Blue Highways: White Salmon and Appleton, Washington

Unfolding the Map

Hey there...how you doing, baby?  In this post William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) takes us on a little roadtrip into desire.  So why don't you go get yourself into something more comfortable, put on a little mood music, pour some wine, turn the lights down low and light some candles, and we'll do some exploration, if you know what I mean.  You know you want it.  If you need some visual aids to get excited about where we're going, why don't you get clicking on my map to get that spark?  And now, damn baby, you must be on fire because it's getting hot in here...

Book Quotes

"During lunch in White Salmon, I noticed the map showed a town up on the northern plateau almost in the shadow of Mount Adams called Liberty Bond.  No question about where to go next....

"I tried to get directions in Appleton, a fading place of three or four fading houses and a fading school...No one about...Then a sudden clatter of hooves and a long 'Hallooo!'  A horse whickered as a woman reined up at my window....

"'I'm looking for Liberty Bond.'

"She had long, black hair loose over her shoulders.  Muscular and pretty.  About thirty-five.  Very pretty.

"'It's gone.  Fallen down....All picked over and not a doorknob left....Afraid you're too late for that one.'

"'How about taking me home to the ranch?'

"She laughed. 'What've you got in mind?'  For a moment I saw a ranch-house parlor, low light through shades, the glow of whiskey in tumblers, a deep cleave and merge of thigh.  She smiled. 'Too late there too.'"

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Town of White Salmon. Photo by "Michelle" and posted at City-Data.com. Click on photo to go to host site.White Salmon and Appleton, Washington

Poor LHM.  As we travel alongside him in the state of Washington, probably around the halfway point or just past halfway in his journey, one might wonder what was wrong with him if he had not gotten lonely for romantic companionship at some time.  We know from earlier passages in Blue Highways that he has left a marriage in Missouri after it went sour and that this trip has been, in part, a way to escape his situation.  It is also a journey to reconnect with himself and with the concept of America.  We also know that at times on the trip he has been desperately lonely.  Twice, at least, he has tried to contact his wife, whom he refers to as The Cherokee, and at various points along the earlier parts of his trip he hoped that she might try to contact him or leave a message for him in some way.  The only time he made some brief contact was when he was in Corvallis, Oregon and it left him feeling even more lonely when she asked to call him back instead of talking to him.

So should we be surprised when a siren on a horse, whose prettiness he takes pains to describe, stirs romantic and sexual longings within him?  Should we be surprised that after traveling, at this point probably around 7,000 miles, that he would hope for "a deep cleave and merge of thigh?"

I am writing this post about desire, because we all face it throughout our lives and we all succumb to it in one way or another.  Desire might be the unifying theme that is carried throughout cultures and throughout time in human experience.  We are surrounded by the objects of our desires daily, whether it's the attractive person walking by on the street that makes you look, the great looking car in the parking lot, the woman trying to get your attention or the man hitting on you in the bar, a beautiful piece of jewelry in the store window, or the song about someone else's desire that awakens your own longings.  Desire is ever-present and yet must be balanced like everything in life.  You may desire your friend's wife, or the guy that you run into at the copy machine every morning, but you make the decision to curb your desire in order to maintain social harmony.  You may desperately want that $1000 dress, or the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, but you forego these temptations in order to feed yourself or your family.

We live and struggle with our desires daily.  Some are lucky enough to pour them out in creativity.  When you read a great novel, see a great work of art, watch a great performance, you are often seeing the power of desire channeled into something else of equally great beauty and value.  The drive of desire is the drive of life and connects us with all living things and to aspects of ourselves that we would otherwise only dimly notice.  The most successful human endeavors tap our minds and rechannel desire.  Religion is very good at this, often redirecting the desires of its most fervent adherents toward enlightenment, salvation, community, faith, discipline, and all the other things that religion offers.  It doesn't have to be religion - politics, art, business, and even leisure dip into the wellspring of desire.

