Three Beautiful Things 05/17/09: Dreamin' Kellogg Again, Logs and Specks and Eyes, Billy's One Man Geek Squad

1. My blog post, here, narrating my dream of sliding backwards in my Honda down Kellogg's icy Main Street into a funeral attended by mountain men with high powered rifles has attracted some interest, but, better yet, has attracted some interpretations of what this dream might mean. If you are into interpreting dreams, come read this one and feel free to take a crack at telling me what you think is going on the dank cavern of my id.

2. Bishop Thornton is capable of astonishing insights when he preaches; sometimes, he just hits hard on what we already know to be true and as he examined the destructive nature of evil speech and meanness and being judgmental, he hammered away eloquently at what we knew, but can't hear spoken enough.

3. I loaded Norton 360 on Deke's computer today, an easy enough task, but I really enjoy being of help, in any way I can, with others' computers. Yes, there's not a ton I can do, so when I can do something, it's a thrill.

Kellogg in My Blood: Sunday Scribblings

This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt is the word "decision". For other reflection on this topic, go here.

I live in Eugene, Oregon.

In the summers I come to my hometown, Kellogg, Idaho and visit/live with my sister, Silver Valley Girl, and my mom and spend as much time as possible with InlandEmpireGirl, who lives on Lake Roosevelt in northeast Washington.

On the face of it, that might appear to be quite a decision, leaving the place I live and my wife and stepchildren to spend time with family and my friends in North Idaho.

But, about fifty years ago I started making the decision to come here in the summers. In fact, what appears to be a regular decision to come here, may not really be a decision at all.

Fifty years ago, I was in the preschool Sunday School class at the United Methodist Church and I started to make friends, including Scott Stuart, one of my best friends in North Idaho. Later, in kindergarten, I made more friends and even then, at such a young age, I began to care about these friends: Scott, Kenton, Roger, Denice, Valerie, and a host of others.

My feelings for these friends began to attach themselves to streets and buildings and houses and the general landscape of Kellogg.

Likewise, I began, at this young age, to realize that home, with my family, was a secure place. Sure, it was loud and the houses were small and, at times, it was tense, but it was also a place of generosity, popcorn, pot roast, a predictable vacation to Orofino every summer, Leave it to Beaver, My Three Sons, Lost in Space, Perry Mason, and Marcus Welby, MD.

It was a place of televised baseball, football, and basketball games, of the Wide World of Sports, the World Series, Idaho Vandal games on the radio, of hating the Washington State Cougars, loving USC, and hating Notre Dame. It was the 49ers' John Brodie, deep respect for Vince Lombardi, and rabid love for the Boston Celtics.

I loved all of this. As I grew older, friends became baseball and basketball teammates, fellow golfers, fellow Boy Scouts, brothers in DeMolay; they became fellow musicians in high school band and chorus, fellow youth group members, fellows in harmless shenanigans. I began going to dances and songs like "The Letter" and "Hey Jude" and "Crimson and Clover" bonded with the smell of perfume, with holding a girl in my arms in a slow dance and making butcher paper posters and hanging streamers to decorate Kellogg Country Club or the high school cafeteria for proms or the Sadie Hawkins dance.

Even the heartbreak stuck and became a sweet suffering, wondering if I've ever felt suffering as intensely as I did in Kellogg at the loss of a girlfriend or the stupid decisions to move on from one girlfriend to another, when I left a wonderful girl for a girl who was ultimately cold.

The bond with Kellogg deepened as I went to work at the Zinc Plant. Suddenly I was a part of the industry and the work force that made our town possible. It was awful work in a hellish environment, but being in that plant with other men working in the face of danger, sweating, cussing, complaining, helping each other out, feeling respect that we were all in it together, deepened my sense of being a part of a world beyond my individual person.

I left Kellogg. I pursued my studies. I landed a terrific teaching position at Lane Community College.

But no day passes without me talking about Kellogg, thinking back to what I experienced and experience here, wishing I were here with my friends and family, walking the familiar streets, enjoying reunions with former teachers and life long friends, strengthening old friendships.

So, is love of place a decision? Is feeling pulled back to that place a decision? Is being where I can speak freely, feel deep comfort with those around me, know the demands of hard labor and bodily injury a decision?

Is it really a decision I make every summer to come back here?

I don't think so. Something more powerful than choice, more powerful than deliberation, more compelling thn decision draws me back to Kellogg, Idaho, draws me back at Christmas time, draws me back during spring break, draws me back for the summers.

Decisions, of course, matter. But, it's vital that we recognize that we are pulled to certain people and certain places that render choice and decisions irrelevant.

This irresistible force of Kellogg, Idaho is in my blood. I don't make a decision about whether my blood will circulate. I don't make a decision that my blood will bring life to my organs and my limbs and my extremities.

