Attitude Counts

I grew up in Port Arthur, Texas. It’s a gritty town that few people go out of their way to see, unless they are Janis Joplin fans who want to know where she came from. When I was a kid, it was the world’s largest petroleum and petrochemical refining center. Two of the biggest refineries in the world were across the street from each other there. The oil mostly came and went by ship, so it was also a thriving port.

The oil bust hammered Port Arthur so badly, it has never fully recovered. But it never gives up.

It isn’t big on whining when it gets dealt a bad hand. It just gets up off the mat and tries again.

When Dubya was in the White House, he was fond of saying no new refineries had been built in the USA in twenty years. Drive the highway over the Rainbow Bridge, and you’ll see reality contradict him. Near the turn of this century, BASF fired up the world’s largest catalytic cracking unit. It looks like Dante’s Inferno, but it’s a brand spanking new refinery. After nearly two decades of trying, Port Arthur picked itself up after the oil bust.

Hurricane Rita came in 2005 and hit so hard, the whole town was shut for a month. Everybody had to find someplace to camp while 85% of the electrical grid was patched together with whatever hadn’t just been sent to repair what Katrina took out next door. Port Arthur picked itself up again, and Hurricane Ike hit nearly as hard, shutting the town for about three weeks.

The town is still there. It will be there until the glaciers all melt and the levee is topped by the rising tide. (Average elevation is three feet below sea level.)

Look around in this global recession. Places getting through it best are often places with a soul akin to my old hometown. They aren’t glitzy. Their neighbors might look down on them. But they understand hard times. It never occurred to them that anybody else might bail them out. They’re just putting their heads down and slogging through as best they can, while many of their fancier neighbors flounder. With so much of the world in trouble, there isn’t anybody in a position to ride to the rescue. For nearly everyone, the only way out of the current economic mess is to rescue ourselves.

Attitude counts. For a person, a town, a country. It’s okay to grumble, but not okay to quit.