Been spending a lot of time in Pomeroy, a little town on Highway 12 midway between Dayton and Clarkston. Like countless other farming communities scattered across southeastern Washington, Pomeroy is a microcosm of rural America; a place where hard work is its own reward, where just about everyone is related in some way, and where the commandment to love your neighbor is taken as seriously as it ought to be. It’s also where I went to high school.
In the summer of 1983, Wilbur Gingerich, who farmed in the Falling Springs area just outside of town, hired me to drive truck for that year’s harvest. This is the road we drivers—there were three of us—took on the way to Central Ferry, the Snake River grain elevators where we dumped tens of thousands of pounds of wheat and barley every day. Apart from the anomalous windmills off in the distance, this photo could very well have been taken that summer.
Driving New York Gulch Road again 31 years later, it’s easy to imagine that some things in this world will never change. But just as you’re about to believe in the possibility, you round a corner and you see those damn windmills. And you’re reminded that, in fact, it’s too late: everything has already changed.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
by Linda Witherup