Bob Welch: Ory-gun 101 clears facts up
By BOB WELCH
Columnist, The Register-Guard
WELCOME TO EUGENE, Chris, Lee and Kirk. We're honored ESPN's College GameDay has chosen to televise its daylong show of Saturday's college football highlights - and predictions - from Autzen Stadium.
Given that this is GameDay's first trip to the Northwest and given that I've talked to people at Denver International Airport who believe Oregon is bordered by Missouri, South Dakota and Michigan, thought I'd offer you a little "local knowledge."
First, a safety warning: While you're visiting, a stranger may well shout at you, "Freeze, sucker. Hands on the hood." Don't panic. It's just the gas-station attendant politely informing you to drop the nozzle; we're one of two states that don't pump their own.
Next, geography: Lee, you asked on-air a few weeks back where Eugene, Oregon, is. Officially, we're at Latitude 44 North, Longitude 123 West, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. Unofficially, we're the center of the universe, but keep that low if you would or people will want to move here.
We're always getting listed in those best-places-to-live polls, but please don't mention that. Don't mention the internationally known Bach Festival, the 27 miles of bike paths, the zillion trees, the being only a two-CD drive from the coast or the Cascades.
Just feed them Duck football trivia, like how our average home attendance last year nearly equaled UCLA's even though L.A. has literally 49 times as many people as Lane County. Mention how we're so fan-friendly we let folks play football on the field after the game. And how we have a linebacker named Mallard.
Oh, about those nubs northeast of Autzen that some TV sportscasters have referred to as "the beautiful Cascade Mountains" - they're actually the Coburg Hills. The Cascades are farther east, and about five times as high.
The fields you see are fields, not "prairies," as a writer in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution once wrote. And that river just south of the stadium is the Willamette. That's will-LAM-it, not as some outsiders have referred to it, the will-uh-MEH-tee.
SPEAKING OF language, it's youGENE, not YOUgene. And Ory-gun, not Aura-gone.
Remember, as our name suggests, there's a little "ego" in Oregon. Probably a little Northwest inferiority complex, too; you get a bit defensive when people assume the state fabric is flannel and when a Newport Beach, Calif., waiter says to you, "Is that the place where it, like, stays light all night long?"
Oh, by the way, an ABC sportscaster during the Wisconsin game called our head coach "Nick" or "Mick" Bellotti. It's Mike. Nick Aliotti is our defensive coordinator.
The state motto is Alis Volat Propiis - "She Flies With Her Own Wings." Eugene's motto is Argumenta Ad Nauseam - "We'd Rather Peck Each Other to Death."
Let's just say we're a spirited community, guys. Eugene is this odd combination of innovation and cannibalization. Where else does the city's first female city manager pressure the city's first black police chief to resign, then get fired herself by the City Council?
Where else does Julia "Butterfly" Hill, who sat in a redwood tree for two years to protest clear-cutting, get heckled during a speech - by a masked trio who suggest she "sold out" to the logging company?
We're the political equivalent of that adage about ever-changing weather: If Eugene is calm, wait five minutes and someone will complain about something, whether it's anarchists wanting to bring down corporate America or a former athletic director wanting to cut down those artsy athletic figures ringing the front of the Casanova Center.
Mother Jones magazine recently named UO the top school in the country for campus activism - We're No. 1, We're No. 1! - so don't be surprised if a few radicals chain themselves to the goalposts if the Ducks, say, get called for clipping.
Eugene can be a bit quirky. "Animal House" was filmed here. Our annual parade features a slug queen. And where else does a community's post-parade newspaper coverage say, "The Eugene Skinner Award was given to Planned Parenthood for its Joe Sperm entry"?
Oh, almost forgot: It's not the University of Oregon Beavers, as some outsiders have said. To call UO the Beavers would be to call Democrats the Elephants. It's the Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State Beavers.
Originally, Oregon was the Webfoots, named for Willamette Valley pioneers who slogged through winter mud, but sportswriters thought the name too long. As for Oregon winters, well, some say they're too long, too.
Feel free to mention those long, rainy, gloomy,
pathetically-dark-and-dank-go-crazy winters. Just, remember, they're
Ory-gun winters, not Aura-gone winters.