Likewise, it's not my decision that my life is vitalized by all that Kellogg embodies for me.

It's in my blood.

It's bigger than choice.

It's deeper than decision.

Three Beautiful Things 07/06/2007: Oil, Andy, Help Me Rhonda

1. Just before Memorial Day weekend I took my little 1993 Honda Civic in for an oil change and Dan told me it looked like time to make an investment in my car and rattled off some apparent problems with oil leakage. It would cost a lot, he thought. After a dye was put in the oil line, further inspection showed I needed a much cheaper repair: new gasket and cam seals. But, he had me bring it in a couple of weeks later, which was today, to make sure no problems existed after those seals were replaced. The Honda is fine. I can drive it to Kellogg on the 10th. My relief was more profound than a person ought to have for a car!




2. My pal K-Doe and I saw the movie "Waitress" tonight at the Bijou and it was funny, charming, weird, uplifting, offbeat, and satisfying. Its pie metaphor was fun. I had purposely not read anything about the movie, so I was especially surprised and happy to see Andy Griffith in it. I enjoyed everyone, but I have a very soft spot for Andy and his acting was spot on.

3. I love Rhonda, a checker at Alberton's. She's a great yakker. Today I was looking lost at the chewing gum rack. I was looking for cinnamon-flavored chewing gum in pellets. She found an Albertson's brand gum that I had overlooked. We had a great talk while she checked me out about cooking and her boyfriend and her kids and who cooks for whom and I was so happy from talking to Rhonda that I floated with my groceries back to the car. She's out there, in a good way.

Eccentricity: Blumming It in Bonners Ferry: Sunday Scribbling

When I've acted eccentrically, it's been my attempt to cover failure.

When I was in high school, I played basketball and baseball. The older I got, the less successful I was.

First, a little back story. I played basketball for the Kellogg Wildcats in North Idaho. We Wildcats loved imitating other players, mostly NBA players, and mostly players with eccentric shooting styles, but also our high school opponents.

Our favorite player to imitate was a star at Wallace High, our chief rival. Bob Blum ran up and down the court with his fists high on his ribs and his elbows pointed straight behind him. When Bob Blum was introduced as a starter at the beginning of each Wallace game, he leapt up, raised his fist, and greeted his teammates "rah rah" style.

It may not sound funny to you, the reader, but we found it hilarious, and imitated him all the time, at basketball practice, in the halls at school, at dances, anywhere.

In our Kellogg way of talking, we called it "Blumming It". When I go to my high school reunion this summer, I guarantee that a handful of us will, when we see each other, Blum It.

My junior year in basketball, by midseason, I had been relegated to the bench.

It hurt me. I compensated with eccentric behavior.

For example, late in the season we Kellogg Wildcats made our annual trip to Bonners Ferry, in North Idaho, nearly to Canada. In the Bonners Ferry gym, both teams' starting five was introduced in a spotlight.

Three of us on the Wildcat team wore a warmup jersey that didn't match the others. These jerseys were about six years old and were white with "Kellogg Wildcats" written in cursive font.

We called these warm ups the "albino". No good players wore the albino. I loved wearing the albino. It put me in my place as a scrub and made me stand out. I found it eccentric and funny.

In Bonners Ferry, our starting five was introduced in the spotlight. On this night, when the last starter had been introduced, I leapt up, raised my fist, threw my elbows straight back, and joined the starters in the spotlight, wearing the albino, faked rah rah enthusiasm, and shouted, "Let's go! Let's go!"

I startled the starters.

I pissed off our coach.

My benchmates doubled over laughing, especially as the spotlight exagerrated the shadow of my elbows thrown back.

I returned to bench and they all gave me skin. "You're fucking crazy, man!"

I Blummed It in the Bonners Ferry spotlight.

I masked the pain of my decline as an athlete by being eccentric.

It's been a lifelong practice.

Maybe another time I'll tell other stories, but that's it for now.

For other Sunday Scribblings on Eccentricity, go here.

Remembering Dad: Sibling Assignment #23

My siblings and I are writing about whatever events we want to surrounding our father's death. Silver Valley Girl's wrote a moving tribute and describes her struggles here. InlandEmpireGirl's beautiful reflections upon and pictures of the best day leading up to Dad's death are here.


Today is the eleventh anniversary of our father's death. It was a Saturday. Dad had been in an in-between state. He didn't seem conscious, but in his pitching and thrashing around, he wasn't really asleep or unconscious either. I'm not knowledgeable about the hours leading to a man finally dying. I can only say that Dad, in his silent thrashing, sure seemed to me to be fighting for his life.

