Here We Are Now by Charles R Cross

moved sixty miles west to Olympia in 1987, and it was there where he wrote most of the songs that would end up on Nevermind . Though he’d return to his hometown for the occasional gig or to visit friends and family, Kurt wouldn’t live in Aberdeen again.
    When Nirvana rose to international attention in 1991, so did Aberdeen. The city was often featured when the media first began to profile the band. Many Aberdeen residents were not comfortable with the association, particularly in light of the fact that Kurt repeatedly talked about Aberdeen as if it was filled with hicks. In one band biography release he wrote for Nirvana in 1988, Kurt described Aberdeen as full of “highly-bigoted redneck snoose-chewing deer-shooting faggot-killing logger-types who ain’t too partial to ‘weirdo new wavers.’” Needless to say, Kurt did not win fans at the Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce with this depiction of his hometown.
    Things soured further in 1992 when Kurt’s drug addiction became news. Though drinking and taverns were central to Aberdeen life, newspaper stories about heroin embarrassed the town’s leaders because their association with Kurt was still so strong. Of course, Kurt’s suicide in 1994 brought the kind of infamy few towns would seek. “Some joked that it was a revolting development for Aberdeen to be famous for Nirvana,” says John Hughes. Aberdeen had already had run-ins with media stereotypes in previous decades. The town’s downtown core was once so populated with brothels that in 1952 Look magazine cited it as “one of the hotspots in America’s battle against sin.” Residents seemed quicker to embrace that ribald past (a local tavern even sold T-shirts that read ABERDEEN WHOREHOUSE RESTORATION SOCIETY ) than their connection with Kurt. There were several attempts immediately after Kurt’s death to have something officially named after Kurt in Aberdeen, but all failed outright. One local sculptor created a statute of Kurt, but the city wouldn’t allow it on a public street. Eventually, the statue was put on display inside a muffler-repair shop.
    Aberdeen doesn’t have a bookstore that holds literary events, so when I did a reading for Heavier Than Heaven there in 2001, it was held at the library. That was appropriate in a way, as Kurt passed many days of his youth reading books in that building. There was one element, however, that I wasn’t expecting: protestors. One held a sign that said, DON’T GLORIFY DRUGGIES. But this being Aberdeen, with a small-town friendliness even in matters of heated debate, that particular protestor ended up coming to the reading and buying my book anyway. My impression of Aberdeen residents over the years has been a little different from Kurt’s experience. I’ve run into “snoose-chewing” rednecks, but I’ve also met many educated, well-read intellectuals. Many are even proud of their famous musicians.
    But not all. In 2004, for the ten-year anniversary of Kurt’s death, the mayor of nearby Hoquiam put forward a proclamation honoring Kurt. The proclamation was essentially a piece of paper stating that Kurt lived in the town as a baby, and issuing it officially would have cost the city nothing. It failed to pass when some suggested it would signal a public endorsement of drug use. “What kind of message is this sending to my kids?” Hoquiam city council member Tom Plumb asked.
    In the past decade, that perception of Kurt has begun to shift in Aberdeen, and surrounding Grays Harbor County. “Even the naysayers have warmed up to the idea that Nirvana was a transformative band, and a real source of pride,” John Hughes observed. Some of that shift came as motel and restaurant owners noticed a steady stream of visiting Nirvana fans. Some of the change, I suspect, reflects a wider national trend: as the sensationalistic aspects of Kurt’s life and death fade further