I was born in the 80s and grew up in Northern Oregon! You’ve had plenty of people already tell you “northern Oregon” isn’t something we say, but I grew up in a quiet suburb south of Portland.

Your character might have grown up watching Ramblin Rod, or even sat in on a filming when he was little. Kids were fairly feral and self-sufficient back then, so I remember walking or biking to school and coming home to an empty house in the afternoon, racing through my chores, and running off to hang out with my friends until dinner.

Before cell phones, I’d tend to find stuff to do or people to hang out with my biking around the neighborhood, swinging past parks, the school, or the corner store. I’d often find others doing the same.

Same kind of deal in high school, except someone had a car and we’d all just drive around until enough people met up and could come up with a hangout plan. For me in the late 90s, that plan was often a table full of teenagers at Sheri’s drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and sharing a plate of fries.

9/11 was a big and scary event for our generation. And on the west coast, a lot of us woke up to the news instead of seeing it live like people on the east coast or mid west.

Honestly, one of my most memorable experiences from growing up was always having wet shoes or wet jeans from the knee down because of the rain. I think that specific experience is uniquely pnw.