Capitalism works as an economic system, and faces it's biggest problems, because it is based on desire.  People getting what they desire in exchange for their labor or their capital is at the heart of capitalism.  Desire causes people to work harder so that they can make more money and achieve what they desire - including snaring a mate to meet the more fundamental desires.  Capitalists attempt to make more money partly to get what they desire and attract those they desire.  Everyone working to get what they desire leads to a balance that Adam Smith called "the Invisible Hand."  Yet if the balance goes awry, and it becomes harder for many to achieve their desires and accumulation begins to favor a minority, then capitalism itself can be threatened.  Perceptions of such an imbalance is driving the current Occupy protests pitting the "99%" against the "1%".

In the end, though, desire is about connection, no matter how focused or abstract the desire is.  Why accumulate more things that you can't possibly use yourself?  Because you want them to create connections to others.  Why write, draw, paint, succeed in business, join a religion, or even just be a person of leisure?  So that you can reach out and touch others who will respond to your activities and also touch you.

This blog grew out of desire - a desire to reconnect with and know myself better, as well as a desire to see if any of what I have to share would connect with anyone else.  It has also helped me channel my activities into positive and life-giving activities rather than unhealthy activities that would touch into the dark sides of my desires.  There is a dark side to everyone's desires.  That dark side can take one down a path of pain, misery, obsession, guilt, and shame.  I have been there once or twice.  Such a road is the stuff that makes film noir's so uncomfortably enjoyable as they delve into the dark and seamy side of life.

There are also consequences to acting upon our desires, and we have to be ready for them.  I just saw a Twilight Zone episode, The Man in the Bottle, that very effectively showed what happens when we are able to get what we desire and the unexpected results that may occur.  What if LHM had been able to act upon his desire, if the pretty woman had been available, and had gone back to the ranch with her?  His trip might have hung in the balance.  He might have had to admit to her that he was just out for a quick romantic stop but no long-term relationship, and that may or may not have had consequences.  Or maybe, he might have been delayed in restarting his trip.  Or he might not have finished it at all.  There may have been no Blue Highways.  Ultimately, LHM took the energy of his desires seething inside him and produced his book.  In doing so, he reached a connection with many of us.

Musical Interlude

Speaking of consequences of desire, there are a lot of mythological stories and warnings about what happens to men overcome with desire.  The Greeks embodied the essence of desire into the Sirens, a group of mythological women with a sweet yet sad song that drove men to anguish.  Mariners were induced to shipwrecks by the Sirens voices and survivors would later die of thirst and starvation listening to the exclusion of all else.  In The Odyssey, Odysseus tells his men to stop their ears and lash him to the mast of the ship so that he could hear the Sirens' song.  They were to keep him bound to the mast no matter how much he begged until the ship was safely away.  In the 2000 movie O Brother Where Art Thou, the Coen Brothers adaptation of The Odyssey set in Mississippi, Ulysses, Pete and Delmar run across some sirens at a river that end in consequences imagined (at first) and real (later).  That will be your musical interlude for today - the "sireens" of O Brother Where Art Thou.  And in case any male readers are overcome with desire for the ladies who play the sirens, the actresses are Mia Tate, Musetta Vander, and Christy Taylor.

If you want to know more about White Salmon and Appleton

GoNorthwest.com: White Salmon
White Salmon Enterprise (newspaper)
Wikipedia: Appleton
Wikipedia: White Salmon

Next up:  Pitt, Washington

Blue Highways: North Bonneville, Washington

Unfolding the Map

The gorge of the Columbia River and its tributaries is great for damming, and William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) runs across the first of the dams, Bonneville Dam, as he travels upriver in Ghost Dancing.  I will look at the costs and benefits of dams, from their clean energy production to their social and environmental effects.  Go to the map to locate North Bonneville in the context of the Blue Highways journey.

Book Quote

"At North Bonneville, the first of the immense dams that the Corps of Engineers has built on the Columbia at about fifty-mile intervals, thereby turning one of the greatest rivers of the hemisphere into staircase lakes buzzing with outboards....

"....Dams are necessary, the Corps maintains, and you can't argue necessity; nevertheless, I don't think Lewis or Clark or the old Chinooks would care much for Bonneville.  But then, like the wild river, they are dead."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Bonneville Dam. Photo at the Washington Department of Ecology. Click on photo to go to host page.

