Where We Are

There is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are.

from "Where We Are" by Gerald Locklin

The Wind Economy

This video is about the town of 3,000+ that is about an hour away from us, but the story is similar throughout the region and for Bickleton itself. Small town, lost jobs, farms barely scraping by, and then the wind industry appears and revitalizes the job market and the community. The thing they once cursed, high winds, has become a blessing to their economy.

Names

Bickleton was named after Charles Bickle and his wife Fanny Bacon Bickle (that woman just had no luck with names). Bickleton is in Klickitat County.

Road names are not very inventive out here: Cemetery Road has a cemetery on it. Dot Road leads down to Highway 14 and east of Dot Road there is East Road—in between the two, you could choose to take Middle Road. But Middle Road isn’t paved, so I don’t recommend it. The town leading through the middle of the town is called Market Road—the local market is on it.

Place names are a little more original than the road names. There’s the Bluebird Inn, the Hen’s Nest, Lazy A Ranch, the Honey Do Ache’rs, and the Whoop-n-Holler Museum.

Even many of the people have countrified names, names that I’ve only read in books. The men are mostly named Bob and Earl and Bob. I’ve met women with names that I’ve only seen in books: Nelda and Wilma and Irma. And some I’ve never even heard of like Delma and Lovina.

All the place names fascinate me, but some of the local pronunciations makes the grammarian in me shudder. Creek is crick, turbine is turbin, and I’ve heard tortillas with the “L” sound pronounced.

The View from My Window

Reminders

The last few days have been a loud reminder of why we live here: the wind. We've spent the last two nights listening to the wind howl instead of sleeping. Every morning I get up expecting to see trees downed and branches covering the lawns--that's what would happen in Portland with all its tall old trees. But all the wind brings here is tumbleweeds.

I am also even more grateful that we are living in a solid brick house instead of a mobile home, or even RV, like many people out here do. The wind might keep me awake, but I don't have to worry about my house blowing over. That third little pig knew what he was doing.

Emilee's Choice

We’re going shopping today. A big shopping trip. If we drive about an hour, we can find a Super Walmart and a Safeway. Unfortunately, the Super Walmart isn’t that super. Much of their shelf space caters to their regular clientele, which is not me because I don’t eat a lot of Hispanic foods. Their produce section is appalling. What kind of store caters to the Hispanic population but doesn’t carry fresh cilantro? On one fateful trip, the Safeway was out of cilantro and I was out of luck.

But today we’re driving an hour and a half to the Tri-Cities, specifically Kennewick, where we can find all the familiar and comforting stores that I’m used to shopping in. They have our bank, so we can do some banking. And they have a mall, a Costco (a necessity when you live this far away from civilization), a Target (oh, how I’ve missed you Target), and a Winco. They even have a Walmart and a Safeway and hardware stores and probably anything else we might want. The Tri-Cities area is home to more than 200,000 people, which didn’t used to sound big, but is approximately 2,000x as big as where I live, so it’s pretty amazing.

The drive is hard on my little girl. She usually naps on the way home, but that is hours past her naptime, so she’s tired and cranky and often inconsolable by that time. I hold onto my secret weapon snack, mini marshmallows, until she’s wailing in the last store. The drive there also isn’t too fun. She does pretty good for a while, but an hour and a half is just a long time for a toddler to be strapped into a car seat. I feel bad, but there’s no helping it. My child needs diapers so my child has to sit through long drives to get those diapers.

Speaking of tired and cranky, that’s a long drive and a lot of stores for an adult to get through too. We have at least four stops today, not including lunch and gas. It would be impossible with one parent, but by the end of the trip, two parents have to watch themselves so they don’t start snapping at each other. And I know we both wish that we could be the ones napping on the drive home.

Did I mention that I love Target? When I lived in Utah I only went to Target when I couldn’t find something at Walmart because the Target was so much farther away (ten minutes seems insignificant now). But then I moved to southwest Portland and the closest Walmart was a good half an hour longer drive than it was to a Target.

Why hadn’t anyone told me how much better Target is than Walmart? Often cheaper, sometimes a few cents more expensive, but the atmosphere is well worth a few cents here and there. And once I had a baby, I fell even more in love with Target, especially their clearance racks. I’ve gotten baby clothes for under a dollar on many occasions. Sometimes I paid two or three, and the only things I haven’t had to wait for clearance on are shoes and winter coats—which are still reasonably priced and cute too. So yes, I miss Target. It’s familiar and comforting and it doesn’t matter where you are, if you find a Target, you know what to expect. (It’s really quite funny seeing this ode to shopping come out of me, I normally hate shopping, but I don’t hate shopping at Target.)

