Let’s clean up Main Street and decorate each empty window with pictures of the amazing and wonderful people who have grown up in Pendleton and became famous, and the amazing people who stayed in Pendleton and made it an even better place to live.

1. Use the fire department to get the outside of downtown business property real clean.

2. Rip off those filthy black coverings because now these windows makes Pendleton look like a town that has been abandoned and left behind. Those of us who call this home, and love living here, know that is just not true.

3. I have suggested four old-fashioned on-the-building billboards so everyone in town will see them — something like the old circus billboards in 1920 and later — to let the locals know the purpose of Pendleton Underground Comes To Life. You can put your flyers up all over town, but I am telling you, the people who live in Pendleton are not coming out. They do not know what is going on; I know because I have asked about 75 of them since June.

4. Fill each window with photographs, posters and anything else to show what people who were raised in Pendleton can really do.

I have been tooling around town (quietly) in my Veterans Affairs-provided cherry red hot rod, as a friendly disabled Vietnam-era woman Marine. What I noticed was how filthy the fronts of the Main Street business are, most now closed. The filthy windows, hastily covered with black paper, are a disgrace to our hometown, known far and wide as a real friendly place to visit. Entering Pendleton from any direction provides a breathtaking view of the perfect village setting in the valley. Now we need to show our visitors why they might just consider moving their family to live in “the real West.”

All that tourism money is being spent, and they do not even know that what brings the city folks back to Pendleton for Round-Up each year. It is the connections they have made with people who live in Pendleton. While the Pendleton Underground is great, it is relatively new to Pendleton, and what has been bringing folks back to Pendleton is the friendships that have developed between Pendletonians and the city folk.

My husband, the late Art Merriman, had sometimes up to 10 people that came year after year and stayed with us. I would tease him that those women were his girlfriends — some were damn cute buckle bunnies. The men were real men, who cleaned up real well and smelled good. Eye candy for the ladies.

I am narrowing in on my windows. My window will have my internationally famous music maestro daughter, Jacie Sites, then my Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association cowboy brother Dave Murphey and goat roping Bobbi Beers, who, with a couple in California started the Western States Ranch Rodeo Association. All Pendleton High School graduates.

I challenge some of these families to jump on board, and clean and decorate a window: the Melton family (Tom Melton/Marla Royal, Emil and Betty Holdman) Butch Knowles, Cindy Newtson Severe, Dean Fouquette, Dick Keizer, Peter Willis, Dan and Andy Emert, Emily Mueller-Cary, Morgan Matteson and our own sweet sunshine, Sandy Mayberry, who always brings in light when she sings “You Are My Sunshine.”

Let’s shine our lights, and show our real Pendleton stars.

Rose Murphey

Pendleton