U.S.S. Blueback

Launched May 16, 1959, the U.S.S. Blueback is a diesel-powered, Barbel-class submarine that was home to a crew of eighty-five men for its thirty-one years in service. In Vietnam it dropped Navy SEALs and mined harbors. It arrived in Portland in 1994, decommissioned, after being used in the film The Hunt for Red October.

Look for RG Walker, the submarine manager, who says, "The effect we're going for is as if the crew's just left and gone on shore for the day." Food still sits on plates. Dirty dishes are piled in the sink. Razors and personal items lie where they've been dropped on bunks. RG will show you the pull-down screen where they showed movies during each two-month tour at sea. A former submariner, RG says, "On some tour of duty, we went out with just one movie— West Side Story. By the time we got back into port, everyone knew every song. They'd all be dancing around, singing, 'I'm a shark! I'm a jet!'"

Really, the best tour is the "Techno Tour," given only on the first Sunday of each month. It's limited to eight people and led by an ex-submariner who has no problems lingering over the most obscure detail. Officially, it's two hours but can last up to four or six if the group is that curious. Buy your $15 tickets early at the front desk. The Techno Tour starts at 10:00 in the morning.

Licensed ham radio operators can broadcast from the on-board radio station.

The Blueback resides at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), at 1945 SE Water Avenue.

(a postcard from 1996)

One side of NE Multnomah Boulevard is Lined with Portland police officers in full SWAT gear, Kevlar face shields, and body armor, holding black riot sticks.

The other side of the street is lined with Santa Clauses in red velvet suits and big, white beards. It's the thin blue line versus the fat red line.

This is Portland SantaCon '96. Aka the Red Tide. Aka Santa Rampage. Every year, members of different Cacophony Societies flock to a host city. From Germany, Australia, Ireland, and every state in the U.S., they're here in almost identical Santa suits. All using the name Santa. No one's male or female. No one's young or old. Black or white. This is some 450 Santa Clauses in town for seventy-two hours of special events. From karaoke to roller skating. Political protests to street theater. Strip clubs to Christmas caroling. They jingle sleigh bells and carry spray bottles of Windex, blue window cleaner they use to squirt each other in the mouth.

For window cleaner it tastes just Like Bombay Sapphire gin-and-tonic.

This Saturday night the plan is to meet at the Lloyd Center shopping mall and join hands around the huge ice-skating rink. There, the Santas will chant and sing in an effort to manifest the spirit of bad-girl Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding.

It hardly matters that Tonya is still alive.

It does matter that the police got here first.

It's a stalemate, the police forming a line along the southern edge of the Lloyd Center—the Santas are facing them across the street, hand-in-hand, in a line along the north edge of Holliday Park. Other Santas have snuck into the mall dressed as shoppers but carrying their red suits and beards in shopping bags. Still, when they duck into fitting rooms and restrooms to change clothes, mall security guards nab and evict them.

Now the line of Santas chant: "Ho, ho, ho! We won't go!"

They do the wave, back and forth from one end of the block to the other, chanting, "Being Santa is not a crime!"

Through a bullhorn, the police say that the Lloyd Center is private property and any Santas who cross the street will go to jail.

And the Santas chant, "One, two, three ... Merry Christmas!"

Above the police line parents and kids line the railings of the parking garages. It's only six in the evening, but already it's dark and cold enough to see everyone's breath. Cars in the street slow to gridlock, so open-mouthed with surprise that no one honks.

The kids are waiting. The police and Santas are all waiting.

Me, I'm here somewhere, buried inside padding and red velvet. My name is Santa and I've been absorbed. Santa-to-Santa our marching orders come down the line in a gin-scented whisper.

A light-rail train pulls into the station next to the park.

The police lower their Kevlar face shields.

At the signal the herd of Santas breaks rank and starts running. A flood of red headed for the train. To escape for downtown. For drinking and caroling and Chinese food.

And right behind them—behind us—the police give chase.

Animal Acts: When You're Sick of People-Watching

The day I spent with Portland elephant keeper Jeb Barsh, he compared the city to a zoo. Comparing the city government to zookeepers, Jeb said, essentially their job is the same: to keep a population as happy as possible inside a confined area. Portland's size is limited by the Urban Growth Boundary—our cage, so to speak—and somehow we've all got to coexist within this limited space. Here's a look inside the other zoo, plus a few more animal-related events.

The Elephant Men

"Working with elephants is an obsession," says Jeb Barsh. "It sucks you in. Dealing with their psyches is such an honor."

In keeping with Katherine Dunn's theory that every Portlander has three lives, Jeb's an elephant keeper, a writer of songs, fiction, and poetry, and a father to his two-year-old son. He went to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he wanted to write a children's book about elephants. For research he went to the local zoo to volunteer. That was eleven years ago.

Portlands status as an elephant factory Jeb calls "an accident of nature." In the late 1950s the zoo bought Thonglaw, a highly sexual bull, and four fertile cows, including Belle, who gave birth to Packy in 1962, the first elephant to be born and survive in captivity in forty-three years. Until then, no one knew much about an elephant's pregnancy.

Tom Nelsen, a volunteer in the Elephant House, says, "The veterinarian sat here for three months because we didn't know how long an elephant's gestation period would be."

Thonglaw sired fifteen calves before dying at the age of thirty. The first, Packy, has sired seven, including Rama, the zoo's twenty-year-old bull.

"Elephants are in a crisis on earth," Jeb says. "They're running out of habitat. In the wild an Asian elephant only lives twenty-one years out of a possible seventy." He says, "My job isn't to phantom a perfect world for them. My job is to take where they are and make the best of it. I have to do today what I can do right now."

Jeb has a scar running through his top lip, near the right corner. Movie star handsome, he has longish hair curling over each ear and resting on his collar. He has gray eyes and a rough two-day start to a goatee. Maybe it's his shorts or his muscular legs from hiking and rock climbing, but every couple of seconds a different woman steps up to ask him something.

Between questions, he says, "There's a tendency among those of us who work with animals to disappear into our animals. That's why I like to keep one foot out here among people. To continue to spread the word to people about the mystery and joy of elephants. It's an honor to be here."

He says, "Every day of an elephant's life, it's collecting memories. We just try to keep mixing it up for them so their lives are interesting. They have the largest brains of any mammal on earth. We administer to their heads, not just their bodies. Every day, I know how these seven feel. From those feelings we plan our day."