Out Of My Element

A Moscow Hick in Portland Asks “Why Are All These Men Wearing Clogs?�

By Joan Opyr, 8-04-05

I’m enjoying a brief holiday in Portland, Oregon, a quiet jewel of a city on the Willamette River. I drove here yesterday from Moscow, Idaho. The journey was uneventful. Apart from passing two fire engines and a highway patrolman – the former was busy attending to a pickup truck with its engine on fire, while the latter was comforting the truck’s owner, who was sat by the side of the road, weeping – as I would, should my darling 1976 Suburban, The Beast, ever suffer a similar fate – I had a nice, quiet drive along the Columbia and then the Hood rivers. Oregon is beautiful, from the scrublands in the east to the first sighting of Mt. Hood, just as you reach The Dalles.

There was no traffic to speak of until I reached Portland proper. I passed three – count ‘em, three – triple-tandem Frito Lay trucks on I-84, which gave me the false impression that Portland might have a problem with obesity, but I’ve seen no evidence of that thus far. Unlike New Orleans, where every third person walks with the aid of a cane because he or she has blown-out knees, Portland appears to be home to a lot of fairly fit, passionately pedestrian types. (I’ve quickly had to adjust both my driving and my walking habits. I grew up in a city, but I’ve lived in Moscow for so long that I forget that when in the city, one must yield to pedestrians even when they’re not in the crosswalk and that jay-walking is not a felony offense but an urban way of life.)

Portland is good. It’s a bit like Seattle, only not so painfully hip. In Portland, my nose-ring is not out of place; it fails to give the store clerks pause. In Seattle, on the other hand, my nose-ring is inadequate. Unless you’ve also pierced your tongue, your eyebrows, your septum, the tops of your ears and an eclectic assortment of your nether regions, you’re just a tiresome wannabe, a pathetic piker. Don’t even bother to go into Seattle’s John Fluevog Shoe Store without the appropriate piercings because none of the blue-haired clerks will wait on you. They know that you might actually expect the shoes you purchase to be comfortable.

At lunch yesterday, I dined on wilted spinach and duck breast salad. I might have achieved this meal in Moscow, but first I would have had to drive eight miles into town to buy fresh spinach, and then sixteen miles in the opposite direction to shoot a duck at the Spring Valley Reservoir. This is much, much easier. I spent the afternoon shopping at Oblations Paper & Press, spending an ungodly amount of money on beautiful Italian stationary and amusing cards. I visited the Chinese Gardens – seven bucks admission but worth it for the ponds and the mediation rooms and the banana trees heavy with fruit – and the Pendleton Store, where I resisted the urge to spend the whole of my travel money on a pair of hand-sewn, deerskin, Calamity Jane gloves with fringe on the cuffs. One cannot wear fringed gloves in Idaho with any degree of sincerity, and $118 is too much to spend on the off chance that one of my friends might throw a Western-themed Halloween party. (The last time I attended a costume party, it was 1996 and I went as Bill Clinton’s cigar. I’ll never be able to top that, so why try?)

Portland is an essential part of the West, but it’s not the West that I know. This is the liberal, progressive West, a West still ruled by unions and conservationists and Democrats – strong, organized, confident Democrats who know how to win U. S. Senate seats and Governor’s races. I met a man named Kari Chisholm last night. He’s the owner of Mandate Media, whose business motto is “Internet Strategy For People Changing The World.� Kari has just acquired the Internet PR contract for one of the Democratic contenders in the Nevada governors’ race. I intend to interview Kari about his candidate – and about his extensive experience in Oregon politics working for successful gubernatorial and senate campaigns – but last night, we talked about a Western strategy for the national Democratic Party.

As a Southerner, I say forget the South. With the exceptions of Louisiana, Florida, and possibly Arkansas, it’s not worth spending a single Democrat dime below the Mason-Dixon line. The Dixiecrats have all become Republicans, and until the generation that kept Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms in power (and their children, who have now given us Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Dole) answers the role called up yonder, the South is lost. National Democrats must concentrate their attention on the coastal states, the Rust Belt, and the Intermountain Rocky West. Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado – taking more than just a nodding interest in once-progressive Northern Idaho might also help – might be a better strategy than Hillary Clinton trying to out-moralize the fundamentalist, anti-gay, bible-thumping right.

Or so it seemed last night over several of Portland’s excellent microbrews. For dinner, I had a pan-fried oyster sandwich with melted gruyere and a remoulade sauce. Heaven. I could really get to like this Portland business. The food, the shopping, the politics – but then, what would I do with all my knives and my guns, my hunting gear, my military-surplus gear, and my gas-guzzling, toxic-fume spewing 1976 Suburban? I’m a Democrat, but I’m an Idaho Democrat.

In Portland, I’ve seen a lot of men wearing clogs: brightly colored, rubber clogs. If they came to Idaho in those shoes, we’d think they were nuts. We’d worry that they didn’t have proper boots, or that maybe, just maybe, they didn’t know how to tie their laces. Can urban Democrats from Portland make common cause with rural Democrats from Idaho – or Montana or Nevada or Colorado? Sure. Wild salmon are wild salmon, but they don’t taste the same once they swim up Oregon’s rivers (and over its dams) into Idaho’s Snake and its Clearwater. There will have to be some adjustment on both sides.

I’ll go first. My name is Joan, and I have an irrational aversion to men in clogs. Now, would any of you Portlanders mind if I sharpened my AK-47 bayonet while we discuss what we can do to turn the rest of the West into a nice shade of Democratic blue?

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