Initial Observations: Southern California vs. Central Oregon
by Craig Richards
icholas and I truly loved living in Glendale, a small-yet-progressive Los Angeles, California suburb snuggled among scrub-oak-dotted foothills and easily within bicycling distance (if one opted) to work at most of the major studios. Glendale has fine schools, among the lowest crime stats in the state, and its wide and clean streets are lined with those welcoming and dizzyingly tall palm trees that out-of-state visitors expect to see in Beverly Hills or Palm Springs.
In Glendale, we endured the snappy winter days that could barely push the mercury to the mid-50-degree mark so that we could enjoy the nourishing 80- to 90-degree sun the remaining ten months of each year.
Compared with Bend, Oregon? Up here, I have met people who actually think a day peaking at 60 degrees is "a bit too hot" (yes, they are okay with using "hot" and "60" in the same sentence) and they describe an overnight low in the 20s as "comfortable" with a straight face.
Either these misled tundra-dwellers are going to adjust their terminology or I will have to turn around my thinking because, so far, we are not speaking from the same lexicon!
"Bend," I've come to suspect, is what newcomers must do to their minds in order to accept the climate in central Oregon.
That said, Bend is also a very clean, growth-oriented, culturally rich community with even nicer schools and passionate teachers.
No offense intended, but Bend is not near anywhere. In the midst of vast stretches of pumice-strewn sand between rolling hills and picture-perfect mountains, hundreds of miles to any midsized city and the inherent "conveniences" of a metropolis, Bend is somehow an oasis of beauty – much too its credit and my delight.
Another thing I have noticed is that central Oregon seems to be where some of the remaining larger herds of white people in America have migrated. (I know, except in hushed whispers, this is to some a sensitive topic that we don't talk about in polite society.) It's just that it is startling to see elementary schools filled almost entirely with flaxen-haired blue-eyed kidlets. After 30 years in the melting pot of southern California, walking through a small one-story shopping plaza in Bend (here, they're called "malls") feels eerily like stumbling upon the aftermath of a post-WWII cloning experiment gone terribly wrong.
I'm just not used to it, that's all – The last time I remember seeing a pasty white busboy in southern California was in 1970 when I looked in a mirror and saw, returning a proud glare, a pimply-faced 15-year-old at his first real job (outside the realm of a newspaper route, mowing lawns or babysitting). At that minimum-wage, part-time, after-school "opportunity" as I saw it, I was working my way toward my inevitably affluent adulthood (which we must classifiy simply as an "ongoing project," if you don't mind).
In Bend on the other hand, I am still surprised when I can easily comprehend, without straining through a profoundly thick dialect, what some friendly and overly enthusiastic youngster is saying when I phone a local business or drive up to a fast-food order window.
Remember that scene in "Back To The Future" when a motorist "ding-dings" to a stop beside a Texaco pump and three well-groomed and uniformed attendants leap into action with the rehearsed greeting "How may we be of service, sir?" and commence to eagerly provide what was then standard service for their valuable patron? Bend businesses remind me of that.
A weird thing I am very happy to try to get used to: The number on the pricetag is what you pay at the checkstand. Buy a pack of gum, a dinner for four or a motorhome. There is no sales tax here. Is that cool or what?
Okay, so getting back to what's even more important to me and my often-cool extremities, the local meteorologists have been reporting this week, without even a raised eyebrow to let you in on the joke, "unseasonably warm daytime highs this week in the low- to mid-50s with overnight lows ranging from the low-20s to the low-30s."
No wink. No knowing smirk. No off-cameral guffaws or even stifled giggling. These folks seem to have no inkling that the line they're delivering is the punchline to some northern-latitude strain of humor, as I am convinced their forecast surely must be.
Their unseasonably warm is still my unreasonably cold and I've seen no movement yet toward compromise.
But the jagged Cascade Mountain Range's snowcrested volcanic peaks to the west are glistening against the crisp blue sky as the bright and sharply focused amber-glowing orb follows its noticeably southern arc across the juniper-forested landscape. And I am compelled several times each day to stop what I am doing and gasp aloud, "That is beautiful!"
The people here, too, seem just as attractive. I haven't met anyone yet that I haven't genuinely liked. Without the hyper-frenetic stress of L.A. life imposed on the human condition, the absence here of the self-protective plastic wrap is evident and the friendly and caring humans we all can be are revealed here. That's one theory I'm working on to explain this refreshing phenomenon.
On occasion, it comforts me to think that, for now, these scenes are being shot "on location" and that it gives my life story the authenticity and cinematic richness it did need. As comfortable as Los Angeles had been for me for so many decades, I confess that backdrop may have become stale when I wasn't noticing.
Warmest virtual regards,
Craig Richards