Pickle's Place, Arco, Idaho

Then I'm belting across the back roads of Idaho, en route to the Sawtooth Mountains. Past “Atomic City” and the “World’s First Experimental Breeder Reactor,” and what few businesses are in this tumbleweed high plain are all named after America’s burgeoning nuke industry from over a half century ago.

I needed lunch, and the signs for “Pickle’s Place, Home of the Famous Atomic Burger” started miles and miles from Pickle’s Place. In fact everything – the whole world even – starts miles and miles from Pickle’s Place. Hardly anybody lives or works in Arco, Idaho anymore, and though most stores and businesses are closed-dusty-decrepit-falling-down, they still have a deceptive OPEN sign in the front window.

I ordered the Atomic Burger with tater tots. Tasty and good, and perhaps I increased my half-life significantly.

Cowboys and ranchers there, complete with boots and hats, craggy-faced, with weather-blasted creases and leather tans from a life lived outside in a tough climate. One of them manned the pink plastic fly swatter with good success, borne from ample experience, no doubt. There was an auxiliary swatter (dark blue) hanging on the wall, just in case. The women look a little haggard. Nobody is fat. The men are lean. The men look good. Their clothes are dirty, worn, warm, and sturdy. I think most of these men used to be U.S. Senators. Don’t they all have ranches out here? They have short hair, except for the one who doesn’t. Most drive pick-ups, some drive big, old, 4-door American sedans. I bought a couple jars of their “John’s Steak and Seasoning Spice,” and headed for the Sawtooths. At the airstrip on the way out of town, there was a Gulfstream G5 private jet, confirming my Senatorial suspicion.