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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 20, 2017)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, May 20, 2017 East Oregonian Page 5A Waylon and Sylvia: A love story I believe in free public education at all levels. In the last year before school consolidation, I taught nine students in a wood frame schoolhouse, way out on the hard red winter wheatfields of northwest Montana. There was no school bus. The students were delivered to the chapped building by wind-wrinkled mothers smelling of diesel, clabbered milk and manure, who drove stubnosed grain trucks and Pontiacs with singing shock absorbers. Through the slumping panes of the teacherage’s kitchen window, I forecast the day’s attendance by counting the dust plumes that boiled out of the Sweetgrass Hills and converged on the section-line roads. I had long hair and had seen the world beyond Great Falls, so I was a bug in a mayonnaise jar to the kids, to be viewed through a shell of cautious politeness until it was determined whether I raised welts or spat stinky fluids. The younger ones softened first. By Columbus Day we were claiming a corner of Rasmussen’s wheat field for our school by planting a flag in the dusty stubble. Shortly afterward I was J.D., one of the gang, to most of my students. But not to Waylon, who, at age 12, had read most of Louis L’Amour and believed it possible to live as a gunfighter. Hormones were gathering behind his dinnerplate-sized belt buckle. He focused on fair Sylvia’s scant breasts during history class. To Waylon I was an outlander, an agent of change, someone bent on jamming mathematics between him and his bull-riding future. In the puncture weeds at the perimeter of the pea-gravel parking lot were several ant mounds. Waylon’s courtship of Sylvia consisted of carefully working his freckled hand and lower arm into an ant hill, until it was swarming with a black scurry, then chasing her around the schoolyard yelling “Ant Arm Man is going to get you! Ant Arm Man is going to get you!” During one such episode of cowpoke foreplay, Sylvia went down hard on both knees against the lip of the concrete pad that anchored the flag pole. Restrained tears fogged her glasses. “Darn you, Waylon. I’ll get you.” These were strong words from a fundamentalist farm girl who dressed as her grandmother had. Waylon booted rocks down the road ahead of us. I was angry. I told him to cut the crap, to try a little tenderness, that Sylvia was in pain because he had worked an old joke one too many times, and that I didn’t like pain, intentional or accidental. He’d better settle down before I called in the big dogs, his folks and Sylvia’s. Waylon tipped back the bill of his tractor hat, checked the clouds, flashed a coyote grin and said, “Yes sir, Mister Smith, sir.” That night a cold front sneaked over the Canadian border and covered the schoolyard with a foot of snow. For Christmas I bought each student a harmonica. By Valentine’s Day, with Sylvia Waylon, at age 12, had read most of Louis L’Amour and believed it possible to live as a gunfighter. sitting first chair, we were a one-song band, playing “The Streets of Laredo” to an audience of aquarium guppies. Science afternoons were spent in model rocketry, firing chunks of balsawood and cardboard way, way up into the huge crystal skies. Physical education occurred when we trudged through the snow a mile downwind for the space ship retrieval. A wind that smelled of crawdads whistled up from the Missouri River breaks in early April. Overnight the snow was gone. One sunny morning, after the yellow clay had dried enough to permit play, Sylvia and Janet asked if they could take the new canvas bases outside and design a softball diamond. Sure, but keep in mind the windows and the thistles. Each team had a pitcher, a first baseman and a couple of roving fielders. I was both teams’ catcher. Waylon captained one group and chose Sylvia, Janet, and the two first graders for his team. Sylvia was unusually aggressive in demanding that her team bat first. Of course, Waylon was the leadoff hitter. He punched the first pitch through the hole where a shortstop would have been, a clean single, but the girls knew Waylon so, as he wheeled up the baseline toward first, Sylvia and Janet yelled “Take two, Waylon! Take two!” When he made the turn, going for the double, they changed their chant to “Slide, Waylon! Slide! Slide!” and he slid headfirst into a busy community of red ants that had recently been covered by second base. He came up swatting, spitting and slapping. He was a tough little hombre, but I could see that he was in trouble with this situation, so I hustled him toward the four- seater outhouse. I left as he fought with his J.D. S mith FROM THE HEADWATERS OF DRY CREEK belt buckle. Sylvia sat smiling in the swing. A month later the job ended. On the last day of school, as I was boxing the artifacts of my teaching career and packing my truck to head toward Alaska, I looked