North Bonneville, Washington

As I wrote in my previous post, the 1930s were an era of massive public works projects put in place by the Roosevelt administration to help pull the US out of the Great Depression.  The idea was that if government spent a lot of money to put people to work building roads, bridges and dams (as well as commissioning other types of public works), this would put money into the pockets of ordinary Americans, who would spend the money and thereby increase demand in the economy.  This would, in turn, stimulate greater investment as businesses restarted or opened to meet that demand.

The series of dams built along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest were part of a number of these projects.  The idea was simple if not massive.  If the massive water flow through the Columbia was harnessed, it could provide power for an entire region.  Construction of the dams would put thousands of people to work and put money in their pockets as well as stimulate business.  The result was a series of what LHM calls a series of "staircase lakes."

The dams have certainly provided power.  According to the Bureau of Reclamation, about 80 percent of the electricity in the state of Washington is created by hydropower dams on the Columbia and its tributary rivers.  With this electricity has come development, in fact, without the electricity one might be able to say that Washington would be a rural state with little industry.  Folk-singer Woody Guthrie, commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration during the construction of the Columbia dams to write songs praising their utility, fully endorsed this type of development during the Depression.  To him, dams meant industry and industry meant work for millions of economically distressed Americans.  Other nations have used their water resources to spur development and provide their energy needs.  Rising economic power China is the largest producer of hydroelectric power - and its Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River has the largest electricity generating capacity and is second in overall output to Itaipu Dam between Brazil and Paraguay because of seasonal water flow variance.

Of course, dams have their downsides also.  Advocates of wild rivers, or rivers in their natural state, lament the loss of so many rivers to this type of development.  LHM makes a nod to this view when he states that Lewis and Clark, and the old Chinooks who fished the Columbia River, would not like the Bonneville Dam.  However, it is ironic that at least in the case of the Bonneville Dam, it is situated near where an ancient landslide made a natural dam that blocked the Columbia River for some centuries, until it eventually broke through and washed away the debris.

In order to settle and develop rivers, the rivers had to be tamed somewhat, but wild rivers left to their devices were a seasonal provider of river sediment which enriched the native soils and created fertile ecosystems for animals and humans.  Today, the mantra is to put levees, dikes and dams in place so that the rivers stay in their places, at some environmental cost. 

Another downside is that dams can impede the seasonal run of spawning fish, even if accommodations are made for them.  Bonneville Dam, for instance, has a fish ladder to allow spawning salmon to run past the dam.  LHM argues in this chapter, however, that 10 percent of salmon are lost and fish suffer from a variety of maladies caused by high nitrogen content that the dam's spillways introduce into the water. 

The flooding of areas behind the dam also comes at great cost.  Some of the cost is due to the loss of irreplaceable natural features.  When the Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1966, it flooded a stunning area of slot canyons and other geological features that will never been seen again.  The building of O'Shaughnessy Dam in California for San Francisco's drinking water supply was opposed by John Muir and other naturalists.  When they lost the battle, California lost a valley, Hetch Hetchy, that by all accounts was as stunning as its neighbor Yosemite Valley.  Communities can be affected as well.  There have been many accounts written of the 1000 towns, villages and even cities that have been or are being submerged by the Three Gorges Dam, which has displaced over one million people.  Even dam projects in the United States came at social cost - some 3000 people were evicted from their homes because of the Columbia's Grand Coulee Dam, and the town of Roosevelt was lost due to the construction of the John Day Dam on the Columbia. There are many other "drowned towns" around the United States.

The other cost can be a way of life.  When the building of the Columbia River dams disrupted fish runs, it also disrupted Native American traditional fishing grounds.  Since a primary source of food and income was affected, these communities have felt wide ranging social effects from the loss of this primary livelihood.

