2015-
I was born in 1969 and grew up in a small mill town in southwest Washington state on the Columbia river. Conservative living, hunting, fishing, four wheeling, logging, working on cars in your own garage..you name it, we were rednecks. Dirt in our fingers was a daily part of life. We went out and got dirty. We played hard, we worked hard. The smell of wetness was always in the air, air that smelled like a wet forest. After living in and around many big cities, I sometimes smell that smell in my dreams when I am walking in the woods of my childhood.
Life in a small mill town is about work. When the mills are going strong, paper and lumber coming out and going onto trains, trucks and ships, things are pretty good. Some would say even better than pretty good, more like above average to great. But just as the ups go far, the downs go far. When you live and die by an industry so closely tied to the economy as a whole, you feel the changes before almost everyone else realizes it. You see the effects of piss poor economic import/export policies hit home hard. People you know lose homes and cars. People cut back on eating out, movies and that annual hunting trip they always take. Mostly it was the simple small things that we took pleasure in that were never affected by what was going on in "outside" world. You could take your dirt bike, horse, old 4-wheeler etc out into the woods and play pretty cheap. You could pack up a bunch of camping stuff and take a boat ride across the Columbia river and camp on a sandy river beach for a week or a weekend. Cooking hotdogs with mustard, baloney and government cheese sandwiches, drinking cheap knock off brand soda pop, fishing, playing and waking up with sand in about every orifice...that was life unaffected by anything. The simple life when rules and regulations didn't get in the way of living. Really living.
You knew your family, every one of the dorks, geeks, trailer trash, rednecks, drunks, fun uncles, mean aunts, great grandma's and best grandpa's. How many people really, really know their families today. The blood relatives that we don't know like we did or should is a shame. They are our past, what shaped us into what we are today. They are our legacy when we are gone. Nieces and nephews that should know you as their qwerky uncle or fun aunt...where are they and why don't you know them better?
Dividing families diminishes our identities as people. The first step I remember as a child is the one where people began talking about how we needed two incomes to live well, then just to be comfortable and now....just to survive in many places. People then have so many excuses why they didn't attend Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays', etc... make the effort, extra effort to resist the excuses such as...well I had to work....prioritize your life to include these events and put them at the top. Even if you live in four corners of the world, it can be done if you make it important to you.
I hear a lot of blame on so may things its hard to understand that it really starts with taxation and non represented taxation through regulation. Costs to just exist and do the most basic things have become burdensome. The simple things in life that were almost free or in some cases were free have now become regulated....taxed....fees imposed...can you think of one thing we can do truly for "free"? If you are wondering, non represented taxation through regulation is when we are charged or fees increase through a department or entity that was not duly elected by public vote. This didn't happen over night, it was literally decades in the making, or unmaking depending on how you view it. Remember to vote and get educated on what you are voting for, use that power our founders gave us, use it wisely and as often as possible.
Remember who you are and where you came from. Take a moment to re-connect to your family and childhood friends that can relate and share those memories. Ultimately its up to us as individuals and families to push back against the tide and come together as a group and keep our legacies alive. At the end of the day, blood is thicker than water. You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. Forgive, forget, move on and reconnect. Sometimes its hard to find the words. However you do it, to coin a well known phrase "just do it".
I could talk about this subject for days and I know everyone has their reasons and opinions for doing what they do and why. I have my own challenges to overcome and hopefully soon I too can achieve a balance in both my life and that of my wife's. Her challenges are her own, but I will be there to support her in all things, in all ways as a husband and friend should do. I want to make this "important" and a priority in my life.
How about you?
Talk at you later -
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