At midnight on the thirty-first of March, in the village of Saugersville, in upstate New York, young John Herbert is left in darkness when the electric power goes off. The net morning George, who drives the milk truck, turns a bewildered face to the little group in the village store and says, "the road ain't there no more." Search parties are sent out and return, days later, exhausted and afraid, having found no other towns, railroads, or people.

This is the dramatic background for the narrative poem; it is a classic tale for the ages, a psychological fantasy and a poetic equivalent of Wilder's Our Town rolled into one.