Dams are also popular politically - it's a long-term project that a congressman or senator can bring home to his or her constituents.  To have the Army Corps of Engineers or the Bureau of Reclamation come into a state, plan and build a dam, and bring in federal dollars for the project can be a great short-term economic stimulus and gives politicians something to brag about at election time.  Yet there can be costs to that as well.  Though the New Orleans tragedy was not caused by a dam, the Army Corps of Engineers appears to be responsible, though it has denied this, for some catastrophic levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina due to a lack of oversight.  Other issues include the "greening" of places not meant to be green and the allocation of water.  Despite some spectacular dams in the western United States that have put communities in the middle of deserts and made millions of acre feet of water available for agricultural use, the Southwestern United States is and will remain a desert.  The effects of dwindling water supplies throughout the southwestern states due to drought and overuse are only now beginning to be felt.  There are some that forecast that a cause of some major future world conflicts will be over access to fresh water - just watch what happens in the Middle East as Israel and its Arab neighbors all fight with each other over access to water.

"Roll on, Columbia, roll on" sang Woody Guthrie in the 1930s.  His was an optimistic look at all of the benefits the river could bring if we just dammed it and used it.  In the early 1980s, when LHM was passing through, there was a budding sense that maybe we'd dammed too much.  As we now pass through the early part of the 21st century, dams are a conundrum.  They provide clean energy but still have environmental and social consequences.  Some want to "undam" the rivers, but others want to continue to use this natural resource until we can find other cost-effective clean energy measures as alternatives to coal and oil.  Perhaps we're not too damned using dams, but maybe we'll discover another way so that the rivers one day can again run wild.

Musical Interlude

I mentioned him in the post so I might as well use him as the musical interlude.  Here's Woody Guthrie, the famous American folk-singer, with Roll On Columbia.

If you want to know more about North Bonneville

City of North Bonneville
Columbia River Images: North Bonneville
Wikipedia: North Bonneville

Next up:  White Salmon and Appleton, Washington

Blue Highways: Skamania, Washington

Unfolding the Map

Driving through tunnels inscribed with the date of 1936 high above the Columbia River on the Washington side, William Least Heat-Moon makes a passing reference to road building in a different time.  I take the opportunity to compare the time when the highway was built with our situation today, and make a not-so-subtle reference to today's politics.  I hope you don't mind.  Please feel free to take a look at the map if you are tracking LHM's journey through these posts.

Book Quote

"At Skamania the road climbed so far above the river valley that barns looked like Monopoly hotels and speedboats were less than whirligigs.  East stood Beacon Rock, a monumental nine-hundred-foot fluted monolith of solidified lava....

"....Volcanic bluffs along the highway were flittering with cliff swallows, their sharp wings somehow keeping them airborne.  High ridges came down transverse to the Columbia in long-fingered projections perforated by narrow tunnels, some with arched windows opening to the river.  Above each tunnel the same date: 1936.  To drive state 14 in the snow would be a terror, but on a clear day it was good to find road not so safe as to be dull; it was good to ride highway Americans wouldn't build today."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Washington State Highway 14 Tunnel in Skamania County. Photo by Amy McAllister on the ActiveRain site. Click on photo to go to host page.

Skamania, Washington

At Skamania, which is a rural, unincorporated community in Southwestern Washington, LHM chronicles the following as he traverses state highway 14 which cuts into the bluffs above the Columbia River:

"Above each tunnel the same date: 1936."

When LHM wrote that, he didn't explain why the date is important.  It may be that in the early 1980s, people reading Blue Highways understood why dates from the 1930s were stamped all over construction.  However, some 30 years after LHM's trip, I think that it might be helpful to return to the importance of those 1930s dates that we see on buildings, road dedication signs, bridges, sidewalks and other public works.  I think that it might be important because as a nation in 2011 we occupy a similar place in history, and forgetting why a seemingly inocuous date on public works does not do our nation any good.

1936, if you'll recall from your history, was in the midst of the Great Depression.  The United States, indeed the whole world, was reeling in the worst economic disaster of that century, perhaps many centuries.  The Great Depression was brought on by overspeculation on Wall Street.  Demand was not keeping up with supply but investors were pouring their money into overvalued stocks.  When the bubble burst, as it always does, factories closed, and people suddenly found themselves out of work.  The richest Americans, who squirreled away their money, were in a position to weather the economic storm but millions of middle class people were thrown into instant poverty.  Banks, faced with a run on money, closed up and many Americans lost all their savings.  A lack of money in society, especially in the hands of the middle class, kept demand low and discouraged investment and the opening of new business.  It was a continuing self-defeating spiral.

