Small Town, USA : Urbanites Find New Way of Life

Mike Richardson, starting a new life at the age of 52, was ebullient. Goodby, San Francisco; hello, Condon. It’s the good life from here on out. No more traffic, no more crime, no more crazy real estate prices. Rural America had won another convert.

“After all the clutter and clatter of San Francisco--and I’d lived there on and off for 35 years--I don’t ever want to go back,” said Richardson, who has just moved to this northern Oregon town of 710 residents and set up a business cleaning rugs and upholstery and sharpening knives and scissors on the side.

A Home for $18,000

Just yesterday, he said, he had closed on his new home in Condon. It has three bedrooms, an electric kitchen, heavy insulation and a garage. He paid $18,000 for it. He set down his beer, looked across the bar and said to Don Schaeffer, manager of the Elks Lodge: “You know what my payments are, Don? Just $159 a month. Can you imagine what I’d have to have paid in San Francisco?”

Richardson turned to the man next to him. He said: “I’ll tell you what struck me most about Condon. It’s how darn quiet the town is. You could lie down in Main Street at 6 o’clock and not get run over. My phone’s so still here that I pick it up every 30 minutes just to see if I can still get a dial tone. But I don’t miss a darned thing about San Francisco, except maybe hearing that foghorn late at night.”

The story of how Richardson got to Condon--he was actually recruited by the Condon Chamber of Commerce--is the story of rural America’s anguish and urban America’s restlessness. It is the story of how one small town, crippled by sagging farm prices, declining population and an eroding tax base, decided to take the future into its own hands and ended up attracting national attention.

Wheat-Filled Valleys

Condon, situated in the rolling, wheat-filled valleys of the Columbia Basin 150 miles southeast of Portland, is a Hollywood set for Small Town, USA. At the north end of Main Street is a towering, concrete grain elevator, at the south end, a Sears catalogue store. In between are the Elks Lodge (with a membership of 350), the Round Up Cafe, some stores and half a dozen boarded up shops. Three plaques next to City Hall honor the six Gilliam County boys who died in World War I, the 10 in World War II and the four in Korea.

There are two barber shops in Condon, and the owners work on alternate days. The liquor store is in the pharmacy, though some folks express it the other way around. The police department has a force of one, and on Chief Wayne Moore’s days off, Sheriff Paul Barnett covers for him. An out-of-town dentist visits the medical clinic on Tuesdays and a physician visits on Wednesdays. (House calls are $28.50.) When someone dies in Condon, funeral notices are written on pieces of paper and the news is taped to shop windows around town.

Back in the 1960s, Condon had a population of 1,200. Then the U.S. Air Force radar base just outside of town closed and the 125 airmen there left. The Kinzua lumber mill moved to Heppner. A nursing home shut down with the loss of 21 jobs. Wheat prices fell, small farms were sold to make big farms and farmers complained that the decisions affecting their futures were being made in Washington by the State Department, not the Department of Agriculture. Year by year the town’s population grew smaller and older as the young went off to college--85% of Condon’s high school graduates go on to higher education--and never came back.

Jobs, People Needed

Condon needed jobs and it needed people, yet, like most rural towns, it had not been able to attract the new businesses or the light industry necessary to transform its economy. The radar base, now owned by private investors, its vacant 27 houses, barracks and other buildings maintained in perfect order, seemed an ideal site for a company to relocate, but 150 letters sent to Japanese electronics firms brought hardly a nibble. Thirty-six houses in town were for sale at prices ranging from $5,000 to $69,000, Walt Scothhower’s variety store was on the market for $53,000, stock included. Even bargains are worthless when there are no bargain hunters.

Enter four Condon businessmen: McLaren Stinchfield, publisher of the weekly Times-Journal and president of the Chamber of Commerce; realtor Boyd Harris; Gilliam County Dist. Atty. Pat Wolke, and William Berray, manager of the Home Telephone Co.

After a series of sparsely attended meetings, they decided the chamber would do what would have been considered heresy in the 1970s when Oregonians went to great lengths to protect their life styles and to discourage out-of-staters from moving here. They would kick in about $250 and recruit new residents through classified ads placed in the real estate sections of the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury and the Portland Oregonian. Their goal was to get 10 families within 18 months.

‘Upbeat Community’

“ORE. Upbeat Eastern Oregon community is looking for a few good residents,” the ad announced last spring. “Safety, inexpensive housing, good schools and services, recreational opportunities. For information call city recorder Condon OR 503-384-2711.”

