From one the Greatest Backpacker Journalists (and a fellow Hoosier) - I think his formula still works:
Ernie Pyle, Home Country (published in 1947)
"Do you know what Portland is? It's Paradise on earth. At least that's what people in Portland said. Personally, I had never thought so, and I'll tell you why. In 1926 I came through Portland, wearing overalls and driving a Model T Ford, with a tent and blanket roll tied onto the fender - a young man seeing America. I stopped at a roadside stand in the suburbs to eat some watermelon, and I was eating alone, minding my business, when up came an old codger and started bawling me out. He gave me a long lecture, and wound up by yelling that if I didn't stop smoking cigarettes and eating watermelon on Sunday I would undoubtedly land in hell. I'd never had any use for Portland after that.
Of course the incident was on my mind as we drew near Portland this time. But I said, "No, let's be fair. We'll start all over again with Portland and see what happens." About that instant we came around a bend, and there staring us in the face was an expensive signboard, as big as the side of a house, saying in huge letters: "ALL HATH SINNED." That's all it said. Now, I don't know whether all hath sinned or not. But supposing all hath, why put up a signboard about it? After that, it took my friends five days to convince me that I was wrong about Portland.
And incidentally, I stumbled onto a fine formula for getting treated like a visiting lion. Just say to somebody, "Describe to me the character of Portland, will you, so I can write a piece about it. You know - its personality, its spirit." How they went to bat! People started giving parties so I could hear about the spirit of Portland. They'd run to the phone and say, "Come right over, quick! And on your way be thinking up how to describe the spirit of Portland." It was marvelous. I went to five parties, and two luncheons, and to two dinners in one evening. And another evening we went to dinner and forgot to eat, all because people were trying to get across to me the spirit of Portland. Maybe that's it, right there.
Well, anyway, here is what I put together out of all the scramble: everybody in Portland is crazy about Portland. They rave about it. They don't talk like chamber of commerce folders; they don't talk about their industries and their schools and their crops; they roar about what a wonderful place Portland is, just to live in, and people do live well in Portland. That whole Northwest country is beautiful, and the climate is gentle, and existence is pleasant.
Portland is a place, they told me, where money doesn't get you anywhere. They meant socially, I guess. So I tried to find out what would get you anywhere - what was the standard for social admittance in Portland. Definitely, they said, it wasn't money. And definitely, too, it wasn't blue blood. "What is it, then?" I asked. 'Intelligence?' They hadn't thought what it might be. So they thought. No, it wasn't intelligence. Some of the social elite were both as poor and as stupid as myself. They thought and thought. They finally decided that it was merely an ability to contribute something - usually agreeableness and interest.
Portland is, on the whole, a conservative place. It is a city of homes - a place to raise your children. It was settled originally by "down-Easters" who came around the Horn. They made the money and became the backbone, and they kept on being the backbone. But somehow they mixed their New England soundness with a capacity for living the freer, milder Northwest way, and it made a pretty high-class combination.
As for the physical appearance of the city, the downtown section is neither unattractive nor distinctive. The nice thing about Portland is that it rises into hills, and they're the most livable hills you ever saw. Thousands of people live up there in fine houses, among trees, and not far away are the mountains themselves. A friend of mine, searching for the reason he loved the Northwest, finally decided that the sense of having everywhere around him these clear, cold, tumbling streams had a great deal to do with it."
And there's always alternative, modern visions of Portland:
Ernie Pyle, Home Country (published in 1947)
"Do you know what Portland is? It's Paradise on earth. At least that's what people in Portland said. Personally, I had never thought so, and I'll tell you why. In 1926 I came through Portland, wearing overalls and driving a Model T Ford, with a tent and blanket roll tied onto the fender - a young man seeing America. I stopped at a roadside stand in the suburbs to eat some watermelon, and I was eating alone, minding my business, when up came an old codger and started bawling me out. He gave me a long lecture, and wound up by yelling that if I didn't stop smoking cigarettes and eating watermelon on Sunday I would undoubtedly land in hell. I'd never had any use for Portland after that.
Of course the incident was on my mind as we drew near Portland this time. But I said, "No, let's be fair. We'll start all over again with Portland and see what happens." About that instant we came around a bend, and there staring us in the face was an expensive signboard, as big as the side of a house, saying in huge letters: "ALL HATH SINNED." That's all it said. Now, I don't know whether all hath sinned or not. But supposing all hath, why put up a signboard about it? After that, it took my friends five days to convince me that I was wrong about Portland.
And incidentally, I stumbled onto a fine formula for getting treated like a visiting lion. Just say to somebody, "Describe to me the character of Portland, will you, so I can write a piece about it. You know - its personality, its spirit." How they went to bat! People started giving parties so I could hear about the spirit of Portland. They'd run to the phone and say, "Come right over, quick! And on your way be thinking up how to describe the spirit of Portland." It was marvelous. I went to five parties, and two luncheons, and to two dinners in one evening. And another evening we went to dinner and forgot to eat, all because people were trying to get across to me the spirit of Portland. Maybe that's it, right there.
Well, anyway, here is what I put together out of all the scramble: everybody in Portland is crazy about Portland. They rave about it. They don't talk like chamber of commerce folders; they don't talk about their industries and their schools and their crops; they roar about what a wonderful place Portland is, just to live in, and people do live well in Portland. That whole Northwest country is beautiful, and the climate is gentle, and existence is pleasant.
Portland is a place, they told me, where money doesn't get you anywhere. They meant socially, I guess. So I tried to find out what would get you anywhere - what was the standard for social admittance in Portland. Definitely, they said, it wasn't money. And definitely, too, it wasn't blue blood. "What is it, then?" I asked. 'Intelligence?' They hadn't thought what it might be. So they thought. No, it wasn't intelligence. Some of the social elite were both as poor and as stupid as myself. They thought and thought. They finally decided that it was merely an ability to contribute something - usually agreeableness and interest.
Portland is, on the whole, a conservative place. It is a city of homes - a place to raise your children. It was settled originally by "down-Easters" who came around the Horn. They made the money and became the backbone, and they kept on being the backbone. But somehow they mixed their New England soundness with a capacity for living the freer, milder Northwest way, and it made a pretty high-class combination.
As for the physical appearance of the city, the downtown section is neither unattractive nor distinctive. The nice thing about Portland is that it rises into hills, and they're the most livable hills you ever saw. Thousands of people live up there in fine houses, among trees, and not far away are the mountains themselves. A friend of mine, searching for the reason he loved the Northwest, finally decided that the sense of having everywhere around him these clear, cold, tumbling streams had a great deal to do with it."
And there's always alternative, modern visions of Portland:
