small town

sometimes i wonder what i would be like if i grew up in portland. well, any city with a large number of inhabitants. would i be more competent, confident, jaded, wealthy? i wonder too the ramifications of growing up where i did and when (pop. 16,000 or so, circa 1989 - 199something.) i guess when i say "grew up" i mean where i went to high school. before that it was an even smaller town off of highway 3, not interstate 5.

my dad used to tell me a story when i was little about the witch who lived in the orange groves. he lived on the edge of some orange groves in southern california during the late fifties and he and his sisters would terrify each other with stories of the witch.

i imagined a green expanse dotted with orange blobs. in the center, a rickety wooden windmill that leaned solicitously to the nearest trees. the witch lived in the tower and protected the groves from pests, poachers, and weather. she somehow used the windmill to control storms and the like. none of this is actually what my dad told me, i don't think, but when he described the place, this is what i imagined.

if i grew up in a big city i probably would never have seen a rodeo, tree frogs, or crazy lightning from a geodesic dome.

wistfully,
S