On a quarter-century in Bend

I never expected to be in Bend for 25 years, and yet, this month marks that anniversary. Wow.

A lot of change in my life, and Bend’s, over that time. Some good, some not so great, all water under the bridge there’s no use kvetching over.

When my job at United Press International evaporated in the fall of 1990 – I was their last reporter in Portland, next to last in Oregon – a boss I barely knew in LA called to tell me I was the “best person I’ve ever had to lay off.”

Ouch. Such a compliment.

I frantically looked for work – AP had no spot for me, nor did The Oregonian – how things would have changed if they did. So one day, as the unemployment was running out, I called an old friend at The Bulletin, which used to be a UPI client – held on longer than most.

Indeed, there was an opening. And after two women turned it down, Deb and I moved over the Cascades from Beaverton.

It truly felt like a small town then. One where there was no Starbucks, no Supercuts (I used to kid about going to Floyd’s Barber Shop with Field and Stream magazines and a six-pack in the sink;-) — and worse for me, no local access number for my already-strong online addiction (ah, CompuServe, Prodigy and — I was a beta tester for AOL. If only a beta shareholder!;-)

It was a town where seemingly half the population vanished into the woods when deer hunting season arrived. Where Division Street was not divided, where Third Street already was getting too crowded (back to the future!) and … where at the corner of Highway 20 and 27th Street stood a lonely BP station and … nothing else. No Costco, Safeway, shopping centers — darkness at the edge of town.

Over the years I bounced from the paper to a special five years writing online-only (at first) news for Bend.com/later The Bugle, and then, 11 years ago almost to the day, landed at KTVZ (then newly christened NewsChannel 21, though many old-timers still know it best as Z-21.)

I’ve had my ups and downs, just like the region I’ve come to know and, yes, still love. Sure, I have not spent as much time away from the keyboard enjoying it as I wish. Never been much of an outdoorsman, but at least I get my walks in now, thanks to the co.-provided Fitbit and My Fitness Pal.)

One of my first stories at the paper was to interview the authors of a book that included Bend in “50 Fabulous Places to Retire” or somesuch. I recall asking the couple how they came up with the list. They had narrowed it to 200 or so, I seem to recall, before starting to interview residents.

They thought they’d have trouble narrowing it to 50. Instead, they had trouble coming up with 50, because so many people are so down on where they live, they couldn’t imagine folks actually think it was a good place to retire, or raise families, etc. And it appeared that the longer they lived in one spot, the more who felt that way. Soured on their former “paradise,” mad at those who came after them for “trying to change the place,” etc.

So they had to focus on the relative newbies, the one who knew why they had come and loved where they were – not the long-time residents who have soured on it and of course have this rosy, romantic view of how things “used to be.”

As a journalist, my specialty is reality. I have to skip the rose-colored glasses. Bend and Central Oregon wasn’t perfect then, or now. There are always things to miss and remember fondly, wherever you live. The trick is to realize that everything changes, some for the better, some not so much. We cannot put a place (or person) we love under glass, never to change. It doesn’t work.

Yes, the summer tourists seem lousier drivers than ever. (Day to day ones, too.) And it’s still called “poverty with a view” by too many.

But during the deep recession that hit here as hard as anywhere, I remember looking up to the bright-white snow-capped mountains on the horizon right outside our doorsteps and saying, “they haven’t lost a bit of their value, right?”

It’s all about trying to put, and keep, things in perspective, something hard to hold onto in the swirl of emotion-fueled rants in our social-media-fueled Blame Society.

There’s no magic dial called “growth” we or our elected leaders can turn up or down, much as many would like (if we could even get a slim majority to agree on where the dial should sit!) It’s 1,000s of individual decisions by all of us infallible, imperfect humans.

So we must, in the end, except the bitter with the sweet – some of the best chocolate, and life, is bittersweet. I can be brought close to tears by a 20-year-old library card or bottle of Windex. Seriously. I’ve always had a touch of the melancholy that way.

But we can’t, yet, time travel. (Though a Star Trek transporter sure would have been handy covering big national news 3 hours to our east!)

Instead, our mind does the traveling, the sorting, the rationalizing. It’s how we survive what life throws at us.

And for all those ups and downs, and the worse traffic we face now (but WAY better than the Valley!)  I know I’m blessed to, for example, have the best wife in the world (to put up with me and the News Vortex, a saint!) – a 5-minute commute, a great job and great co-workers and bosses, my health (mostly:-/ and a special place to call home, even if we write all the time about its imperfections and issues.

Because the Chief Rationalization of Life, no matter where you live, is that while things could be better — they could always be much worse.

Such is life. In Bend or anywhere. It’s what we make of it, as Doc Brown says at the end of said Back to the Future — so make it a good one! And take time aside from grousing to remember all the things we take for granted – and thank God and our fellow, imperfect friends, family and co-workers for making it not just tolerable, but pretty darn nice at times.