It's clear to me after family get-togethers that my brothers and sisters don't have the same egalitarian memories of Bend that I have. Maybe I'm just an old hippie, I was 16 years old in 1968, but I remember a Bend that not only didn't suck up to the rich, but frowned on them.

Yes, you can live perfectly well in Bend without granite countertops. In fact, that was part of the deal. You sacrificed the granite countertops in order to move to Bend. You sacrificed the latest fashion. You fell two years behind the world.

The pace slowed down. You breathed in the mountain air in the winters, and kicked up the red dust in the summers. Dogs wandered around, loping out to the sidewalk to scope you out. Hardly anyone built swimming pools because you could only swim two months out of the year (ditto golf courses.)

Maybe if the first bastard to tear down a perfectly nice house on Mirror Pond, and constructing a Jabba the Hutt monstrosity with it's belly hanging out over the river had been laughed out of town, we could have stopped it. Maybe if the first Hummers in town had been pointed at and snickered at, maybe some of these newcomers would have gotten a clue.

We just got overwhelmed. That's all.