Blood Ties

“No doubt the future will bring more causes, more necessary repairs to American democracy, and more need for passionate civic activism.” Elaine Weiss, The Woman’s Hour. 

There’s no comparing where I’ve been for the past week with where I am now. Tillamook, Oregon, where my brother lives, is rural, small town America. It’s a place where the school bus driver is your neighbor, and he drops you off in front of your house. For several hours over a couple of days, I sat in my brother’s garage, sipping IPA’s and listening to outlaw country music on his Sirius FM boombox. The sky was gray and cloudy, but the rain stayed away, and on my last afternoon the sun broke through the clouds and it was warm. Every hour or so I’d jump on my brother’s black adult tricycle and pedal around the neighborhood, across the little park to the lumber mill. I didn’t see many people. Some of the streets are paved, full of potholes and rough patches, and some are packed gravel. There are no sidewalks. Homes sit contiguous to each other, though every lot isn’t fenced. I saw dilapidated, fall-down houses the likes of which one almost never sees in Santa Barbara. Pick-up trucks and boats parked on the front lawn, old furniture, car axles, tires, rusted out refrigerators. An easy pitching wedge from my brother’s front gate sits an abandoned house slowly being taken over by blackberry vines. I went past the house several times, wondering each time about its story, its history, and what the sagging walls would tell me if they could speak.

A huge American flag flies over the lumber mill. Along with the Tillamook Creamery, the mill is one of the biggest employers in town. I thought to myself as I rode the tricycle around that I had stepped into an Elizabeth Strout novel. The comforting familiarity of a small town, where people know your family, and most graduate from the same high school, but with a corresponding lack of anonymity and privacy. Although Oregon is a liberal state, it has pockets of conservatism and I’m sure its share of Trump supporters. I tried to stay away from the news and politics on the trip, but when you carry an iPhone it’s hard to completely escape the news and noise, the latest Trump outrage or scandal.  

Saw some lovely country, from the south jetty of the Columbia River to a country road in Sequim, Washington, from Astoria to Port Townsend, through places like Raymond where self-reliance carries real meaning, and a young woman with colorful gel fingernails named Abigail debated with herself over giving me change for a minimart cup of coffee with five ones or a five dollar bill. Exploring Sequim on our bikes, we passed the Dungeness schoolhouse, built in 1892, and now a landmark. It was easy to imagine a procession of children filing through the front door, farm kids who learned to read and write, basic math, geography and history, in this one building. No ipads, Chromebooks, Apple TV’s. White chalk on a dark green blackboard that had to be cleaned every day. Saw a red-tailed hawk not far from the school. Had the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted at the Dungeness Creamery. Talked to an avid bird watcher and a woman who told us of last year’s heavy snowfall in Sequim. 

My brother and I were not close as children. After a certain point he went his way and I went mine and our paths rarely intersected. I went into the Air Force and spent five years in Japan, he went to college for a couple of years and then joined the Forest Service as a firefighter. A lot can happen between siblings, hurts and misunderstandings collect and fester, but, somewhat to my surprise, I’ve found that the pull of shared blood is strong. Accepting our mutual flaws and idiosyncrasies is easier now. I don’t watch the Weather Channel to pass the time, but my brother does and that’s fine. He’d be bored by English Premier League football. Beneath our skins, in our bones, we share a lot of traits and proclivities, along with a love of the outdoors and a sense of time passing.