Road trips that took the Whale Pod through the heart of Eastern Washington’s one-horse towns a generation or two ago are among the most treasured memories of my childhood.

The old Chevy, and later the Oldsmobile, carried the lot — mom, dad, and us, their sometimes squalling but well-behaved (most of the time) offspring.

The towns themselves, mere pass-throughs, typically glimpsed for fleeting moments through a car window, and most of whose names I never learned or have since forgotten, set me on a lifetime of wondering.

Most of the time about the people who lived or who had lived there.

In their sometime stark distance from other towns, with their single-pump gas stations and general stores, their lonely solitude against the broad sky, they struck a melancholy chord that still thrums in me.

What was it like to grow up in places like those? To attend whatever small school, likely miles away, the area’s community could cobble together? Where you knew everyone there? Did the children seize their first chance to shake the dust from their shoes and move on? Did they return? Did they live out their lives there?

I had no idea.

Even their cemeteries, where lay farmers, bankers, doctors and lawyers, the prominent townspeople of a moment, whom I would never know, haunt me today.

I have revisited a handful of towns like that over the years, trying to bottle a bit of nostalgia. But I always come away disappointed. They are seldom, if ever, what I remember.

Some have disappeared entirely.

In “Ghosts of Blewett,” Bud Fritz of Chelan Falls wrote of his treks into the old mining town of Blewett in the foothills of the Wenatchee Mountains, west of Peshastin Creek.

The town, established in the 1870s, was named for Edward Blewett of Seattle, whose mining company owned many claims in the area. A road to Peshastin was completed in 1896, and a stage ran three days a week. In its heyday, the town boasted a school, a two-story hotel, stores, a saloon and a telegraph service.

The mill ceased operations in 1905 when the main vein of ore ran out. It passed into the past after the WSDOT rebuilt the old, hair-raising Blewett Pass. The Stamp Mill remains along with a couple of small, scattered buildings. A few mines are still accessible, but take care.

Today, a listing on a US 97 roadside marker designates where the remnants of the town can be found, alongside a parking area and an information sign. (Bud Fritz is the author’s cousin.)

Perhaps I esteem them too highly in the adult’s backward glance. There really wasn’t much to see. But it seems to me that a depressing uniformity has swallowed whatever character locales like those once had. From the highways, each advertises its Golden Arches, its Taco Time. Yet, the old hardware store, the mom and pop grocery, they are long gone or going — and with them something vital is lost.

They remind me that, as Greek philosopher Heraclitus of old said: “One cannot step into the same river twice.” Or, to clarify that a bit, they remind us of the paradox that the one constant in the world is change.

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Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@auburn-reporter.com.