There are snarky jokes about lawyers. There are severe phobias about dentists. But the professional person who strikes a dagger of dread deep into my soul is that well-known link between me, you and most people lucky enough to purchase a new home. I am talking, of course, about realtors. I know that among their ranks are some of the finest, smartest, most hard-working folk any of us will ever know. The fact that I’ve yet to meet one like that does not, in any way, diminish the existence. And the one I enlisted to help find my new domicile in my new town had a truly positive effect on my life. Without him, I never would have wandered into a diner called “Andy’s Café” after a long day on the hunt for a house, when I sunk down at a little corner table, and unloaded my plight on a waitress who gave me the thing I most needed at that very moment: a cup of coffee and a dose of encouragement. And that’s how I met Denice with a C.
 
“Hiya,” she said. “You look like you could use this.” And right then and there, in Andy’s Café, my new small-town life started to turn a corner. Never without a smile and a warm curiosity about everyone in the place, Andy’s Café in general, and Denice in particular,  was the first stop on my way to feeling like I had a new home -- even though it took me a long time to find an actual house.  Denice and that café, glowing with cheer on dark days.
 
And, as realtors go, the one I had was pretty nice – but he was strangely casual, never pushing me toward the dotted line. He just drove me around, checking his watch once in a while. When I finally asked him why time was of such essence, he explained that a big game was coming up.
 
This would prove a recurrent theme. Big games here are right up there with milestone birthdays and pay raises for many people. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his apparently relaxed attitude towar  house-hunting yielded no success. I did write up bids on two houses. For the first, an oily substance in the yard necessitated special removal and the owner thought the cost should be added to our purchase price; In the second, an imminent foreclosure of the home prompted us to make an offer a bit below the asking price. But because we’d been Californians, and thus obviously filled to the gills with money, we were turned away. Soon I abandoned the hunt, and I was no longer interfering with game days. But I was learning all about them nonetheless …
 
Thank goodness for Denice, co-owner of that friendly diner. It was she who warned me that I could not, under any circumstances, keep telling people that the name of Oregon’s biggest football game was called by a historically insulting term that should -- undeniably and immediately – be deep-sixed. I am referring to the three-word title known as “The Civil War.” No, not the one with Abe Lincoln and a divided country. The one between the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.
 
If you are hermit in a cave on Mount Hood in Oregon, maybe you don’t know that this is serious, this gridiron fight between “the ducks” and “the beavers.” And just about every person I’ve met is one or the other: Duck or Beaver. This football rivalry is so intense that when I took of tour of Portland, which included city blocks featuring native wildlife statuary, I was told by the guide that the sculptor took real heat for making the ducks a cluster of waterfowl that outnumber the beavers.
 
I cannot remember if Denice was a duck or beaver, but whatever it was, it was not the animal favored by her husband and co-owner of the diner, Andy Scott. Their banter about this difference was like a comedy routine. I grew to love those visits to Andy’s Café so much. So how are YOOOOOO? Denice would say. And sometimes, if her team was doing well or she hadn’t seen me for a while, she’d do a little happy bounce, which I called her “sunshine shuffle.
 
When I told Denice that I prefer a conversation with my attorney or root-canal surgery to the search for a new house by car with real-estate agent, she urged me to go online. This was more than 10 years ago, when, to me, it seemed like something only Millennials would do. But it worked like a charm. Meanwhile, Denice and Andy prospered, moving into a larger restaurant. For a while, I blamed the fact that Denice looked more tired on her space, which required a lot more running around. Then one day she mentioned the cancer she thought she’d beaten had returned. But she’d done that once, so she’d do it again. She was sure of it.
 
And so she kept on working. Until one day, when she didn’t. And, after a time, it became clear to all that knew her, all those ducks and beavers she’d entertained so long with her snappy repartee about the rivalry, that Denice was not coming back. At her memorial service I tried to say how much the cate had meant to me, and how much she would be missed. But I failed in my attempt to convey the degree to which I’d feel that, even after months, even years without seeing her. Because Denice proved that there is no truth in the old maxim that everyone is replaceable. I know this now, because I knew Denice with a C, who was indispensable and so wrongly gone. I’m Anne Scheck and this one of the lessons I learned from my small town.

