I think Oregon is the straightest place I have ever lived. Strangers actually yell at you for walking outside of the cross walk. There are so many traffic signs that I find it distracting to my driving. Going north on I 5 into Medford, Oregon there is a road sign about every five feet. People are orderly in lines. They are gung-ho about high school sports. Recycling is a religion.
The first time I landed in Oregon, in 1969, I had moved from Long Island, from Point Lookout, Long Island, next to Long Beach. ( you saw many scenes from Long Beach in the Godfather Part 1) Brown's Lobster House was across the street from our little rental beach house. On certain Sundays, limo after limo would come up to the door of Browns, tinted window and chauffeurs, and dislodge men in dark suits with their hat brims pulled down covering their faces. Three Fingers Brown was supposedly shot during one of these meets. But the neighborhood was very peaceful. The cops were all on the payroll of the Mafia and they protected the neighborhood in their quiet way.
One Sunday, we were hanging around the yard having a beer when these huge heavily armed cops pounded on the door. We looked around frantically wondering what we had done wrong. I opened the door. "Are you Julie Pierce?" one cop growled. I hung my head and muttered "yes." He reached out his hand and put it on my shoulder, "Well, call your mudder will ya, she's worried about you."
We didn't have a phone, and I guess my mudder really wanted to talk with me. At one point we were going away and I told the guy in the cruiser that we were taking off, thinking we were not that far from New York City, maybe an empty house would seem like an invitation... That cop looked me in the eye and told me, "You don't even have to lock up. Nuttin's going to happen to youse.
So, that neighborhood was pretty strait, with a twist. But the freeways and the stores and anything else around New York were kill or be killed aggression back then. My first day in Drain, Oregon (pop. 600) I walked into the 'supermarket', found a few items and the girl behind the counter looked a bit cross eyed at me and shouted "Hi, honey, how're yooo today." I, with my New York instincts, glanced quickly behind me and grabbed my purse tighter, thinking it was set up for a robbery. She had to be trying to distract me while someone behind was going to mug me. Not so. This was Oregon friendly. Where even today, even if you are in a deep heavy conversation, your waitperson will come up and tell you her name and ask all about your life. Now I just feel like shooting myself and getting it over with.
In Oregon we have very strict rules about dog poop. And we watch our neighbors a lot to make sure they follow these rules. But I am often bothered here by the wildest hypocrisy. These are the same people who cut down all the trees here and don't replant. Fly low over this state someday and your heart will bleed. Some of these fine citizens burned a cross on a friend's lawn a few years back when she married a Jamaican man. Our town of Ashland had a very well attended and very heated City Council meeting discussing the brilliant idea of having an Exclusionary Zone downtown so the tourists wouldn't have to see the poor and homeless. I don't necessarily think it would be a better freedom for your dog to be able to poop everywhere, but I do think that if the logging companies have the freedom to cut your country down to nothing, they should have to pay for their crime as much as a jay-walker, at least.
We need freedom from exploitation of the people and the earth. Freedom is an illusion if it doesn't carry responsibilities. And it is stupid if it only applies to ordinary people and not to corporations. And if we had democracy, even our strange 'representative democracy' then our elected representatives like George the Second Bush could not, would not, last a day as president, after making his infamous statement "I don't care what the people want, I am the decider."
It is not a simple subject, this freedom stuff.
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