Wolf Creek exits into the past

Once upon a time major highways that crisscross the United States went through the center of large and small towns. To the local inhabitants this was Main Street and their shopping district.

For me, the traveler, driving down the main street of Wallace, Kellogg and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, on our way to and from Seattle, was to be in touch with rural America. I miss these pleasant interludes since the construction of interstates.

Today getting from here to there is uninteresting. In fact, I consider it down right boring unless one has reason to veer off of the four lane motorways.

Recently we had reason to do this at Wolf Creek Exit on I-5 north of Medford, Oregon. The car, my husband and I needed refueling and the roadside sign indicated that our needs would be met.

The drive along a timbered two-lane road distanced us from the hum of morning traffic. The road widened at the entrance a town of few buildings, spaced at random on the road that circled a long, wide grass island.

My husband parked on gravel between the pumps and a building no larger than a one-car garage of the only gas station in town. I got out of the car to enjoy the quietude.

The attendant, short and slim of stature appeared promptly. Long silver hair drifted below his shoulders and a pointed beard hung to mid-chest. "Do you have a boys' room?" my husband inquired of the gnome-like man. "Out back."

I surveyed the scene across the treeless green. A white, two-story clapboard building, indicated to us by the attendant as the town's only restaurant, displayed a "Closed" sign in bold, black letters. Breakfast would have to wait.

Adjacent to the cafe, half a dozen sturdy looking young men dressed in dark clothing were in groups on the long benches and log railings of a rundown saloon type structure that was reminiscent of an old west movie set. "What's that building over there where people are going in and out?" my driver asked the silver haired man. "The Post Office," he answered.

I walked up the thick board steps and along the deck of matching boards into the convenience store that was the backdrop of my survey of a community so near the hubbub of the outside world and yet had an aura of being far removed.

My eyes skimmed the long narrow interior that was clean, orderly and well stocked for its size. My husband joined me at the coffee bar. "What's the outside biffy like?" I asked. "You don't want to know," he told me. We bought two cups of coffee and two cellophane wrapped sweet rolls. "Do you have a restroom?" I asked the clerk. "Behind the garage."

"Dreamy sort of place, isn't it?" I said to my husband between sips of coffee and bites of roll on our way to the world beyond.

"It's a place where gas is high and they have no indoor restrooms," my companion added. "I think it's a place that progress passed by and clocks stopped ticking in the 60s." I glanced back. Wolf Creek was deserted.