My Evergreen uncle and cousin came out last year for some dirt-biking and camping. After dusk, when the yellow moon started moving across the sky, my uncle joked: “So you live in Silt, huh? Why don’t they just name it ‘Undesirable Dirt?’ “
Silt has long been a town where people fence their yards with chicken wire, collect vehicles in their driveways, grow a few tomatoes, and decorate their yards with old iron bed-frames and ski-lift chairs.
And this is what we like.
We like our four-wheel-drive vehicles and having the shooting range close by. The rivers rush by us, uncontaminated by city-dwellers. We live at a slower pace. The store clerks know who you are and what you need.
But our precious rural silence and isolation are commodities that other people also crave — and my little podunk town has been invaded of late. A few years ago, when the yuppies began moving here from places like Connecticut, the hills above Silt started to change. The yuppies didn’t want their Christmas letters and birthday cards to have return addresses in a place called “Silt.” So they petitioned the town board to let them change the name to something more respectable, like “Cactus Valley.” Fortunately, Silt is many things, but a pushover it is not. The long-time residents of Silt shot that plan so far down-valley that those yuppies are now moving to Utah. That’ll teach ’em.
I don’t understand the confusion here: The name of our town is “Silt.” It’s not like we are trying to trick anyone into thinking it’s gonna be the next Aspen. Out here, we play horseshoes till the mosquitoes chew us alive. Then we drive up to the lake and sit on the dams, drinking 40s and thinking about all the unfortunate folks who live in cities.
We like being able to see the stars and not the pollution; we like seeing cows and sheep but never a human.
Out here, we are free, alone. Content.
A few weeks ago, a neighbor called me “white trash.” I was shocked, and then furious. Me? White trash? Although everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, in my mind I defy the typical definition, as I know it. I have no illegitimate children; I pay my insurance and taxes; I go to work and mind my own business. I don’t have any milk crates as furniture and I am not that impressed with Country Jam. But this woman was incessant. “Go back to your white trash husband in your white trash house,” she shouted at me.
Well excuse me, Miss Yuppie. I didn’t know that the heart-of-pine, original hardwood flooring coupled with the period lead-glass 15-pane front doors that grace my authentic Victorian home automatically qualified me as “white trash.” Maybe it’s my husband, then, who works for hours tuning up his rifles and bows, legs sticking out from under another vehicle as he turns one tool and then another. Or perhaps it is something that runs in my blood.
If I am white trash, I guess so are most every other American who wishes to live a life comprised of more important things than which wall to hang my fake Miro on.
If I am white trash, then I am quite happy in my white trash world.
Krista Cox (krista.dawn.cox@gmail.com) of Silt works in the lumber industry.
