In Country
My client in Othello, like almost everyone east of the Cascades, is in the agribusiness business. The land over here is sere sagebrush desert, and nothing grows without vested water rights, so you don’t just come over here with a hoe and a packet of seeds. I think when people think of Washington state, they automatically visualize forests and snow-capped mountains and Puget Sound. But over one-half of the state is comprised of this parched landscape. I like driving over here, though - I find the land forms fascinating.
The social and political landscape over here is also sharply different from that of the west side - conservative, mostly Republican, “country”. Until a couple of years ago when it became a Best Western, the motel I stay at here had signs in the rooms admonishing guests not to clean game in the sinks.
At my client’s office, they’ve been playing this country station that has, at most, 25 songs in rotation. Music to me is usually sound and texture - I have difficulty discerning and/or remembering the words to songs because I don’t approach music as a narrative form. After 3 days of repetition, however, the musical component of country loses its sense of wonder, and these songs became a form of infomercial for a lifestyle. A lifestyle that seemingly can segue, without apparent irony, from “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off” directly to “Jesus, Take The Wheel”.
There’s something to admire in some of this unadorned sentiment and folk wisdom, though. We urban types expend a torrent of words and reams of paper trying to intellectualize the courting, dating and mating process. There’s Cosmo, GQ, Seventeen and Penthouse Letters all pantingly and pantslessly pursuing the mystery in all its nuances. Then a country song reduces the whole thing to a six-word fail-safe recipe. Tequila makes her clothes fall off. Doh!
