One Summer Season: R.W. and Juan Davalillo

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Western boy adjusts to the South

I must apologize for the lengthy time between posts. You see, I have pulled up stakes in Colorado and settled into the beautiful Upstate region of South Carolina. It's more than merely a new location. This is a different culture, weather routine, foods, way of life. I am not going to be so presumptuous to believe I understand it all, but I have had time to form opinions about my new home. Here are a few:

1) The South doesn't believe in pretenses. Maybe it's different in Atlanta or Charlotte, but my new hometown of Anderson, South Carolina, is as comfortable as an old shirt. No one is expected to act one way, dress accordingly, show off the signs of status, or spend time telling people how good you are. One of our friends in our new home is Mykel, an African-American man who just moved with his wife into a new home from the apartment complex where we currently live. His reaction to his new home and car on the same day? "That's a blessing," he says. Walk down t…
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On attending my brother's memorial service

This wasn't supposed to happen this soon. Yes, my brother Steve had health problems for years. Nothing indicated that he was so close to the time of his passing. There were no messages or warnings. We were caught off-guard.

I have spent considerable time weighing the impact. There is so much information and emotional baggage to weigh. I have found few answers, only more questions. I won't detail those here. The only certainty I have reached is this: Steve's death affects me most because he was of my generation, the first family member of the younger set to pass away. That brings the reality of mortality that much closer.

I wrote in one of my novels of a man explaining why he made death such a major factor in his writing. (There is nothing autobiographical in this, by the way.) His point was that most death doesn't affect us much. We read or hear about deaths of many people by many means, but those deaths don't hurt us because we don't know.these people. The sta…
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Wrestling with the idea of white privilege

A former co-worker was the first I saw charge that all Caucasian employees have the advantage of white privilege. I laughed and labeled it as the latest wave of thought designed to find perpetrators for victims. I laughed because of my upbringing.

I was born in The Dalles, Oregon, which isn't an epicenter of wealth and status. It's a town of about 10,000 residents on the banks of the Columbia River. It is known for cherries, wheat, winds funneled through the Columbia River Gorge, and a key historic spot for Lewis and Clark and the pioneers who ventured west on the Oregon Trail. It was a good place to grow up, at least for me. It was small enough that you had the feeling all residents were neighbors. A downside was that you were often known by who your parents were. I was often introduced as Eldon's boy, or Virginia's boy. I was the third child of three, so I also was known as Steve's little brother, or John's little brother.

It also was a town with a racist rep…
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