82 the stolen goods. Our entertainment was the same as our parents’ escapism. We were left to our own devices while the people we modeled were consumed by despair. The night wore on as the bottles were emptied; someone was sick and another crying while the rest of us goaded each other into stupid risks. To prove I was just fine, that the inordinate amount of alcohol had had no effect, I clamored atop the remains of a fallen tree that lay partially across a hiking path on one end, the other stretched out into open air. No sooner was I on the rotted log than I was off, blundering wildly over the side of the path that dropped thirty feet to the creek bed below. My saving grace was the cushion effect of dense brush and soft, untouched soil. Barring a bump or two and a few scratches, I walked away unscathed. The night carried on with increasingly dangerous acts, each teen determined to outdo the last. By dawn, we somehow all made it back home. No one noticed our absence, nor the cuts and bruises. For so many of us, a bleak adolescence led to a bleak outlook on what adulthood would be like. Offroading on powerline roads in “borrowed” vehicles and binge drinking and smoking seemed to make sense. It wasn’t too far off from what our parents did to cope. Some of us still couldn’t cope, though. A sixteen-year-old who was well-loved by our close-knit group of teens, committed suicide. The note simply stated that there wasn’t any point to it all, and he stuck the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The loss cut deep. If the upbeat, loveable guy who brightened every room he entered couldn’t see hope, what the hell were the rest of us to do? *** I left Skamania as soon as I could; the job opportunities were still abysmal by 1997. The rest of my family, though, they stayed, dealing with local minimum wage jobs or commuting upwards of an hour back and forth from the city. Years later, on a visit back home, I watched a childhood bully get hauled away in handcuffs for operating a marijuana grow field accessed by one of the anonymous cat roads that split off near my parents’ house. I had endured years of torment from him, the one kid who didn’t have it quite as bad as many of us, and yet all I could feel at that moment was a sense of loss. Poverty and hopelessness were a deeply pervasive sickness. No amount of education can overcome the feral mind of survival. When people are left without opportunities, and no recourse to support themselves, much less their families, the bigger view quickly narrows to the immediate and personal. If I can’t feed my kid today,
CIRQUE why the hell am I worried about what happens in fifty years? *** I imagine my brother or my dad walking into an HR preliminary interview. Large men, their heavy, muscular builds stuffed into too-tight button ups and pinch-toed shoes, trying to articulate why they’d be a “great fit!” for the desk jockey job that hundreds of other applicants are vying for. The idea is ridiculous— that ridiculousness having nothing to do with them but everything to do with a society that doesn’t understand, or respect, people who work with their hands. I’m as desk jockey as they get—tech industry professional, academiadriven writer—but I don’t understand the disconnect in our society that sneers at people who live, breathe, build, and do with a body that has evolved to move, not sit. Today, Eric works for a local metal fabrication company as the senior quality assurance inspector. The shining metal counters and cabinetry throughout the Portland International Airport are pieces that he has worked on personally, along with many of the massive metal signs and artwork throughout the country. Metal fabrication is tough, it takes many areas of expertise to produce work worth selling: welding of multiple types (materials, gases, and techniques), press operation, cutting and lathing, mechanical drafting, digital design, angles and measurements, inventory control, not to mention all the people management to ensure safety, quality, and efficiency metrics are met. All of these things are what Eric does every day. All of these things are what Eric does every day, with no sick time or paid time off for vacation, and he’s a single parent. Two years ago our dad died, and while Eric was able to take a few days off from work, the lost wages took a couple months for him to recover. People throughout the area are eager to get hired on at the company Eric works for because this is the best there is, at least for those who work with their hands. And most of those people are children of former lumber industry workers. Those of us who grew up in the majestic beauty of The Columbia River Gorge are thankful that the clear-cut swaths no longer mar our mountainsides, but too many are scarred. Permanent marks from the painful hopelessness that we grew up feeling is etched into our collective psyche. Our parents’ livelihoods were stripped away and nothing but poverty and despair was left to fill the void. 2nd place winner for nonfiction in the Willamette Writers Kay Snow writing contest.