The situation was desperate.  There was a significant rise in the number of people who were unhappy and who were ripe to consider alternatives to capitalism, such as socialism and communism.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democratic president born into wealth and concerned that the Depression could threaten America's democratic values (and, some would say cynically, the position of the wealthy in society) put into place programs based on the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes (also from wealth).  In a depression, Keynes argued, government is the vehicle to jump start the economy because government can print more money and spend it.  Therefore, the government is able to, by developing programs, put more money into the hands of people who will spend it, thereby increasing demand and leading to the startup of new business to meet that demand.  Roosevelt heeded these arguments, and put into place massive government sponsored work programs for the unemployed such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  Over the next few years, the US upgraded its infrastructure.  Roads were built or upgraded, bridges were constructed, dams erected, creating thousands of jobs that allowed many families to weather the worst of the Depression.  The activity wasn't simply restricted to giant construction projects.  Foresters planted millions of trees, and upgraded national parks facilities.  Artists and actors were employed, creating new public works of art, massive photo collections, and commissioning important new works for stage and dance. Some give credit to Roosevelt's programs for perhaps staving off revolutionary activity, but economists today felt that Roosevelt was too timid in his deficit spending.  Such government sponsored programs weren't the only way out of the Depression but they helped - when Roosevelt backed off on government spending in the late 1930s, the economy fell back into a morass.  Ultimately, it was another stimulus of even more massive government spending, this time to build guns, tanks, ships, planes, and ammunition that reopened factories, put people back to work, and started an economic boom that continued for decades.

When you see these dates from the 1930s on public works, it was because of government-sponsored programs and the people they hired to build these works.  When I was growing up, I noticed that most of the bridges along the Coast Highway were all built during this time.  It took me a few years to connect the dots - when they were built and why.  The fact is that most of those bridges are still being used.  They have been patched up over the years, but are still in service.  There have been media reports about the sad state of US infrastructure in the wake of government cutbacks, and lack of spending on these vital areas.

I also remember my grandmother, a social conservative but who voted Democratic, who thought Franklin Roosevelt was the greatest man ever.  After all, his programs put my grandfather to work in logging during the darkest times of the Depression, allowing her family of four children to survive.  You could say anything about any other president, but you didn't malign Roosevelt.

Today, we are faced with a similar situation.  After economic speculation and a series of burst bubbles, we are in recession with really no clear answers on when we'll get out of it.  Spending is down as the economy contracts, and businesses are in the process of downsizing.  Arguments range from continuing to cut the deficit (in other words, doing just the opposite of what Keynes argued) to spending more money.  However, unlike the 30s, society and politics is more polarized than ever, leading to government paralysis.  Would putting into place massive government infrastructure projects, like in the 30s, help?  I'm not sure.  The US has become a much more diverse society socially and economically.  Most adults aren't willing to do the labor jobs that people in the 30s would have jumped at.

Perhaps, in the age of information technology, constructing and upgrading the infrastructure for our information superhighway might serve as an alternative.  Perhaps government injections of money into hi-technology projects, putting people to work as programmers and engineers might be the answer.  It would also help maintain our security edge, which would appeal to people of all political stripes.  Then, we may be able to get data connectivity on our cell phones and notebook computers in remote places even as we plunge off the crumbling 1930s-era bridges that are collapsing under us.  What will it take, in 2011, to put people back to work and get money into the hands of the middle class so that our economy will revive?  It will take action rather than finger-pointing, bi-partisanship rather than division, constructiveness rather than obstructiveness.  Is it possible?

Musical Interlude

Loudon Wainright III has put out an album called Songs for the New Depression.  The songs are in the style of those that were popular during the Great Depression, and some of them are actually from that era - though I must say I like the song on his album called Paul Krugman Blues after the liberal New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner in economics.  Enjoy, if you can, Times is Hard.

