A Sleepy Little Town called Odessa, Washington

Yesterday, I sat most of the morning in Odessa, Washington, up to my
grayness in a meeting with some of their community leaders in an
organizational meeting which had been called much earlier last week. Rather
than meeting in an air-conditioned office building, as I often do,
surrounded by technology, overt signs of power and authority, and attended
by covert aides and assistants, by unanimous choice we left the offices
downtown behind us and met informally at a friend's yard, sitting at a patio
table beneath a pair of vibrantly-flowering trees with coffee and the
amenities at the ready.

The purpose for our meeting, nor the result thereto, have little to do with
the purpose of this essay, for it is the mood of the time, and the ambiance
of wheat country that surrounded us that strums my heart strings as gently
as a harpist about her business of creating beauty out of emotionless
strings.

I've lived a good portion of my life outside of the reach and impact of the
lights of the Big City, so having a relaxed, invigorating meeting of the
minds sitting beneath a flowering tree smack in the middle of the Scablands
of Eastern Washington's high desert is just about my cup of tea, although as
I have opined in the past, I wish that the Hanford Nuclear Reservation were
not so obviously upwind. Some of the towns and villages in The Scablands
have massive drug and social problems of their own, which they barely are
able to cope with on an administrative and fiscal level, but having
interviewed the former Chief of Police in Odessa last summer, during the
Deuchesfest Festival, it would seem that residents of Odessa have avoided
the social plagues that have visited themselves upon other towns in the
area.

Moreover, while to outsiders traveling down the main streets, peering down
long shaded avenues with stately, neat homes, Odessa gives sojourners a
first impression of being a sleepy, historically-poised, relaxed and quaint
little town, which it can be, at times. However, there is a vibrancy in
their business community, a tougher-than-nails drive to excellence and
survival that often combines into a community-wide effort, encompassing as
much as 30% of the town's residents in a common purpose.

How many cities could claim such a demographic? Could Spokane's business
community, for example, ever unify even one-eighth of their total business
community into one common, articulate goal? Given the number of people
within the business community in Spokane whose primary business it is to
regularly prey on other businesses, it would seem unlikely.

Odessa, Washington, like so many other towns located in the wind-blasted
high desert, is an acquired taste. Those aspiring to live comfortably in
such a town must never be bored by the endless horizon of rolling wheat
fields mixed with sagebrush that surrounds the community on every side, for
you must be content and at peace with a concept of beauty that includes
spring wheat bursting out of the soil on the rolling hills, of mechanized
irrigation circles that have created and then revolutionized the business of
agriculture where there once was only high desert, and always being in touch
with nature, itself.

While you can hear or watch a weather forecast from urban Spokane, but in
Odessa, Washington, if you climb a hill and look around you, you'll see the
weather unfold while you watch, because the sky is uncluttered, with only an
occasional cellular phone tower to disturb your view. There is an old, apt
saying about living in farming country that, despite modernization, still
rings true.

"If you need to talk with God in the city, you will need to seek a quiet
sanctuary somewhere so you can speak in privacy. However, out in the
country, all you need to do is walk into the middle of a 100-acre wheat
field, and you'll find your conception of God sitting there, waiting to
speak with you and you alone."

However, living in small uncluttered villages and towns in wheat country
isn't for everyone, for a series of reasons.

Everyone knows who you are, your business, and surprisingly enough, have a
pretty firm understanding of your ethics, values and religious beliefs. Over
time, there is very little about newcomers' personal lives that escapes
small-town residents, and it has been suggested that what personal tidbits
the local harpies miss, they'll embellish or create fascinating details to
fill in their lack of accurate information.

Gossip, rather than being mere heresay, is elevated to an art form,
unexcelled by anything else that takes place in day-to-day living. Men are
just as likely to be socially indicted for repeating hearsay as are their
female counterparts, since gossip, in a rural community, sometimes becomes a
heavy-handed implement to accomplish ones' own agenda, just like any other
business tool.

A group of farmers are yakking it up over coffee one morning, and one
observes, "Why, I heard he uses diskless farming methods back off the road
where nobody can see!", and thus a relative newcomer in their midst is
indelibly branded with public opinion. What is equally fascinating, however,
is that within a few days, perhaps a month, nearly everyone who overheard
that comment will approach the guilty party with all the delicacy of a
ballerina twirling on her toe, to form their own impression and firm up the
information they thus acquired. Farmers are, as a collective group, an
inherently suspicious group of people, but that can be said for anyone who
tills the soil for a living. 

Despite the gossip, despite the wind that endlessly blows across the
Scablands, nothing comes close to touching the compassion that occasionally
ripples forth from within the entire community, in one giant breathtaking
display. 

A farmer out harvesting his wheat crop was killed several years ago, by a
fast-moving fire ignited by a passing Burlington Northern train. The firemen
from the nearby town were able to save most of the wheat, but his
grief-stricken widow was suddenly thrust from being a farmer's wife to being
a single head-of-household for a 1600 acre wheat farm, and no way to harvest
a crop that was ready three days earlier.

No sooner than she had buried her husband, a well-liked and respected member
of the community, than the next morning, while she was still attempting to
put his things in order, folding his clothes into boxes, she heard a
terrible racket coming from the barn yard outside. Shielding her eyes from
the brilliant mid-morning sunshine, she stepped on the back porch to see
what in tarnation all the racket was.

There, for nearly as far as she could see, were combines, grain trucks,
giant roaring machines designed to harvest wheat, lined up in military
precision on one side of the country road. As they entered the farm in turn,
each combine and truck imperceptively stopped at the back of the house, and
with a hoot of their massive horns, or perhaps a wordless salute, members of
the community all moved down into the golden waving fields of wheat that
waited beneath the morning's sun.

Members of the Spokane news media initially had a field day taking pictures
of the row upon row of combines marching in stately order down the fields
that day, and telling of the great compassion and caring in the community.
However, when they attempted to intrude upon the privacy and decency of the
grief-stricken family and their friends at the house, it only took one news
van being unceremoniously (and *very* accidentally) being shoved into the
ditch by a 12 ton combine for the message to be apparent.

This is part of us, just as our forefathers have done for generations
before. This is how we take care of one of our own. You've got your
pictures; now go home and leave us alone. 

I'm coming back to Odessa soon. My mission there is far from over, and may
even extend further than I have time right now to tell. However, I've
listened to the wind, I've heard the gossip and unspoken, beneath the
hearsay and speculation which is part of small-town living. I recognize the
sense of community which, despite all that one might hear, inexorably binds
nearly everyone who lives there together as one beneath the golden afternoon
sunshine beaming down in the hearts of wheat fields as far as you can see.

And just as the generations that came before me, I will remembere and revere
these things all the days of my life, and keep them close to my heart. 

									 -30-