If you’re wondering why I have a picture that says “Ringert Road” and whether or not that has any significance…it does not. It is a picture that my mother took of an Idaho road, and I wish I could have gotten the entire thing in, but alas, that is the problem with having a long skinny space. The road goes on and on forever, and it just seemed so…Idaho to me. I remember going to visit Bear, a family friend, right after I got married, and taking Marti with me (we had to visit before our long trek to Washington DC from Idaho). Bear lives in Ola. Should you like to write to him, you can, by writing “Bear, Ola ID” on the front of an envelope and putting it in the mail (along with a stamp, of course). I am not kidding. He prefers postcards with nice pictures.
Anyway, it is a long, long way out on narrow country roads before you get to Ola, a town that boasts — not a stoplight — but a stop sign. Yes, there is just one in Ola.
And Bear might have a real name — and a last name — but I would never presume to ask. Rudeness, that’s what that would be.
I remember the long drive out and Marti saying, “Wow. I never imagined so much…nothing. There’s just nothing out here.”
And that’s the Idaho I remember as a kid. The kind of place where every town could be Radiator Springs.
Idaho is filling up now — Boise has suburbs, if you can believe it — but this is how I remember it.
Empty.
With long roads, leading to nowhere.
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