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I tend to repeat those words to myself now and again, though now with a much more sarcastic tone. I feel like the guy who came up with the new formula for Coca-Cola, or General George Custer when he decided to go to Little Big Horn and "whup some Injun butt."
We live in an all-white, God-fearing, humor-impaired, granola-crunching, undereducated community of homophobes. Sort of like Carmel, only with poor people.
At least the scenery is nice.
I had expected fundamentalist Christians to be less prevalent out on the West coast Perhaps the local religions would be more
inclined to crystal worshiping or tree hugging. Wrong. Not only is "Darwin" a dirty word, but people look at you suspiciously
when you suggest that the world may be round after all. You no longer see the unobtrusive "Trust Jesus" graffiti spray-painted
on mailboxes or light poles. Here you see people with "Ecclesiastes 5:1-7" spray-painted in huge white letters down the length of
their own cars. I looked it up. The verses refer to God punishing people who tend to be smart-asses.
But, yknow, the scenery is sort of nice.
I smoke. My wife smokes. We are apparently the only ones who do in central Oregon. The first time we went to a restaurant in this town, I asked to sit in the smoking section. The waitress looked at me as if I'd asked if it was okay to dance naked on our table and then urinate in a wide circle onto the other customers. "No," she replied, dialing the police in a horrified frenzy. "This is a smoke-free restaurant. Don't touch me." We left, dreaming of a nice island in the South Pacific where we could hang out with the other lepers.
But that scenery ... wow, is that something.
Some day, the Bend rock radio station (note the singular use of the word "station") may be as progressive as Q95. You can hear all of the latest hits from 1973. Skynyrd, Foghat, Molly Hatchet, all live on in some sort of Classic Rock limbo. The word "rap" still means a knock at your door. Even though we're much closer now, you can't hear the Seattle sound here. The mountains must block it out. The country station, however, is all cutting-edge redneck technology, at least as far as I can tell. We listen to a lot of tapes.
Scenery ... nice ... must look on positive side ...
I've made some friends out here. Both of them are originally from Indiana. For entertainment, we draw the shades of our apartment, smoke cigarettes, worship the devil, listen to tapes, and talk about how much fun we used to have in that liberal-minded state of Indiana, where we lived among free-thinking people who respected us for our peculiarities.
But the scenery ... screw it. You can get a nice view out the window of any penal institution.
Had this happened to anyone other than myself, I would find it extremely amusing. The things I'd complained about in Indy are the exact things I complain about here, only magnified ten times. There is some sort of Karmic justice at work, and I freely admit I have learned my lesson. I will never complain about Indianapolis again.
Unless, of course, we move back.
