business transaction, such sex might be the extreme version of loneliness without being alone.  Why?  Because no matter how much is paid for sex, the sex act under such conditions cannot provide the loving human contact that most of us crave.  It is simply business.  At the end, the participants, if lonely, remain so because once the transaction is over, it's finished.  There is no continuity, no promise of tomorrow unless there is payment, no chance of unconditionality because it is all about conditions.

Detail of downtown Eli mural. Photo by Michael L. Hess

That is probably why the websites of the two brothels that still exist in Ely strike me as strip clubs, where one can get extra benefits after the strip show and the lap dances are finished.  It all seems very lonely to me, with the participation of a lot of lonely people.  While Nevada regulates the prostitution industry, the exploitation of people's loneliness by appealing to their need for companionship through the most powerful feelings and instincts we have as humans seems to me to really touch on the most vulnerable parts of us and is ripe for the emergence of the dark and seamier sides of humanity.

I don't want to end this post on Ely with a downer.  Ely has more merits than LHM gives it.  It has some very nice attributes as a city, and is quiet and not at all completely driven by the prostitution industry.  We especially liked the public art, in the form of murals, spread around the downtown.  When a city makes efforts like this, it shows a pride in community and a real attempt to make a place appealing for residents and visitors alike.  The photos I've peppered through this post show some of the artwork one can find around the town.

Detail of mural image in Ely, Nevada. Photo by Megan E. Kamerick

Musical Interlude

I was going to put, for the musical interlude, Patti Labelle's Lady Marmalade, to keep in the mood of this post.  I forgot about an amazing Cole Porter song called Love for Sale.  This version is sung by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald.  Just listen to the lyrics rendered in Ella's wonderful voice - it captures the loneliness perfectly "If you want the thrill of love / I've been through the mill of love / Old love, new love / Every love but true love."

If you want to know more about Ely

Ely, Nevada Home Page
The Ely Times (newspaper)
Hotel Nevada
NevadaWeb: Ely
Nevada Northern Railway
Wikipedia: Ely

Next up: Hickison Summit, Nevada