Dad was too big for my mother, a nurse next door, and me to handle. His mattress slid off the bed and he was at an awkward angle, one quarter of him on the bed, three quarters off. Finally, with the help of some medicine and with our combined efforts we got him back on the bed.

Once Dad quieted down, he breathed with a whistle. His breath would whistle in, faintly, and then whistle out. The whistles became farther and farther apart, quieter and quieter.

I stayed in his room with him. I turned on a program on VH1. It featured Paul McCartney. I used to know which McCartney song was playing when Dad's whistling stopped and he was dead. It was early afternoon, June 1, 1996.

Two things stand out for me from those weeks I was home while Dad died. First, I remember my anger. I was mad at Dad. I don't know how correct I was, but, at that time, I felt sure that Dad's years of alcohol abuse had been a chief cause of his liver cancer. It might have also been related to the toxic environments he worked in at the Zinc Plant, but, eleven years ago, his drinking was what was on my mind and in my craw.

I was alone with Dad most nights from about ten or eleven o'clock until Mom took over at about five a.m. I wasn't always at Dad's side, but I was nearby and ready to help him if he needed to go to the bathroom or called for water or something to eat.

Sometimes, when I knew he was asleep and Mom was asleep upstairs, I would curse my dad. I got thoughts and feelings off my chest about how much time I thought he wasted being drunk and how much I thought our relationship was not what it could have been because of alcohol. I hadn't spoken these things to him much when he was healthier. I'm not sure it did much good to say these things when he was unconscious and dying, but it's what I did.

The second thing I remember was how many friends came to see Dad as he died. It was really inspiring. My anger at night was more than offset by the inspiration I felt as I learned in such a concentrated way how many men loved my father.

Men he worked with at the Zinc Plant came by. Men he drank with uptown and watched football and baseball games came by. Men he golfed with. Men he had known most of his life. Dad had lived in Kellogg all but a handful of years. He had long friendships. These were more loving friendships than I had known. More was between Dad and these men than the beer. They were kind to him, talked to him, offered my mother their help, and were supportive of me and my sisters.

Once Dad died, the flowers, cards, and other tokens of love overwhelmed us. His funeral packed the church. Members of my mother's family drove up from Orofino. So did friends of Mom's from Orofino. People from every walk of life in Kellogg attended who had known Dad in the bars, at the Bunker Hill, or at the golf course.

Especially moving for me was having about ten friends from my graduating class come, several of whom considered my father every bit as much their friend as mine; some of them hung out with my dad at the golf course or at the bars long after I had moved away.

My anger dissolved. My understanding of Dad was transformed in the last week or ten days before he died in what happened around his funeral. My thinking about Kellogg, about what makes a man a good man, about how love works, about friendship and long-term commitment to friendship, and about how friendships formed and were sustained in Kellogg deepened in the time around Dad's death and funeral. I woke up. I came to see that I hadn't really understood Dad very well. I'd been unfair in some of my anger.

I dedicated myself to never letting Kellogg, my family, my Kellogg friends, or the roots of who I am ever get far away. I dedicated myself to never losing touch again. I dedicated myself to enjoying and thriving on being a Kellogg guy and never letting go of that, no matter if I were in Kellogg or living somewhere far away.

I often think about how much more fun Dad and I would have now that I've dedicated myself to being a Kellogg guy. I wouldn't feel the distance. I wouldn't feel in limbo. I'd enjoy him and his friends so much more.

Instead, I'm left to carry on the way of life I learned from him, as best I can. I'm grateful for all I learned about being an everday guy from him and happy that coming to realize what I did has freed me from the anger I felt.

I miss Dad. His memory gives me and my mom and sisters a lot of good laughs. Above all, I miss his devotion, his devotion to Kellogg, to his friends, and to his family. I hope I can carry this devotion forward in reality as much as I want to in my desires.

Fragments

Patrick at Making Flippy Floppy got me thinking about penny candy. For me penny candy meant Walden's grocery on Cameron and Hill in Kellogg. A big cat at Walden's lay across the penny candy, but it never seemed to deter me or my friends from buying it.

It didn't deter my life long friend Don Windisch either. Don and Scott Stuart and I were on our way from Sunnyside Elementary school to Junior Choir at the United Church on a Friday afternoon. Scott and I didn't know that Don had cobbed penny candy from Walden's. We found out when he showed us the candy and said in a sixth grade criminal growl: "The hand is quicker than the eye." If Scott and I want to make each other laugh to this day, all we have to do is repeat Don's declaration of handspeed over eyespeed.

I had a dream about Walden's grocery over a month ago. Walden's was in Eugene instead of Kellogg. It was closing. The shelves were nearly empty. The beer cooler was full. Many of us were in Walden's to buy beer. It was weird to buy beer at Walden's and walk out of the store onto Blair Blvd. in Eugene.

