Dear HCN,
I would like to respond
to Roger C. Brown’s comment in a recent issue (HCN, 5/30/94) that,
“(Rural Westerners) may joke about (urban migrants’) lifestyles,
but they do not threaten us. On the other hand we, in our
condescending and sometimes ill-informed arrogance, have made very
concerted efforts to destroy them in the name of “reform.”
“
I wonder if Andy Kerr, who was recently
harassed when he moved to the eastern Oregon town of Joseph,
believes those amiable Western country folk pose no threat? As a
former newspaper reporter in a small Oregon timber town, I can
personally attest otherwise. I was smoked out as a liberal
tree-hugger sympathizer, and given a very icy shoulder by some
people in that town. All below-board, of course, though the threat
of violence is real. And tell me, if the rural West is so
unthreatening, why does it produce such Neanderthal, rabid-dog
politicians as Larry Craig and Alan Simpson?
I
tell you what I want to destroy in the name of reform, and it’s the
attitude that the West belongs to the people who’ve happened to be
in the right place in the right century, who have made money off
the West’s resources and believe they have some kind of birthright
to keep the pillage-profits flowing. If that’s perceived as a
concerted effort to end a way of life, then excuse me, but change
is what life is all about, pardner. Mr. Brown looks back in
fondness for what was in the West, and if the last grizzly bears
weren’t so busy trying to survive I bet they’d look back fondly on
the days of yore also, before those unthreatening rural Westerners
shot their species to
near-extinction.
Mike
Page-English
Pocatello,
Idaho
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Life is change, pardner.
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