Welcome to Oregontucky

In the morning after doing some work from the motel, I checked out and drove into Forest Grove where I parked on the main street in the quiet downtown. Across the street from me was a theater and next to it, an office on the corner. In the large windows of the office were the golden letters Stephanie M. L-----, Attorney at Law.

I looked over the letters in the window for a minute. "Well, here we go," I thought. I got out of my car and crossed the street. I pulled open the door and walked inside. Alongside the wall were a bookshelves of neat law books and several large framed law degrees.

Behind the desk a balding man with glasses sat as the receptionist. When he looked up at me, I asked him, "So who is that chick anyway, at the end of your cover photo on Facebook?"

His face grew in a big grin. He stood up from behind the desk, walked around and gave me a hug.

It was a surprise visit. I hadn't even tipped my friend off that I was in the area.  The question with which I had greeted him was in reference to a comment I had left on his Facebook wall the night before. The "pretty woman" in the photo was his wife, whom I had accused in the comment of being his second unknown daughter.  It was her law degrees that were on the wall.

I had known them both since college. They were a couple even back then, and got married within a year of graduation. Their son had just graduated from high school and was heading to Cal Tech to study physics. Their daughter was a teenager who after loosing her baby fat suddenly looked like Taylor Swift.

We arranged to go to lunch. In the mentime I tried to do some work from a local coffee shop, but Forest Grove, even as a college town, lacks the kinds of amenities one might find elsewhere in the country. It's amazing how fast the cosmopolitanness drops off as you leave Portland, even though the "tech corridor" is only miles away.

I explained this to my friend over lunch, since he is from Springfield near Eugene. "I was always confused by Oregon in college," I said. "I thought it would be like Colorado, since it's a western state. But I finally realized it's actually more like Kentucky or West Virginia." That made him laugh. I know a lot of Oregonians who have no problem admitting this about their state, and mocking it. I've never heard one person from Colorado do the same thing.