Boise to Bend

Yup...we keep sending you our rejects, the malcontents, an absolute horde of professional welfare recipients, our chronically unemployed, our socially maladjusted, and every other wino, dino, and dingbat who couldn't make a go of it in what is probably the easiest state in the Union to live.
They're your problem now. We aren't taking them back.
Look at all the weird stuck-in-the sixties perennial students who think that social activism should be a college major. We encourage them to go to Oregon. Look at Eugene...the little logging town that finally got a university and now patterns itself after all the University of California models and wants to be Berkeley when it grows up.
And don't forget the retirees. The "this isn't the way we do things where I come from" crowd who want to live in a pristine rural atmosphere...with a Starbucks and a WalMart close by. Keep them, too.
All these people seem to filter through our little corner of California on their way to someplace else. They don't stay long, just long enough to really irritate us. We always tell them how nice Oregon is.

 

It is funny but it can be an aggravation too. Where we live it's said that the two biggest growth industries (after pot, of course) are real estate agents and U-Haul dealers. People move up here because it's green and it's pretty and that's all they look at.

After they've been here awhile it dawns on them that we have no WalMart, no K-Mart, no Sears, and not even a Starbucks. Our Starbucks went broke.
But it's pretty here. And it's green.

Our school system is barely adequate and our health care system for anything beyond minor stuff requires a two hour drive to a decent facility.
But it's pretty here. And it's green.

We have a double-digit unemployment rate and unless you have a marketable skill or know somebody you won't find a decent job here. You can work for a pot grower but sometimes their severance package consists of a few ounces of lead and a hole in the ground.
But it's pretty here. And it's green.

People realize all this after they move here and then they move away. They're usually people who don't really fit in or succeed anywhere they've ever been.

But it's pretty here. And it's green. Until fire season, anyway.