Small Town Walk-Around
In which I tour my little corner, while still raw from election shock
I get to live in an extremely scenic place in a small mountain town in the North Cascades, which some may recognize by the pictures.
Mountains in all directions
Here, the scenery is everywhere, mountains are in every direction, but it’s not much of a tourist town for all that. It’s mostly a working class place where people live because they work “down below” and can actually afford a home here compared to what’s available in cities and suburbs some 30 to 90 miles away. Other residents are here, still, or have moved back because their parents, grandparents and/or great-grandparents lived and worked in this area for decades, or even a century. Many of the newcomers (anyone arrriving in the last 10 to 20 years) as well as many locals (those with ancestors here) have a daily round-trip commute to work of some 50 to 150 miles or more.
My walk on a winter afternoon
Below is the old main street, where businesses come and go without traffic from the state highway that runs through the town four blocks to the north. A long time auto repair shop and an auto parts store are anchors on this street, where everyone knows the owners by first name. Views below are to the west, then southeast to mountains in a wilderness area, then north down a residential street to a nearby mountain where you can rent a stay in former fire lookout. Standing in about the same place, the view is to the east where evidence of recent logging is visible. Then there’s the early childhood center and school district headquarters next door. It’s about 4 pm on a weekday, the sun just going down and I’m carelessly snapping pictures on my phone as I walk back from the post office to the house. Such a beautiful place — why would anyone not want to live here?
Not yet over the election result
During the 2016 election year, a huge TRUMP banner was strung between posts on a large vacant lot in the center of town. Didn’t see that this year. But there are a number of homes still covered almost completely with Trump and MAGA signs, banners, and yes, confederate flags. Not many such places, but more than a few. And now and then you see big pickups drive around with such flags flying high. Not a problem, really. People here are the kindest, the friendliest.
It’s only a month after the election, and I am not yet over it. I find it very hard to be looking on the bright side, to be holding my head up, shoulders back, and facing what comes next, as I am advised to do in the types of articles I read. Might do that for five minutes, before I’m back to trying to shut my mouth from what seems to the horror of it all.
We should not be surprised
“I’m so tired of people saying they don’t understand how this could happen!” a friend says, meaning we all know (or should know) that it is the racist, misogynistic, pro-white-supremacist point of view that gets Trump elected, again. Why be surprised or shocked? As theatrical Michael Moore puts it in his recent Sustack title:
Hey, If You Can Kill 20 Million Native Americans, Enslave 12 Million Africans, and Let Biden Fund the Slaughter of 40,000 Women, Children and Elderly...
— Of Course You Can Install a Rapist/Felon/Fascist as your President! In the Meantime, Breathe, Take Care of Yourself, Read a Good Book.
An undercurrent growing
But there’s more to it than that. There is an undercurrent, now spilling over the top of where it had been held back, a mounting frustration, anger, and fear on the part of those who are not part of the lucky group I am in. Those who are so tired of hearing from the educated, the experts, the know-it-alls, those with no clue, none, of what it’s like to work hard all your life and still end up broke. Read about Sarah Smarsh again.1
I’ve read some commentary — too tedious to get into right now — that relates to being tired of experts. The theory is that a huge dividing line exists these days between people who are college-educated and those who did not attend college for many and various reasons. The so called “educated class” vs the so called “working class.” Not sure these distinctions are real or helpful, but these ideas hit home to me, being educated and privileged and finding myself in what I have just called a working-class town.