I can't help but remember that Pat Birch, a lost soul from KHS class of '48, my dad's class at Kellogg, returned to Kellogg after being in California for quite a while and married a Walden woman.

When I was playing junior high school basketball, Pat Birch asked me if I could shoot as well left-handed as right. I knew I couldn't. This deficiency in my limited aresenal haunted me all through high school. I could always hear Pat Birch asking me about my amidexterity. I always knew I could have done more to improve the dexterity of my left hand.

Another small grocery shop in Kellogg was Swanson's. During Christmas break in 1972, Tom Arnhold, who was a senior at KHS (I was a freshman at NIC) bought the two of us a half case of Falstaff beer and we found a remote spot on the Cataldo Flats and drank the beer. We had a great talk. I don't think I've seen Tom since then. The next day I went to Spokane to drink and stay with Ed Bailey who lived in Spokane. I've only seen Ed Bailey a few times since then. I bought an LP by Argent with the song "Hold Your Head Up" on it. We also listened to Jethro Tull play "Thick as a Brick".

I missed the 1986 all-class reunion at Kellogg. I was at Shakespeare Camp. Ed Bailey picked up my sister, Inland Empire Girl, and carried her in the streets of Kellogg. I don't think she's seen Ed Bailey since then.

Ed Bailey used to tease my younger sister, Silver Valley Girl, without mercy. I think Silver Valley Girl was relieved when Ed was no longer around to tickle her and lift her in the air.

Ed Bailey and I rode in his Datsun to Blue Creek Bay for our graduation party. We listened to Elton John on his eight track player in the car. Whenever I hear Tiny Dancer, I think of leaving town that night to go to Blue Creek Bay to drink beer well beyond my capacity.

Last summer Scott Stuart and I went out in his boat and went to Blue Creek Bay. We both wanted to see what things looked like there and to remember our graduation party from thirty-four years ago.

This summer will be our thirty-fifth year since we graduated from high school. We plan to have a summer party in Kellogg and are asking members of the classes of 70,71,and 73 to join our party. I'm sure if members from other classes showed up, they'd be welcome.

Three Beautiful Things 01/12/07: Eggs, Athol, KHS Class of '68

1. Scott and I had a very good lunch at the Glenwood and talked about Shakespeare and acting and what it's like to go back home again. (My Eggs Benedict and home fries with diet Pepsi were really good, too.)

2. Mommie Dearest, a wonderful blogger from Post Falls and a reporter in North Idaho for the Spokesman Review, is from Athol, Idaho, another small town in North Idaho, wrote to me that she thought us Athol/Kellogg types must stick together. What a wonderful understanding of her roots and mine. We do need to stick together.

3. A member of the Kellogg High School class of 1968 who works in Pasedena found my blog and commented and I commented back, with my email address and we had a wonderful email exchange today. I enjoyed very much reading some of how she experienced Kellogg--she's four years older than I am -- and very much look forward to more correspondence with her.

Church and Church Key in Kellogg

While growing up in Kellogg, I had this idea that our town was divided between the churches and the taverns. I know it wasn't this simple, but I saw it all around me. I got the idea from this idea that church life was a teetotaling life and people who drank alcohol didn't go to church.

My family make-up reinforced this idea. My mother went to church sometimes, but was adamant about my sisters and me going to Sunday School and junior choir. My mom didn't drink.

My dad, on the other hand, rarely went to church and drank alcohol daily, except when he decided from time to time to go on the wagon. He called the opener he used to crack open bottles or pierce a can of beer a church key. Mom was of the church and he was of the church key.

I know that from outside Kellogg, it looked like our town was all about hard work and drinking, gambling, fights, and, until the new freeway construction razed the houses, prostitution (though there prostitutes who worked out of the McConnell Hotel), Kellogg also supported strong Lutheran, Baptist, Roman Catholic, United, Mormon, Assembly of God, Nazerine, and other non-denominational congregations.

I knew Kellogg's Catholics drank alcohol. Many of the Italians in town were Roman Catholic and many of them bellied up to the bar with my dad at Dick and Floyd's and I knew that some of the Italians made their own wine and I'd gone to the annual Italian picnic with my dad and the alcohol flowed freely.

I knew of Lutherans who drank. So I knew that there was crossover, but the prevailing idea in my head was that alcohol and serious church attendance didn't mix. Therefore, it didn't surprise me when one of my dad's friends, whose wife and kids were devoted to the United Church across the street from our house, came to the church to pick up the family, he didn't go in the church, but sat in his car, waiting, drinking a six-pack of beer in the church parking lot.

All through high school, I drank very little beer. Once I started college, this changed. I also sang in the choir at North Idaho College with Rick Frost, a wonderful choir director, and a very public Christian and a teetotaler. Being Christian, Rick attracted many Christians to the choir and I became friends with some of these choir members and I felt torn by the faith these friends professed and my drinking.

