The Space Needle. One of the most recognizable structures in the world and one I saw almost every day for nearly a decade and a half as I rode the ferry to work from my hometown to Seattle. I live in a smaller town and you would expect to be able to make connections with local people and create long-lasting friendships. Things one might not consider in a small town is why is it small? How come it doesn’t grow? Why are the locals rather unfriendly to newcomers? How is it that there are so few jobs in relation to the number of people here? How is it that when you do get a job, the employers pay so little in relation to what you can earn in the city just 12 miles away? After twenty years I think I can answer those questions. Some are a little more obvious and some are not. One thing is certain for me. I now have better tools to evaluate a new place to live before I ever pack the first moving box in an effort to move should I decide to.
Let’s look at what makes the area so attractive in the first place. For one, it’s beautiful all around. Trees and greenery here are rarely matched in many parts of the U.S. There are snow capped mountains and rivers and streams. The Puget Sound and outlying bodies of saltwater all around make for a fantastically dynamic and visually appealing environment. If you are into hiking and exploring that’s an option as well as the Pacific Northwest truly is a wonderful place for the active outdoorsman…you just have to be ok with most of your outdoor activities being cold and damp to wet unless it’s during the eight or so weeks of summer we have here.
Let’s look at what makes the Pacific Northwest so green and beautiful….Rain. Period. The weather here is much wetter than in many places and it is what makes it so beautiful here. The air is clean as the rain washes away most of the pollution and it’s evidenced by the fact that we have some of the worst traffic in the country but very little smog. Plant life is watered well and as a result, it’s very green. So much so that Washington is also known as the Evergreen State. It does get hot here in the summer but it’s a short summer typically and it’s unpredictable and lasts about seven or eight weeks. It is in this little tiny window out of fifty-two weeks or fifteen percent of the year you might have a “Warm Dry Spell”. Many times for the Fourth of July, I can recall getting rained on during a bar-b-que. Gore-Tex is a staple fabric here in the northwest as its ability to shed water and still allow breathability in outdoor clothing is unmatched in other fabrics and I have had my share of it.
Back to those questions about small towns, low growth rates, unfriendly locals and so on…
The small town problem….why stay small? It’s simple enough. The very terrain of the land here that makes it so beautiful also creates a landlocked problem. There just isn’t enough space to grow much any more without creating some major traffic issues. On top of that, engineers are very aware of water drainage problems that impervious surfaces create and while that can be overcome with new technologies in pavements it’s a consideration. So what’s stopping businesses from coming here? In a word, infrastructure. This includes both technology and transportation. This is a problem that in some ways the state has created and now holds the local citizens hostage. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge just wasn’t working for drivers due to high volumes of traffic and timid drivers. The addition of the new bridge did a few things. It made each bridge a one way bridge and effectively added a single extra lane. There is a carpool lane but that is another discussion for another time. This new bridge costs about four dollars to cross in an effort to leave the peninsula or you can drive an extra 50 miles around (and pay the TAX on the gasoline) or you can take a ferry ride that costs about fourteen dollars…each way. This is hardly the way to attract skilled workers to a new business location and a great way to fleece the locals who already live there and need to cross the bridge to go where the jobs are. Since there are no large businesses here that need high-speed internet with large bandwidths the ISP’s aren’t going to go the effort of installing the equipment and it becomes non-existent and isn’t welcoming to businesses that need it. These are some of the reasons that the small just doesn’t grow.
The small town I live in is a military town and most of the business here is in support of the military in one fashion or another. If it weren’t for the military and these support facilities, the place would probably not exist. I served my country and I can say this without prejudice but rather from experience. Many but not all of the younger servicemen in this town act like sh-t-heads. Just one example. I have personally seen a car with out-of-state plates and full of military guys throwing trash out of the window of their car. So many of them just don’t care about our town because they know they will be leaving when they get transferred and it’s hard to catch them doing this sort of thing because they hide behind the fences and gates on the bases. The bottom line is that it’s hard to become close friends with people who you know will not be around for long because they will transfer away. This makes them not like a place like our town when it is so hard to connect with the locals. The result is an us vs. them mentality.
How is it that there are so few jobs in relation to the number of people here? Simple answer is again, the military/government employs a large number of workers. It’s very difficult to get into civilian jobs offered and most don’t pay very well because so many the workers are either inexperienced or they have retired out of the service with plenty of experience. The latter equates to many retirees having to rely heavily on their retirement to supplement their civil service pay. For those who aren’t retired military and are paid well as civil servants, they are the ones who took on a career in civil service at a young age and have graduated to very high paying jobs as civil servants. Not a bad place to be in a small town.
How is it that when you do get a job, the employers pay so little in relation to what you can earn in the city just 12 miles away? It’s that terrain thing again. The costs to commute to Seattle are very high both in time and money. Employers know this and exploit it.
What does it all mean to me personally?
I have made my share of friends who were in the service and they all have moved away and I have lost track of them. I know that with the invent of Facebook and other social media it’s now possible to connect and I have done so with some of my more recent friends but let’s face facts. No one is going to want to sit down and have a virtual beer with you through the internet. It’s just not the same.
I find that my commute consumes about sixty hours of my life each month here in the great Pacific Northwest and that is precious time I can never get back. It’s time to fix this.
I am coming to realize that life is really short and I can either enjoy it or be cranky about it. I find that some things are very difficult to change and sometimes life is best enjoyed by finding a new track to run rather than become a beaten down shell of a person who is plodding on the same path with no goal but rather living a mere existence.
I think the quickest ethical way to become free of a mere life of existence is to pay my debts off and not bring things into my life that serve to only wiegh me down and have no benefit. I guess life in the Pacific Northwest has taught me what to look for in the future and what to avoid if possible. I suppose life in general has taught me these things and I just happened to be in the Pacific Northwest when I came to this realization.
I wouldn’t trade my experiences away for they are what have made me who I am today.
-C.R.
Rowland Ramble - 