BEAR SPOKANE HERE -- TAME LIVING IN THE WILD WEST

We’re traveling now to Spokane County in eastern Washington state, where Public Works Department officials are fed up with complaints from city folks who’ve relocated there and found themselves woefully unprepared for “the hazards of country living.”

Seems these new pioneers are moving to Spokane County country as self-imposed expatriated urbanites, only to discover that, yes, the grass is greener, but it is also full of potholes, bugs, dirt roads, a capricious power & water supply, and carjacking bears making unauthorized calls on their cellular phones.

Okay, so the latter hasn’t been officially reported, but it won’t be long.

Spokane County Commission officials directed that “The Code Of The West,” a booklet chockfull of rural disclaimers and telephoning bear warnings, be distributed to anyone planning to build and relocate to the Washington State boonies. They hope this will prepare these wannabe hicks for the perils of rural life before they move in to their stomping grounds and start whining.

The booklet’s title was lifted from novelist Zane Grey’s credo of the same name. It referred to the legendary and trailblazing chutzpah of the Old West’s first inhabitants. For the neophyte adventurer, “chutzpah” translates literally as “cell phone bear repellent.”

No, I’m not a Washingtonian bushwhacker, but I do reside in the Eastern boondocks, and count myself qualified to quantify the new hillbilly handbook being used to get citified immigrants up for the game of country life in Spokane County. It was drafted from a guide originally used in Larimer County, Colorado, whose public overseers were also overstocked with similar complaints from its delegation of rural, crybaby refugees.

Thus far, no one has seen fit to apologize to Zane Grey. Yes, he’s dead, but he’s been plagiarized in two states, and any humor writer will tell you which is worse.

Let’s have a look at some sample rules of order, taken verbatim from Spokane County's welcome wagon. As usual, real life is already dumber than anything I could hope to invent:

" ... Unpaved roads are not always smooth .... ”

A good place to start. If life is, as writer Peter DeVries once best-defined, “a zoo in a jungle,” then an unpaved country road is a pothole in a drainage ditch. I live on such a road, and, seasonally speaking, you’ll be fine as long as you remove your hearing aids, dentures, underwear and hot beverage payload prior to navigation.

Yes, you’ll be driving deaf and toothless, but not because your Beltone and choppers were thumped out of your skull. This will also spare you the scalding coffee wedgie you’ll suffer before you get back to the main road.

“ ... Power outages can occur in outlying areas .... ”

Okay, Spokane County, let’s not equivocate. When the wind blows, the boughs break, and because we of the hayseed persuasion have an overabundance of boughs atop an underlying supply of power lines, we often find ourselves sipping cold coffee in candlelight.

These outages also increase every spring and summer, whenever crazy old man Batcheldor re-reclamates his pond and knocks down another utility pole with his backhoe.

“ ... In some cases, your only option may be to haul your trash to a disposal site yourself .... "

This really should be touted as a benefit of living in the land of far and away. A weekly trip to the landfill out here is not only necessary, it’s an opportunity to pick up the second best bargains in three-legged couches, hubcap planters, cable spool coffee tables, and golfbag umbrella stands.

It’s also a chance to see your neighbor toss into the compactor all the junk you couldn’t sell at last year’s yard sale, after he couldn’t sell it at his. This is recycling at its best.

“ ... The water flowing in creeks or streams may belong to someone else .... ”

Yes, careful you don’t dam up, pollute, fish-out, or otherwise redirect the source to old man Batcheldor’s pond, or he may fire up the backhoe and you’ll be gulping chilled Maxwell House and looking for your teeth in the candlelight.

“ ... Hunting. Don’t automatically assume that your property is in a shooting or no shooting zone .... ”

Good idea, for any city folks who think that moving to the sticks will get them out of the line of fire. I’m going to add an addendum of my own to that last admonition:

“ ... During hunting season, put your cows in the barn, paint the word ‘COW’ on the side of your dog, and, if the bullets start flying, get behind your backhoe and wait it out .... ”

Or, you could always call the sheriff.

Soon as that bear drops your phone.

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.