In other words, I internalized the conflict I perceived between church and drinking. Once I started drinking, I took on my father's attitude toward church: drinking made me unworthy of the church. I felt guilty when I saw church members and if I went to church I felt like a hypocrite. On the other hand, if I decided to go to church, I felt embarrassed with my friends who were drinkers and who didn't go to church.

This division continued after I graduated from North Idaho College. I transferred to Whitworth College. It's a Christian college. I think I felt like I could shelter myself in North Spokane away from alcohol and be a teetotaler in a Christian atmosphere. It didn't take me long, of course, to discover that many students at Whitworth drank alcohol. At first I was disillusioned. But as time went along, I began to think of myself as being sort of a hip Whitworthian because I began to believe I had integrated the worlds of the church and church key.

I drank alcohol at Whitworth and I worshipped. Upon graduation, in 1976, I got a job as a Chaplain's Assitant at Whitworth. I celebrated winning the job by having a nice dinner and wine with friends and then came back to my dorm and drank a couple of coffee mugs of Chevis Regal with Dave in my dorm and was so hungover the next day I could barely wiggle.

It wasn't the last time my chaplain's work and alcohol crossed paths.

This divide I perceived in Kellogg and felt within myself played itself out most clearly when my younger sister, Carol, got married in July, 1986. I had quit drinking the year before. I had come to the conclusion that I had a terrible drinking problem, and had been maintaining sobriety with the help of a couple of 12-step groups for about eighteen months by the time of the wedding.

Carol and her groom, Paul, were deeply committed to a non-denominational Christian church, the Christian Life Center. Paul's family had been pillars in this church for many years and it had taken hold in Kellogg very strongly.

When the wedding ended and the wedding reception started in Mom and Dad's back yard, across the street from the United Church, where the wedding took place, I was in charge of the bar. I could be trusted with pouring drinks and serving beer because I was sober.

As I started pouring some ditches and gin and tonics and screwdrivers and handing out some beers, I noted that our backyard had become a divided place. Members of the Christian Life Center occupied the west half of the back yard and the boisterous drinkers who were all family friends occupied the east half. As had been the case in my years growing up in Kellogg, the teetotalers and the drinkers were keeping their distance and didn't really know how to get on with each other.

I took a "what will be will be" attitude toward this division since there was not hostility, only awkwardness. But, after an hour or so, the groom, Paul and his brothers and his sister took out their guitars and a banjo and stood in the middle of the yard and began to play and sing.

Their wonderful playing and singing attracted immediate attention. My dad's friends inched toward the music. So did the church members. Pretty soon Dad's friends, a little lit up, but not sloppy, began to compliment the musicians to the church members, employing all their concentration not to say, "Son of bitch, these kids are goddamned good" and instead saying things, a bit artifically, like "These kids are great musicians. You must be very proud of them."
Joyful laughter accompanied these words of praise.

The music broke the division. The music seemed to cast a spell on those celebrating my sister's marriage to Paul that erased the self-consciousness of the polite church-goers unsure of how to mix with the more rough and tumble drinkers and of the drinkers acting sure that they were being held in judgment by the Christians.

Like most such magic moments, this one ended when the party dispersed. My dad's friends did not become members of the Christian Life Center and members of the church did not all grab a bottle of Oly and start telling stories spiced with profanity.

My period of sobriety lasted until fall, 1996. For mental and physical health reasons, I'm in another period of abstinence which I think will last a long time.

My struggle now is less with church and the church key as it is with refinement and vulgarity. Whether I'm drinking or not, I've been blessed by growing up in Kellogg with a profane mouth, a love of dirty jokes, vulgar phrases, giving and taking shit from people, and the kind of unrestrained humor that I learned in the Zinc Plant, from my high school friends, and at home. But, I work in higher education.

The classroom is not the right place for this love I have of profanity, irreverent comments, and picking on people. (Fortunately, I have several fellow teacher friends who don't mind too much if I lengthen the leash and some students with whom I can be myself away from the classroom.) But, in the public square, the prevailing tone and attitude is to be refined, not profane, and so I watch my tongue. Too many people take too much pride in how easily they can be offended.

I fight this all the time. How much, in the academic context, can I be my full self? How much should I hold back? How much can I let my personality rip? How about at home? In a way, my job has become what church used to be and watching my tongue as become the equivalent of not drinking.

I suppose it's why when I get excited about something around my family or enjoy a poem with my students or want to compliment a piece of student writing, I don't say, "It's like a wooden dick: you can't beat it."

I wait until I get back to Kellogg to speak such words that reflect my personality that honestly.

