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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 16, 2017)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, September 16, 2017 East Oregonian Page 5A Packy Don Larew rides again I was working though a case of the Sunday morning slows in a massive shopping center on the island of Oahu. I was attired in my usual, casual, drugstore cowpoke outfit of felt hat, Whites boots, snap shirt, dinner plate belt buckle and Wranglers, and was just two days of R and R beyond wading in the frozen slop on a feedlot job. I was also six hours on the downhill side of a last call double shot of Jim Beam with a beer back at the Wakiki Tiki Hut or Wannaleiu Inn, or some such dive. I needed to atone for Saturday night excess, so I entered an Asian imports establishment and purchased a cobalt blue tea set, rimmed in gold filigree, with four enamel cups, and an assortment of oriental herbs. I was headed out on the gentle path to monkhood, to serenity, to washing from my psyche twenty years of wasted days and wasted nights. I placed my new treasure on the top of a red Chevrolet rental car and was fumbling around with the door key when a group of tourists, dressed alike in white cotton shirts, dark pants, sensible shoes, fanny packs, and stubby-billed baseball caps, surged around the curve of the spiral parking lot, all of them walking backward and producing a lightning storm of flash bulb pops. Their focal points were three motorized camera dollies aimed at a black Buick cruiser that contained the Lord himself, Jack Lord, star of the Hawaii Five-O series, who was taping a product placement of the Ala Moana Center while executing an exciting two-minute sequence wherein tough homicide cops cruise through a shopping center parking lot and look like they are looking for someone. I stood there, leaning on the Chevy door and witnessed the price of fame. Even as the crowd yelled his name and waved to him, Jack did not look happy in his stardom. Jack looked bored and sleepy and hung over, about as star-worthy as a bowl of poi. I don’t think he was acting. He looked like he, too, had boogied one too many times to ukulele tunes the night before. It took a good five minutes for the adoring procession to thin out enough for me to ease the car into the mess of traffic. As I was flipping the tranny into drive, two young women emerged from the tribe of Hawaii Five-O groupies, pointed my way, and began to chant what I understood to be “Packy Don Larew.” I was a hungover hick from Idaho. I had I was a star of stage and screen right up until one of my adoring fans almost im- paled herself on the rental car’s hood ornament. Quick takes Bobby Mote decides to hang up his spurs The first time I met Bobby Mote he was sleeping on my parent’s floor after a high school rodeo in Hermiston. Last time I saw him we were on a flight that kept losing power before we could take off. We were sitting next to each other and we both wanted off that plane. Luckily we landed safely. Everyone called him Elvis. Glad he had a successful career. — Jennifer Hamlin Hermiston continues to debate graduation venue As a parent of a senior at Hermiston High School I am very concerned with the “local” options. The gym has a major issue of limited seating. The football field still has the issue of limited seating and it adds the issue of unpredictability with the weather. The rodeo grounds have the major issue of cost as well as the unpredictability of weather. To me the Toyota Center is the only viable option. — Jennifer Roberts It needs to stay local, why are we concerned about weather? I’ve never heard anyone complain when they sit in terrible weather conditions at a professional foot- ball, baseball game, etc. — Kacee Stewart It’s interesting the opinions of people who are more concerned with local busi- ness impacts than they are for the graduates and their families. End of the day, limited seating affects families, not the profit local businesses make. — Fino Osorio — JanitorWillie Yes, we have a turkey “problem.” So what do we need? Only the help of the bureaucrats in the ODFW can remedy this great American turkey dilemma. — the PatrioticTraitor If a spotted owl can totally destroy the economy of the Pacific Northwest, imagine what a turkey can do. — Central VA One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is that much can be summed up in just a few words. Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours @Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian. com, and keep them to 140 characters. J.D. S mith FROM THE HEADWATERS OF DRY CREEK that I should skip one Saturday night party just to see what it was like to wake up on Sunday morning actually feeling better than when I went to bed. It was great advice, and it stuck. ■ J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena. The new normal: wildfires all the time I n September 1982, my a late morning break in lawn chairs wife, Hilde, and I learned near the eastern edge of our southern firsthand about wildfires Oregon property, sipping coffee during a backpacking trip in and talking while we admire the Northern California. While we monument’s impressive mountains 15 were fly-fishing a creek miles miles away. from camp, we noticed a cloud But not this summer. The view of smoke drifting upstream. has been obscured by smoke from More smoke, thick smoke, soon eight nearby Michael followed, and then hot wind, Baughman wildfires sparked and then we saw the first orange by July and August Comment flames. lightning strikes, so We had no choice but to run we’ve been watching for our lives, trees exploding in bursts of the mountains through a flame not far behind us. After two hours grim haze of gray-brown we made it safely out of the forest, our smoke. white T-shirts splotched with red by the fire Recently, the smoke retardant dropped from overhead planes. was exceptionally thick, If we hadn’t been in good shape, we might the monument’s mountains have died. invisible. A prominent Fast-forward to September 2017. The knoll rising