I moved to the Bend area late in the last century because I got
tired of driving over the Cascade mountains in the Winter. It isn't fun.
Back then I was spending a lot of time on snow--skiing and dog sledding.
At one time I had a small team that could easily go out and do 25 miles
just for the fun of it.

When I moved there Bend was less than half of its current size. It
had already been a rapidly growing city for a long time. The tradition
was that everyone complained about how fast it was growing, no matter
how recently they had moved there. There was much wailing and gnashing
of teeth when Fred Meyer, AKA Kroger, and then Home Depot and Walmart
came to town. There was a lot of talk about the horrible fate of the
more or less homegrown businesses. Home Depot almost immediately forced
the old Coast to Coast store out of business. Their prices were so bad
that I never saw any bargains when they were having their clearance
sales. I suspect that the traditional office supply store downtown was
paying about the same wholesale price for their stuff that Walmart was
getting for their retail price. All of those businesses just brought
more business to town.

Back when I moved there the dominant motif had been cowboys. There
were and still are a lot of real cowgirls and boys there, but Bend's
first economic boom depended on logging. The real drivers then were
being the economic center of a wide area and tourism. Back then bankers
dressed like maybe they were running a cattle empire. The boots, the
buckle and a nice hat somewhere. The whole nine yards. High school boys
almost always had a ring worn in their back pocket, where their can of
chewing tobacco rode. These days the dominant theme is outdoor
recreation. Everyone wants you to know that they enjoy playing outside.
Back in the day only tourists or men who worked with tourists wore
shorts. These days it's part of the uniform.

Back then Bend's homeless population was almost completely
invisible. It isn't anymore. The homeless shelter is one block off of
Bend's main street, right behind the big hotel I had worked for.
Actually half of it. It was 2 60 unit motels a block apart. Back then
they still belonged to the guy who built them. They were the oldest
motels in what became a small chain of mostly modern business class
motels. The old boy had been a used car salesman. He knew everyone and
everyone knew him. He didn't like to sell things anymore. What he did
like was building new motels all over the PNW. When he built one they
were completely paid for. When he died his kids probably sold the whole
thing and retired. So now there are homeless people camping across the
street from the homeless shelter on the backside of the motel's
property, among other places.

Back then there were a few Black people living in Bend. I met some
of them. These days there are enough Black people living there that they
were able to have an impressive Juneteenth celebration. We arrived at
the tail end of that.

The current population of Bend is almost a hundred thousand. I
never would have thought the local economy could support that many
people. In some ways I'm sure it doesn't. Naturally, it's still growing.

From there we slowly headed to Lake county. Population less than
8,000. What you see is a lot of widely scattered houses, mostly on big
farms. Xenophobic much? There are people out there who must go weeks and months, if not longer, without talking to someone they hadn't already
met. If you don't go to church out there you're passing on a huge social opportunity. If you don't end up marrying your high school sweetheart,
Lord help you. No telling where you'll find her. It's a whole different
world out there. Which helps to explain why rural people have a whole
different outlook.

TB

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wednesday, June 29, 2022 at 11:22:00 AM UTC-7, Technobarbarian wrote:

I moved to the Bend area late in the last century because I got
tired of driving over the Cascade mountains in the Winter. It isn't fun. Back then I was spending a lot of time on snow--skiing and dog sledding.
At one time I had a small team that could easily go out and do 25 miles
just for the fun of it.

When I moved there Bend was less than half of its current size. It
had already been a rapidly growing city for a long time. The tradition
was that everyone complained about how fast it was growing, no matter
how recently they had moved there. There was much wailing and gnashing
of teeth when Fred Meyer, AKA Kroger, and then Home Depot and Walmart
came to town. There was a lot of talk about the horrible fate of the
more or less homegrown businesses. Home Depot almost immediately forced
the old Coast to Coast store out of business. Their prices were so bad
that I never saw any bargains when they were having their clearance
sales. I suspect that the traditional office supply store downtown was paying about the same wholesale price for their stuff that Walmart was getting for their retail price. All of those businesses just brought
more business to town.