If you want to know more about Skamania

Skamania County
Skamania County Chamber of Commerce
Skamania County Pioneer (newspaper) (Facebook page)
Wikipedia: Skamania
Wikipedia: Skamania County

Next up: North Bonneville, Washington

Blue Highways: Camas, Washington

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) is beginning to head east, but stops for an Arkansas Traveler moment with a farmer near Camas, Washington.  What does that mean?  Think of it like a mid-1800s version of the Abbott and Costello Who's On First.  There's a little more to such moments than just comedy, sit back, laugh and enjoy the show.  Oh, and take a look where Camas is located on the map.

Book Quote

"In Vancouver I lost the highway, found it again, and drove east on state 14 to follow the Columbia upriver until it made the great turn north....I breathed a fresh odor of something like human excrement.  Near Camas I stopped where a farmer had pulled his tractor to the field edge to reload a planter.  'What's that terrible smell?' I said.

"'What smell?'

"'Like raw sewage.'

"'That's the Crown-Zellerbach papermill.'

"'How do you stand to work in it?'

"'I don't work there.'"

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Downtown Camas, Washington. Photo by Triddle and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Camas, Washington

The passage above, where LHM asks the farmer what smells, reads almost like an Arkansas Traveler joke.  If you have never seen or heard an Arkansas Traveler joke, the format goes something like this:

Traveler:  Hey farmer, where does this road go?

Farmer:  As long as I've been here it ain't gone nowhere.

Upon first reading of the Arkansas Traveler jokes, the farmer comes across as an uneducated hick.  And some might see the Arkansas Traveler jokes as equating rural America with backwardness and a lack of education - a place full of dumb bumpkins.  In fact, Arkansas itself made the Arkansas Traveler it's official state song from the 40s into the 60s, and it is now classified as the official state historical song.  What the Arkansas Traveler really does is highlight tensions between people on opposite sides of the American cultural spectrum.

In the typical telling of the jokes, and in the song The Arkansas Traveler, the traveler keeps asking the farmer questions and keeps getting answers that seem evasive.  The traveler gets annoyed, but never quite gets the straight answer he wants.  He wants to know where the road ends up.  Of course, the farmer, perhaps uneducated but also very clear, literal and to the point, is in his mind telling the traveler exactly what is, not what the traveler wants.  Therefore, in the farmer's mind, the road has been there as long as he has.  It is still there and as far as he can tell, it isn't going anywhere soon.

The Arkansas Traveler has been traced back to as early as the 1840s as a fiddle tune and a popular skit performed by traveling comedy troupes.  The tune is the same tune that many of us teach our children to this day - "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee.  Won't my mommy be so proud of me!  Yes I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee.  Ouch, it stung me!"  The skit, according to the website Not Even Past, looked something like this:

The skit portrayed a traveler (usually from the city or the East) coming across a squatter in rural Arkansas.  As the squatter repeatedly saws the first strain of the tune on his fiddle, the two engage in pun-riddled banter.  “Where does this road go?” the traveler asks.  “It don’t go nowhere.  Stays right where it is,” comes the reply.  Tension grows as the traveler’s questions become more antagonistic and the squatter continues to dissemble.  It is finally eased when the traveler grabs the fiddle and finishes the tune that the squatter had started.  Laughter ensues, and the squatter welcomes the traveler to stay the night.

From Sounds of the Past by Karl Hagstrom Miller

The University of California at Santa Barbara's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project has a copy of the Arkansas Traveler skit on an Edison Gold Moulded [Cylinder] Record issued sometime between 1889 and 1912.  The performer listed is Len Spencer, and you can hear it here.  There are other versions of the recording, with variations in the jokes.

One can read these types of jokes as a commentary on many different things.  For those who want to look down on a rural life and see the inhabitants of a rural area in stereotype, these jokes can serve as a way to promote the superiority of the educated urbanite.  For those who trumpet the virtues of a simple, back-to-the-land existence and elevate the "salt of the earth" farmer and his plain-spun homey wisdom, such jokes show how out of touch high-falutin city-dwellers are.  Some might read class into the exchange between farmer and traveler, with a wealthy traveler looking down his nose at a poor farmer and the farmer taking the opportunity to poke fun at the rich traveler a little.  A more middle ground on this issue might be that people in both lifestyles don't communicate well and can't understand each other.