out into the schoolyard and there by the flagpole sat Sylvia and Waylon, holding hands while they waited for their rides back into the Sweetgrass Hills. ■ J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena. A river trip ends in tragedy A Drone range a development opportunity I hesitate to say that need to come from a group something is new in such as PNNL. And ventures Pendleton’s economy after including shipping freight dashed hopes over the years. puts distant Pendleton at a Why has Pendleton not disadvantage and Pendleton landed payrolls that have has a limited number of ready gone to Hermiston? Several workers. reasons. But the point here is not If you need bare land whether Pendleton can grow Mike near interstate highways, to a population of 30,000 or Forrester becomes the UAS capital interstate rail and a major Comment river, Hermiston can be your of the West. The question place. Pendleton has some is whether Pendleton and of those features but this town is its airport can team up with drone more choosy than Hermiston when it R&D people and help them. If so, comes to development. I believe most Pendleton can be a net beneficiary. Pendletonians favor economic growth Incorporating drones into farming as long as it does not change the basic drove early interest in forming a character of the town they cherish. test range here. Pendleton sits next Seems to me Pendleton has to to the Columbia Basin, one of the some extent been the victim of its most productive crop areas in the own success — as if Pendleton United States. World War II brought Woolen Mills and the Round-Up Pendleton an airport designed to are proof that this town has it made handle planes of the Army Air Corps forever. But the losses of Albertson’s and commercial airliners out of and J.C. Penney and declines in Portland. And the fact that Pendleton school enrollment remind us that if is in a rural area of just 17,000 is you are not moving forward, you are good because UAS aircraft need dropping behind. plenty of space. Pendleton airport has found itself The FAA says the data from the in the research and development Pendleton test range helps the FAA aspect of unmanned aircraft systems in writing flight regulations and (UAS), or drones. ensuring that airport users across the The Tiger Shark is the newest country can operate cooperatively aircraft added to the aviation and safely with one another. department of the Pacific Northwest The FAA is known for extra National Laboratory. Tiger Shark attention they give to drafting and collects data related to global climate revising regulations governing change. It was developed by a aviation. It can be frustrating to deal Pennsylvania engineering firm for with a cautious agency, but Pendleton the Navy for reconnaissance. It was UAS officials have learned to cope. then adapted by the DOE as a climate Darryl Abling, the Pendleton measuring tool. Range manager, says that in addition PNNL flight official Pete Carroll to the Tiger Shark, other potential sounds enthusiastic about being able clients have shown an interest in to use Pendleton’s UAS test range. using the Pendleton Test Range, but Chances of repeat business with the he gave no names. Pendleton test range look pretty good. Abling, a 29-year veteran of But even though the Pendleton Northrop Grumman in Southern Range is busy these days, city California, showed me two facilities officials wonder if the future will to house drone test operations at the bring the airport more than rental Pendleton airport. payments from aviation companies. One is a trailer that can move After all, the Northwest-based tech equipment from place to place engineering for a Tiger Shark would on the test range. The other is a 12,000-square-foot building that used to house bank records. So what is the potential for outside investment and jobs at the Pendleton test range? Distance from urban areas and shortage of housing and workforce may rule out manufacturing of drones. So what is more likely to develop? Because of the Pendleton Range’s favorable reputation so far, I would guess that the PNNL would consider Pendleton for work on aircraft beyond the Tiger Shark drones. Likewise for the FAA’s writing of drone flight regulations and capturing data on climate change. Pendleton has apparently been a dependable partner, so why not keep using the facility? Pendleton needs well paying jobs. Numbers of ag jobs here have declined as farm ownership has consolidated. If there was a prize for filling a drone test range niche, Pendleton might get the blue ribbon: Diverse array of aircraft from science research to military to medical, distance from urban areas, nearness to diverse cropland and forest lands, variety of weather and climate, nearness to Tri-Cities. A rule in economic development is to build on your strengths. Pendleton has been fortunate in that. A flourishing sheep industry helped start the Pendleton Woolen Mills just after 1900. And the Round-Up and Happy Canyon were a natural fit for Pendleton. Operating a test range for drones has been a niche only for a couple of years. “Make the most of what you have” is still good advice. Pendleton city officials are reportedly planning next fall to start marketing Pendleton and the test range for groups in the industry. I’ll be rooting for that because I and others continue to meet people who are glad they have found this community which offers so many positive features to its residents. ■ Mike Forrester lives in Pendleton. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for pub- lication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Sub- mitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com. s spring returns roared by too swiftly to the West, for us to make a safe I think about exit. Then we saw a day last summer two guides signaling when we packed for to each other across a rafting trip, never the river about how thinking to pack many of us had been for death. We took rescued. And that is clothes, cameras, when we knew: One Andrew river gear, sleeping Gulliford of us was lost. bags and tents. We River running, Comment never dreamed both in private boats there might be a and commercially, tragedy, a whitewater death has become firmly established by drowning. And yet that in the West. Families want a accident happened, and our taste of adventure, cold water lives were forever changed the splashed on hot skin, yells and instant the raft flipped. shouts of excitement, a reason It took hours for a to hang on to the “chicken helicopter to come by, low line” as the rafts tumble and slow, searching for the through rapids. We crave kind of shadow that reveals excitement. where a body might be Our group had planned hidden underwater, pinned by this trip months in advance boulders. without knowing that a record Four other rafts were well snowpack would force the ahead of us when our raft dam above us to release huge slammed into a submerged amounts of cold water, not tree and the commercial only to save the dam but also river guide yelled, “High for downstream irrigation. side! High side!” That meant These pulse floods are we had to move fast to the healthy for the environment, upside of our raft to prevent re-establishing habitat for water from getting into the endangered fish and bird low side and flipping us. But species. But with high flows, in a tight canyon with the there is little margin for river roaring at 9,000 cubic human error. Now, as the feet per second, everything bright sunshine ebbed towards happened simultaneously. The late afternoon shade, we survivors were grateful simply raft tossed all six of us into to be alive. 45 degree water. I blew out The next hours blend the back end and swam to a together. I recall deep wails log near an island. I looked and sobs of grief from the around for my companions. I man whose partner was saw no one. missing. He kept saying, It was the first day and “Why her, God? Why not the first rapid on a four-day me? Take me, I’m older.” The rafting trip. In those seconds inevitable questions arose after the accident, as I tried about the random nature of to understand what had death, who dies and why. happened, I heard only the Weeks later, I thought rushing water. Then I saw the about the hidden complexities upside-down raft bobbing of the situation. Here we were, furiously in the river, caught trapped in a canyon, and yet in the kind of submerged also caught between some of tree that river-runners call a the West’s other competing strainer. activities, things like farming I stayed on the log, and irrigation, activities far debating whether to try to removed from river running. get to the island, when our The Bureau of Reclamation, I guide appeared out of the had learned, would not slow a thick willows. He saw me scheduled release from one of and patted his head. I patted their big dams — not even to mine in turn to signal that I retrieve a body. was OK. We couldn’t hear There were 28 passengers each other over the sound of on the trip, and among them the river. He turned around were grandparents who’d and melted back into the brought their grandchildren. brush, and I stayed a few I hoped those children did more minutes on the log, my not blame the river. We had impromptu sanctuary. chosen to be in the wilderness, In 20 years of river and that choice had running, I’ve experienced irrevocable consequences. plenty of flips, but this one Snow is melting now in felt different. I reached the the high country. Rivers are island, removed my lifejacket and helmet and tried to dry off high from snowmelt, and rafters launch with a sense of as the sun climbed the cliff. nervous expectation. To every Then one of the couples who river runner and every excited had been in the front of our passenger: I wish you safe raft appeared, both of them barefoot because the river had passage. ■ ripped their sandals off. We Andrew Gulliford is a hugged. contributor to Writers on the We explored the island. Range, High Country News. On both channels the river