Kellogg Spirit

Since the blizzard conditions in Eugene closed Lane Community College, I can return to blogging and write some more about the conflict I wrote about, here.

Whether we would outright admit it or not, we who were raised in Kellogg knew that it was pretty much just what outsiders said it was. When I would leave Kellogg and meet kids from other parts of the state and said I was from Kellogg, I'd be met either with awkward silence or a comment of this sort: "Yeah. I've been through there. It looked like some one dropped a A-bomb. What's it like living there?"

I don't know where defiance ends and defensiveness begins, but I'd respond with some blend of the two. Looking back, I'd say I was more defensive than defiant. My defensiveness was, in my opinion, born of a sense of inferiority. Like John Austin, who wrote in Huckleberries Online that "when I was at the U of I, I didn't want anyone to know I was from the Silver Valley. Known mostly for two things, its pollution and its prostitution, I was ashamed of the place. This, knowing as a miner every weekend I contributed to the former, while my college buddies contributed to the latter", I, too, felt shame. I developed a strong sense within myself that people who were from places that were not held in contempt or not seen as a joke, belonged in college or were more sophisticated or knew things I didn't know that I wanted to be a part of.

I also knew that what Idaho Escapee wrote in Huckleberries Online was true. Many years ago, Idaho Escapee spent a few years in Kellogg and he "always had the feeling like I was living at the end of civilization. But I suppose those who grew up there have a fondness for that area; it's only natural. But if I never see Shoshone County again in my lifetime, that's too soon for me."

There it is. On the one hand, growing up in a town void of much vegetation, split north and south by a river gray with tailings and sewage, with days with air so thick with air pollution it burned my lungs to ride my bike or run from the Junior High down to the football field, did, in fact, give me a sense of the acopalypse. The poet Richard Hugo expressed this to me most clearly in his poem "Cataldo Mission".

On the other hand, as Idaho Escapee says, I was fond of Kellogg. I was fond of it. I hated it. I wanted to leave. I never wanted to leave. I felt proud of how hard I worked in the zinc plant. I felt proud that I was doing a man's work at seventeen. At the same time, all the men I was working like told me was to go to college so I could get out of this shit hole.

I think the code in Kellogg was pretty clear. If you lived in Kellogg you could refer to it as a shit hole or a hell hole. But, if you were/are from the outside, don't. Outsiders never earned the right to call Kellogg a pit, to call it Leadtown, to call it Hellogg. Outsiders were/are seen as soft number crunching statistic makers with fancy studies and blood tests, but they lacked love for the Valley and were not to be trusted.

I've been gripped by this code. I'll never forget when children's blood began to be tested in, I believe, 1974. These tests weren't born of Kellogg. They were administered by outsiders. My memory says Atlanta, but I might be wrong. That fall I was at a college retreat at Mount St. Michael's, my junior year at Whitworth, and Spokane author Linda Lawrence Hunt rather innocently asked me about the blood tests and the conditions in Kellogg.

I got angry. I told her it was just poor kids with bad hygiene who were making the Valley look bad. I probably even said some crazy thing like they'd probably been eating pencils (not thinking that pencil "lead" is graphite). She was stunned by how vociferously I defied the tests and defended the Valley. I was agitated by a sense of inferiority, of feeling attacked and tried to sound strong by being vociferous.

Kellogg was ripe in 1974 for defiance and defensiveness. Gulf Resources of Houston, Texas had taken control of the Bunker Hill company about six or seven years earlier in a hostile takeover.
It meant that the mining and smelting operations were no longer home owned. It meant that the Bunker Hill Company was part of a larger corporate entity, so that its successes would be helping underwrite other facets of Gulf Resources' operations and if it slid, would be sucking money out of other operations.

This meant that efficiency experts began coming in to the company. It meant that men were being told how to do work in the Bunker Hill by other men who had never been in the place before. The days of home grown managers and home grown leadership were diminishing. It created resentment.

So did the post-1970 arrival of OSHA inspectors. Not only was the Company being run, now, from Houston, its operations were being inspected by Washington D.C. and the Company came up short. OSHA required modifications to make machinery safer and to make working conditions cleaner. Defensiveness/defiance resulted. OSHA was calling into question ways of doing things that many considered had worked just fine for years. Yes, it was an insular attitude. Yes, this defensiveness and defiance was probably unwise. But, it's not the wisdom of it I'm getting at.

I'm getting at the Kellogg Spirit. It's a spirit of defiance and defensiveness that has fueled much of the antagonism over the last twenty years as the EPA has worked to clean up the damage the smelting and mining of hard metals did over sixty to eighty years. For many in the Silver Valley, the EPA stands for yet another outside agency that interfered with the way things had always been and brought ruin to the industry. Many find the statistics and studies specious. The more years that pass, the more years that mining and smelting drift into the past, the better those years seem to many in Kellogg.

