Better Than TV

Found myself watching Divorce Court on a summer morning one day. A guy tried to run over his wife with a dump truck again, ‘cause he missed her the first time. That was my hitting bottom moment.
           

This was back when kids played outside and screen addiction wasn’t a thing. But somehow I knew, and that was it for me.

I had rules. My family watched TV, so it was OK if I walked by and saw it, even if I joined them sometimes. I just couldn’t turn it on. 

In college, a roommate moved out and left his TV. I threw it in a dumpster, hauled that heavy thing up a ladder and watched it crash to the bottom.

A couple years ago I shot a photography job that had a raffle. I won the grand prize, a giant TV. I sold it and bought plane tickets to the East Coast. Went to Assateague Island, paddled a kayak across the channel and through a marsh, and saw real live ponies. So much better than virtual ones, those ponies.

But lately I have… what? Slipped? Relapsed? Or just loosened up? It started with Emily in Paris at Rachel’s, but that didn’t count. Not my house and I didn’t turn it on.

Then one night Jon and I can’t find a movie and he suggests Northern Exposure, that popular show from the nineties. Shot in Roslyn, a quirky little town I fell in love with long before it was famous.

I used to go over there and hike and hang around. One time I found a house for sale. Three bedrooms and a big front porch, newly remodeled, for $34,000. I’ve always regretted not buying that house. What would my life be like now if I had?

I also shot a photography job in Roslyn. Lynden Trucking Company used to be a client of mine and one of their trucks appeared on Northern Exposure. They hired me to document it. I was on the set with the TV crew, had tea in Maurice’s office.

Still, I’ve never seen the show ‘til Jon suggests it. We find it on my computer and watch one called The Flying Man. The radio DJ spouts Jung and Nietsche. A circus comes to town and the guy who does the trapeze act falls in love with the doctor’s receptionist, asks her to leave town with him. She can’t, she says.

“I am a receptionist. It’s a job, not an act.”

We are hooked. Saturday nights we could go dancing or see a play, but mostly we choose Northern Exposure. The commercials are loud and in Polish, but who cares?

The latest episode is about TV addiction. Holling gets Shelly a satellite dish and she can’t stop. Wheel of Fortune, Puerto Rican soap operas, the Home Shopping Network. She blows their savings on chia pets. The irony is not lost on me.

Am I now a TV watcher?

“I don’t watch it without you,” I tell Jon.  “I never watch it alone and never before noon.”

The next day is Sunday, bright and warm, and we need some fun. Been working hard on my place all summer, hauling firewood and scraping moss off the roof. Jon thinks of Roslyn, the real Cicely, Alaska, only fifty-one minutes from North Bend. Perfect. We hop in the car.

We’re photographing each other in front of the sign for the Roslyn Café when a guy drives by in a pick-up truck.

“Y’all want some of you together?” he yells out his open window.

He parks the truck and joins us. His name is Jason and he gives me a very firm handshake. Turns my phone at odd angles to shoot the pictures—crooked photos make sense in this town. He tells us pirate jokes. Tells us he’s a Ph.D. I say I love this town and I wish I lived here.  

“Nah, you don’t want to live here, “ he says. “This town is weird.” And then he has to go.

Next we go to the Roslyn Grocery, where the cashier has a handlebar mustache, waxed on the tips, and he’s wearing a tie-dye T-shirt. When I admire it, he says, “Look!” His pants are tie-dyed, and so are his socks. The guy in line behind us says, “Look at this!” His plaid flannel shirt is also tie-dyed, courtesy of the cashier. Tie-dyed plaid.

We have walked right into Northern Exposure.

There’s a mining museum that’s open Saturdays eleven to three “unless life gets in the way.” A pet food store sells toys that smell like tacos or pizza. I am so in love with this town.

Walking around, we see a sweet little apartment building with geraniums in pots on patios, barbecues, and lawn chairs. The sign out front says it’s a retirement community and I think, I could live in a place like this. So unlike those enormous sterile complexes people pay a fortune to live in. Jon and I have been talking about what we’ll do when we’re old, and now I have a new vision.

We notice a place that fosters cats and dogs, and woman comes out. She says she retired here, moved into her dad’s house when he died. She loves helping animals. So much more meaningful than her corporate job.

Now I not only want to live here, I want to be her. I do know envy is not a good thing, but still…

“Sometimes you just take what life gives you and it all works out,” she says.

I wonder, what will happen in my life if I don’t make a plan?

Our last stop is the Brick for dinner. The oldest tavern in Washington and the heart of Northern Exposure. Where Shelly watches TV. We play a guessing game: which tables hold locals and which are tourists? It’s pretty easy to tell.

Then we hit the road, head back across the pass with the sky turning pink and the leaves turning gold. I’m thinking, thinking about a job vs. an act, about planning or taking what life gives you. About what could have been and what is now. About virtual reality and real reality, and Cicely, Alaska and Roslyn, Washington.