Madras, Oregon.
My first roommate, a pretty nice guy I got along well enough with, came from Madras, Oregon — some small town I’d never expect to hear much about in the middle of Oregon. I know not from Madras, except bits here and there that Charlie told me over several months.
I believe the propreitors of the dorm stuck us together due to some small town background similarity logic, and to split him up slightly from the other Madras resident. In the midst of analyzing survey answers, such a set-up makes as much sense as anything else. At any rate, somewhere along the line he had a bit of a roadtrip with a neighbor (a girl who grew up in Eugene) to go back home to show her the sights and sounds of … Madras freaking Oregon. There’s nothing much to sell there, but apparently they would at some point go to that old teenage hang-out…
… A Gas Station.
Is Parochial the word? I shrug it off, and figure that anywhere is as good as anywhere else. But my imagination pictures a truck stop that serves a bit more as the base of the local economy than seems appropriate.
The girl from Eugene gave a simultaneous shrug, rolled eyes, and a “How quaint”. I let out a gaffow. To which I was asked, “Didn’t you have a gas station?”
Monday, Madras came up in the news. Thomas Tucker, from Madras, Oregon — and his fellow soldier from Texas, was missing from his unit. He had been kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents. Today, the bodies have been discovered. They were both savagely maimed and killed.
I caught his age today. It doesn’t take a great leap of faith to imagine him on the same high school football team as my old roommate… or if not that, something — anything — else shared by them at that time in their lives.
Condolences to to the community of Madras, Oregon.