For the last 30 years I’ve lived and worked in a small, mountain town. On the surface, we are a charming slice of Americana. Come fall, our bakeries are famous for Apple Pies made from fruit grown and picked on local farms. Spring, summer and fall, our farmer’s market is filled with local growers and families. Thousands of bicyclists come to town for our annual mountain trail ride. Dozens of backpackers on the Pacific Crest Trail stop over to pick up supplies, clean up and rest up. Our public schools maintain distinguished status while our charter school programs serve the families of our home schooled children. Our mountains are covered in snow in winter, come spring poppy fields can be seen for miles, our hydroponic plants grow produce year round, one of our three valley is dedicated to organics and our ranchers still raise grass fed cattle. For a very long time, we were the wind capital of the world.
We are as picturesque and charming as a Norman Rockwell painting. Beneath the surface, history lives on. Ten years of court battles saw the removal of a 30-foot wide Confederate flag that once flew on a 50 foot high flag pole. Lit at night by spotlights, the Confederate flag could be seen from everywhere in the valley and every mountainside. Gone is the 30 foot tall white cross that once marked our cemetery, where all of us are laid to rest. Twenty years of court battles ended with the installation of an electric grid capable of transmitting the energy our mountain winds produce. Ten years of court battles ended with WalMart opening inside city limits where local government set the standards, the rules and the price tag and forced tax revenue to stay local.
While my words, all true, sound like a liberal paradise, beneath the surface, history lives on. 30 years ago, there were 5 Christian churches in our town, one large and one very small Catholic church (and one Jewish center linked to a Synagogue 100 miles away that served the families of local Jewish doctors, attorneys, artisans, musicians and engineers).
25 years ago, when my children were in elementary school, local churches began to experience pressure from outside the community. Time and time again, local pastors were replaced with Pastors from other states. What old timers labeled the battle between the gospel of Good Works and Evangelical’s prosperity gospel soon ripped the old congregations apart.
Today, church attendance here is half of what it used to be, but we have a whopping 41 churches in our community. Funding for land, church construction and Pastors came from out of state donors, not local people. Again, a mysterious, and closely guarded secret source of out of state funding acquired one of our most stately landmark buildings. A Crisis Pregnancy Center soon opened and 3 billboards on the boulevard and highway announced its Free Services.
Downtown, a man from Texas bought a building and opened a sports bar, quickly nicknamed the Trump Bar for its huge banners, flags and signs that fly over the building, and line the parking lot along the street. The owner flies 2 confederate flags in the bed of his truck and 3-foot wide Trump 2020 posters are plastered on the sides and back. The bar is only half a mile from my house. On Friday and Saturday nights, the bar’s parking lot is filled with motorcycles, cars and trucks that spell out their owner’s views. Everyday, on my way to and from work, I pass the bar and a chill runs through me.
By mid-2017, antisemitism was spreading fast. Lest it become a target, we closed the Jewish center.
As Mr. Olaga says, the November presidential election is still 7 months away and yet, all over town and all across our valleys, homes, cars, trucks, businesses, churches and raw land are covered with Confederate flags, Don’t Tread of Me flags, American flags and Trump signs.
As I said, history lives on, far beneath the surface.
