I got to see and use the new, improved, expanded Redmond Airport terminal for the first time last week, and it’s a gem.
One bitch, though: If the powers that be could find tens of millions of dollars to expand the terminal, why couldn’t they find a few thousand to put number and letter signs – G6, A5, etc. – on the light poles in the long-term parking lot to help people locate their cars when they return from their trips?
***
Flipping through the Horizon in-flight magazine, I came across a full-page ad for Wenatchee, WA, bragging – in type half an inch high – about its “300 days of sunshine a year.” Is there ANY town in the American West that doesn’t make that claim?
***
Well, yes – Astoria.
Bend has fallen on hard times since the real estate bubble popped and things don’t seem to be getting any better: Friday’s Bulletin reported that notices of default – the first stage in the foreclosure process – hit a record in the fourth quarter of 2009.
But you don’t see evidence here of the kind of chronic, grinding poverty that’s everywhere in Astoria and the surrounding area. Nearly 16% of the population is below the poverty line (compared to 10.5% in Bend) and it looks like the town hasn’t had any real economy since the salmon canneries went away. It’s trying hard to be a tourist attraction but there’s precious little there to attract tourists, unless they enjoy 70 inches of rain a year.
***
Returning home, I realized that Bend is still a small town when I saw the local daily newspaper had devoted the bulk of its front page for two days in a row to a story about a cat stuck in a tree.
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2010.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
True, the cat stuck in a tree-type stories are kind of what you hope for I suppose.
That’s generally what happens to a Timber Town when the source of Timber dries up. Almost happened here, didn’t it? But we were saved. Saved by Growth!, and that three hundred plus days a year thing(y)*. Ski a turn or two in the morning, round of golf in the afternoon, pay for it tomorrow.
How’s that growth ‘thingy’ workin’ out for ‘yawl, ”ya betcha’!?
Oh, right, forty-one percent of the town is ‘underwater’, and that doesn’t even count the commercial space just sittin’ around empty, waitin’ for a cold snap and the pipes to freeze. Guess that’s generally what happens to a Credit Card Town when the Credit dries up.
Used to be, if a guy didn’t have what it took to work in the woods he could at least find a job in a sawmill.
*I’m guessing you’ve been out of town for the past couple of days, missing what amounts to our second significant cold/snow this, ahhh… winter.
At least the tourist sector in Bend takes up SOME of the slack when construction (our other main “industry”) goes tits-up.
On our first day in Astoria we visited the Maritime Museum. On the second day we toured the Flavel Mansion. On the third day we climbed the Astoria Tower. On the fourth day it was time to go home — which was a good thing, because we had run out of things to do.
There’s also a real dearth of good — or even decent — restaurants in that town.