The Real Oregon

Years ago, having just arrived in the Northwest from California, we were doing 56 in a 55 one day when an Idaho cop pulled us over for a little chat. We didn’t get a ticket but did get some friendly advice: “I’d get those California plates off your car as soon as possible,” the trooper said. “And if anyone asks where you’re from, just say from down the road apiece.”

Well, it’s more than two decades later. Californians aren’t hated these days in the Northwest, which likes their real estate money. But they are ridiculed.

It has to be Californians who live in all those McMansions sprouting up all over the state. (No actual Oregonian would buy such a monstrosity.) It’s Californians living here on their equity funds and pensions who keep voting down a sales tax and school funding. Certainly couldn’t be the fault of Oregonians.

In 1973, at the height of anti-California fervor, then-Oregon-Governor Tom McCall said it best. Or at least most famously.

“Welcome to Oregon,” the governor used to say. “Visit. But don’t stay here”

Don’t tell anyone, but we’re staying here now.

Finding the right gate for the flight home to Eugene or Portland is always a snap at San Francisco airport, even without checking the departure monitors: Just follow the worst-dressed people.

Oregonians, on the whole, are not fashion plates. You see a lot of jeans and t-shirts here and few jackets and ties. The good news is, that means you don’t have to dress like a model to travel here and blend in. Dress is even more casual east of the Cascades, where practicality overcomes fashion any day of the week and just about anywhere you go.

The exceptions might be: A few restaurants and night spots in Portland and that job interview you get at the bank, when you decide what you want most of all in life is to live here. But that’s another story.