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