Last modified: Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:05 AM PDT The Country Curmudgeon: A woman in the house By Roy Hicks Well, I have one of these now, friends. I’ve been without one for nearly three years. Kate is a 44-year-old businesswoman: a tall, willowy blonde with two of the world’s most beautiful blue eyes. It took a while to persuade her to join me here. Like myself, Kate is a fugitive from California. She’s had a difficult life. The totality of her story is much too lengthy to include here, but she arrived a couple weeks ago and moved in with me. I’ve never particularly cared for dependent or clinging women. That Kate is not. Hardened by years of being pounded on by the anvil of reality, she’s totally independent and as tough as old horseshoe nails. She has always made her own way in this often troublesome world and carries solid business credentials as a thoroughly experienced and expert office and property manager. She was here barely more than a week before she got her first job offer to manage three apartment complexes in a nearby town. After being by myself for such a long time, this was quite a change for me. Kate has the entire lower floor of my ranch house to herself, and from day to day we manage quite well to stay out from under each other’s feet as we go about our separate affairs. I often cook suppers for her, and she likes that. Occasionally she does the same for me. She is also a tireless and superbly efficient housekeeper, and this grouchy old widower particularly appreciates that. Moreover, she’s a first-rate companion and a sterling confidante. We often find ourselves engaged in lengthy and serious personal discussions lasting long into the evenings. Better yet, we share almost identical views of the way the world ought to be. If you think I’m conservative, Kate is an equally staunch Christian believer, and politically she’s somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. I like that a lot. Kate’s married, but that’s of no particular concern to me. I’ll keep her here until whenever her husband can arrive from California to join her in God’s country. In the meantime, we share my house and go to church on Sundays. We often watch old movies on TV together, and occasionally play pocket billiards in my downstairs pool room. Kate has expressed an interest in joining me with the Elks, and in fact worked with me for an entire afternoon at the Malheur County Fair as my assistant cook. Given my commitment to the local lodge, and needing all the volunteer help we can get, I especially liked that. Kate is also a would-be writer who aspires to become a newspaper opinion columnist. She once did this for a company newsletter and has a natural knack for it. Indeed when she writes she often sounds so much like me it’s almost spooky. I think some day she’d like to take over in this space. With a little coaching from yours truly — on learning the newspaper game and how to edit her own work — she just might be able to do it as “The Country Curmudgeoness,” or something like that. It’s fair to say this remarkable woman loves me a lot, and needless to say I’m totally enamored of her. Put more bluntly, she’s a constant blessing and brightens my scatter every day. After only a couple weeks of living together, I have — as Rex Harrison once remarked in “My Fair Lady” — “become accustomed to her face.” Best of all, she’s my daughter.