The Shit Ditch Post

 Behold: This right here is where the saying 'The other side of the tracks' comes from. 

dammit dammit dammit dammit OK here is a link:  N/E Sh*t Ditch! - YouTube try that. 

    Now as far as I can tell this should play for you. This is the first video I have ever made! What is it a video of?

It is a video of a shit ditch.  

This was taken in the very very very small pioneer town of Everson/Nooksack, and the reason I shot it was because it's the unspoken half of the spirit and intent of the original town coming through to the present. 'The landscape still telling tales' kinda thing. 

When I was a kid the old people would talk about stuff like this (when they didn't think kids were listening.)  We had a couple of shit ditches you could still make out in the town where I grew up, just long holes dug in the ground where everyone would throw their trash and dump their slops, cut so the surrounding land drained into them.  It was kind of a colloquialism, to call a ravine or a creek 'the shit-ditch' and it's one of those phrases that you don't hear at all anymore. Not something that would have been recorded, either. 

BUT I HAVE. 

Here it is. Microhistory. 

You are welcome.

 In the past, where I'm standing had been a huge timber stage, with multiple tracks and a siding, all that stuff. The old railbed is now a paved street, behind me, and in front of me is the shit ditch which ran alongside of that railroad track, now overgrown with vine maple and indian plum and marshy trees like that.  

That ditch, as with most, was the old boundary between the 'respectable' part of town and the 'less than respectable' part of this little town. Lady or whore, red or white, man or child,  you all came and threw your slops and garbage into this shit ditch.  Thing is, the area I'm facing in this video, which extends from the far side of the ditch all the way to the foot of the Cascades, was a marsh back then. In the winter, the 'less than respectable' part of town became a quagmire full of sewage and cholera and dead kids and stuff.  And that was fine with everyone.

 The thing that gets me about Old West sites like this is how small it all was. How few people, how close together things were, and how absolutely rigid and deliberate and stark the social divisions were.  Things like this ditch were deliberate. It was planned from the beginning. Everyone got it. Everyone knew where they had to live and why. To this day there are people who live to the north of this ditch who won't have anything to do with certain families from the south of it, and the only reason why is because of the side of the damn ditch they live on. 

This is why you should pick up and move every five years or so if you can possibly help it. Spread that genetic material far and wide. See the world. Travel broadens the mind. Don't be the latest in a line of hundreds of rural lumps just squatting in one place with your grade school education disliking people because of what side of a ditch they live on.  Got it?   

OK now here are the better aspects of this same little pioneer town:

The building is from the 1920s. The little colored panes in the windows are from the original timber church that was built here by the pioneers back in the 1800's. The building would wash out, or burn down, or fall down, and they'd collect the colorful glass and rebuild. There's something very poignant about that.

Now note this - it is the only building dating back from those days that is actually built way up on a stone foundation. That's a good four to five feet above grade there. Also note that this town is less than five miles away from the Cascade Mountains - which are notably made of rocks. All kinds of rocks. Free rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. 

This is the parsonage right across the street. I think it's a private residence now. It dates back to the 1800s, and it too has burned down, fallen down and been flooded out just like the church - and just like the church, rebuilt in the same stupid-ass low-lying spot generation after generation. You can see it sitting flat on the ground there. C'mon, people.

OK, so much for wealth. Now let's look at a couple of old, old homestead cabins in the same town: 

This is a cabin that's being updated presently. I wasn't given permission to take a picture by the person who was working there. That's why I drifted down about 3/4 of a mile away and used my zoom.  

The Nooksack River is behind those trees to the right. And distances are deceptive in this shot - this is on a vast flat prairie covered in huge puddles and flood backwaters.

The prairie and the river are why people settled in this spot. When this area isn't flooded, or engulfed in flames, its choice farmland, with the river nearby teeming with fish and the mountains nearby teeming with game, even to this day. The bitch I pick with it all is why in the fuck didn't anyone think to raise their foundations?  Huh? Why?  And it's the same to this day! 

I will spare you that rant. 

Under the siding here is an original squared timber cabin. It was built out of cedar, so that when all the other places in the same area got washed away by floods or destroyed by time, this one remained. Old growth cedar is almost indestructible. 

When this area flooded, the waters would move the cabin around a little bit. It was a big wooden box with one room, all fitted together like cabinetry, and it floated. As long as it stayed within the property lines, they'd just wait until the water went down, and then they'd jack up one side or another, level it out, hammer some timbers underneath and call it good until the next flood.

I can see that. It's a clever stopgap adaptation to prevailing conditions, and you put up with it to save money until you proved up your claim. Thing is, once people proved up, they said 'Time to take a break for the next hundred or so years. Pass me the bong, Jeremiah.' 

Which is how you get an Everson/Nooksack.

I hope you have learned things. Now go see if those sassy lads out in the stables have readied your carriage.

This is just a moody picture of the Sumas River.  I like it.