Ontario, Idaho

"Yeah, that's another thing that bothers me," he said--amiably enough, but with a far away look in his eyes--as his muscular, farmer-tanned arms twisted some stiff metal wires in the blazing sun.  My tire had blown out you see, so violently that the plastic tire guard was torn apart.  The tire was replaced easy enough, but now loose electrical wiring dangled across the rim, waiting to be caught and torn away.

I feared we'd be stranded here in the desert, still so far from home, but the tow-truck driver took one look at it and said, "Oh, I bet we can fix that!  We just need to tie 'em up, tuck 'em back in there.  Here, I got some metal wiring in my truck," and here we were.

But as grateful as we were for his help, his cheerful tone had taken a turn for the morbid: "This ain't event the worst I've seen," he started, "One time, I had to tow a tipped-over U-haul not too far from here.  Seems this sweet old ladies' kids were finally moving her into a nursing home, clear out in Washington or some such.  She'd lived here for something like 50-odd years, raised her kids, buried her husband and everything, right here in Ontario.  Heart-breaking to force her to leave like that, to make her move someplace strange to die...

"Well, they were hardly a mile down the highway when they took a turn too hard, and the truck tipped over.  Boxes fell out, priceless heirlooms spilled all over the road.  The worst of it were the photographs--there were photos scattered everywhere--old ones, black and white ones, irreplaceable stuff, ya get what I'm saying?  I tried to gather as many of 'em as I could, but some were damaged, and some were just lost, blown away in the wind.  That really bothered me."

I had been driving home from college you see, with an old High School friend and a girl trying to hitch-hike her way to Alaska.  When my tire blew out, after a few tense seconds of wrestling the car to the shoulder, I called Triple-A for help, and they asked my location.  "Um, Ontario, Idaho," I said, remembering a sign, but unaware we'd just barely crossed the Oregon border.

"Canada?"

"No, Idaho, Ontario, Idaho."

"Sir, there is not Ontario, Idaho."

"Wait, what?"

"Ontario, Idaho, it doesn't exist."

"No, that can't be right, I just barely saw a sign a moment ago that said, 'Now Leaving Ontario'!"

"I'm sorry sir, I'm just sitting in front of a computer here in California right now, and according to my records there is no such place as Ontario, Idaho."

"What is this?!" I shouted, feeling a mounting panic, wondering what Twilight Zone or Purgatorial Land of the Dead I had just stumbled into outside of all maps, space, and time.

But all that was soon cleared up, and now an hour later, we were in a Les Schwab in Ontario, Oregon, on the Idaho border, and the kind tow truck driver was tying up my loose ends.  "You're lucky, really lucky, that you blew out when you did," he said, "Just a few miles further, and you would have been outside all cell-phone range, and who knows what might have happened to you.

"We may think we're all civilized and settled and such out here, but just a few miles from the freeway, it's still wild country.  In fact, some of the older folks 'round here swear there's still Indians roaming about.  Well, maybe their spirits..." 

"Hey man, we really appreciate your help, here, let me pay you..." I offered, partly in sincere gratitude, but also partly to distract him, because despite his pleasantness he was frankly making us uncomfortable.  But he just barreled forward: "Yeah, that's another thing that bothers me...There's still so much we don't know about this area, even just right in our own backyard!  Why just recently, they found an old skeleton, not too far from here.

"Must've been from the old pioneer days.  Whoever he was, he probably died of thirst, and from the way the skeleton plopped down, you could tell from what direction he probably crawled.  And from what we could tell, he could have just come across a hundred miles of desert without finding a drop of water.

"But you know what was only a quarter mile away from where he collapsed?  The conjunction of three rivers.  Ya hear me?  Three!  If he had wondered just a quarter mile to his left, or to his right, or even just straight ahead, a quarter mile, he would've found all the water he needed.  But he didn't.  He collapsed dead in the sun, all alone in the world, but there was water surrounding him.  That sort of thing really bothers me."

All four of us fell silent.  A slight breeze blew, briefly alleviating the searing heat, and we all gazed down the long desert road, still a long, long way from home.