When my family moved from Los Angeles to a small town in Oregon – and by small I mean fewer than 9,000 people at the time – one of the things on my mind was the way relocation would affect our dog. He was always running off in LA. But we had a fenced yard. So the adventure of galivanting off into other neighborhoods was pretty much confined to those times when someone left the gate open. In contrast, our new home was an old farmhouse – with no enclosure at all.
 
So I was shocked to see that our little terrier never ventured from our lawn. At first, we counted ourselves lucky. It seemed that our canine had finally figured out that there is no place like home. Soon, though, our beloved little mutt seemed confused about even finding his way to the door from only a few steps away. Everything seemed to confound him.
 
It was time for a trip to the local vet, a man everyone told us had bite marks on his hands and a heart of gold. His name was Dr. Lindsay, and he also was known as a man of few words.
 
Very few words.  As I recall, he uttered only three: “Likely … brain … tumor.” Stunned, I asked him if he was actually the Dr. Lindsay with whom I had made an appointment, because this is not the way I expected a golden-hearted veterinarian to speak. “Yes, I am friend,” he said, kindly.
 
Well, this was reassuring, because our new friend, Dr. Lindsay, was going to have the extraordinary and excruciating duty of watching us break down into spasms of grief as we determined that he was the guy to help us take our dog to his last breath. This he did compassionately, after my husband gave our little pooch a last treat and a final tummy rub.
 
And it was Friend Lindsay to whom I turned when our teenage daughter – bereft at this loss – was allowed to adopt another dog from an animal shelter where no one seemed to know the breed. Tiny, but with long and unkempt hair, the little male dog looked like the business end of a mop. I told my daughter I wasn’t even sure he was a dog – we took him, anyway. We named him Fido, mostly because I thought that would be funny.
 
And then, tragically, Fido seemed to be suffering the same malady as our former dog. He lay limp when bathed. He didn’t seem to know where he was. When someone came to the door, he gazed up from the sofa, put his down, and never barked. He looked at food warily before eating. It was time for another sad trip to Friend Lindsay.
 
With the same economy of the language, Dr. Lindsay, looked over Fido, and, in his taciturn way said: “This dog is traumatized.” I felt relief flood over me. He said “trauma” not “tumor’! OK, so we had Fido’s condition, now what was there to do about it. Like a kid begging to trade a chore for a cookie, I told Dr. Lindsay I would do anything, anything at all, just so we could make Fido better. Could I drag him on walks? Could I feed him ice cream? What drugs could help?
 
“Well, there is really nothing to do,” Dr. Lindsay said. “Except what you are already doing.”
 
What? This supposedly was Friend Lindsay! What kind of veterinary friend says to do nothing! And why does he call himself “friend,” anyway? Was this some religious thing? Who does that?
 
As soon as I left the veterinary clinic, I called my husband. “Dr. Lindsay told us to do NOTHING!” I said. “We have a traumatized dog and he told me to do nothing! What kind of vet is he anyway, and I am not calling him friend!”
 
There was a period of silence. “I think we should do nothing,” by husband said. “Dr. Lindsay is highly regarded here, and, to be honest, I myself am a fan.”
 
And so, we did nothing. And our dog slept and ate the hours away. And then he stood still for a trim, and we noticed how he looked up at us without objection as we cut off his hair. And how he went to the window to watch as we came and went. And how my daughter could not go anywhere without hearing the click of canine toenails behind her on our wooden floor. The tail wagging began without us even realizing it, until one day I noticed it stopped – when the mail carrier came to our day. Fido never barked, but he stood at attention, regarding the porch intruder with the wariness he once reserved for his bowl of food. How we grew to love this little dog.
 
