Toad @ 7: An Inland Northwesterner?

33 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

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  girlfridaycda on August 30 at 2:15 p.m.

  I think you are a “local” if this is your home, you live here 365 days of the year (not part time here, part time there), you don’t have any plans on living somewhere else, and you can say…Remember that winter when….

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  BethB on August 30 at 2:17 p.m.

  When I say I’ve lived here over 15 years, I usually follow it with, “so I’m a newbie, by Spokane standards.”

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  DFO on August 30 at 2:24 p.m.

  I always struggle with the “native” thing. I’d guess it means to be born somewhere. My son was born in Montana, for example, but he spent the rest of his formative years thru his sophomore year in college as a resident of Idaho, particularly Coeur d’Alene. He considers himself an Idahoan. My daughter has fled Coeur d’Alene for Portland and is in the process of going native as an Oregonian. She was born in the Lake City. I’ve been in the INorthwest 33 years and in Idaho 28 years which is more time than I spent in my “native” northern California. I’ve lived in Coeur d’Alene 26 years as of Sept. 9. I guess I’m a local by anyone’s definition. But I don’t consider myself native because I wasn’t born or raised here. I don’t know if any of this helps this debate.

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  Cindy_H on August 30 at 2:27 p.m.

  I dunno about the debate. I’m just traumatized that DFO’s daughter is “going native as an Oregonian.”
  /shudders

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  jdanmike on August 30 at 2:28 p.m.

  it’s goin huntin’ with your father in law of 2 years in central idaho (elk city area) and comin’ back!

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  scootermom on August 30 at 3:06 p.m.

  I’ve been in Idaho for eighteen years, but whenever I go back to Wyoming I immediately feel at home.

  Just seeing the cowboy on othe highway signs and smelling the sagebrush make me feel like I never left.

  Wyoming is, and always will be, home. Idaho will never be home.

  I may be a local, but I’ll never be a native.

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  toadman on August 30 at 3:14 p.m.

  @Scootermom - I’ve had the opposite experience. We’ve visited Texas now twice since moving up here, and each time, I’ve felt more out of place there. Sure, there are familiar sights, my parent’s home, the land on which I fought imaginary dragons, the High School I attended…all of this. But each time I return, it looks more foreign, slightly different, somehow “off” just a bit. Or maybe it’s me, maybe I’ve changed somehow.

  I’ll always carry that time with me, in my being, to be sure. It will always be a part of me, and shape who I am. However, I don’t think I could ever really return…not without having to reacquaint, and re-acclimate myself to the changes. Many of the vast open prairies of my youth, have been paved over and replaced with a rolling sea of houses that all look the same as Fort Worth and Dallas sprawl outward from their cores. Many of those same homes, now de-valued and empty, have been reclaimed by banks, raccoons, and rats. But that’s a different story, a different rant. ;-)

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  JeanieSpokane on August 30 at 3:17 p.m.

  My heart is on the Oregon coast, where my grandparents homesteaded right on the beach; where I spent all my summers (if I wasn’t camping on Priest Lake). I was born in Idaho, lived in Spokane since I was 6, but my heart is on the Oregon coast.

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  toadman on August 30 at 3:27 p.m.

  You know, I don’t know if I completely fit in here in Spokane, or the Inland northwest. I do in a sense because I’m familiar with it, I know the lay of the land now, and very much enjoy the changes in the seasons. Yet, sometimes, I still feel a little out of place.

  Oddly, I have to admit, walking the streets of Seattle recently, while completely foreign to me, and slightly unnerving because of the late hour, and the continual offerings of drugs, and appeals for lose change, I felt more alive, and “in place” than I have in a while. Weird, no? I felt comfortable on the Washington coast as well. It just felt “right,” you know?

  Maybe my particular comfort zone is to be a man untethered to a particular place.

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  hereinidaho on August 30 at 3:41 p.m.

  I believe you must urinate outside before you can become a native of Idaho.

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  Kage_Mann on August 30 at 3:44 p.m.

  I am a native of CDA, as I was born in the old hospital that sat right behind, where the Ironhorse stands today on Sherman Ave. To me, becoming a ‘true local’ is a state of mind. Phrases like: ‘I left my heart in California’, is said by people who haven’t adapted to this area. How can you call them an Idahoan, when they daydream about some other place? I know I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I’ve never seen a place as beautiful as North Idaho and I have traveled all over the Northwest.

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  Kage_Mann on August 30 at 3:50 p.m.

  “I believe you must urinate outside before you can become a native of Idaho”.FHB

  A native would never say that. ;-(

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  JohnA on August 30 at 4:03 p.m.

  My family’s been here since 1896 but I don’t believe that makes us ‘natives’. I’d have to defer to the Coeur d’Alene Tribe on that one. The fact is, most of north Idaho’s inhabitants came from someplace else. Whether it was this year, last year or 114 years ago, the only real ‘natives’ to me are ‘Native Americans’; they were here when the rest of us arrived.

