My family and I just got back from a wonderful little Spring Break getaway to Southern Oregon. You know that I’m from Southern Oregon, but I’m not from this part. This is the part that has flowers in early March and vineyards and rolling hillsides and pastoral farmlands. I’m from the part where the wind is still whipping and snow is still flying and cows are huddled together on the high, brown plains in-between the harsh, dry buttes until May. If I sound disgruntled about winter, I am. Don’t worry, March is hard; I will return to sunnier dispensations soon.
Anyway. We went to Southern Oregon because my folks had given us a three-night stay in a historic home in Jacksonville for Christmas, and so we took full advantage of quaint walkability of it all. We ate lots of good food and visited an epic children’s museum and did some great hikes. It was awesome.
Jacksonville is a very cool town because Oregon is a young state in a young country. Here in America we have almost no ancient historical sites, and the oldest buildings are a few hundred years at best. We haven’t traditionally been great at venerating old things or caring for our worn-through places, a blind spot of a young, scrappy, hungry country (h/t Lin-Manuel Miranda) one which focuses more readily on progress and improvement than tradition and lore.
Anyway, Jacksonville was a gold rush boomtown, but unlike many of its neighbors in California, it had more established culture. It wasn’t all stinky dudes and loose women, is what I’m saying, although I’m sure there was some of those. It boasts the oldest Protestant church west of the Rockies, for example, as well as many businesses and homes that are still standing - it wasn’t all saloons and shanties.
What is Spring Break without your parents making you read historical plaques and look at the hollow-eyed grainy photos of stoic settlers? Nothing, I say! So Adam and I made our kids read much more about the settling of the Rogue Valley than they cared about. (One of Addy’s big highlights, however, was that the mayor of Jacksonville came out of her office to greet us and turn on the lights for us in the old courthouse. “I’ve never met a mayor before!”)
As we were reading various plaques and informative signs, I came upon this gem: “The county seat moved to Medford in 1927. The town of Jacksonville diminished. Poverty and neglect preserved the town.”
Preservation by way of poverty and neglect. What a beautiful, hopeful idea.
I have been berating myself for the choices I made professionally pre-motherhood. When I lost my job post-2008-crash, I freelanced and became a horsemanship instructor, and as the economy came back I never went back to a corporate job - I stayed an independent copywriter/editor. There were reasons for my choices, and that whole story is a saga for another time, but I have been feeling regret lately.
Why didn’t I take the opportunity to make a name for myself in publishing again as the industry came back? Why didn’t I make more money before I had all these kids to wrangle? Why didn’t I get more published? Why didn’t I take some of those editors up on their offers, even if they weren’t exactly what I wanted?
I’m not sure exactly, although it is certainly more complex than a little Substack post can get into. (Perhaps someday I’ll write a memoir about my wild ups-and-downs in publishing - that would be fun - using “fun” in the sense of “whoa what a ride” and not sunshine on a beach. You get it.)
Anyway. I saw that line: “Povery and negelct preserved the town” and I just about cried. Because I know in my bones that there was someone long ago, just as soft-hearted as I am, watching the railroad leave and the county seat move to Medford and the gold long since gone, who was broken-hearted over the state of her town. Maybe she wished she’d made a different choice, or that she’d seized the day when she was younger instead staying here, in this beautiful place which now seemed destined to be nothing but a memory. In the moment, you could empathize with her, the thing that she had loved, the thing that made her feel safe, was dying. But little did she know, 100 years later, a family with an adventurous dad and a dreamer mom would walk these old streets and buy ice cream from a sweet-smiling teenager and read about the very neglect she feared, marveling at how the world turns and changes. How magical it is, to be honored with the memories of people who dreamed against all odds, to walk the streets of our forbears and hear their whispers on the wind, the way they tell us that courage and fortitude and creativity are not unique to one type of person or time in history but that this is a universal human strength. How amazing that we could still be graced by her love, this regretful woman I imagine in my mind.
This would’ve never been possible without poverty and neglect, without unfairness and heartbreak. We’ve all heard of the Oregon Trail - there were lots of little towns like this throughout “Oregon Country”. But Jacksonville is unique, because of its hardships. These stories would not have been told unless they had laid dormant, neglected for a while as progress whirred past, as equally-charming towns to the east and west were torn down to make way for foward-thinking rubbish of all kinds.
I can’t change the past or the mistakes I made in my career - the path not taken is long since washed away. But I can embrace the years of poverty and neglect. The years I spent writing to no one, years of yearning with no end in sight, years of kissing baby heads and getting rejected professionally and writing fast for hire.
Years of poverty and neglect can be agents of beauty and preservation, assuming there is something here worth saving. Because I happen to love old forgotten things, I think there almost always is.
Buzz news…
Buzz the Not-So-Brave and I are hitting the road again! We will be at Desperado’s First Friday event in downtown Bend on Friday April 5th from 5-7pm. It will be a great evening, full of art and music and sale swag, so please stop by!
We’ll also be at the Ag Show in Redmond April 6 and 7. This free event is at the fairgrounds and has working cowdog exhibitions, cool agriculture experiences and education for kids, lots of machinery to climb on and of course, yours truly. Come see us and enjoy the small-town fun!
You spin the dust of historic Jacksonville into gold. Thank you again for an excellent read.
PS: My siblings and I resisted the attempts of our parents to enlighten us with roadside signs by consistantly referring to them as "Hysterical Markers"...of course, we would add our own irreverant spin to the signage. You can lead a kid to culture but...
What a wonderful piece! It makes me think back to all the crossroad choices that shaped my life. One thing I do not regret is time spent with those I love the most. I was so frenetic about speaking/traveling/writing and I still remember missing my youngest son's championship basketball game as I had a previous speaking engagement. Ugh. Still. I'm glad I took the risk to get published, to write. Writing books is like having children. You have to tend them, raise them up. And they never seem to go away. (And you always want more!) Is there room for all of it? I think so. Tend what's closest to your heart.