Making It

If one is fortunate, one knows that his or her hometown is civilized; that is, people seem occupied with orderly, constructive activities and tend to refrain from running naked through the streets and lopping off the heads of passersby for sport.  So, if you have recently moved cities and do not see any unduly decapitated in your new habitat, well then, that place can't be all that bad.  It's a start, anyway.

And if you realize upon waking one morning that you have been uprooted and replanted in a new place (certainly, this happens to you all the time), stumbling upon some connections between your native city and your new one feels nice.

I recently met a friend (who had herself lived in Portland) at a coffee shop in Brookline.  Before she arrived, the barista told me that he had just been to Portland the previous week, and that another employee was from Portland.  Paper packages of Stumptown® coffee beans lined the shelves.  Two girls were at the counter ordering; one became distracted by the paper packages and came over to examine them.  "Stumptown?" she whined skeptically, as if wondering aloud who lives in dismal, tree-barren Stumptown (wherever that is) to buy coffee.

"That's my hometown!" I proudly informed her.

"Oh--you're from Portland, Oregon?" she asked me.  I nodded, wondering how on Earth she suddenly knew that "Stumptown" was Oregonese for "Portland" a few seconds after questioning its legitimacy and even its existence.

"I went to Reed College!" she chimed.

Her declaration both did and very much did not answer my question.

Another time, I saw a student outside his dorm wearing a University of Oregon sweatshirt.  Risking embarrassment, I said in passing, "Go Ducks!" and he smiled.  Once, I saw an "I (Green) Heart Oregon" sticker on someone's car on campus.  Occasionally, I meet someone who knows someone whose friend's former roommate was from Oregon, but doesn't remember exactly where.

Silly they are, but those few superficial Oregon-New England ties are ever-so-slightly heartwarming.

Even more comforting is the knowledge that other Oregonians have already ventured to Boston before and have lived to tell the tale.  They have even become successful and beloved, like Pink Martini founder Thomas Lauderdale (a Harvard graduate) and Jacoby Ellsbury, member of the Red Sox Nation.  According to a John Canzano article printed last summer in The Oregonian, I have a chance at becoming suddenly interesting among native Bostonians for 1) being from Oregon, just like #46, and 2) having seen his home city of Madras with my own eyes--what they, according to the article, imagine to be "the most hip 2.2 square miles in the Northwestern United States."  Those two were not swallowed alive by the big city, nor did they have their heads lopped off, and so far neither have I, so by golly, I have a chance at making it, too.