Musings Over Breakfast at the Roadrunner
This is an editorial I wrote for the South County Spotlight, published on June 17, 2008. At the time, I lived out in the country near the small town of Scappoose, Oregon, just off the Columbia River between Portland and Astoria. That’s where the Roadrunner is located. It’s one of those little roadside gas plus groceries plus coffee shops plus everything you need places that you find in small towns. I’d stop there every morning for breakfast and this was just my way of describing the experience of being somewhat of a city boy living in small town America.
Every weekday morning, I stop at the Roadrunner in Scappoose to pick up my standard two non-caffeine diet sodas, high-protein low-carb nutrition bar, and daily paper before heading for my job in Hillsboro. If I’m low on gas, I fill up while I’m inside. It’s a simple ritual that sets me up for the day ahead.
My stop there is sort of a microcosmic experience of what life’s become in Columbia County. The line at the gas pump and the vehicles parked out front bear witness to the cultural and economic diversity that’s developed here. At the gas pumps, a $60,000 Porsche SUV that has never seen a back road sits behind an ancient banged-up Jeep Wrangler that sees little else. In front of the store, pristine BMWs and Mercedes park next to jacked-up mud-splattered 4×4s and work trucks.
Inside, the contrast is just as stark. Businessmen in designer clothes with perfect hair wait their turn in line with giant guys in work shirts and overalls. While the man mountain in front of me orders an enormous deep-fried breakfast topped off by a couple of half-liter death-by-caffeine energy drinks, a package of energy pills from the rack on the counter, and a can of Copenhagen, I sheepishly hide my new-age breakfast behind my back in the hope he won’t see it and start laughing. As a former four-eyed fat kid, the feeling at that moment seems hauntingly familiar.
The conversation at the counter easily defines people who grew up here from the ones who use the county as a rural bedroom. I’ve been here long enough that the folks running the register recognize me, at least to the point that any change from my normal breakfast regimen elicits a comment or two. But, even so, I always find myself envying the easy banter about hunting trips, wives and kids, who won the game the night before, and the simple closeness that growing up here imparts on the people who truly call the county home.
I still think of myself as a small-town person, having grown up in a community in Arkansas remarkably like Scappoose. But that doesn’t seem to matter much. A while back, an anonymous on-line response to an editorial I wrote suggested I take myself and my liberal ideas back to the Socialist Republic of Portland. As someone who spent a 21-year military career trying to rid the world of socialists, that stung a bit. But not nearly as much as feeling like an outsider in a community I’ve called home for over three years.
Since then, standing in line at the Roadrunner, I can’t help but wonder what the people in front and back of me think. Do they judge me by my obviously liberal breakfast? Do they know I’ve actually done manual labor? That I served my country for two decades? That I drive a new car, but long for my old F250? Or do they just tag me as unwelcome?
I’d like to think that the smiles and friendly words I get from people there aren’t just cover for some hidden resentment. That people in the county would recognize that I and others like me don’t want to contaminate the county, but add to it.
I’m pretty sure this scene plays itself out in other places around the county. And across the nation. We’ve forgotten that in this country, we all belong. And the only way we’re going to get out of the mess we’ve found ourselves in these days is by working together
As a start, I guess I might just have to alternate my fitness bar breakfast with a couple of corn dogs, some energy pills, and the biggest can of Rockstar I can find. And the Copenhagen? Well, things will have to get a lot, lot worse.