It was Dr. Lindsay who told us the breed, even before the grooming had taken place. We had a cockapoo. And it was Dr. Lindsay who didn’t seem surprised at all when our dog bit him while he dispatched vaccinations. And it was Dr. Lindsay who never minded that Fido would take one look at him and urinate copiously on the floor. And it was Dr. Lindsay who brought us the news that we had a healthy, 5-year-old dog who seemed like a great little member of his species.
 
So … I told my husband that Fido truly had found a friend in Dr. Lindsay, after all. “I don’t know why he called himself ‘Friend’ the first time I met him, but he really and truly is,” I said.
 
My husband looked at me. “I don’t think it’s likely he actually said ‘friend’,” my husband answered. “Did you know his first name is Ken?” No, I had not.
 
So what if that first time I met him, in his taciturn way, he said “I am Ken” rather than “friend.” He is both things now. And Fido got a friend, and so did we, and once in a while I say a little thanks for the fact that all animals going through the old door of that clinic are sure to have one, too.

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If you’ve never been to Oregon in the summertime – and I grieve for you, O poor soul of missed spectacles if you haven’t – it is the prettiest place on earth. I say this with conviction because I’ve actually seen what many consider the prettiest place on the planet – New Zealand – and I think Oregon is easily its equal, and even better in some respects, such as the fact that nearly everyone here knows how to fix a hotdog and what ketchup should taste like.
 
So take that, you Lord-of-the-Rings, misty-watercolor-mountains and rainbow-spraying waterfalls of landscape-laden New Zealand, with your glow-worm caves and bubbling geothermal ponds. Living in Oregon is like walking into a postcard.
 
Here, I can look out on a snow-capped mountain just by driving the I-5 to Portland, and, if I go the other direction, I can visit the world’s most beautiful coastline, via a highway shrouded by towering pines and fir trees, a forest that looks so primeval I expect to see Robin Hood one of these days.
 
Why, it is the very peak of paradise … except … for one thing … sooner or later … it gets to be November … and just like that … the dark drenching begins. Rain screams down from the sky, hissing on the payment, spitting in your face, and sending a message from the clouds above … that the joke is on you, because not only is summer a thing of the past, it is slowly being erased from your memory, as the unrelenting growl of winter expresses itself in drips, drizzle and downpours  -- which you are sure will cease because nature is going to run out of water, right? At least temporarily?
 
But it just never does.
 
The day I moved into my new Oregon home, in Independence, I was all by myself. My husband was at a conference, my daughter was at a summer camp, and my son stayed behind to live in Southern California since he was headed for college there in the fall. In the fine art of moseying around, I went to the local hardware store, where I met a new neighbor. I told her how lovely Oregon was. She smiled. Yes, it is, she said. Where you from? I said the word that everyone here seems to dread: California.
 
“Good luck,” she said. “I hope you survive the two-year test.”
 
When I asked the woman behind the counter to explain the two-year test, she put it to me this way: First year ex-Californians say: hey this a lot of rain. Second year, they say: I don’t think I can take this kind of rain every winter. By the third year, a for-sale sign is in their yard.
 
I paused. In fact, the house we now own had been placed on the market the third year after the couple we bought it from had moved into it. They were from California -- and now they were headed to Arizona.
 
Arizona, it turns out, is a pretty typical winter destination for those who can afford it. For people like me, the remedies are much closer to home. I bought a light box, a sun lamp, a membership to a gym with an indoor track flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows. And I got something else, too. Through sheer necessity – because nobody I know gets Seasonal Affective Disorder like I do – I passed the two-year test. Yes, I flunked adjustment to winter’s wet demands. But I prevailed, just the same.
 
It’s kind of metaphor for life, isn’t it? You think you can’t take a situation, it’s simply asking too much of you.
 
