From the Editor's Desk: A piece of my heart
By Pat Caldwell
Sunday, September 13, 2009 12:43 AM PDT
A piece of my heart will always be in Drewsey. Or, more to the point, a piece of it will be forever connected to the Drewsey Field Ranch situated below Drinkwater pass on the way to Burns.
My mother’s family came from Juntura, but I confess I’ve never thought of the town as a reliable connection to my family. For my mom, of course, it is because she grew up there.
Drewsey, for me though, was and is a different manner.
All of us reading this no doubt have a place like Drewsey. A place in Nebraska or Montana or Utah or Arizona. Somewhere we recall through a wavering lens of memory that never grows old and, thankfully, hovers permanently on the edge of our mind’s eye.
In a sense, the memory is always comforting; there are no negative elements to good memories, after all. Those memories are a treasure — often hidden and difficult to grasp, but there nonetheless.
For many, I suppose, seeking out beauty in our region can be difficult. We live on a high desert; sagebrush on the plains and juniper pine in the high country define our landscape.
Perhaps it is a peculiar attribute of the human condition that we can find beauty in certain places. Deserts can be an oasis, jungles a refuge. Looking back on my tour as editor of the Argus Observer I realize I should have spent more time in Drewsey.
Perhaps it is another peculiar trait of age, or middle age, to realize and evaluate missed opportunities. Perhaps it is just plain Irish sentimentality.
My cousins and my aunt live on the Drewsey Field Ranch and run cows. In a sense they represent, to me, Malheur County more than even the butte, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps it is the rustic nature of the area that conjures up such sentiments. Perhaps it is the fact, at least in my mind, there has never been a clear dividing line between what are Harney and Malheur counties. To me, the whole area was a place where my mom’s family lived, prospered, died, faced tragedy and endured.
We hear a lot about the American dream; we are inducted with news and rhetoric about immigration. The borders are insecure; the land of opportunity, it seems, has become a weigh station for refugees we cannot afford and don’t want. The list goes on and on.
Yet when I think of immigration, I invariably see my grandfather and grandmother. Two people who came to what appeared to be a desolate part of Oregon and forged a future.
They were Irish. They were not American citizens, at least not at first. They assimilated, though. Not because, I believe, it was part of some political agenda but because America was a land of opportunity, and they wanted to be Americans.
Their story is an age-old tale, especially for America. They arrived, found their niche and then carved out a future in a hard, rawboned country far away from Galway, Ireland.
All Americans can trace their ancestry to another nation. Irish, German, Hispanic, our families all arrived here in search of something — salvation, perhaps, prosperity for sure.
Yet many families must go back generations to find the link to the old country. I’m lucky in a sense because I do not have to do so. I only have to go to Drewsey, and there, at least for me, stands America, Oregon, Malheur and Harney counties and Galway, Ireland.
So close, sometimes, I can almost touch them.
When I drive away from work at night, I glance out the window and fix my eyes on the western horizon and think of my grandfather and the Joyce clan from Ireland and the fact that anything, in America, is possible.
There, I often see in the fading shadow of early evening, stands two nations, Ireland and America: proud, defiant with the finite ability to endure.
Even in Malheur County the ghost of Ireland is always near.
Pat Caldwell is the editor of the Argus Observer. He can be contacted at PatC@argusobserver.com