  I do love the shirt I saw “I wasn’t born in Idaho but I got here as quick as I could”. I think about sums it up for most of us.

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  DFO on August 30 at 4:16 p.m.

  @ FHB re: “I believe you must urinate outside before you can become a native of Idaho.”

  So I became a native of Idaho when I worked the hay fields on my Uncle Manuel’s dairy farm in northern California when I was 14? ;-)

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  Soaf on August 30 at 4:22 p.m.

  @ DFO re: So I became a native of Idaho when I worked the hay fields on my Uncle Manuel’s dairy farm in northern California when I was 14? ;-)

  Only if you did it on an electric fence!

  ;-)

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  sue on August 30 at 4:27 p.m.

  Someone asked if my mother was a native and 2 of her kids said, no, she’s from Minnesota. Only been here 67 yrs..

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  toadman on August 30 at 4:34 p.m.

  “I believe you must urinate outside before you can become a native of Idaho”.

  Well, in that case, I’ve been a native Inland Northwesterner for years. ;-)

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  toadman on August 30 at 4:39 p.m.

  For SOAF - a North Idaho game, I presume?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXH9BcHXsRY

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  Gary D Rhodes on August 30 at 4:44 p.m.

  What if my parents, (Washington residents) had illegally crossed the border and delivered me in the parking lot of the El Patio. Would I then become an anchor baby capable of bringing my kids to swim at Tubbs Hill?

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  Soaf on August 30 at 4:46 p.m.

  TOAD!!!! You found it!!!

  Too Funny!

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  toadman on August 30 at 4:47 p.m.

  ;-) Can I buy that game at White Elephant in Spokane?

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  Soaf on August 30 at 4:51 p.m.

  As a present for Dave?

  ;-)

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  toadman on August 30 at 4:53 p.m.

  Sure! HA!

  Man…haven’t watched any Ren and Stimpy in years. Brings back memories.. stoned out of my mind, memories, that is.. good grief, this stuff is crazy weird.. but I kinda like it, still. ;-)

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  Soaf on August 30 at 4:56 p.m.

  LOL!!

  Know what you mean! I laugh just thinking about it!

  :-)

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  nic on August 30 at 4:59 p.m.

  @ Gary, I get that your trying to be funny… but do you have to turn every thread into a birther rant?

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  nic on August 30 at 5:01 p.m.

  I was born in Idaho, but grew up in Seattle. While I consider myself an Idaho native, my home town is still on Washington’s left coast.

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  toadman on August 30 at 5:07 p.m.

  @Gary - you can’t use babies as anchors. They float.

  :-P

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  Gary D Rhodes on August 30 at 5:30 p.m.

  @ nic

  Although I didn’t bring up the president’s birth certificate, I notice that he did again over the weekend.
  Just saying.

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  hereinidaho on August 30 at 5:36 p.m.

  Forgive me Kage for mentioning the urinating. I love your Idaho.

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  nic on August 30 at 8:03 p.m.

  You didn’t mention Obama… but you did broach the subject with the weak birthplace hypothetical scenario. Weak.

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  idbarrelracer on August 31 at 5:54 a.m.

  Native= Born here
  Local= Been here more than half your life, wouldn’t be anywhere else, raised your children here, and yearn for home when you’re away.

  *Bonus points if your high school letterman’s jacket is Blue & White… “Go Viks!”

  That makes me a Native Local with bonus points on the board… :o)

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  Mr_Bloggy on August 31 at 6:33 a.m.

  Native: Birthright
  Resident: State law
  Local: Adaptation of the community norms, values, behaviors.

  So, you could be born in Idaho, which would make you an Idaho *native* but have just moved to Washington and not yet a Washington *resident* yet become a Seattle *local* by discarding your Idaho general rube-ishness, outdoor urination preferences, trading your ‘Dodge Ram pickup for a Prius or Porsche, giving up the jacklight poaching of large innocent forest ungulates for the peaceable watching of birds, setting aside the daily guzzling of a “half rack” of Budweiser Ice after a hard day logging third growth timber, for sipping Iced Mocha Frappucinos in the morning on the way to work at your tech job, selling your Harley “Fat Boy” road bike and buying a Specialized “Langster” fixie bicycle, and divorcing your edentulous sister-wife and dating a lovely Asian-American attorney.

  In the end, it all depends on community, culture, choices.

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  Stickman on August 31 at 1:46 p.m.

  Nice thread, and I liked your comments Toad. I hope to see you this Fall when the town gets back to somewhat normal and things are very quiet again. I know you and your family love to hike Tubbs Hill. I am not a native, but I do consider myself a local in a sense. I am like DFO, as I have been here almost 20 years now and have lived here longer than anywhere else in my life. Hawaii would be the place where I would truly feel like home, but North Idaho is truly my home now and I really don’t ever see myself leaving.

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