Back when I moved there the dominant motif had been cowboys. There
were and still are a lot of real cowgirls and boys there, but Bend's
first economic boom depended on logging. The real drivers then were
being the economic center of a wide area and tourism. Back then bankers dressed like maybe they were running a cattle empire. The boots, the
buckle and a nice hat somewhere. The whole nine yards. High school boys almost always had a ring worn in their back pocket, where their can of chewing tobacco rode. These days the dominant theme is outdoor
recreation. Everyone wants you to know that they enjoy playing outside.
Back in the day only tourists or men who worked with tourists wore
shorts. These days it's part of the uniform.

Back then Bend's homeless population was almost completely
invisible. It isn't anymore. The homeless shelter is one block off of
Bend's main street, right behind the big hotel I had worked for.
Actually half of it. It was 2 60 unit motels a block apart. Back then
they still belonged to the guy who built them. They were the oldest
motels in what became a small chain of mostly modern business class
motels. The old boy had been a used car salesman. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. He didn't like to sell things anymore. What he did
like was building new motels all over the PNW. When he built one they
were completely paid for. When he died his kids probably sold the whole thing and retired. So now there are homeless people camping across the street from the homeless shelter on the backside of the motel's
property, among other places.

Back then there were a few Black people living in Bend. I met some
of them. These days there are enough Black people living there that they were able to have an impressive Juneteenth celebration. We arrived at
the tail end of that.

The current population of Bend is almost a hundred thousand. I
never would have thought the local economy could support that many
people. In some ways I'm sure it doesn't. Naturally, it's still growing.

From there we slowly headed to Lake county. Population less than
8,000. What you see is a lot of widely scattered houses, mostly on big farms. Xenophobic much? There are people out there who must go weeks and months, if not longer, without talking to someone they hadn't already
met. If you don't go to church out there you're passing on a huge social opportunity. If you don't end up marrying your high school sweetheart,
Lord help you. No telling where you'll find her. It's a whole different world out there. Which helps to explain why rural people have a whole different outlook.

TB

Bend is a cool town. I've only been there a couple of times, but the grandson's Ex was employment raised by McMinnimens's... She got me a room in the converted Catholic school for $60 per night, which was a bargain! The town seemed to be a magnet,
drawing families, & freaks, who were seeking small town America...... I think the pop.was about 50-60K, six, or seven years ago? I understand it's the fastest growing city in the state....

Don

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 6/29/2022 8:23 PM, Don Lampson wrote:

On Wednesday, June 29, 2022 at 11:22:00 AM UTC-7, Technobarbarian wrote:

I moved to the Bend area late in the last century because I got
tired of driving over the Cascade mountains in the Winter. It isn't fun.
Back then I was spending a lot of time on snow--skiing and dog sledding.
At one time I had a small team that could easily go out and do 25 miles
just for the fun of it.

When I moved there Bend was less than half of its current size. It
had already been a rapidly growing city for a long time. The tradition
was that everyone complained about how fast it was growing, no matter
how recently they had moved there. There was much wailing and gnashing
of teeth when Fred Meyer, AKA Kroger, and then Home Depot and Walmart
came to town. There was a lot of talk about the horrible fate of the
more or less homegrown businesses. Home Depot almost immediately forced
the old Coast to Coast store out of business. Their prices were so bad
that I never saw any bargains when they were having their clearance
sales. I suspect that the traditional office supply store downtown was
paying about the same wholesale price for their stuff that Walmart was
getting for their retail price. All of those businesses just brought
more business to town.

Back when I moved there the dominant motif had been cowboys. There
were and still are a lot of real cowgirls and boys there, but Bend's
first economic boom depended on logging. The real drivers then were
being the economic center of a wide area and tourism. Back then bankers
dressed like maybe they were running a cattle empire. The boots, the
buckle and a nice hat somewhere. The whole nine yards. High school boys
almost always had a ring worn in their back pocket, where their can of
chewing tobacco rode. These days the dominant theme is outdoor
recreation. Everyone wants you to know that they enjoy playing outside.
Back in the day only tourists or men who worked with tourists wore
shorts. These days it's part of the uniform.

Back then Bend's homeless population was almost completely
invisible. It isn't anymore. The homeless shelter is one block off of
Bend's main street, right behind the big hotel I had worked for.
Actually half of it. It was 2 60 unit motels a block apart. Back then
they still belonged to the guy who built them. They were the oldest
motels in what became a small chain of mostly modern business class
motels. The old boy had been a used car salesman. He knew everyone and
everyone knew him. He didn't like to sell things anymore. What he did
like was building new motels all over the PNW. When he built one they
were completely paid for. When he died his kids probably sold the whole
thing and retired. So now there are homeless people camping across the
street from the homeless shelter on the backside of the motel's
property, among other places.

