This January, I stood in line at the JC Market in Newport, Oregon. I live not far from Newport, in South Beach actually, and I love shopping at JC because it is independently owned and employs a mysterious man named Dave who smokes all manner of delicious meats and seafood in a huge, computerized smoker in a special glass room adjacent to the meat counter. Dave's smoked tuna is especially tasty and I pay a princely sum for it but could care less. I am proud to support rural Oregon businesses any chance I get.
Nestucca Spit Press, my publishing company, is also a rural Oregon business and it lives or dies by readers choosing to buy my Oregon-themed books from independent Oregon bookstores like Powell's. I was particularly proud of having
Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon's Sesquicentennial Anthology printed in Newport by Pioneer Printing. It would have been a lot cheaper to print it overseas, but frankly, I could no more do that than cut off my own arm.
In line ahead of me were two young white men making a joint purchase of corndogs and cough syrup. The corn dogs were pink and brown on sticks and the cough syrup was day-glo orange in the bottle.
The men were not coughing.
Try to imagine the combined taste and effect of corn dogs washed down with cough syrup. It surely ranks as one of the most dubious mishmash of tastes and effects in Christendom, with the possible exception of George Bush and Dick Cheney locked in a prolonged open-mouth kiss after three shots of cheap gin.
Speaking of George Bush, my goodness, did you hear the tragic news? According to The Globe, he's back on the sauce. I read the screaming headline while waiting for the young men to fish out enough dollars and change to cover their bill. If it is true, it might be the only human thing I've read about him in eight years.
President Bush is gone now, still sober or newly sodden, retired to Texas to live out his remaining years watching television and making aircraft carrier models.
My God, what will I do without him and Cheney as foils for my writing? Rush Limbaugh, though colorfully fascist and drug addled as he is, hardly rates. Neither does Made in Oregon nut Lars Larson. And what will I do without Gordon Smith, Oregon's craven and recently deposed US Senator? Jeff Merkley beat him and I have a lot of respect for Merkley. In 2005 I mailed a copy of my first book, Grasping Wastrels vs Beaches Forever Inc., about Oregon's hallowed legacy of publicly owned beaches to every member of the 60-seat Oregon House and 30-seat Senate, each chamber then controlled by the Republican Party and the likes of Karen Minnis, unquestionably the worst Speaker of the House in Oregon history, who very nearly succeeded in wrecking my beloved state. Merkley, a Democrat, was the only member who sent me a note of thanks. He might have even read the book.
But Smith is gone. Bush. Cheney. All of them. What will I do when I need a stock villain who threatens Oregon?
Let me think hard here. I've got it! Ted Ferroli! That's it. He's my villain. He's the Senate Minority Leader, a Republican from John Day, who, according to a recent article in the Oregonian, "donned a cowboy hat and vest on Oregon's birthday last year to deliver a stirring pro-sesquicentennial speech on the Senate floor."
That's right. Ferroli thinks Oregon history was all about cowboys and Indians. He was also quoted in the article saying he was glad the state didn't hold a large event in Portland to celebrate the Sesquicentennial, where people might actually party and have creative Oregon fun, as opposed to attending a Rotary spaghetti feed in Roseburg or an American Legion barbecue in Burns or a Cub Scout circle jerk in Klamath Falls.
Ferroli said: "Doing something in downtown Portland is not where Oregonians live. It isn't the real deal, it isn't the Oregon Trail, it isn't the pioneering spirit."
What the hell does Ted Ferroli know about Oregon? About as much as the Portland hipsters who drink Pabst when they could be drinking, without irony, one of the great cheap Pacific Northwest lagers formerly brewed in the Pacific Northwest.
It is exactly this kind of unfounded, immature, irrelevant, and defensive statement from Oregon's rural lawmakers that dooms rural Oregon and the Republican Party for the foreseeable future. The latter is fine by me. The former is not because I live in rural Oregon and reality and understand that rural Oregon needs Portland just as much as Portland needs rural Oregon. To pit one against each other for political gain, as Ferroli does every chance he gets, serves no useful purpose. But it does allow a senator to talk about pioneering spirit despite living in a town that couldn't possibly exist without tax dollars generated from Portland subsidizing practically every aspect of life in John Day, from cell phone service to public schools.
If 40 years ago this state had elected Republicans like Ted Ferroli as governor instead of a Republican like Tom McCall — who hailed from Redmond, by the way — modern Oregon would not exist today. Most of the Willamette Valley would resemble a cheap Gresham subdivision, the Cascade Range would be the Cascade Clearcut, we'd all drink Gallo and Coors with our farmed salmon, Smith Rock would have condos on top of it, everyone would use an umbrella, and motels would own our ocean beaches.
So, goodbye George Bush and hello, Ted Ferroli. What a timely Sesquicentennial gift you are! A blowhard and mountebank neatly wrapped in a suit from Wal-Mart. As my father always said, "One door closes, another one opens." And in this case, a dangerous fool lurks behind each one.
You know how I can thank Ted for his service? I'll send him a copy of Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon's Sesquicentennial Anthology. He really should read all 500 pages of it. He'll learn a lot about Oregon...what Oregon really was and is. Then he can march back on the Senate floor, give a speech, and not make a total ass of himself when he claims to know his state.