As Kellogg teeters on the edge of renewal as a tourist town, it is, of course, Eagle Crest, a subsidiary of Jeld-Wen, an outside corporation who holds the future of Kellogg's ski industry in its hand. Eagle Crest also has plans for a golf course. Many condos are springing up in Kellogg. These are not being built with local money, but with money from the outside.

And, lastly, the Bunker Hill Company originated in San Francisco and Tacoma. Kellogg was chosen as a place to smelt, not only because of the mines in the area, but more because Bunker Hill was looking for a remote area where the dirty air would affect fewer people. Bunker didn't want the lead smelter or the zinc plant in Tacoma. Too many people would have to live with the stench. Kellogg got the nod instead. Lots of jobs. A modicum of prosperity. And a long-term mess.

It's the mess that causes the conflict and the mess that we who love Kellogg never quite know just how to deal with. On Huckleberries Online, the long tradition of "don't tell us what the Silver Valley is about" rears its head as commenters from Coeur d'Alene or Spokane Valley make (accurate) observations or question the pride we from Kellogg have of the renewal there.

These comments and questions are often met with the same question: "Have you lived in the Silver Valley? Do you really know what you are talking about?"

It's the Kellogg/Silver Valley spirit. We know, deep down, the place is a mess. We are proud a long slow recovery is underway. We make fun of Mullan, Wallace, jokes about the whores, Kellogg, and Smelterville. But we are protective. It is as if we are mother bears protecting our cubs. It's a fierce spirit and a proud one.

As I've grown older and as I have lived away from Kellogg for many years, I am more accepting of outside voices than I used to be.

But, still, when I hear that someone from outside wants to write a book or do a study or comment on the Valley, that old defiance/defensiveness is triggered, immediately. But writers like Greg Olsen and Katherine Aikens have proved that outsiders can do some very good work and the improvements I've seen in Kellogg make me think that it's good that my home town has given itself over to the expertise and know-how of strangers.

Three Beautiful Things 01/07/07: Emptiness, Sisters' Approval, School Days

1. It was a dank afternoon in Eugene today and I walked with Snug, thinking about lines fromT. S. Eliot,lines like "the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table."




And I thought about reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" for the first time in 1973,



and how the gray, toxic skies of Kellogg helped me understand the spiritual void Eliot portrays in poem's like "Prufrock" and "The Hollow Men".




And so I took pictures of this black tree's branches against the gray sky in Monroe Park, thinking about





"half-deserted streets" and "muttering retreats", but most of all thinking about emptiness in the outer and the inner world. This grayness might seem more depressing than beautiful, but it was exhilirating for me to find out when I was 19 years old that I wasn't alone in feeling empty and in seeing emptiness around me. It was my secret. Poetry and its images made that emptiness external. I could get it outside myself. These trees reminded me of the liberation I first felt when poetry began to help me inquire more deeply into Kellogg.

2. Both of my sisters wrote me emails today and told me they enjoyed my Snug blog. I'm enjoying taking daily pictures of Snug and posting them and was very happy that Christy and Carol are enjoying this modest project of mine.


3. I spent most of the afternoon preparing for tomorrow's first day of classes for winter quarter and am particularly eager to teach Intro. to Poetry again.

Until Next Time

I hope I can wrangle a way to return to Kellogg in March. Last year the Deke and I visited Kellogg over the Presidents' Day holiday, but that won't happen this year because of my involvement in "Othello" and the Deke's studies in her graduate program.

My visits to Kellogg become more relaxing each time I come. I lie around. I take naps. I go out with friends and play slot machines and poker or grab a bite to eat. Nothing is pressing. No one demands anything.

Things are lovely with my mother and my sisters and I have found much comfort in our relationship with each other. When it comes to my mother, let me just say a person would have to be a fool not to get along with her:



I'll return to Eugene tomorrow and get back to my professional life and my married life.

I hope some day my married life and some kind of professional life will be in North Idaho. It's where I can relax.

Kellogg Tour: High School, Pictures Taken 12/20/06 (Part 3)

Kellogg High School was constructed in the mid-fifties and is an anomoly in local school architectural design. Other schools are primarily brick and others have the cement penitentiary look. Kellogg High School, tucked into Jacobs Gulch, is largely a glass structure:



Here's another view:


One of the attractions of Kellogg High School's design is how Jacobs' Creek runs under the building:



My many failures as a Kellogg High School basketball player took place in Andrew Gymnasium:

When I was in elementary school, I attended KHS basketball games. While the parents and adults came outside at half time to smoke cigarettes, my friends and competed to see who could throw snowballs the highest on this chimney that stood beside the gymnasium.



