While there is no Bumfuck in Idaho, there most definitely is a Boring in Oregon, whose cheeky byline (“THE MOST EXCITING PLACE TO LIVE!”) is funny the first time you read it, but probably not the hundredth.
Maybe unsurprisingly, the Tripadvisor page for Boring, Oregon, is just that. One page. Places to stay, things to do, places to eat — one page.
Which is economical, right? Like the locals, who like to keep it simple. They believe in Bigfoot, play billiards, and eat ‘enchalada beef’ for $5 at the Timber Pub & Grub (#1 of 2 bars in Boring).
Yeaah right, I call bullshit on that. Five bucks for beef enchiladas enchalada beef? Sure you do!
Anyway, according to Tripadvisor ten people have visited Boring (one admits it was by accident) and their average rating is 3.8, albeit two were by the same guy and one was by a local so shouldn’t count.
The biggest gripe overall seems to be ‘oversalted soggy tots’ whatever the fuck that is, but on the flip-side one guy was so impressed by the chargrilled ribeye that he “ate it naked” which, you know, might be an Oregonian thing.
The only true foreigner to visit Boring was CynthiaTerry1234 from Italy, who gave it an extra point because she can haz cheeseburger. But with 19,002 towns in America where she can haz cheeseburger, that doesn’t explain why she endeed up in Boring.
Unless it was to hide a body.
Speaking of hiding bodies, this cul-de-sac in Oregon nonetheless sounds exponentially more interesting than the drab shithole where I grew up.
My home town has a petrol station, general store, bottle shop, post office, timber mill, and a museum. It had a football clubhouse but they burned it down, possibly in protest at how useless their team is.
Or there is a serial killer living in town.
They ought to monitor how many pets disappear, because that’s another red flag.
Living in old fibro Housing Commission homes splayed out across 14 streets, the 456 residents are mostly white male widowers with diabetes and mental health issues, boxed in by plantations of pinus radiata rotting upright because in 2018 the sawmill died.
With no local jobs left, the town died with it.
For me, this is became a ghost town where not all the ghost are dead.
I plan never to return.
I once blogged that Adelaide in South Australia is the serial murder capital of the world; but if Salman Rushdie thought Adelaide was like “something out of a Stephen King novel” then he needs to visit my home town.
… and re-read ‘Salems Lot‘.
Because I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder in that town, and drawing the curtains. I learned to steer clear of people and spent most of my young life either indoors or in the forest.
Because they felt safer than places the other people were.
That’s the truth of it: a lot of bad things happened to people in that unquiet town. For starters, the arsonist that killed people in their homes when I was young seems to be back. When I eventually write my horror novel, I know exactly where it will be set.