HAPPY VALENTINES DAY CHICAGO, DEARBORN, EAST LANSING

Happy Valentines Day to the great American cities of midwestern love.

Chicago, Dearborn, and East Lansing have all showed the love to boomerpdx recently and Valentines Day seems a good time for A SHOUT OUT.

If February 14 isn’t a world wide celebration, it is here in Oregon.

“Why?” you ask.

Since my new readers may not know Oregon as well as they might, and my old readers may not know Chicago, East Lansing, or Dearborn as well as they should, let’s do a cultural exchange on boomerpdx.

I can testify to the benefits of cultural exchange between nations, states, and people. To begin, I grew up in a backward little town scabbed onto the edge of the North American continent, a town not much different than any other.

The one thing I grew up knowing for certain was North Bend was a better town than neighboring Coos Bay. Getting crushed by the Marshfield Pirates regularly in high school sports didn’t change my opinion. Because things have changed since high school, old resentments have eased a little.

The one thing that made North Bend a better town was a man named David Abraham. He was a teacher and a coach, a history teaching wrestling coach, which turned out to be a perfect combination.

He also liked to travel beyond the North Bend city limits, and with wrestling as an excuse, he took teams with him. Some of his wrestlers had been to South Africa, Japan, and New Zealand on cultural exchange trips.

My senior year, 1973, I qualified for a cultural exchange trip by winning a state championship in Greco Roman wrestling. Would I go to Japan, South Africa, or New Zealand?

In what’s become a hilarious theme throughout my life, I discovered not all things are created equal, not all cultures are exchangeable. Instead of a month of travel through foreign lands with language barriers challenging every idea, the trip I qualified for went another direction.

My cultural exchange trip aimed for Iowa, a month long tour of all-star team matches through Illinois, ending with the Junior National Freestyle and Greco Roman Championships in at the University of Iowa. Now it’s Fargo.

It was a wonderful trip with great guys and new friends and the language barrier wasn’t a huge problem. The Oregon team pounded the rest of the country and I came away an all-American for third place after I was cheated out of first and the hubcap sized plaque that came with it. But I’m no complainer, not on Valentines Day.

February 14th means more in Oregon than it does anywhere else for the simple fact of statehood. Why? Because Oregon became a state on Valentine’s Day. Virginia used to promote with the bumper sticker, “Virgina Is For Lovers” and a red heart, but they didn’t know about the Oregon story.

Many early pioneers on the Oregon Trail started from the midwest. It’s not too much of a stretch to say Oregon settlement succeeded because of the transplanted midwestern values. Even new arrivals from the midwest today bring something extra with them.

And Oregon needs all the extra it can get. Boomerpdx readers from Chicago, Dearborn, and East Lansing can learn more about it right here.

Or here.