History of Oregon Du Drops Part III

Living on Answered Prayers

by James Stephen Du Bois

After a summer and Christmas shopping season in Eugene I decided to move Oregon Du Drops to the coast. Eugene, Oregon was a wonderful proving ground for my little creation, as well as, a great introduction for me to the world of handicraft vending, but it was time to expand. Now finding art and craft fairs, getting accepted into them and being successful while your booth is open for business is not as easy as it sounds and extravagant wealth is not guaranteed. It is quite possible to find a perfectly appropriate art show and not be accepted by the jury (especially at first), or to be accepted and have no sales.

So, for those reasons, and the fact that I got to the coast to find there were precious few fairs and shows to begin with, I did not stop selling at The Saturday Market when I moved from the Eugene area. I kept driving back and forth from my new home on the coast in Yachats to the valley every Saturday. There were times I left the coast lacking the cash to make change and with just enough gas to get to Eugene (65 mi. away) simply with the faith that I would make enough in sales to get me home with groceries and a little cash in my pocket for supplies for the coming week. I became convinced my prayers were being answered because I always made it home. There were always just enough resources at hand to get by. But, I’ll tell you, what absolutely solidified my conviction was having “Cat” appear in my life.

Meeting Cathleen

The brightest spot in Oregon Du Drops’ history came in the Spring of 2001 when I met Cathleen Emily Freshwater. Did you catch that last name? More on our meeting first. Oregon Du Drops were accepted into an art show in Yachats and I was told, by a fellow fair denizen, that I should check out the Wine, Cheese and All That Jazz Festival, the next weekend in Rockaway Beach, a little coastal town two and a half hours north.

Little did I know then that my prayers for help would, unexpectedly, get an answer there. I am going to resist telling you very much of our meeting and let her tell you in her post, Cat Comes Back to the Beach, but I will share a little.

I had never taken the drive north from Yachats to Rockaway Beach before. I discovered that highway 101 is a beautiful drive between these two little coastal hamlets with ocean on one side and rain forest on the other most of the way. There is a mountain to climb south of Depoe Bay and another one north of Lincoln City but they don’t last too many miles and the road returns to the flats with occasional ocean views. When the ocean was unavailable, my eyes were greeted with broad swaths of wetlands replete with insects, fish and small mammals, to the herons’, eagles’, hawks’ and Kingfishers’ delight. About fifteen miles from my destination the broad Tillamook Bay opened before me all the way to the ocean. The road skirted it for about five of those miles. I arrived in Rockaway Beach just in time to set up my booth at the outdoor venue before opening.

The Festival was set in the parking lot of an ocean wayside in downtown Rockaway Beach. I asked the manager of the show if I could set up behind the music/food tent and away from the other, shaded vendors so that I could recruit the sky, spread out above me, and the ocean, stretching to the horizon, and a narrow marine layer of clouds separating the two as my backdrop.

That image of aquamarine sea, sapphire sky and white clouds reflected back in every Oregon Du Drop. Each one reflecting their images in every other one too. Mesmerizing. I was getting closer to recreating my encounter with the dew covered sparkling bush all of the time.

The first three-quarters of the day I was busy accumulating a lot of non-monetary compensation. If you don’t know what I mean by non-monetary compensation, please see History of Oregon Du Drops, Part II; Secrets… The people in Rockaway Beach were very complimentary and, so far, I had earned my booth fee and a little more than gas money. I told myself, “it’s early yet.” I always tried to stay optimistic at individual events because my overall picture was always rosy.

Corallaries popped up all of the time to my three core beliefs and two coping mechanisms (pt.2), and one of my favorites is that I would have to see beyond current barriers. I really had to believe that I was on the road I needed to take. I would have to be my own cheerleader, responsible for my own attitude. No matter how circumstances appeared, I had to remember that the whole picture was not being represented by what was happening at any given moment.

You never know where your creativity will lead or who will be drawn to you because of it. As I was musing on just this idea, my back to the crowd, absorbed in my view of the broad glistenng ocean and the sun setting into it, I heard the director of the festival. “Du Bois, there is someone I’d like you to meet. This is Cat Freshwater, she has the voice you’ve heard singing for the last hour.” I don’t know if my jaw dropped when I turned around, but I was entranced. And I have been since June 16, 2001. All but five and a half months of the twenty-first century.

I didn’t even know I needed a partner at that time. Little did I ever dream that the help for which I had petitioned the powers of the universe would appear in the form of a petite, shapely chanteuse. I did know, however, that if I ever had another mate in my life she would have to be the right one. She would have to be a woman who was in love with me for who I am, not for what she might want to make of me. I would need to love her for being who she is as well. And excited to encourage her in the pursuit of her personal fulfillment. So I vowed to myself that before I would participate in another emotionally intimate relationship I would, first, bare my soul and ask her to do the same. Then we’d see what happened.

If I had been searching for an intelligent, attractive, positive person to partner with none of the candidates would have come close to what I found in Cathleen. In addition to her other attributes she has an indefatigable, upbeat personality, and she is so talented. I felt at the time that Divinity was involved in our meeting. Still do. When she said, “I like to do the accounting,” I thought, “This is too good to be true.” It wasn’t. After we were together for a year she said, “My job is my joy, I’ve always wanted to polish dew drops for a living,” I only fell in love with her more.

We are both writers and have often laughed at the idea of taking our story to a publisher who, we knew, would tell us, “First of all, nobody will believe that your name is Freshwater, secondly, no one will believe that you have a CD with a song on it called, “Dew Drop In,” released a year before you two met, and, thirdly, with all that, who’s gonna believe that your last name is really Du Bois. Sounds too contrived. And I haven’t even gotten to four and five.” Every bit is accurate, except now, Cat’s last name is Freshwater-Du Bois. We were married at the second Wine, Cheese and All That Jazz, in Rockaway Beach in 2002. The director had the festival dedicated to us. It said so in the program.

For the summers of 2001 and 2002, and those two Christmas seasons, Cathleen and I commuted to Eugene for the market. We had very slow winters with letters to the landlord, promising. But there was nothing to do but believe and press on. In April of 2003 we decided to sell everything we had and move to Hawaii and make Du Drops with rain from the wettest place on Earth, Wiamea Canyon, Kauai. We still have a little of the April 2003 Kauaian rain we caught there.

Before I get too far ahead in the history of Oregon Du Drops, let me direct you to Cat’s version of our meeting, Cat Comes Back to the Beach. Then you are invited to pick up with me and Cat, and the next installment of our story by heading to History of Oregon Du Drops Part IV: April Fools?