My husband’s work commute is twenty minutes or under. Most of his co-workers have a commute of more than an hour. It’s not only nice for him, but a blessing for us because if he had an hour commute, we really wouldn’t see him on his ten-hour work days. I would have to keep our daughter up past her bedtime just to see Daddy during the week.

But living up here is not without its sacrifices. One of the biggest being that it is a huge production to go shopping and I can rarely do it alone. When he got the job up here, we knew there would be sacrifices wherever we chose to live. When we decided to live in Bickleton, it was a decision between my husband and shopping. I chose my husband. I’ve teased him that if there had been a closer Target, it might have been another matter. But I know that I still would have chosen him over amazing clearance racks.

(I love you, honey.)

Solitude

This week I saw a total of three people: my daughter, my husband, and the girl working at the post office. That last one was only because we had a package to pick up.

I have had a hard time adjusting to the long days alone with a toddler. I used to break up the days by going shopping, visiting the library, going to the park and the zoo. But that's just not an option anymore. It's too cold to play outside, I don't normally have a car during the day, and it takes forever to drive anywhere anyway.

So I've come up with a plan to cope with the long days alone. Some might call them New Year's resolutions.

* Write something every day--blog posting, journal entry, creative writing. Subject and content isn't important, just the time spent writing.
* Read more, watch TV less.
* Do some form of exercise every weekday.
* Try a new recipe once a week.
* Take a few minutes to watch the sunrise and sunset every time they're not covered by the clouds or fog.
* Open the blinds on sunny days.
* Call one of my sisters if I'm feeling stir crazy.
* Get on the floor and play with my toddler every day.
* Read to my toddler every day.
* Work on a project every day.
* Celebrate random holidays.
* Keep a list of events to look forward to.

I'm not usually a fan of the landscape around here. But when the weather is good, the sunrises and sunsets are beautiful.

The Dump

Turn onto the Bickleton Highway at the edge of Goldendale and you’ll soon see a sign that says “No Services for 65 Miles.” Halfway through that 65 miles, and you’ll be in Bickleton. No services simply means no gas. But the no services sign means much more to its residents.

There’s no mail delivery service. There’s also no garbage service.

I had no idea that I’ve been spoiled my entire life by having someone come and pick up my garbage from the curb. When you live in an apartment community you throw your trash in a large dumpster and have no idea how much garbage you actually create. But in Bickleton what I see as an inconvenience, local residents see as something they get for free. No garbage pick up means no garbage pick up fees.

Instead of traditional garbage pick up services, we take our garbage to the local dump. It’s the fourth largest landfill in the country and since we live in the same county as the landfill, we are allowed to dump our garbage, even large appliances if we want, for free. The catch is that we have to take it there ourselves.

We were told that it’s a “short drive” to the dump. I’m beginning to think that the locals think anything less than an hour is a short drive. When you have to drive almost an hour to find a couple of stores, and an hour and a half to find most the places you actually want to do your shopping at, I guess anything less than an hour is a short drive.

But first you have to find a place to store your garbage in between dump runs. We bought a large plastic tote that takes up all the space in the back of our car to keep our garbage in—this also solves the problem of not putting the garbage directly in our car.

Thankfully, the tote has a lid to contain the smell. I’m even more grateful for the garage and large storage space that we have so that the garbage doesn’t have to stay in our living area. Particularly those bags of soiled diapers which become so potent after a couple days of sitting that they almost knock you out. I suspect that we will have to make a trip to the dump much more frequently once those diapers are sitting in the summer heat.

It’s not as easy as when we lived in Portland, but we still try to recycle. We have to sort our plastic, glass, metal, and paper recycles now. For now, we burn our paper garbage in the fireplace. But I can’t imagine that will be as much of an advantage when it’s hot out and we’re trying to keep the house cool.

Since we have to deal more closely with our own garbage, and since we don’t have a garbage disposal, I’m grateful that my husband bought a composter. I put food scraps in a large bowl as I cook, he transfers that to a bucket and as that fills up, he takes it out to the composter in the back. I almost feel good about throwing stuff away in the compost—I feel like I’m doing something good, as well as keeping some really stinky stuff out of the garbage that we have a much closer relationship with now.

I’ll be honest. I’m still a step removed from the garbage that I create. I don’t take it out to the tote, and I’ve never been the one to exit the car at the dump and throw it down the chute. Thank goodness for my husband and the traditional role of him as the one to take out the garbage. In the back of my mind, I worry about what I would have to do if he ever goes out of town and the garbage fills up while he’s gone.