The city recorder is Bonnie Parker. She is also Condon’s city administrator, budget officer, planner, treasurer and, until recently, interim judge. She expected to get three or four calls, which is all that might have happened had the story not been picked up by NBC News, Paul Harvey, both major U.S. wire services and several newspapers. As it was, urban America spoke up in force, expressing concern over too much crime and too few jobs in the cities and voicing a desire to rediscover the days of its rural childhood.

More than 2,500 inquiries poured into Condon, a town named for the attorney who helped establish the first post office here 102 years ago. Scores more people called, often tracking down Parker, Mayor Tom Hassing, Sheriff Burnett or publisher Stinchfield at their homes. Most of the letters came from California and the Northwest, a few from Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia and other scattered cities. A Baptist minister, a dental hygienist, a school janitor, a state trooper, a baker from Arizona all wrote. So did a physician whose printed letterhead identified him as a “Slowing-Down Doctor, Still Interested.”

‘Not Strangers to Work’

“We are not strangers to hard work,” a California couple wrote. “To put it simply, I am homesick for the wide open spaces, small towns and most of all, the West,” a woman from Tennessee wrote.

“Years ago, I came from a small town in Pennsylvania and have never been really satisfied here in California,” a San Jose woman wrote.

“My husband is in sales but he is willing to retrain to adapt to the needs of your community,” an Illinois teacher wrote.

Stinchfield was gratified by the response yet he felt a sense of sadness in knowing that there were so many people out there living where they didn’t want to be, working at something they didn’t want to do. But here in Condon, the campaign has breathed energy into the flagging spirits of a weary town, and beaming townspeople will stop strangers on the street with an extended hand and ask if they’ve just moved to Condon.

Residents ‘Found Pride’

“The town’s started feeling better about itself,” said realtor Harris. “With all the traffic coming through to look us over, people started fixing up their homes, cleaning up their yards. They found pride in their town again.”

Condon’s search for new residents will continue with the help of a $6,000 grant from the Oregon Lottery Commission.

Thus far 36 people have moved to Condon and all seem to have adjusted to their new small-town environment. Fourteen more have said they are on the way. Half the empty houses have been sold. A new building-supply store has opened. Realtor Jack Steiwer is renovating the shuttered Liberty Playhouse, located between the Sweeney Mortuary and Pete’s Barber Shop, into a theater for movies and live performances, and the 18-unit Condon motel has put color TV sets in each room.

“We’ve got five units remodeled with queen-sized beds,” said the motel’s manager, Ralph Kohn, “and we’ve got a king now in unit 14. That goes for $30 a night, flat rate. I’ve even had my no-vacancy sign up a couple of times.”

Battle Far From Over

But Condon knows its battle is far from over. Most of its new residents are older people, sometimes retirees, and though good citizens they may be, they do not generate the jobs and the dollars the town needs.

The high school, with 54 students, is operating at only half its capacity, the three-story brick Condon Hotel on Main Street has not had a guest since it closed up when good times turned sour. On top of that, the solitude and quiet of Condon are not for everyone, no matter how fed up with the city one may be. Nor are the winters, which are long and cold.

“If the new residents didn’t fit or if they changed the complexion of the town, I suppose the campaign could have had some negative consequences,” Stinchfield said. “But there really haven’t been any problems. We got the 10 families we wanted in about five minutes, so in that respect, the effort is a success. Now I suppose we just have to wait to see how these people like what they’ve bought into.”

‘Like the 1920s’

One ex-Californian who has already made up his mind on that score is Leo Morris. “This place is like rural America of the 1920s,” he said. “By that, I don’t mean the people are backward. I just mean they’ve hung on to . . . what’s the word you’d use . . . well, their culture. They’ve kept the things--the friendliness, the sense of community--that we’ve lost in the cities.”

Morris, a former Long Beach bar owner, moved here after hearing about Condon on television. He wanted to open a bookstore, but figuring that wouldn’t be a wise investment, bought the Round Up Cafe instead. He’s added a mirror behind the bar, decorated the walls with brands from nearby ranches, and improved the menu, buying salmon and trout from the fish truck that comes through town once a week. With a payroll of 11, he is the largest private employer in Condon.

‘Condon’s My Escape’

“I’ll tell you,” said Morris, who talks fast with an Eastern accent. “I was born and raised on the East Side of New York. I was one of the Dead End Kids. I’ve been dying to get out of the city all my life, and California’s getting just as bad as New York. Condon’s my escape. It’s great. Only problem I’ve had here is with the language barrier. They talk one way, I talk another. But we’re slowly learning to understand each other.”

“Hey, Leo, I’ll have another draught,” someone at the end of the bar said in the leisurely paced tone of the Oregonians.

“Huh?” replied Morris. “Whadjasay?”