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THE OREGON TRAIL
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Is Oregon the antidote
to California? Let's see!
of TheColumnists.com
I may have mentioned my youngest son’s observation before. It could be one of those tiresome repetitions that we indulge in when we get older. Nonetheless: “Dad, you have to realize that you live in a tiny blue bubble ‘way out there on the western edge of a vast continent. With a few exceptions, the rest of the country is not very much like the San Francisco Bay Area.”
Indeed. When you dare to venture outside the Blue Bubble, you find that Patrick R. McFadden is right on.
I have just returned from a revealing auto trip through Oregon, California’s low-key neighbor to the north. We have a long undefended border with Oregon, probably because the state is full of former Californians who have said, “The Hell with it. Let’s move to Oregon and slow down.”
You can slow down in Oregon. It’s different up there. It’s greener, quieter, wetter, more peaceful. After a week in Oregon, coming back to California is like driving into a noisy, dusty desert.
Quiet green Oregon also seems more tolerant of human foibles. Yes, it’s true that during the time I was visiting, Oregonians did not have a Dykes on Bikes motorcycle contingent in a Gay Pride parade. But in San Francisco, Republicans skulk about, quietly fearful that they will be outed and forced into a life of shame over their lifestyle. Don’t ask, don’t tell. In Oregon, they seem to be accepted, even running for office.
Oregonians manage to extend their tolerance to the incumbent president, an action that San Franciscans would regard as a bit of a stretch. While George W. Bush would have no chance of carrying the state in an election, it doesn’t seem to be a given that he is an ignorant, vicious fascist. I didn’t have one Oregonian tell me that Gen. Wesley Clark should be prosecuted as a war criminal over use of depleted uranium in Bosnia, something that cannot be said of San Francisco.
In fact, these low-key Oregonians don’t seem too fond of inflicting their political or religious beliefs on others via bumper stickers, at least not the way Californians do. On Oregon Camrys, very seldom do you see anything about “Exuberance With the Goddess!” or “Somewhere in Texas a Village is Missing its Idiot.”
I did see a couple of Oregon billboards showing a man’s face morphing into a monkey’s face under a headline “Don’t let them make a monkey out of you!” - presumably from folks unhappy about the Theory of Evolution. Such a billboard would be a tourist attraction in San Francisco. There would be television crews.
Oregonians have different tastes in recreation than do San Franciscans. For example, a San Franciscan would drink a warm martini rather than enter an RV. From what I saw, Oregonian are nuts about them. I swear I saw 15 huge RV dealerships in a five-mile stretch of I-5. Their sales lots had what seemed to be endless lines of RVs--all white. They had names like “Gazelle” in hopes that the buyer would envision years of lighthearted, nimble adventure ahead instead of years driving QE2-on-wheels.
“Don’t any of these people live in houses?” I asked my wife. But of course they do. New housing developments are going up all over the western part of Oregon. The natives talk of four-bedroom houses selling for as much as $450,000. In the Bay Area, that’s a fixer-upper, if you’re lucky. Oregonians shake their heads over the outrageousness of it all.
“What’s next?” they ask. “Five hundred dollars a month for an apartment?”
For the most part, Oregonians quietly go about their business, doing the sensible thing. But they do go outside the American mainstream occasionally. While I was there, The Oregonian had a front-page feature story on a 62-year-old woman who elected to take advantage of Oregon’s one-of-a-kind death-with-dignity law rather than endure another few months with terminal cancer. The paper had a photograph of her taking the fatal dose. The story was done with taste, restraint, humanity. Of course. It was, after all, in Oregon.
©2007 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Oct. 15, 2007.
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