Iraq war in focus: Home-front Journal
Winlock's grand old egg flies high

By Ron C. Judd
Seattle Times staff columnist

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WINLOCK, Lewis County — It's corny, and everybody here knows it.

The darn thing is made of fiberglass. Battered by winds over the years, it leans a bit to the south. A really close look reveals cracks in the shell.

None of which will stop local folks from getting a bit misty-eyed when the town landmark — optimistically described as the World's Largest Egg — winds up wrapped with a yellow ribbon big enough to diaper a woolly mammoth.

Big-city folks probably won't get this.

Gracie Barnes did. When she drove down the hill the other day into the long-since-dethroned Egg Capital of the World and saw the bow, she was thankful nobody was following close behind her pickup.

She lost it.

"I just sat and cried."

The egg, perched atop a steel pole in Vern Zander Memorial Park like a Volkswagen-sized golf ball awaiting Paul Bunyan's tee shot, already had been re-striped in red, white and blue after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks a continent away. "God Bless America" was inscribed on the egg's east end at the same time.

The finishing touch, a yellow ribbon, is a lot like a million others hung from trees, fence posts, car antennas and mailboxes across America after the war in Iraq began half a world away two weeks ago.

But in this rural Lewis County town, it wasn't a hollow memorial to nameless faces trudging through the sand past Basra. It was a civic hug, to a sizable chunk of the town's extended family.

People who stop by for floor wax or Turkey Spam at the Cedar Village IGA can't miss the rows of bright, young faces in military uniforms, smiling proudly in pictures aligned neatly in a display near the store's Lotto machine. Two of the faces are Barnes' kids. Both Marines — one an MP, one a counter-terrorism trainer in Russia — they're not in the fight yet, but probably on the way.

Nine more faces surround them, and locals speculate that other soldiers less known to store clerks are out there as well. All told, somewhere between 12 and 18 former Winlock Cardinals are in uniform for a country at war. In a town of only 1,300 people, that's a major hole in the roster.

"So many people know each other here," says Irene Cook, who, along with husband Frank, has operated a hardware store for 53 years in the historic Washington Egg and Poultry Co-operative building. "They feel each other's sorrows, and they're happy for them when things are good."

Right now, things are decidedly in-between.

Another young face on the IGA shelf belongs to Chris Cobbs, 20, from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which has led the charge to Baghdad. His mother, Joanne, a Winlock massage therapist and self-described "1968 no-war kind of person," still finds it difficult to believe he's there.

Like other children of the '60s, Cobbs raised her oldest son with the free will to make his own decisions. Who knew his biggest one would be to carry a machine gun into the Iraqi desert?

She respects his decision. But unlike other Winlock residents, most of whom admit to being glued to Fox News for weeks, she refuses to await the consequences on TV.

"You have to hold your center," she says, with a warm smile that suggests she's been at least partially successful.

"If something happens to him, trust me — I'll know," she insists. "Why die a million little deaths? That's what's happening to people (watching it). They're dying a million little deaths."

She focuses instead on the positive, trusting that after the smoke clears, the whole world will "see its oneness."

Most Winlock people — the type of folks who went to the tax preparer this week armed with receipts for tractor parts and religious donations — aren't quite so sure about that oneness stuff. Some have lived through enough wars, and enough fresh coats of paint on that egg, to know better. At the same time, they keep proving that, for people physically removed from big-city America, let alone the Middle East, this war is painfully personal.

"No matter where I go, people tell me, 'Chris is in our prayers,' " Cobbs says. "These are the kinds of towns where, if something really bad happened, the community would take care of each other. It wouldn't be every man for himself."

These are the kinds of towns that most Northwesterners not only drive, but look right past. To most of us, Winlock exists only as one of hundreds of green-and-white freeway-exit signs to nowhere — the offramp never traveled.

What's easy to miss, until you make a point of connecting the funny town names with pleasant faces and gigantic roadside proteins, is that the Winlocks of the world are more the norm than the exception. For every large city in the Northwest, you'll find 500 other unknown Winlocks — and Vaders, Ryderwoods, Pe Ells and Onalaskas.

The town sits at the bottom of a dip, attracting so little attention to itself that one of its most notable non-poultry achievements — immortalized on a sign near the egg — was the spawning of several world-champion women logrollers between 1954 and 1983.

That's not by accident or lack of trying. It's on purpose. People come here to escape big-city life — not only its traffic, bustle and other physical attributes, but its attitude.

"I've lived here for nine years, which makes me a newcomer," says Ken Morley, a retired Northwest Airlines pilot who now drives one of the school district's 11 buses when he's not flying his own plane. "I used to live in the San Juans. The sound of the bitching would drown out the engines. Folks here don't complain a lot."

If they did, everyone would hear. The town takes up the space of a shopping mall — maybe — and six pages in the Lewis County phone book. Train tracks — the main line from Seattle to Portland — split it down the middle, close enough to rattle the huge co-op building that stands as a reminder of the long-since-fizzled egg biz.

Jobs are hard to find these days. But a place with a proud heritage tends to hang onto it. Winlockers still line the sidewalks every summer for Egg Day, where a downtown parade, overseen by the Egg Queen and her Court, has snaked down the main street every June since 1921.

It shows equal enthusiasm for supporting its boys overseas. A sign in the front window of the local paper, the Lewis County News, urges support for President Bush.

"You'll find a lot of support for troops here," predicts Mayor Lee Wheeler.

And he's right. Although residents are careful to caution that urbanites shouldn't assume they're backwoods warmongers.

"We're not supporting the war," says Barnes, who admits it's hard not to take urban peace protests personally. "We're supporting our kids."

Everybody in their own way. Earlier this week, a windstorm hit Winlock, and that big yellow ribbon that put tears in Barnes' eyes blew right off. First thing the next morning, the city's public-works crew — Leroy Zwiefelhofer and Rick Hill — was out there with a ladder, taping it back up.

The egg is a common subject of banter to many, including the coffee-table regulars at The Firehouse, the eatery where walls are adorned with fire and police patches.

"Sooner or later, the terrorists are coming to get our egg," Morley, the bus-driver pilot, quips from one of the red-vinyl-topped round tables. "So far, we've managed to hang onto it."

Winlockers, see, can joke about the thing. The rest of you should consider giving it, and the people it represents, due respect.

When an American town at war paints its egg like the flag, it uses enamel. That plastic bow might blow off again by tomorrow, but these colors don't run.

Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com

Harley Soltes: 206-464-8145 or hsoltes@seattletimes.com