We accidentally drove to Levan Thursday. I say accidentally because we didn't know it was there, but we wanted to go on the old highway that parallels I-15 going south. And like Brigadoon, it rose from the asphalt.
And like Brigadoon, there was no one there. It was 4 in the afternoon and we drove around the whole town and finally saw one old man out on the front porch of a really huge house. Possibly four of the surrounding houses would have fit into it. He waved, so we knew he wasn't a prop.
Then we found another grumpy old man fooling around in his yard in the time honored manner of grumpy old retired men fooling around everywhere in the garage or the yard. He decidedly didn't wave. Clearly the man with the big house was happier with things.
Finally we heard the laughter of children and followed it. It was like a horror movie where you hear the merry trills of children playing and you search around the empty buildings in a deserted town. Only it was two little girls and they didn't have hollow eyes and jagged teeth.
Friday we drove to Salt Lake and on the way home we drove by the Auto Mall at 106 South and Clay looked out over the sea of metal roofs and wondered "who on earth do they think is going to buy all those cars."
Swarms of people driving north on the other side of the highway, empty streets in a Levan afternoon 75 miles south.
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