Small town cooks up support for ‘Idol’

SELMA, Ore. – The Deer Creek Valley around this small rural crossroads has only about 3,000 people, but on “American Idol” night, many of them are watching their TVs, poised to vote as many times as they can for hometown singer Kristy Lee Cook.

Desiree Eddy, who cooks for the people who crowd the Country Folks Restaurant on “Idol” night, figures she can vote 600 times dialing as fast as she can if the toll-free phone lines don’t jam up in the two hours of voting after each week’s performance.

“We stay up and vote nonstop,” said Eddy. “She comes from such a small town that we have to vote twice as hard to keep her in.”

Selma is an unincorporated community on the edge of the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest. A blinking yellow light marks the center of town along U.S. 199, known as the Redwood Highway because it ends up in redwood country on the Northern California coast.

The community dates to 1897, when the postmaster named it for her hometown of Selma, Iowa. It was in the heart of Oregon’s gold rush in the 1850s and the timber boom after World War II.

Both have gone bust, leaving Selma with a handful of businesses mostly focused on drawing passers-by off the two-lane blacktop, and a scattering of rural homes ranging from mansions to singlewides. Horses, llamas and goats graze in grassy fields and snowcapped mountains ring the valley.

In 2002, Selma feared for its very life as the Biscuit fire, the biggest in the nation that year at 500,000 acres, bore down on it. People hauled off their animals and furniture in livestock trailers before the fire was contained.

Born in the Seattle area, Cook, 24, moved to a log house here as a 14-year-old, when her parents, Larry and Carlene Cook, were looking for a place that split the distance between Reno, Nev., where one daughter was a swimmer at the University of Nevada, and Eugene, Ore., where a son was a wide receiver at the University of Oregon.

The Grants Pass Daily Courier has followed Cook’s career, reporting that she got her big break in 1998, when she opened at a nearby music festival for Glen Campbell. That led to a record deal and an album. Her dad, a softball coach at a junior college in Northern California, told the newspaper that after failing an “Idol” audition in San Diego Kristy sold a horse to pay for a second try in Philadelphia, where her rendition of “Amazing Grace” got her in.

Back home, Cook rides horses and stops in for country fried steak or cinnamon roll French toast at the Country Folks Restaurant, where she always sits in a corner booth, said Eddy.

At the neighboring Clear Creek Family Practice, Dr. Katherine Mechling doesn’t watch TV but follows Cook’s fortunes in the newspaper.

Her 14-year-old niece, Audrey Mechling, doesn’t know Cook but was thrilled and surprised to see her on TV during the Philadelphia auditions for “Idol.”

“We were like, ‘I bet she’s not going to be good,’ but then she made it,” said Audrey, pulling off a set of soapy gloves and putting down a scouring pad to talk. “It’s so cool, because no one had ever heard of Selma before.”

On “Idol” night, Country Folks owners Alicia and Stan Kinsey, Eddy’s parents, keep the restaurant open past their normal 3 p.m. closing so folks who don’t have satellite TV can come and watch.

“It just kind of grew,” said Eddy. “Now it’s huge. The customers are really cool. They come about 7 and order so we can get everything out by 8 o’clock and we all can watch. It’s like family.”