2 Days In Hermiston

Carl may be a minor god in several small villages in Vietnam.

I, on the other hand, am a minor curiosity for the locals in Umatilla County.

Eastern Oregon is the Red side of the state. Western Oregon is the Blue side, together, we make a purplish sort of populist political hodgepodge. Two days I spent there, just down the road a spell from the Pendleton Round Up.

Here are my abbreviated observations:

1. Giant TV-tray-sized belt buckles make me very un-easy, which is to say, I fear cowboys. I don't understand them. They seem to be unnatural, and I don't trust them. They are like feral dogs, quiet and brooding, until you make a wrong move and they beat you to death, tied to a barbed-wire fence. I frequently found myself prominently toying with my wedding ring, hoping they wouldn't mistake me for a homosexual.

2. Dining at an A&W restaurant dressed in a button down shirt, pleated pants with cuffs and leather shoes, with another man dressed in similar fashion, is not a good way to convince the other giant-belt-buckle-clad diners that you are not, in fact, a homosexual.

3. Hermiston reminds me of all the bad parts of Boise, without any of the good parts.

4. When naming streets with a series of consecutive numbers, hillbillies are not necessarily good at counting, and/or direction.

5. If you are a white man, like me, and you sit down at an Indian-casino poker table for a poker tournament, and everyone else at the table (including the dealer) is an Indian, you are not going to win. However, the poker gods may intervene for a time, and you may hold out far longer than you are welcome.

6. I am far more comfortable with Indians than I am with cowboys.

7. Bad Karaoke is the common language that unifies us all.

8. There is always time for one more beer.

9. Hawaiian shirts do not "blend in" at a cowboy bar.

10. Cowboys are even scarier at night.

11. Cute strippers who use their uncanny resemblance to Heather Graham to cover up their meth habit should stay out of black light... (trust me on this one)

And finally,

12. When you stop for lunch at a renovated saloon in a small historic railroad town, and the walls are adorned with 19th century erotic oil paintings, the establishment was likely once a brothel. You can, and should, bet money on it.

I'm happy to be back, safe at last from the cowboys.