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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY It's scary being in the wrong situation Did you ever find yourself in a situation where you suddenly realized you were a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time? I remember two such occasions. One was in 1951 in the small Southern Oregon town of Lakeview over in Lake County. The other event happened in Miami, Fla., about 40 years later. Lakeview has an elongated sign near the city limits bearing a painting of a very tall cowboy. Below him, a slogan touts the place as the "mile high city," which it actually is. Much of the county is federally owned, but there are also large cattle and sheep ranches. One of the highlights of each summer was the Lake County Fair. Everyday activities come to a halt as almost everyone in the sparsely settled county flocks to town. Back in 1951, one of the men at the Klamath Falls radio station where I worked suggested we go to the fair over the weekend. Both of us were unmarried and it sounded like a lot of fun. The exhibits were homemade, but crafted with care. After looking at all of the 4-H and FFA exhibits and hearing the auctioneers take bids on the pigs, sheep and cattle, we decided to end the evening at the big dance of the year. The hall was filled with people, most of them wearing new Western garb, and almost everyone was smoking. I was still a smoker then, but the haze was too thick even for me, so I wandered back outside. Almost as many people were standing out in the street as there were in the auditorium. Suddenly, out through the doors of the hall came a tall woman running as if for her life. A few seconds later, a rather short man in a cowboy outfit boiled out the door and took off up the street after her. He caught up with the woman, grabbed her by the arm and slapped her face. All of this occurred within a few feet of where I was standing. What happened next seemed like a scene from a John Wayne movie as a very tall and muscular cowboy stepped out of the crowd, grabbed the little man by his shirt, and lifted him up so they were face to face. The cowboy said something about, "We don't treat women like that here," then dropped the little man and slugged him on the chin on the way down. I think he was probably knocked out, but I didn't stick around to find out. It had been more than seven years since I had last been shot at in the war, but in my imagination I felt a fight was coming on, and I got out of there. The other incident came in 1991 when I was the county's delegate to the annual meeting of the National Association of Counties at a huge old hotel in Miami Beach. Unfortunately, my reservation arrived after that hotel was full, and they assigned me to the Omni Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard, a major arterial in Miami, about eight miles away. The next morning, I was up at dawn and I called the front desk to find out where to eat breakfast. The clerk said the hotel's coffee shop didn't open until seven, but there was a fast-food place across the street that opened at 6:30. It was about 6:15 then, so I decided to go over early. I was dressed in a white shirt, blue pants and a pair of patterned red suspenders that matched my tie. Half-a-dozen Cuban men were standing around in front of a burger place, and one hurried toward me. He identified himself as a Miami police detective. "You really shouldn't be out here by yourself," he said. "A hold-up man shot and killed a man earlier this week just a couple of blocks down the street. He looked like a tourist, and so do you." Believe me, I ditched the distinctive suspenders and tie as soon as I returned to my room. Reading the Miami newspapers over the next three days, I saw enough stories about people being shot by hold-up men to convince me not to wear a tie, and to try and look like a native. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA