A monthly feature written and photographed by Southwest Washington native and Emmy Award-winning journalist
Hal Calbom
Production Notes
Big City Blues, Small Town Greens
people+ place Home for All-the-Days Returning to where you started
Scotty Kirkpatrick and Christie Kirkpatrick Schmutz
“See, this is truly the big time,” said Dr. Scotty Kirkpatrick, with a gleam in his eye, “Twelve years of college, now a certified cardiologist, and I’m living in my mom’s basement!” Among the many aftermaths of Covid, our sense of where we are has been dramatically altered. This month’s People+Place focuses on big city /small town dynamics, through the eyes of a brother and sister who’ve returned to Longview. Space, Mobility and Elbow Room
During Covid, extra space became a good thing. We isolated in place, worked from home, gave each other elbow room, sought out nature and valued privacy. Meanwhile our big cities had been relentlessly headed in the opposite direction. Density’s Dilemma
Urban planners were finally realizing their decades-long vision — packing us together in walkable, friendly, high-energy urban pockets, elbow to elbow. The dream of density — high rise apartments and condos, mass transit, ubiquitous eateries and shops, prohibitive parking to keep out the dreaded automobile — had seemed like such a good idea…at the time. Downtown Deserts
Then came Covid, economic uncertainty, and angry demonstrations in the wake of the George Floyd killing. Urbanites began voting with their feet, heading in droves out of our central cities.. Downtowns hollowed out with sickening speed — except, it seems, for the unfortunates, the addicted, mentally ill, criminal. Today large sections of urban downtowns are depressed and derelict, occupancies plummeting. Density is losing, remote is winning. Community as the Organizing Principle
What Covid also prompted was a retrograde move back to small town life. We reverted to organizing our activities — school groups, work groups, social lives — around communities of the like-minded. We became neighbors again. This happened all over the country — in big-city enclaves and small towns alike. Whether for survival or for special projects, people sorted into pods, zoom groups, cadres, bonding mainly through their own affinities and initiatives. Neighborhoods energized. These powerful binding forces not only helped shelter us from the pandemic, but also offered us better quality of life and advantages smaller cities and towns have known and enjoyed all along. •••
There are both obvious and subtle advantages to returning to where you started. The rent is good. The meals are familiar and free. And as basements go this one isn’t bad. But it’s also part of a national trend.
M
ore multi-generational families are sharing a home, living together, as many as fifteen percent of all households (see sidebar). And, thanks in part to the cost of living, the displacements of Covid, and the challenges of big city urban life, those shared lives are increasingly lived in smaller cities, towns, and in rural America.
I’M LIVING IN MY MOM’S BASEMENT!
That’s a big change of direction with serious ramifications: The consistent migration of our best and brightest away from their own small towns and into the big cities has slowed, and in many cases, reversed. That return to one’s roots is more than just home cooking. Going away and coming back
There are a couple of obvious reasons why the two latest MDs in a long line of Kirkpatricks — Scotty, age 33, and his sister Christie, age 30 — would find themselves back in Longview. Their family constitutes virtually a doctor dynasty in the Planned City.
come back,” added her brother. “I really had just the time of my life growing up here. And I felt I could give my kids a childhood even better than mine.” More than just the ties that bind
Even for two young physicians with virtually guaranteed earning power, there’s still a lot of attraction to inheriting the family business: continuity, familiarity, comfort. And there are institutional connections that remain — school, church, sports, music — the stuff of a childhood still in place and flourishing. “There’s a community feel,” said Scotty, “where you can excel and feel like you matter.” cont page 28
“I had loved my home life,” said Christie, a pioneering member of the first graduating class at the new Washington State University Medical School. “And I loved school here. But I didn’t appreciate how great Longview was until after I left.” Christie was not especially interested in medicine as a career, but worked for her dad, Dr. Rich Kirkpatrick (himself a follower in his own father’s footsteps) as a scribe during the summers. “That was really the first time I got to see him do what he does.” There’s something to be said for seeing the world, and framing where you’ve come from with those new experiences. The decision to return — or simply to stay, even without extensive travel or standards for comparison — is usually a combination of both venturing out and looking inward. “I think the second I left Longview I had the idea that I wanted to
DOCTORS THREE Christie Kirkpatrick Schmutz, Scotty Kirkpatrick, Richard Kirkpatrick. Nov-Dec Holiday 2024 / Columbia River Reader / 27