Why I Live in Moscow, Idaho

By Joan Opyr, 11-06-06

Last Monday, I caught a cab from London's Kings Cross to Paddington Station. I was on the first leg of my journey home. I'd been in England and the Netherlands for ten days, first at Newcastle's ProudWords Festival, then to deliver a talk and a book reading in Amsterdam, and finally to the York Lesbian Arts Festival. I'd had a fine time, but I was tired and I was very ready to be back home. However my cab driver, a woman -- most unusual in London -- was a chatty sort. She heard my accent and asked where I was from.

"Idaho," I said. "Moscow, Idaho."

"And where's that?" she asked. I explained that Idaho was out west. As this didn't seem to mean much to her, I added that Idaho was part of the Old West, the Wild West, as in logging, cattle ranching, homesteading, the Oregon Trail and Lewis and Clark. She stared at me blankly in the rear view mirror. I tried again. "The Gold Rush," I said. "Sacagawea. Gun fights. Cowboys."

"Oh," she said, now excited. "I had a real live cowboy in my taxi not two days ago. He had a hat and boots and everything."

"Where was he from?" I asked.

"Virginia," she said.

Where to begin? How could I tell the woman that she did not have a real live cowboy in her cab? She had either Senator George Allen or one of The Village People. In the end I just nodded politely, but it made me think: how do you explain the American West to people who don't have a clue?

The title of my first novel is Idaho Code: Where Family Therapy Comes With a Shovel and an Alibi. I began my talk in Amsterdam by asking if anyone in the audience had ever been to Idaho. No hands were raised. I then asked if anyone knew where Idaho was. A few hands -- there were a couple of transplanted New Yorkers in the crowd. I decided that before I read from my book and its sequel, From Hell to Breakfast, I'd try to give a brief description of my adopted home state. I said that it took about twelve hours to drive from the Canadian border in the north to Idaho Falls in the south, and that was if you didn't mind getting a speeding ticket. I pointed out that our state population only recently topped the one million mark. I said that Idaho was a libertarian place; that although it was technically Republican Red, it was wild and open and free. Finally, I told them about a fellow I knew whose grandmother had been eaten by a grizzly bear. That's when they began laughing. They laughed harder when I explained that when I'd expressed my condolences, the man had said, "No, it's okay. That's the way she'd have wanted to go." And that, I believe, captures the true spirit of this state. What are we like? This is what we're like. We're odd and strange and funny and tough. We are real live cowboys.

Welcome to Idaho, where we say what we think, and we mean what we say. This place couldn't be more different than the South where I grew up. I have news for the pundits and Democrats who are pinning their hopes on the polls showing Democrat and African-American House member Harold Ford, Jr. running neck and neck against zero personality, limp dishrag Republican Bob Corker in the Tennessee Senate race. Come election day, Ford will get six or seven percentage points below what he's currently polling. The GOP is playing the race card in Tennessee, and, sadly, the race card still works in the South. In North Carolina, where I grew up, Jesse Helms consistently polled several percentage points below his African American challenger, Harvey Gantt, but come voting day, Helms won. Twice. Why? Because Southern racists don't want people to know they're racist. They lie to pollsters. They lie to themselves. Southerners do not -- contrary to what Fannie Flagg, NASCAR, or World Wide Wrestling may have led you to believe -- let it all hang out. In the South, surface is everything. We want to be pleasant on the outside, even as we fester within.

That's not how folks operate in the West. In Idaho, what you see is what you get, and what you're told is what people actually think. You may not like it, but no one cares what you like. Get tough. Grow a thick skin. Cowboy up. If your grandmother's eaten by a grizzly bear, sit back, grit your teeth, and take the stoic approach. It beats the hell out of dying slowly in a hospital or being nibbled to death by ducks. [End of article]