How Vaudrey Strawed the Road

In 1913 in Parker Idaho, there was a group 'Dry Farmers who celebrated a party, at one such party this following poem was composed.
The Juniper is fair to see, the Juniper’s a land of gold,
And Lies between the dunes of sand, and Camas river gray and old,
Where game abounds, and oats and wheat; and fleecy clouds of summer sails;
And yet one blot has laid its hand upon this region of the brave,
And frightens back the sons of toil who seek its haunts their crops to save.
It is the one dark fatal bar, that bid defiance to the strong,
And hold as in the bondage sure the valiant poor who fright the wrong
This evil that we hate and fear and burdens with its heavy load,
Is that “bill “ Flint and Vaudry bold, have scattered straw along the road.

‘Way back in misty ages past; in auld lang sine’ and long ago,
Before Columbus had a dream, or Alexander crossed the Poe,
The Juniper lay blushing fair, the pride of many blushing maids,
Whose dark brown lovers sought for them, in its sequestered silvan shades.
They never hear of Old Fremont, or Washington or General Strode,
They never dreamed that Vaudry, he, would dare to come and straw the road.
This empire laying near the door, of every railroad in the state,
Has been reserved for the good few, who now redeem it from its fate;
The sunken rivers hiding now beneath the burnished brow of sand,
Will soon be shooting from the deeps to irrigate the fertile land;
And when this evolution sees, fair cities where the cowboys rode,
Will anybody have the nerve, to say that Vaudry strawed the road?
If William Flint, commissioner, should ever ride his car that ways
He’ll tell about his joys, and how it was he came today,
That far and near where he had been, he never heard a man that crowed,
So long and long as Vaudry did, because he made the old straw road.

The Allans and the Hopkins too, the Josephsons, and Jeff’s and Browns,
The Hixes and the Froks and Haights, the Millers and the Rubberdowns,
And all the men of Juniper whose names I cannot think of now,
Will come and say at close of day, me thinks I hear them say it, how
In spite of love or fear or hate, or hell that hides the floating mode,
Bill Flint and Vaudry take the cake, because they strawed the road.

Come all you sons and daughters too, who love this dry farm land of ours;
That catch the latest snows that fall, and rising meet the early showers,
The coming empire of the west, the crown of all the dry farm train,
Rejoice with me and come and see the harvest fields of golden grain;
And what you see and what’s to be, would ne’er have been the farmer’s code
If General John C. Vauderee had never made and strawed the road.

Behind the white frosts falling zone, that hides the hills of Juniper,
We hear the voice of Spring command, to build a road of Flint and fur,
To build it wide and deep and high, where naught can stall the heavy load
Because Friend Vaudry in the night, might slip out there and straw the road