above a lake Klamath, Siskiyou and Cascade mountain a mile from our home ranges converge near the Oregon- could barely be seen through the acrid haze. California border to create an irreplaceable The Chetco Bar Fire, over 125,000 acres combination of co-existing ecosystems. In and growing by the hour, was threatening 2000, to protect this unique area, President the coastal town of Brookings. We have Bill Clinton established the 86,774-acre close friends living on the North Umpqua Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. River who were now at stage 2 evacuation Then, in 2017, President Barack Obama preparedness. The morning news warned expanded it by adding 48,000 acres. that the fires would likely burn until Thanks to Donald Trump’s Interior mid-October. As September began, we read secretary, Ryan Zinke, a recommendation that 81 large fires had burned 1.4 million that would scale back the monument’s size acres, and at least eight Western states were is currently under review. Zinke’s proposal suffering from dense, smoky air that turned comes as no surprise. While serving as a the morning sun red. congressman from Montana, he voted for a We talked about all of that, and about the House resolution that would make it easier contrasting problem of Houston, where we for the ownership of public lands to be also have friends, and where more rain had transferred to the states. fallen in two days than the Rogue Valley After 50 years of hiking its trails and gets in two years; and then about the Texas cross-country skiing its mountainsides, Republicans who voted against federal aid Hilde and I know the monument very for East Coast victims of Hurricane Sandy, well, and we welcomed its creation and thereby creating an opportunity to confess expansion. Whenever the weather allows, to their world-class hypocrisy by voting, as after a workout or some yard work, we take they should, in favor of aid for their own state; and finally about how, according to science, as opposed to Chinese hoaxes, summer wildfires will soon become the new normal: the rural West frequently ablaze. Since the day we ran for our lives, Hilde and I have witnessed a steady progression toward this awful outcome. And then we were saved from absolute depression. We were sitting no more than 10 feet from a birdbath, and behind the birdbath was the wire fence that separates us from our neighbor down the hill. A flock of eight Western bluebirds arrived and perched on the low limb of a nearby oak. The birds studied us briefly, decided we were all right, and fluttered down to the bath together to splash vigorously for several minutes. No sooner had they flown off than two perfectly formed and overlapping V’s of stridently honking Canada geese, 100 birds or more, flew directly over our heads, so low that we could hear their slow, powerful wing-beats. Shortly after the geese disappeared, our neighbors’ horses, two mares and a gelding, came to the fence so we could feed them their daily feast of apples from our tree. So birds and animals helped us through a dreary day, and sooner or later, if not in October then in November, the rains will come and the fires will be extinguished and the sky will clear once again. But then comes next summer, and all the summers after that, and running away won’t work. ■ Michael Baughman is a contributor to Writers on the Range the opinion service of High Country News. He is a writer in Oregon. As September began, 81 large fires had burned 1.4 million across the West. Pilot Rock battles a flock of nuisance turkeys Solution = deep turkey fryer. Period. no idea who this Packy Don Larew person was, but I supposed, because of my cowboy garb, that I was being mistaken for some Roy Rogeresque hero of the Asian cinema and was all too willing to participate in the harmless masquerade, to squeeze out my two minutes of fake fame. I mustered my prettiest, “Aw shucks folks, thank you but I really must ride into the sunset” smile, accented by a tip of the hat to my fan base as I nudged the car into the stream of satisfied shoppers. I did notice that none of my fans were attempting to take my picture. They were just pointing my way and yelling, almost chanting, that name, “Packy Don Larew, Packy Don Larew.” As the original Latinos were wont to say, “Sic transit gloria mundi.” I was a star of stage and screen right up until one of my adoring fans almost impaled herself on the rental car’s hood ornament and I jammed on the brakes then watched my cobalt blue teapot and four little tea cups tumble down the windshield, over the hood and into pieces on the parking lot tarmac. I finally realized that rather than being mistaken for a second-magnitude movie star, I was being politely informed by a group of English-as-second-or-third-language folks that, in my absent-minded un-Zen state of post-party buckaroodom, I had left a package on the roof of the car. It took another ten years before I quit drinking alcohol. The precipitating event for my abstinence was not a horrible car wreck or broken nose or paternity suit. It came when my pal, Hester the Jester, suggested CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES U.S. PRESIDENT Donald Trump The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ U.S. SENATORS Ron Wyden 221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20510 202-224-5244 La Grande office: 541-962-7691 Jeff Merkley 313 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 202-224-3753 Pendleton office: 541-278-1129 U.S. REPRESENTATIVE Greg Walden 185 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 202-225-6730 La Grande office: 541-624-2400 GOVERNOR Kate Brown 160 State Capitol 900 Court Street Salem, OR 97301-4047 503-378-4582 REPRESENTATIVES Greg Barreto, District 58 900 Court St. NE, H-38 Salem, OR 97301 503-986-1458 Rep.GregBarreto@state.or.us Greg Smith, District 57 900 Court St. NE, H-482 Salem, OR 97301 503-986-1457 Rep.GregSmith@state.or.us SENATOR Bill Hansell, District 29 900 Court St. NE, S-423 Salem, OR 97301 503-986-1729 Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us