But somehow you stick it out, and then you come out the other end, and well, you’ve made it! Some, who can’t stand the rain, hightail it out for relocation to a sunnier climate. And some grow to like the rain. These are the people who are native Oregonians and -- I mean no disrespect here -- stinkin’ liars.
 
Because the rains can be hellish. In fact, if I live a wrongful life, a good way to punish me is to tell me at the pearly gates that I need to be 17 again, in a perpetually rainy Oregon winter. But if I make the grade at the end of my time here, I want heaven to look just like Oregon, in summer, that is -- with maybe a slice of New Zealand thrown in, kiwis and crystal lakes. And, so, I’ve learned to take the dark with the light, that summer is never that far away, so long as I keep thinking about it through the gloomy January days.
 
I’m Anne Scheck and this is one of the lessons I’ve learned from my small town.
 

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​It has long been the stuff of dreams to chuck the choking traffic and high prices of a big city for the kinder, gentler life of a small town. If you don’t believe me, just turn your television to classic movies.  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House – filmed in 1948 in black and white, is an old timey favorite, showcasing Cary Grant as a former city-dweller as hijinks ensue at his new home in the Connecticut countryside. Then Diane Keaton and Chevy Chase captured the same slice of relocation romance as Cary Grant did, in the 1980s films “Baby Boom “and “Funny Farm,” respectively. Now, in 2017, a charismatic couple that restores houses in small Southern towns is becoming an HGTV hit, thanks to wishful-thinking urban viewers tuning in for “Home Town.”
 
 I don’t know why someone from Hollywood isn’t getting in touch with me. Because moving from Los Angeles to an Oregon town – a town that doesn’t yet top 10,000 is nothing like it is in the movies …  apart from the fact that it’s exactly like the movies … in some ways, that is
 
Crotchety and nosy residents? Got ‘em. Heart-of-gold neighbor? Yep. Charming downtown filled with colorful characters? Yes, by the dozen. High school sports that are the center of the world as we know it? Make that the universe.
 
But the transition from a big city to a small town is far from idyllic. When my husband landed a job here, friends were universal in their congratulations. Freeway rush hour would be a thing of the past. We’d finally be able to afford a house larger than a potter’s shed. It would be an adventure! People would greet me as an incoming gust of welcome breeze, glad to have someone of my skills and personality to add to the fabric of the village that awaited.
 
For anyone contemplating a move amid such upbeat forecasts, I have got a few hints, tips and remedies – or so I like to call them. No, not all people are happy to see you, you-you-you outsider who has not been here a hundred years. No, nobody is impressed by your previous accomplishments, primarily because no one asks about you or where you came from or what kind of work you do or used to do. Instead, you are invited to listen as they tell you all about what’s what and who’s who and things you need to know as you settle in to the greatest town ever known to humankind and you better believe it, sista.
 
No one ever tells you that a bigger house might not be the ticket to happiness, or if they did, I didn’t get the message. No one ever tells you that homesickness doesn’t happen only on those childhood sleep-overs of yesteryear --  and that it can be deep and real in adulthood. And no one ever told me that I’d pine for the smells and sounds of the city I left behind: the wafting of coffee roasting or pizza baking from corner stores on my street that were way too close or that I’d miss screaming children riding bikes and longboards on cracked sidewalks outside my window. Of course, everyone does tell you that you’ll miss friends; They just don’t know how hard it can be to make new ones.
 
And so I know a thing or two how about how to create that proverbial silk purse from a sow’s ear – in fact, I personally now know two sows. Very nice pigs that belong to a local farmer. There are some lessons I’ve learned from a small town, and one of them is to keep a record of my accumulated knowledge. That is how this blog, or as I call it “journal” began, and after several years here, I’m happy to share those accumulated hints, tips and remedies. In fact, I have collected so many that I can just about guarantee I’ll have a happy ending  – it isn’t going to be easy to come by, necessarily. But I can see it, sure as I see the sun hit the Willamette Valley horizon every morning. I’m Anne Scheck, and this is one of many lessons I’ve learned from a small town.