{"id":590,"date":"2012-04-17T07:10:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T14:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningnewsinverse.com\/?p=590"},"modified":"2012-04-17T07:10:36","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T14:10:36","slug":"the-city-of-californicating-oregon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=590","title":{"rendered":"The City of Californicating, Oregon"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I love Oregon, but as a Californian I always go there in disguise; not the glasses, big nose and mustache kind, but rather with an affected Canadian accent, which ends up sounding more like a drunk Norwegian with a lisp.\u00a0 Why the disguise?\u00a0 I\u2019ve found that it\u2019s never a good idea to tell people in Oregon that you\u2019re from California.\u00a0 The reason dates back to the real estate boom of the \u201870s when California home prices were very affordable and were attracting people from all over the country . . . the world.\u00a0 Californians, wanting to get away from this sudden in migration, decided that the \u2018promised land\u2019 had moved across the border to Oregon, so they started moving north . . . in droves.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oregonians, fearing that these new California immigrants would turn Oregon into another California, were not the least bit pleased with the influx of \u2018flakes from the land of fruits and nuts\u2019.\u00a0 While there was some question as to whether\u00a0signs ever really existed at the California-Oregon border that read, \u2018Welcome to Oregon. Now go home!\u2019, Oregon governor at the time, Tom McCall, did set the tone with this quote to a CBS news reporter, \u201cCome visit us again and again.\u00a0 This is a State of excitement. But for heaven\u2019s sake, don\u2019t come here to live\u201d.\u00a0 But Californians still came, and to this day most things that smack of progress in Oregon are blamed on those who have \u2018Californicated\u2019 the state.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So it was with mixed emotions that I went to Sunriver, Oregon on a recent business trip \u2013 anxious to see this beautiful part of the country for the first time, but concerned that there may still be a bounty on California natives loitering in these pristine environs; especially if I was going to enjoy a cigar while I was there. I thought rules for smoking in California were stringent, if you want to smoke in Oregon, you have to go to the Southeast corner of the state and step into Nevada.\u00a0 If you\u2019re going to continue to smoke, Oregonians would prefer that you just stay there.\u00a0 I left the cigars at home.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Prior to my trip I decided to look up a little history of Sunriver.\u00a0 The short version is that it was built by the\u00a0Army as a training camp during WWII and then developed as a resort in 1968; I guess that\u2019s the long version as well.\u00a0 The developer picked the name, so the brochure says, \u201cto reflect the most characteristic features of the area\u201d.\u00a0 Perhaps I came at a different time of year than the developers, but it was only on the last day of my visit that the sun came out and I caught a glimpse of the river.\u00a0 Had it been up to me to name the place, I probably would have called it something like Overcastandcold \u2013 of the four days I was there in mid-April, it rained once and snowed twice!<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I discovered that Oregonians have never shown much imagination when it comes to naming their cities, to wit: Drain, Sinks, Cake, Bakeoven, Wagontire, Lookingglass and Noon.\u00a0 There is also the self-deprecating town of Nimrod and one left over from their hippy days, Zig Zag.\u00a0 When they ran out of domestic objects as names they started just copying other US city \u2013 Cleveland, Denver, Kansas City, Detroit, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Nashville are all cities in Oregon.\u00a0 To add an international flavor, they have cities named Glasgow, Lebanon, Little Switzerland, Paris, Rome and Damascus to name a few.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I will say that the one sunny day I did have in Sunriver\u00a0was spectacular, Mt. Bachelor shown as a snow-capped peak set against a deep blue sky, was awe-inspiring (see picture). \"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u2018The Three Sisters\u2019 peaks of the Cascades couldn\u2019t have been more beautiful; the closest town: Sisters.\u00a0 I know that I breathed air in Sunriver\u00a0that no one has ever breathed before.\u00a0 Oregonians are excellent stewards of the nature around them and I love that.\u00a0 It was ultimately a joy to fully understand and appreciate how Sunriver got its name.<\/p>\n

Aloha, not a Hawaiian salutation, just another Oregon city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bob Sparrow \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I love Oregon, but as a Californian I always go there in disguise; not the glasses, big nose and mustache kind, but rather with an affected Canadian accent, which ends up sounding more like a drunk … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[685],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sunriver"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-9w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}