LHM, faced with the plain answer of the farmer, responds with a simple "fair enough."  However, it's clear that the farmer, living with with the smell of the paper mill every day of his life, simply takes it for granted. It has become part of his landscape, just as the dirt and the plants he grows and the farmhouse he lives in is part of his daily reality.  Chances are he hasn't even thought of the smell until LHM asks him about it.  Therefore, there is a disconnect when LHM asks him how he can stand to work surrounded by such a smell, and he responds by telling LHM that he doesn't work in the paper mill, thus signifying that he doesn't work in it.

I think overall, however, the jokes reveal even more about what was going on in America.  At the time, rural America was made up of more small farms, but there was tension between the urban, industrial centers and the rural farming communities.  We see the same types of tensions today in developing countries, for that's what the United States was in the 1800s, a developing country.  Add to those tensions the political battles between the industrial and urban North and the agricultural and pastoral South.  One might be able to read many of those types of tensions into the Arkansas Traveler.  This was at the beginning of a great shift that has come with industrialization.  Making a living at farming is difficult, and one or two bad years could bankrupt a farm.  Where would a farmer go if he couldn't farm?  He would end up in the slums and ghettoes of big cities and trying to find a job in the factories.  Farmers may have been the salt of the earth, the backbone of the United States, once, but then they found themselves competing with new immigrants such as Italians and Irish now.

LHM's twist on the joke is that all of the elements are right there in front of our noses.  The industrial Crown-Zellerbach (now Georgia-Pacific) paper mill, the rural farmer, and LHM all come together near Camas, Washington.  LHM is clearly not a wealthy traveler, but he is a traveler nonetheless and unfamiliar with the ways of the region that he is in.  He may be asking an innocent question, but he has no idea what suspicions, resentments.  He has no idea what the farmer thinks of him.  Remember, LHM at one point was looked upon suspiciously by a man and his wife traveling in an RV.  At best, the farmer is poking fun at LHM.  Most likely, though, the farmer thought his question a silly one, and answered accordingly.

Musical Interlude

I wrote that there is a song about The Arkansas Traveler.  I really wanted to find a modern version by Michelle Shocked from her Arkansas Traveler album, but I couldn't locate one.  However, I did locate a version by Archie Lee in the Florida Department of State's Florida Memory Project.  He touches upon a lot of the Arkansas Traveler jokes in the song.  It's very enjoyable, and shows that this particular and long-lasting version of the urban-rural divide stays alive and well even in the 21st century!

Arkansas Traveler by Archie Lee.

If you want to know more about Camas

Camas-Washougal Post-Record (newspaper)
Center for Columbia River History: Camas Community Exhibit
City of Camas
Wikipedia: Camas

Next up:  Skamania, Washington

Blue Highways: Vancouver, Washington

Unfolding the Map

Vancouver, Washington lies across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) indicates that, at least in the early 1980s, Vancouver hadn't kept up with Portland.  This leads me to reflect on the plight of unappreciated sister cities that lie near better regarded metropolises.  To see just how close (or far, depending on your perspective) Vancouver lies from Portland, click here for the map.

Book Quote

"I headed for Vancouver, Washington, once the Hudson's Bay Company's major outpost in the Northwest with lines of commerce reaching to Russian Alaska and Spanish California. In spite of a headstart, the old town had not been able to keep up with the new settlement across the river that got named by a coin toss."

Blue Highways: Part 6, Chapter 7

Downtown Vancouver, Washington. Photo by Piyo at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Vancouver, Washington

How many cities have little brother or sister cities that get the short end of the stick, like Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington?  How many of them are often positioned to be great cities, and by an accident of fate get relegated to second status?  How many of them were just doomed to be overshadowed regardless?

I hadn't really thought of this phenomena until I lived in Milwaukee and learned a bit about its history.  Milwaukee has been considered to be a little sister to the great city of Chicago to its south.  However, in the early lives of both cities, fate could have reversed making Milwaukee the greater of the two.  A number of factors may have contributed to the preeminence of Chicago over Milwaukee, including the loss of most of Milwaukee's Irish political leaders in the Lady Elgin shipwreck disaster.  However that may have happened, Milwaukee, sitting 90 minutes north of Chicago, is often overshadowed.

