A few months ago, my bestie and I were talking about books, like we do. I told her about how I’d read a couple books that were set in or mentioned “dying seaside towns.” And I wondered if it was a real thing or a literary trope. I couldn’t imagine any tourist place dying, and seaside towns always seem like perfect tourist stops to me. She suggested we drive up the Oregon coast and see.
I love the nuances of place. Like how “stale” in Colorado means dry, and only really affects bread, but means soggy in Oregon and renders crackers and chips mushy and inedible. How Oregonians rarely use umbrellas because it’s always raining and they have proper rain gear, and Coloradoans rarely use them because its storms only last for a half an hour and are so windy umbrellas can’t hold up. But in New York City umbrellas are community property: take one, leave one. I love descriptions of gardens, the neat organized gardens of England with plants we cannot grow in Colorado, the wild unkempt gardens of Oregon, the dry hard won gardens of the southwest. Though, I do not need pages upon pages of descriptions because it’s the little details I love.
Unfortunately, those little details are often overlooked. And this is the case in the book series I’m reading that most references the “dying seaside town.” The lack of details make the phrase unclear. It’s meant to justify free retail space for new businesses and perhaps the various events brought in by the eccentric Mayor that always result in murder. But the family benefits from tourists, the events bring in tourists. So how is the town dying?
In Colorado, we have lots of ghost towns. They were largely started by miners, and abandoned when the ore ran out or never materialized in quantities necessary to sustain the town. Some were killed off with the move from the gold to silver standard, and others died when milling gold became too difficult due to new environmental standards. These towns were not able to pivot economically, and died. Some still have a few people who still live there, but less than a hundred. Other towns, like Breckenridge, died when the mines closed, but were revived decades later with the advent of ski resorts. I suppose some day it could become a ghost town again, but only if we pave over the hiking and biking trails and the reservoir is emptied for downstream hydroelectric dams. It’s hard to make mountains unappealing.
In suggesting a road trip, my bestie had meant we should drive up the coast in the summer when the weather is nice. Instead, we drove up the Oregon Coast in mid-February, smack in the middle of off-season. I was coming out in February anyway to see my grandmother and assumed she meant then. But driving up in the winter gave us a feel for what seaside towns were like when they weren’t putting on a show. We started in Coos Bay, which is not a
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