North San Juan comes across as a faded, almost forgotten place. Its name is lopsided—there is no South, West, or East San Juan—and the highway slices it in two. The speaker notes that miners once loved the town, then hippies, but now “no one special” does. It has become a stop for drinkers, a place of summer heat, flies on diesel oil, slamming screen doors, and a surprisingly grand graveyard shaded by oaks. The mood is not angry, just quietly melancholic, as if sadness has soaked into the ground and down into sealed mine tunnels. The last stanza shifts to a wry warning: if you pass through in winter, slow down, because an icy curve just outside town could leave you almost dead—“just east of North San Juan.”
North San Juan — Summary
There’s no South or West or East San Juan, only North San Juan, alone with its
name, cut in half by a highway. Once miners loved it, then Hippies, now
no one special. It’s a place boozers who like to stop at every place stop. Its
graveyard is enormous, with regal vestiges—tall tombstones, wealthy oaks. In
summer-swelter, flies stick to diesel oil. Sloppy screened-doors flop
in breezes. Sadness seems to soak into the town, sink into deep, sealed tunnels.
If you go through there in Winter, don’t speed up too much because outside of town there’s a bad curve
where ice holds all day, and you could end up almost dead just east of North San Juan.