The Bay Area, south of where I grew up and where I went to school, has similar dynamics.  There are three large cities on the San Francisco Bay: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.  In terms of population, San Jose is the biggest of the three.  However, San Francisco has always been considered the preeminent city of the region.  It even overshadows Sacramento, just two hours north and bigger than San Francisco.  Part of this is due to San Francisco's colorful history, culture and traditions.  However, how frustrating it must be for the other cities to have their thunder stolen.  Oakland achieves a level of parity with its own MLB baseball, NBA basketball and NFL football teams, Sacramento has an NBA basketball franchise, and San Jose has an NHL hockey franchise.  But, San Francisco still reigns supreme in the public consciousness.

And so on around the United States.  St. Louis and East St. Louis, New York City and the cities of New Jersey across the river.  I even saw a little bit of this in Canada, when I went to the Kitchener-Waterloo area.  The combined area has almost 500,000 people, but it is overshadowed by Toronto to its east.  Sometimes you'll see a neighbor city achieve some parity, as for instance one goes to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.  But mostly, when such combinations occur, one city takes the more noted position.

I even note this in the state where I currently reside, New Mexico.  Albuquerque is the largest city in the state with a population of 450,000 or so people.  It has a number of attractions within it which make for a great and varied lifestyle.  Albuquerque has some great theater including a world class theater festival (Revolutions International Theater Festival) each year, some good music and an amazing yearly global music festival (Globalquerque).  Albuquerque has accomplished artists.  It has good restaurants, and the Sandia Mountain Wilderness bumps up against it.  Yet Albuquerque is frequently overshadowed in public estimation, except by people who live there, by Santa Fe, the state capital, 70 miles north.  Santa Fe is smaller, and has a reputation as an arts city. Santa Fe is also very much more expensive than Albuquerque.  Yet most people, when they come to vacation in New Mexico, fly into Albuquerque, rent a car, and pass through the city on the interstate to get to Santa Fe without staying to see what Albuquerque has to offer.  So, Albuquerque is permanently seen as a lesser place, even though it is not.

So these types of dynamics that lead to a Portland preeminence, Vancouver second-class status are interesting.  I often go to Tampa-St. Petersburg because my wife's parents live in Sarasota.  While Tampa is the flash and glitz of the big city, I think that I prefer St. Petersburg with its quieter streets, interesting bars and restaurants, and more sedate lifestyle.  I love San Francisco, but a visit to the East Bay yields its own rewards.  Milwaukee was a perfect city size to live in, with a lot of wonderful things despite other problems.  People who can't afford or don't want to afford New York live in New Jersey and live fine lives.  So, I imagine that even though, as LHM says, Vancouver hadn't kept up with Portland (and remember, this was 30 years ago...I've seen writing that Vancouver has been revitalized), it has its own attractions and its own enticements.  And, at the very least, such places exist to prop up the preeminent city's ego while giving the lesser cities something to complain about next door.

Oh, one other thing.  LHM mentions the city that was named by a coin toss.  He is speaking of Portland, which was named by a coin toss between two of its founders.  One founder wanted to name it after his home city of Portland, Maine, while the other wanted to name it after his home city of Boston, Massachussetts.  I guess it's obvious who won.  Vancouver, by the way, was named in honor of sea captain George Vancouver (as was Vancouver, British Columbia), and was an early outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company, a British and then Canadian fur trading conglomerate that today is the oldest corporation in North America.

Musical Interlude

When it comes to sisterly relationships, it doesn't matter if they are humans or cities.  One gets all the attention, the other seethes.  One tortures smaller sister, the other plans older sister's demise.  Rarely do they get along famously - but it happens.  This is captured in the love-hate feelings that Juliana Hatfield put into her song My Sister.

If you want to know more about Vancouver

City of Vancouver: All About Vancouver
The Columbian (newspaper)
Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
Visit Vancouver USA
Washington State University, Vancouver
Wikipedia: Vancouver

Next up:  Camas, Washington