Back then there were a few Black people living in Bend. I met some
of them. These days there are enough Black people living there that they
were able to have an impressive Juneteenth celebration. We arrived at
the tail end of that.

The current population of Bend is almost a hundred thousand. I
never would have thought the local economy could support that many
people. In some ways I'm sure it doesn't. Naturally, it's still growing.

From there we slowly headed to Lake county. Population less than
8,000. What you see is a lot of widely scattered houses, mostly on big
farms. Xenophobic much? There are people out there who must go weeks and
months, if not longer, without talking to someone they hadn't already
met. If you don't go to church out there you're passing on a huge social
opportunity. If you don't end up marrying your high school sweetheart,
Lord help you. No telling where you'll find her. It's a whole different
world out there. Which helps to explain why rural people have a whole
different outlook.

TB

Bend is a cool town. I've only been there a couple of times, but the grandson's Ex was employment raised by McMinnimens's... She got me a room in the converted Catholic school for $60 per night, which was a bargain! The town seemed to be a

magnet, drawing families, & freaks, who were seeking small town America...... I think the pop.was about 50-60K, six, or seven years ago? I understand it's the fastest growing city in the state....

Don

Bend was a cool town. It's a big city now and I can't imagine
what it must be like to live there. There were already too many people
in my nature when the population was half that size. They already had
some of the busiest hiking trails in Oregon back then. In many places,
on weekends, it wasn't much different than taking a walk in a city park.
We were there on a week day and some of the sights are drawing more
people than they can accommodate. Some of those folks must be driving a
pretty good distance to get away from the crowds.

TB

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 7/1/2022 8:00 AM, Ralph E Lindberg wrote:

On 2022-06-29 18:21:54 +0000, Technobarbarian said:

     I moved to the Bend area late in the last century because I got
tired of driving over the Cascade mountains in the Winter. It isn't
fun. Back then I was spending a lot of time on snow--skiing and dog
sledding. At one time I had a small team that could easily go out and
do 25 miles just for the fun of it.

My first trip to bend was in 1982, and I just loved the town....
Watching them turn themselves from a rural (mostly tourist) town into a
mecca for retired crowd has been, interesting.
Watching other towns that tried and failed to do the same (Goldendale,
etc) has been more interesting.

My grandparents loved to travel. We lived nearby in Newport and I
was the oldest grandchild. I learned early on that if you were easy to
travel with you could go on all sorts of grand adventures. My guess is
that the first time I saw Bend was sometime around 1957, plus or minus.
I was blown away by straight highways with red shoulders. I started
going there in the 70s for the skiing. I started with downhill and the craziness was all downhill from there.

I didn't see any sign around Goldendale of some of the craziness
that happened around Bend. It was much discussed and cussed, but I think
the "sage brush subdivisions" had a lot to do with what happened to
Bend. Sunriver and La Pine are both odd developments among a bunch of
odd developments that contribute a lot to Bend economically. Les
Schwab's tire empire is both a strange and important contributor to the
economy in Central Oregon. (Les is dead and I've learned that it isn't
exactly a good idea to patronize his shops anymore.)

From what I saw around Goldendale there just wasn't much room for
all that craziness. The ski area helped Bend a lot, but that was always
a small part of the picture. Summer has always been the busiest season
there. About the closest Goldendale comes to any of that is Maryhill and
the fairly recent Greek Orthodox Monastery.

One of the untold parts of my story here is water. We say we love
the desert. What we love is the water and automatically head for it. One
of the things I say about Newport is that it has too many cars and not
enough highway. Bend has too many kayaks and not enough water.
Seriously, if you wanted to look like you were anybody there had to be
some sign about you that you owned at least one kayak or other "personal flotation device". When I lived in that area many places around town
seemed more or less like a city park on weekends because we all headed
to the water. People aren't crowding out into the desert because there's
no place to go--unless you have water. Well, actually there are. BTDT,
but one way or another you have to have water. The big thing you see and
don't see in the desert is the impact that water has on the land.

TB

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