Wagontire Oregon For Poem a Thon

April 6 Wagontire, Oregon 1973 In 1973, I went on a road trip With my father We left Berkeley to go to Yakima Where my father had a summer cabin He was a college professor And had July and August off And we spent the summers Every summer from 1968 to 1978 Our whole dysfunctional family Our annual road trip to hell and back As we did not get along at all We decided to drive through Eastern Oregon Just my father and me Just for the hell of it The rest of the family was already there My father and I shared a travel lust One of the few things we shared This was one of our best trips We got along Which was unusual Normally our relationship Was fraught As we were so different We left Klamath Falls A real nothing burg in those days And headed east along highway 395 As we entered the desert of eastern Oregon We entered a different world High mountain dessert Almost no one on the road Then we saw the sign Wagontire Oregon 100 miles ahead 99 miles ahead 98 miles ahead We counted down the signs Miles after miles As we drove into the gathering dusk We speculated that Wagontire Must be a giant truck stop In the middle of no where We pulled into the town Nothing there but a gas station Motel and café We decided to stop Last gas for 100 miles According to the highway signs In the morning We chatted with the owner He was the sheriff, the fire chief The owner of the motel, gas station The only business in town And the only place open For one hundred miles I noticed a highway sign outside Welcome to Wagontire, Oregon Population 2 ½ humans 10 dogs, 50.000 sheep I asked the Sherriff Say who is the ½ human? My idiot son! And we left. 200 miles later We finally left Eastern Oregon 2016 In 2016 my wife and I drove through Eastern Oregon As part of our epic cross country trip 10,000 miles 31 states in three months On the way from Medford to Yellowstone We drove along highway 395 The signs for Wagontire was gone And we drove through the town The motel was abandoned Nothing there at all And that sign was gone too I said I suppose the idiot son Never took over the business And we speculated about Wagontire And all other nothing burgs We drove through that summer Heart of Trump’s America True fly over country