Old Spokane may be just what you need

As I walked through downtown Spokane this holiday season, I looked for you. I know your back story. You grew up in Spokane in the ‘70s or ‘80s, and you yearned to escape from here forever.

You longed to hail cabs and eat with friends in cool restaurants and wear the latest styles and forget backward Spokane, where fashion took five years to migrate from both coasts, where all-you-can-eat steak houses grossed the biggest revenues and where mullets ruled the hairwaves.

You fantasized about sophisticated cocktail parties and witty repartee with bright people, and you worked toward careers not available in the Spokane area, such as doing neurosurgery in prestigious teaching hospitals.

And now that you are in your 40s and 50s, you are successful beyond your dreams because some Spokane-instilled values translated well to the bigger world. You know how to work hard, and you have a certain humility. And once a year you venture back around holiday time.

I know you, because in the early 1980s, I was living in Washington, D.C., doing all the sophisticated, big-city things I once pined to do while growing up in Spokane. Yet when I rode the subway to work, I wore sunglasses – even in the winter – to avoid eye contact with others.

And wearing sunglasses indoors was just one downside to living in a sophisticated big city. The others included the awful traffic, the high cost of housing, the long drives necessary to swim in lakes or go on hikes. I moved back to Spokane in 1985 and haven’t looked back since.

You holiday visitors might have noticed that Spokane seems – dare I say? – more sophisticated this year. Downtown actually has people on the streets at night, and they are not, for the most part, scary people. The clothes in the department store windows are similar to styles featured in bigger cities. Our restaurants fill you with impressive food, and our housing prices fill you with backyard envy.

Spokane’s metamorphosis is finally happening. Yet, like most journalists, I see the dark lining in every silver cloud. I worry now how we’ll keep intact the best of old Spokane.

This is where you come in, holiday visitor who grew up here. You remember the best of the old Spokane. We need some of you to move back and preserve it.

The best of the old Spokane means you don’t flaunt wealth, even if you really have it.

You still don’t see much big hair, big jewelry or big fur-wearing in Spokane. You don’t meet many folks who boast about their expensive cars or their latest botox treatments. Spokane still has a higher-than-average poverty rate. This is one reason why the really rich folks here rarely act the part. It would be inappropriate.

The best of the old Spokane means people help each other.

Neighbors still chat across fences, still shovel sidewalks for one another. When firetrucks roar down the streets, people still pull their cars over to the side. Last week, when the Spokane Valley Food Bank was bare to the cupboards, donations overfilled those cupboards within 24 hours.

The best of the old Spokane means people still feel accountable to one another.

You mess with someone’s life, pocketbook or trust, and chances are you’ll then run into that person everywhere. Or into that person’s relatives and friends. It’s still difficult to hide in Spokane. What once felt claustrophobic in our childhoods now feels reassuring because it’s harder (but not impossible) to get ripped off here – or to rip off someone else.

The best of the old Spokane means one person can make a difference.

As Spokane city and county evolve into a truly big metro area, we need creative thinkers who will brainstorm ways to circumvent traffic congestion, inflated housing prices, class segregation and impersonal attitudes.

This make-a-difference person could be you, holiday visitor. Think about that dream as you journey back to where you live now, away from the old Spokane you once called home.