Hubbard

Oh, Hubbard.  This is one of the seven towns in Oregon that would show up on my credit report should someone decide to run one.  I spent six weeks in a one-bedroom apartment on G Street in an attempt to distance myself from my home town of Woodburn, a mere two miles down the highway.  It didn't work out so well, as I still managed to hang out in the exact same 24-hour coffee shop every night--drinking coffee, chain-smoking cigarettes, and eating rice pilaf with bacon and maple syrup.  1996 was a weird year for me.  One night, soberly driving my way south down 99E in the January fog between Hubbard and my coffee shop in Woodburn, a naked guy jumped in front of my car, bounced off my hood and bumper, then ran off into the barren winter hop fields.  After finally bringing my Subaru Justy to a complete stop, I scanned the surrounding fields to make sure that I hadn't just hallucinated a tall hairy naked man.  After that, the damage to my Justy confirmed that I wasn't crazy.  Having never hit a naked guy with my car before, I decided to continue on to my coffee shop knowing that various police officers from Marion County were sure to be at the same coffee shop.  I hurried inside and sure enough, two Woodburn cops and a Marion County Sheriff's deputy were sharing some marion berry pie.

"Hey," I said to them, "There's a naked guy running around 99E by the old produce market."

"Yeah, we heard about that," replied the deputy.  "He'll either find his way home or fall asleep."

At first I was pretty amazed that they didn't care that a naked guy was jumping in front of cars on a major highway, but after a few cups of late-night bad coffee and about a third a pack of cigarettes I came to agree with the deputy that these things have a way of working themselves out.

Hubbard Mayor Jim Yonally actually invited me and the wife and the baby into his home so he could autograph our big map of Oregon, which is another first.  Baby Henry even got a little stuffed bear out of the deal which he thoroughly enjoyed all the way from the Mayor's house to the feed store down in Woodburn.  He actually met us on a Sunday, too, and I had to tear him away from working on a car.  In our brief email exchange before we met personally, I observed that he wasn't the first Mayor I had met that liked working on cars and asked him why that might be so.  He replied, via email, "If you want something done right and economically efficient, do it yourself."  If that doesn't sum up what it means to be Mayor, then I don't know what does.  Just as that Nissan Altima's transmission isn't going to rebuild itself, neither is the redrawing of the coming expansion of the urban growth boundary there in Hubbard.  

That sheriff's deputy from 13 years ago was totally wrong.  Things don't just work themselves out.  I realize that midnight naked dudes and zoning ordinances aren't EXACTLY the same thing, but they both need someone to look out for them.  And it takes Oregon Mayors like Jim Yonally to keep our towns from becoming an even sprawlier version of Clark County, Washington where hairy naked guys roam the streets after dark--a nightmare I'm sure I share with many.

There is also a hop festival in Hubbard.

24 down, 218  to go.