People don’t understand why I love Richland, Washington.
To them, it’s a boring, non-entity on a map, in a state that people often overlook. Maybe because Washington state shares its name with the national capital and is often mistaken for the other as a result. Or maybe because once a tourist gets out of Seattle or Portland, the bustling city turns into rolling farmland and—in their eyes—loses its worth. I don’t really know, but I am thankful that my father brought me there. Otherwise, I would be just as misinformed as they are.
Granted, the city I lived in once is quaint. Its two sister cities are more up to speed with the rest of the world, albeit in very different ways: One of them contains a mall, making it the hot-spot for teenagers who want a taste of adult life without any of the responsibility; the other is the Northwestern equivalent to a barrio, of sorts. But I lived in Richland, the quiet one, with a colorful history that eventually evolved into a heady sort of tranquility that is still capable of leaving me breathless every once in awhile.
The one feature that makes the city stand out at all was, historically, part of the one event that brought terror and sorrow to a great many people far, far away: Richland supplied the plutonium that completed Fat Boy, which was the second nuclear bomb that was ever detonated. And though the bomb ended up contributing to a black mark on our nation’s history, Richland took an interesting sort of patriotic pride in the fact that “they” helped hasten our World War II victory over Japan.
Now, though, all that fervor has transformed into an old man’s recollections of an antiquated world, and a child that listens to every story that the old man tells with big eyes and a bigger imagination.
Richland is a city of the retirement crowd, and a city of young families. The only way that the word “nuclear” is ever brought up, now, is in the familial sense. Jokingly, I once dubbed the place Mayberry, referring to the city’s inherent innocence, but the nickname stuck.
To me, it’s not just quaint—it’s pristine.
The Texan city I used to call my hometown before Richland is a hotter place, and a darker place. Growing up, I remember the days where, after stepping outside of my house, I would be immediately drenched with the muggy slime of the city. Only a block away, I would hear the blaring cacophony of sirens, wailing over a murder or a drug bust—whatever the crime du jour happened to be. The mall that I frequented was periodically home to gang-related turf wars, or to violent thefts. Once, when I was twelve, I vividly remember hearing about the shooting of an elderly woman there, when she tried to resist the man that was stealing her purse. And I remember knowing, even then, how shocking it was for me to be so unfazed by the tragedy.
But just a little later, I would end up moving to Richland, where everything would change. At first, though, I’ll admit that I hated it.
After the life I left behind in Texas, I felt as though I had been sentenced to live in a G-rated movie for the rest of my life. My parents even enrolled me in a Catholic school that was just across the street from the house we moved into, seeming to forget completely that we were a nonreligious family.
The day my misery ended, though, was the day I met my first friends there. I didn’t know it then, but for the first time in my life, I would be forming friendships that would last far, far longer than the one- or two-year-long friendships that had been the sum total of my social record up until that point. These friends would allow me to put down roots for the first time ever, and they would keep me laughing and, for the most part, happy through some of the toughest years of my life.
Looking back on those days, it was like I was given the chance to have a second, much happier childhood.
And that’s the gift Richland gave me. And that’s why I will always love it.
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