I got drunk for the first time in August of 1969, just below the high school. Here is a snowy tour of that area. First Hink, Windy, Jimmy, and I walked down a little road, where Dick, the YMCA swim team coach met us with the Coors beer:Then we settled into this little area near the creek and put away a case of beer. In those days, a case of beer was a twenty-four bottle/can box of beer. Today, I think the youngsters refer to a twelve pack as a case. I think of a twelve pack as a half a case of beer:


The view to the north from right behind Kellogg High School grows more spectacular with every year:


The view south also improves every year:


I hope you've enjoyed these pictures. We'll visit uptown Kellogg tomorrow.

Kellogg Tour: Early Learning, Photos Taken 12/30/2006 (Part 2)

In the third grade, I trasferred from Silver King elementary (another post) to Sunnyside elementary school:



Sunnyside school was closed not too long ago and its facilities were taken over by:



Dave Smith Motors in Kellogg is the largest Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep dealer in the world for the third year running. Dave Smith Motors dominates Kellogg. Cars and trucks are everywhere. So, when I go back to my old school, here's what the playground that was for the first and second graders and for part of noon recess for third graders looks like:



The big kids' playground was a lot better. It had a large playground with room for touch football games and a batting cage from which we played a lot of baseball. My favorite day at Sunnyside school was in the fifth grade during a cold snap. The teachers wouldn't come out for playground duty. The temperature was below zero. The snow was less than a foot deep, deep enough to cushion us by shallow enough to run in it. It was dry snow. We played forbidden tackle football that noon hour. Our running and tackling kept us warm. We weren't sopping wet when we returned to class. I loved that day. Were we to try to play that football game today, here's what we'd face:
And this:
Dave Smith Motors calls attention to itself with the bright colored license plate insert I showed earlier and with Macy Day Parade styled helium balloons that all look pretty similar. Sunnyside Elementary was a place where I learned arithmetic, writing, to read good books, and where I had a generally very good academic experience. Now, hovering over the building that once housed my old school is this:At Sunnyside Elementary, we compensated for not having an outside basket for playing basketball by shooting through the space created under the fire escape by the brace on the right helping hold up the fire escape:



It was at this spot that David Rowley, a sixth grader, came to me and told me John F. Kennedy had been shot. I thought of that moment even more deeply today because Dave Smith Motors was flying its flags at half mast in remembrance of the passing of President Gerald Ford:

Kellogg Tour: First Neighborhood, Photos taken 12/30/2006 (Part 1)

From about the time I was two years old until early summer 1962, I lived in this house at 14 E. Portland. It's a a more finished house now with the metal roof and what appears to be a functional upstairs.





Across the street was the Russell house. They were a very large family. They had about six or seven kids, at least. Forty-five years ago, I thought this house was a mansion:We lived next door to our landlord's mom, Hedve Lenhart. She'd been married to a WWII vet name Papesh. He was killed in the war. Billy Papesh was their son. Our house was his. Billy lost an eye smashing live ammunition with a rock. He did it in our neighborhood. He has a glass eye.


Here is a picture of Bill Papesh today. He is president of WM Advisors, Inc. You can read more here:


As the Cold War got more tense in 1961 and 1962, fellow neighborhood boy Duane Gunderson and I used to speculate what would happen if the Russians bombed Kellogg. For some reason, we had decided that Mr. Dick Cripe was rich and his house was big and the Russians would target his house. Cripes lived across Portland from us and down the street about 500 feet. Here's the Cripe house:



Two doors down Mary Pavelich lived as a widow. Her husband, Nick, an immigrant from Yugoslavia, died of a stroke. He was the first stroke victim I'd ever seen. The stroke thickened his tongue and made his lower lip droop. I'd see him sitting in his wheelchair, sunning. After Nick died, Mary helped Mom sometimes by watching me or my sister Christy if she was short a babysitter. Like Bill Papesh, Dan rose to the top of the Spokane world of finances. He recently retired as the Chairman and CEO of BDO Seidman and sits on the boards of Catalytic Software, Washington Mutual Bank, and Wildseed Ltd. Here is the Pavelitch house:

Please come back for more pictures and my take on some other aspects of my life in Kellogg.

Christmas Figures Around Mom's Neighborhood

I went out for a while tonight and took pictures of Christmas yard figures. These were all within a short walking distance of Mom's house in Kellogg.



Here's a jolly snowman:


The snowman might be so happy because he shares a yard with Snoopy:At the nursing home, this globe sits under the gazebo to brighten up residents' spirits:


This angel sits outside the front door of the nursing home, offering hope and brightness:


Homer Simpson plays Santa two houses down from Mom:

Also two doors down is this snow globe:

For whatever reason, some figures don't make the cut and are cast aside, neglected: