Margaret Steinbrunn

Margaret Steinbrunn shares some of her adventures while sitting at Oakshire Brewing company in the Whiteaker Neighborhood of Eugene, OR. Her interview partner for the evening is in the previous episode!

You can read more about the project, about Wordcrafters in Eugene, about our sponsors and community partners, and send in your own Lane County, Oregon stories at StoryHelix.Wordcrafters.Org.

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

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 You're listening to Story Helix, intertwining
 stories past, present, and not yet imagined
 
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 in Lane County, Oregon. What's up, earthlings? I'm Leah Velez, and
 
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 I'll be your host. The story
 we're about to hear was recorded at Oakshire
 
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 Brewing Company in the Whiteaker neighborhood of
 Eugene, Oregon, in early 2022.
 
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 Let's open up
 our ear nuggets and give it a listen.
 
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 My name is Margaret Steinbrunn and I
 live in the Whietaker. It's a Wednesday
 
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 night. It's about twenty degrees outside.... I've always been a kid at heart.
 
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 I left home when I was fourteen
 years old. I was born and
 
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 raised in San Diego. I hitch hiked across the country three or four
 
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 times by the time I was seventeen. I did some things that we don't
 
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 need to talk about on a podcast. And when I was free and legal,
 
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 I met somebody. I came out
 of the closet per se and I
 
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 met my first real girlfriend. My
 mother had sold our house that she had
 
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 lived in for jeez, since my
 brother... She had probably lived there for
 
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 close to thirty years...sold
 the house and moved to Oregon. And
 
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 so I was in Southern California and
 it just came to a point, through bad
 
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 decisions and growing up in a life
 of addiction in my family. I had
 
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 no money, no nothing, and
 I was in charge of a family and
 
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 a child and a partner,
 and so I called my mother and I
 
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 said, okay, I want to move to Oregon. And I was twenty and
 
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 so I moved to The Dalles.
 I lived in The Dalles for quite some
 
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 time. So when I lived there, when I was fourteen, 
 
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 I went up for the carnival. That's my
 first sales job. I learned how to
 
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 be a barker. I went downtown
 and I got a fake ID at fourteen
 
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 years old in San Diego and I
 stood in a little booth and I'm like
 
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 hey, hey, come here, come here,  you got that girl one last
 
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 night... What? You're not going
 to win her one, too? And I
 
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 learned to do that at a young
 age. And when I moved here and
 
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 Carnival came through town, and it's not
 bad money, and they offered me a job.
 
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 So myself, my partner, and our
 small daughter. You know, it's
 
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 like a family, and we traveled
 around the northwest and did that for a
 
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 couple of years and ended up landing
 in Eugene. I had had a job
 
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 where I worked and I knew some
 people here and I landed here and I
 
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 found a job working for someone that
 I knew and it was the first real
 
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 gay and lesbian community that I had
 ever lived in. You know, I've
 
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 never been afraid of public displays of
 affection or any of that, but I
 
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 come from a very devout Catholic family,
 and it was bad, and I was going
 
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 to hell, and my mother found out. Oh my God, it was just
 
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 horrific. So I
 moved to Eugene, and I found Club Arena,
 
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 Perry's. And I went down there and
 that was it. That was the end
 
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 of the story. And about six
 months later, my partner moved here, my
 
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 ex, I should say. That's
 another story, but I've been here ever
 
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 since, and that was close to
 thirty-five years ago. I moved to
 
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 the Whit about fourteen years ago with,
 my ex lived here, and I moved here
 
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 and I've never left since I've been
 here. It has that same sense of community
 
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 and wellness and just to help [?] your
 neighbor. It's accepting and that's something I
 
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 never really had my whole life.
 Thanks for listening. You can find us
 
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 wherever you listen to your podcasts.
 If you've got your own Lane County Story
 
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 to tell, we'd love to hear
 it at StoryHelix.Wordcrafters.Org