Quirky States

After babysitting the blog in her absence, Trailhead offered to allow me to continue posting here from time to time. I thought that was generous and will take advantage of the invitation . . . at least until the regular commenters here form a posse and run me off with pitchforks and torches.

At one time, Trailhead and I toyed with the idea of starting a joint blog, but we both got busy with other stuff and it never materialized. (Mostly it was me dropping the now defunct Postcards from the Vast Wasteland, which Trailhead so kindly kept in the Trailheadcase blogroll to the right of your screen even after I stopped posting.) We had a lot of fun trying to come up with names for the joint venture. My favorite, which was sensibly vetoed for reasons of taste (as it would have been much too likely to attract the dregs of the Google-searching side show freaks) was "Hoosier Beaver?" (A hat tip to Bladerunner on that one, by the way.) I'm a native and current Hoosier. Trailhead is an Oregonian Beaver. Thus, a lovely double entedre is born from our state nicknames. Nevertheless, Trailhead and I reigned in the inner seventh graders that so often emerge when we get together and decided to seek a different name for the joint blog.

We actually did settle on a name, but I won't tell what it is in case we ever decide to revisit the idea. It was a sweet, sweet name. (Okay, I'm overselling, but you'll never really know how much I'm overselling unless we actually decide to revive the joint blog idea in a different venue from here and, by then, you'll have forgotten all about my puffery. Ha!)

At any rate, the whole "Hoosier Beaver?" -- admit it, there's a certain ring to that, isn't there? -- story ties into the real subject of this post. Trailhead and I live in a couple of quirky states. This year, the state of Indiana threw in the metaphorical towel and joined most of the rest of the country on Daylight Savings time. (As a scatological aside, I'd steer clear of that metaphorical towel if you run across it, because one gets the sense that more than a few Hoosier legislators -- wait for it; here it comes -- blew their political wads in that thing. Oooh, that's so dirty!!) Now, there was no end to the upheaval this switch caused. The state is now split among Eastern and Central time zones and at least one county has officially unofficially refused to make the change.

We Hoosiers have a bit of an ownership issue with time. If you've ever been around a Hoosier when he or she is out of state, you've probably heard the whole "our time or their time?" conversation, as in "Does the store close at 8 p.m. our time or their time?" or "Let's meet for lunch at noon our time." My parents, who own a modest cabin in Ludington Michigan at the confluence of the Big Sauble River/Hamlin Lake and Lake Michigan, used to refuse to recognize "Michigan time" when they visited their little summer hideout. I honestly think they feel the sting of loss now that they no longer can play the "our time/their time" game.

As a result, the spring has been rough for Hoosiers with this whole "spring forward" thing. I can only imagine the havoc "fall back" will wreak. Give us a break; it's actually lovable little quirk, don't you think?

Now, as for Oregon, I spent a few days there last month and I learned about a Beaver state quirk the hard way. The first couple of days I spent in Portland at the very nice and hip Hotel Lucia attending a professional meeting. After the meeting ended, I rented a car so that I could tour the Columbia River Gorge one day and drive the opposite direction to the coast the next. After my romp to the coast, I made a quick detour to Trailheadquarters to say hello to TH, Bladerunner, TK, and (because TH and Bladerunner had just returned from their trip to China) TK's paternal grandmother. We had a delightful dinner and great conversation -- a real feat for people who'd just flown around the world for a day and a half. Following that, I headed to the airport to return my rental car and catch my red-eye flight back to Indiana. At the very last exit before the airport, I pulled off to fill up the rental's tank. At the Shell station I got out of the car, swiped my credit card in the pay-at-the-pump reader, and proceeded to pump the gas into the car. No sooner had I topped off the tank, than I was accosted by a burly woman with an ill-advised, bottle-blonde perm yelling at me for violating Oregon state law.

"Did you know that it's illegal to pump your own gas in the state of Oregon?" grumbled the bushy-haired linebacker wannabe.

"No," I responded meekly while thinking, Please don't put me in a head lock!

With a menacing step forward, the would-be pumper of my gas -- and, presumably, hundreds of pounds of iron -- narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. "Well, it is," she snarled.

"Oh," I whimpered, looking around for something that could have forewarned me against my transgression. "I guess I didn't see the sign."

"No signs. It's illegal everywhere in the state," she growled. "How're you gonna pay for it now?"

"Um, I think I already did," I said and raised a visibly shaking finger to point at the pay-at-the-pump device.

She snatched the receipt from the device and thrust it at me. "Don't let it happen again!"

At that point, something in me clicked. WTF, I thought. You mean it's literally against the law for me to pump my own effing gas in this state?!?! So that knuckle-draggers like this have make-work employment?!?!

So, I did what any self-respecting two hundred and [cough-cough] pound man would do in that situation: I quickly crawled into my car and muttered under my breath, "Don't worry. I won't be coming back to your gas station any time soon." Then I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that the tell-tale flashing lights of the Oregon State Police weren't approaching to haul me off to self-pumper's prison. (Wow, another dirty little double entendre!! Or perhaps there is such a Vatican-sponsored establishment.)

It turns out that in Oregon you may not pump your own gas. This has been the law since 1951 and is justified on a number of grounds, including safety and environmental concerns (it seems that "inexperienced pumpers" tend to pollute the ground and water and expose the highly-flammable gas to fire hazards more frequently than the trained, professional pumpers, like my muscle-bound nemesis at the Portland Shell station); job creation (keeping Xena, warrior pumper, off the streets is probably a net positive); and ADA compliance (more seriously, it seems that Oregon does a much better job than most of the rest of the states of accommodating the disabled by providing full service at gas stations for no additional costs). And, Oregon is not alone. New Jersey also has a no-self-service law as well.

Whoduhthunkit?

I'm just glad I got out of that Shell-station-stand-off with all my body parts intact. And, for those Trailheadcase readers who are not from Oregon, but who may one day visit, as they say on NBC, "the more you know . . . ."