NOT the Roto Rooter Capitol of the World

Jump: Drain, OR → Oakridge, OR
99 → I5 → 58: 70 miles

The circus was camped in Drain, Oregon. Drain used to be a lumber town. I don’t know what it is now.

I got there just after dark. I drove 700 miles in my little red Veedub. I could easily have driven another 700. It was effortless, I was gliding. I listened to NPR, Dr. Laura, Michael Savage. I switched the radio off for the sudden vista of Shasta, listening instead to Sinead O’Connor sing about dead soldiers and the foggy, foggy dew in that mad banshee voice. I was just so glad to be quit of Monterey, of California.

Drain, Oregon is not the Roto Rooter capitol of the world whatever you might think. It’s named after Charles Drain, a prosperous 19th century citizen of the township. I’m unclear just what Charles Drain did to earn the distinction. Perhaps he founded the mill – which is now closed and fenced with large No Trespassing signs like so many mills in Oregon.

At one time Drain must have been a prosperous little town. It has a newish civic center – wood not concrete, true – a library open 3 hours every weekday afternoon. In 1950, in commemoration of a hundred years of Oregon statehood, it paid for a covered wagon to travel the full route of the Oregon trail, starting in Independence, MO. For the first 3 miles, President Harry Truman drove the wagon. The nineteen fifties (we can safely assume) were Drain’s glory days.

Now half the shops in its tiny downtown are closed. Hopeful “4 Sale” signs on a few – the chainsaw store, for example. I’d never seen a chainsaw store before. The remaining stores include two (count ‘em) auto parts stores, two (count ‘em) espresso emporiums and oddly enough a bridal shop in what appeared to be an abandoned barn, Celebrate Christ spray painted on its side.