State of Paradox
“Yeah, we heard that there was an Oree-gone pep rally at Universal Studios the other day, so we went, because we thought, ‘Hey, then we can see the Oree-gone Marching Band!’ But you guys weren’t there.”
He was wearing a dark navy blue jacket and pants with a windsor-knotted tie, spats, and an airline pilot-style cap with a giant feather sticking out of it. In his defense, he was a member of Ohio State University’s Marching Band, and he had 224 identically dressed friends, plus an army of rabid Buckeyes, who said he looked spectacular.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
I was wearing a yellow waterproof vest with green and black pants, the Oregon Marching Band’s uniform, which most of the country would later decide looked less like a band uniform and more like what a colorblind extra on The Sopranos would wear. Members of both bands were tentatively comingling in the early morning sunlight along a palm tree–lined suburban street in Pasadena, waiting to march in the 2010 Tournament of Roses Parade.
“We just thought that the Oree-gone Marching Band would be at the pep rally, but they weren’t.” He shrugged with a pair of broad Midwestern shoulders that spoke many summers spent harvesting corn on a quaint little farm that had probably been photographed for a wall calendar.
“Ah.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was, “Yeah, we were all really looking forward to seeing the O-hee-oh State band in person. How was your flight out of Col-oom-boos?”
But I did not. Before our trip to the Rose Bowl, each member of the band received a letter from the dean of the School of Musicand Dance instructing us to be on our best behavior, as we were representing our music department, our school, and the entire state of Oregon. The implication was that our performance in the Tournament of Roses Parade would be a jarring reminder to most of the country that there was, in fact, a state in between the Hollywood Liberals and the Democratic Republic of Starbucks, and as such, we would have to make a good first impression.
At some point in their elementary education, students have to memorize all fifty states. Some of these states are just naturally easy to remember—Oklahoma, the frying pan! New York, where they have tall buildings! Florida, the penis!
But there are just as many states, if not more, which fly under the radar and evade memory. Some states, for lack of any defining historical or pop cultural notoriety, go neglected and unnoticed.
If America were a high school, Texas would be the star quarterback and California would be the beautiful star of all the school plays, while Delaware, New Hampshire, and Idaho would sit at a table in the far corner of the cafeteria, playing Dungeons and Dragons and writing moody poetry, possibly about potatoes.
And Oregon?
Oregon would be the foreign exchange student whose name is constantly butchered by teachers and students alike, subject to wild misconceptions about his character based on poorly conceived stereotypes.
“Doesn’t it rain, like, all the time in Oree-gone?”
“Well, that depends where you’re talking about. Three quarters of the state is actually a desert, but—”
“I heard that Oree-gone is full of hippies running around everywhere!”
“Actually, outside of three or four particularly liberal counties, most of the state is pretty conservative, mainly in the—”
“Aren’t you scared of Bigfoot?”
“As a matter of fact, Bigfoot was proven to be the invention of a logger several—”
“TREES!”
While New York has Seinfeld, Pennsylvania has the Liberty Bell, and Louisiana has Mardi Gras, there are no widely known facts or pieces of popular media to suggest what Oregon is like, leaving most people who aren’t from around here to fill in the blanks themselves.
Admittedly, The Goonies was set in Oregon, but considering that half of the cast is composed of criminals, greedy real estate moguls, and deformed mutants, I don’t think it does the people of Oregon any favors. Also, I’m pretty sure that there is not a giant pirate ship hidden underneath Astoria.
If other people would do just a little bit of homework, I’m sure they’d find plenty of somewhat more accurate ways to stereotype us. For example:
The city of Portland is home to the world’s smallest park, totaling 452 square inches, created as a leprechaun sanctuary in the middle of Naito Parkway.
“I heard that Oree-gone is overrun with whimsical urban planners!”
Sheriff John Bunnell, the over-the-top presenter for World’s Wildest Police Videos, was born in Pendleton, and served for six months as Multnomah County sheriff (a title he has traded on ever since).
“I heard that Oree-gone’s police chases are quantifiably the world’s wildest!”
Oregon is the site of the only aerial bombardment of the continental United States by a foreign power. Japanese seaplane pilot Nobuo Fujita dropped two incendiary bombs near Brookings during World War II. After the war, Fujita apologized for his actions and was made an honorary citizen of Brookings shortly before his death in 1997.
“I heard that Oree-goneians are uncommonly forgiving!”
But even these suggested stereotypes don’t represent us fairly, as stereotypes seldom do.
The most accurate stereotype to describe Oregon is paradox.
Oregon is a place of both natural and urban beauty, tree-huggers living alongside third-generation loggers, culture as high as Ken Kesey and as low as the Cock-n-Balls at Voodoo Doughnuts. As a result, people who don’t know much about us have no idea what to expect when they come here. We’d like to think that when they do visit, though, they’re pleasantly surprised by what they find, even if they can’t pronounce any of it.
Truman Capps is a junior at the University of Oregon, majoring in magazine and electronic media journalism and looking to pursue a career writing for primetime comedy television. In his spare time, he writes incredibly nerdy science fiction and regularly updates his blog at hairguytruman.blogspot.com. Currently, Capps is studying in England and preparing for an internship at a television production company in Los Angeles this summer.
