Stories From Fish Hatchery Road

Fish Hatchery Road is the name of the street where I live in rural Southern Oregon. It is a road that curves around modest farm houses built against the backrop of the Siskyou Mountains and a powerful river called The Applegate. At it's most southern end is a real fish hatchery.  I moved here with my caravan of beloved animals almost 5 years ago.

I knew I was leaving the city life behind (I moved here from Miami). It's just that I thought I would come here and re-build my old life, except in a different location. I painted my house in what my neighbors call "citified colors," built a barn and put up a white vinyl fence. I thought I had found a nice, quiet place to live a nice, predictable life.

What a joke.

Stories from Fish Hatchery Road tells the story of a woman forced to re-invent herself. It is a true story. And you now what they say about true stories. They are so amazing they are almost unbelievable.

Because life is a continuous adventure. And no one is every finished having one.



STORIES FROM FISH HATCHERY ROAD
   
CHAPTER ONE
 

“I quit.”

My heart is racing and my palms are sweating but the words come from my gut. I say them so clearly I shock myself. The managing editor at The Miami Herald blinks quickly and frowns.

I have stood here so many times as a reporter, fighting for my stories. Now I am letting go.

My father died four months ago. Two days after he retired from his post as a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, he collapsed in the bathroom and hit his head on the sink. My niece found him on the floor, in a pool of blood. The doctors took x-rays. My father had brain cancer. They gave him six months to live. Exactly four months later, my father died.

He never got a chance to travel the west coast and take those black and white photographs of the ocean. He never got a chance to drive the black Volvo he bought two days before he retired. He never got a chance to do what he really, really loved.

“Life is good,” my father always said.

It was also short.

“Lori, are you sure?” my editor quipped from behind his mahogany desk.

No. No, I am not sure.

I work in the features department at one of the best and biggest papers in the country. After 10 years as a journalist, seven of them at The Herald, I have my dream job. I come up with my own story ideas, keep my own hours. A lot of reporters in the country want my job. I see their resumes stacked on top of the editors' desks. There is only one problem – I don't want my job anymore. It's as if someone has turned off a switch in my head that says: I WANT TO BE A REPORTER. I try to turn it back on, but it is impossible.

I stare through the glass walls of the editors' office, at the room full of reporters flipping through their notebooks, talking into their phones and tapping purposefully on their computer keyboards.

“I'm going to write a book,” I tell my editor.
“What is the book about?”

I tell him what I think I know – that the book is about my adventures with some of the world's most famous female icons. That it has to do with taking what they teach in their seminars and in their books, absorbing it myself, and sharing it with others. I don't know yet that this is never going to happen.

I don't know that I can't write about anything with any wisdom until it is actually my experience.

I don't know how dangerous it is to proclaim oneself a writer, or that once I uttered those words, I would call to me experiences that would bring me to my knees.

“There is a lot of support for my book,” I tell my editor.

Mentioning that this support constitutes a few good friends and my mother does not feel like a good idea. I am leaving a complete pension plan, a 401 K package, and a comfortable salary.

I stare at my editor with what I hope is confidence.

He stares back.

“Own your power, “People are always telling me. “Remember who you are.”

Sometimes I understand, for a little while. Then the knowledge leaks out again, like air from a tire. It is not yet wisdom living in my heart – only valuable information crowding my head.

My editor and I shake hands. He gives me his business card, on the back of which he writes his home phone number.

“Call me if you need me.”

I thank him, hoping I won't.

“Well, good luck Lori.”




“Lucky girl,” my father whispered before he died. “Lucky girl.”
He closed his eyes as he said it, as if he could see something precious and beautiful. I certainly didn't see anything precious or beautiful. I saw my father, hooked to a catheter in a hospice room filled with flowers he couldn't see. The cancer had stolen his eyesight. I didn't think I was lucky at all.

I walk out of my editor's door and into the future only my father was able to see.


-- By Lori Teresa Yearwood
  All Rights Reserved
-- By Lori Teresa Yearwood

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