Deco, putting out so much electricity you can feel it) we were
entertained with views of stemwheelers on the lake formed
where the Colorado River used to be. As we crept along we
watched a Model and a Photographer doing a photo shoot with
the dam as background. Bus after bus of tourists from all over
the world lumbered around the tight turns in excess of five
miles per hour, but not much.
Finally we got into more open country and could tell by the
billboards we were in a very different state. Eventually Las
Vegas shimmered into view like a Hollywood special effect,
which is pretty much what it is. As we reached the Strip,
sensory overload cut in. Everything was everywhere.
Artificial waterfalls, a full size Pirate ship, huge electric
billboards, hordes of young men handing out newspapers with
photos of naked or nearly naked women; prostitution, and
apparently everything else is legal in Nevada, except poverty.
Mike pulled into the parking garage behind the Pirate ship
and there was no one taking money. “Parking is free.” Mike
said. We took an elevator to the Casino because that is where
the elevators go, no matter how many buttons you push. The
air conditioning was on high like everything else. I will not
attempt to describe the Casinos we visited, but by the time we
left Caesar’s Palace I had completely lost track of the ‘real
world*. It was suddenly made quite real to me again when I
realized we had gone out an exit that took us behind the false
fronts o f the Strip. The street, just a block away from the
busiest thoroughfare in the world, was devoid of foot traffic
and what sidewalk there was, was more of an after thought, so
if someone’s limo broke down, they wouldn’t have to walk in
the street. The backs of the Casinos only have entrances for
employees and the signs make it clear that you can’t enter that
way, no matter what. So we walked several long hot blocks
until we found a way back to the parking lot where we’d left
the car. That made up our minds, we headed out of town.
It is very difficult to find your way out of a Casino in Las
Vegas, and it is almost impossible to find your way out of I .as
Vegas on the freeway. We got the feeling they really didn’t
want people to leave and since I had won $5 of their money at
the slots, I felt they might be trying to get it back by leading
us around in circles until we needed to buy gas or lunch of
something to recoup the $5. NO, I didn’t like Las Vegas.
Mike had told me what a wonderful time he had when he was
there last. I reminded him that he had been with a beautiful
woman that time, and I was with a middle aged man. He
allowed as how that could make a difference. Once out of Sin
City we headed back into real desert.
(Continued from page 1)
and it was all I could do to keep Mike from walking up to
every young coed and saying “Friend?" I found a coffee shop
with e-mail access, and caught up on some work (IRS take
note), and visited several bookstores (I’m still in the business,
yes I kept receipts).
My friend was by this time over her flu, and we decided to
meet for lunch. Mike took one look at the No Smoking sign
in the Vietnamese restaurant and began to moan. Anyway he
wandered off and we had a lovely talk; I promised to bring
Mike to the bar where she worked that night. “He’s a
sweetie.” she said. Women’s taste in men is a constant
mystery. The week had flown by and this was to be our last
night in Tempe, and wouldn’t you know it, my friend worked
at one of the best bars we had seen on the whole trip. As we
settled onto our stools at the bar, my friend came out and
hugged us, and then went back in the kitchen to bring out a
young man and pointed at us, and we smiled, and she pointed
at him and he smiled. When she came by later she said,
“What do you think? He’s a poet.” My eyes must have rolled
back, because she said rather defensively, “He’s got a
scholarship in Poetry at a College back East.” I gave her a
hug and said that every woman should be in love with a poet
at least once in her life, and it was better to get it over with
early, or something like that.
About this time through the door came two people dressed
in leather with what looked like the head gear Amelia Earhart
wore, goggles and all. They saw us, and headed our way; we
were looking around for an exit when one of them removed the
goggles and leather helmet, releasing a cascade of multi colored
hair, and the smiling face of Heide, the woman we had visited
here ten years ago, emerged. After much hugging and kissing
on our part and glaring on the part of her boyfriend, the other
leather-clad person, she explained that they has just driven
from Austin, Texas in a 69 Red Cobra with no top. Not a
convertible, it just had no top. They were on their way back
to San Francisco where she lives now.
Heide has since I met her has become a globe galloping
photographer, an art director for Mondo 2000, a legendary
cyber magazine, and she lives on the Vallejo, an aging
grounded Ferry that used to be the home of Alan Watts. She
is the only person I know who has been on the cover of Time
magazine (it was for a feature about Cyberpunk in Feb. *93).
So, it turned into a wonderful going away party. Mike kept
insisting that two young women were making eyes at us
across the bar, but since he was on his fifth, possibly sixth
Jack Daniels, I knew full well that he couldn’t see across the
bar. And besides we had to get on the road tomorrow. We
decided to make the first leg on the homeward journey short,
and visit a friend of Mike’s in Kingman, just a few hours drive
through the desert with no freeways.
Our Lawyers have advised us that we must confess that the
story “Dow nloading Arizona” is pure fiction, and that Uncle
Mike© is a registered trade mark, and that we must further
confess tliat the photographs that accompany the above fiction
were a rather crude attempt, with the use of a cardboard cut out,
to defame and libel the good name of Uncle Mike®.
B aseball and Beer, is this Heaven?
ate-
“Pi is Round”.
The road home from Vegas is Hiway 95. It is high desert
country, flat, surrounded by snow covered mountains and
mesas. The two lanes run straight for as far as the eye can see,
and the minimum speed limit is 75 mph. “You asked me to
remind you. You’re doing eighty.” I said to Mike. He really
hadn’t asked, but when in the middle of nowhere I start
remembering all the things I used to know about cars, and one
was that gas mileage went to hell after 65 or so. Mike
explained that the last cars I knew anything about were now
considered collector’s items. I pointed to the gas gauge and
then to the nothingness surrounding us. It’s called the
Loneliest Hiway in America.
W e reached Tonopah without running out of gas or coming
to blows. It had been a long drive and we were tired when we
found a Motel, so we just shook our heads and agreed when
they offered us the Senior Citizen Discount. It had come to
this. The next morning we crossed the Oregon border, but not
before stopping at a funky Casino in McDermott a few feet
from the line. I still had a cup full of nickels from Caesar’s
Palace. It took no time at all to be relieved of my burden.
Once in Oregon we started to smell the corral, and drove
through to Bums where the legendary bird migrations were
filling the skies. After a night in a cheap Motel that had some
very amusing rules about drug use, the first we had
encountered, we hit the hiway heading for home. Before we
knew it we were back on old 1-5, coming into Portland.
W e did our best to clean up the Maroon Miata Mirage, but
the bits and flakes of various flora I’d collected remained on the
floor mat along with other vegetable matter spilled at various
times on the trip. We turned in the car without incident, and
found ourselves in a cab with the same driver who had
delivered us here almost three weeks before. This time
however, there was no classical music, and we couldn t smoke.
After we were dropped off at Mike’s son’s house and transferred
our stuff to Mike’s car, we headed west. We were on SW
Jefferson, close to the Goose Hollow Inn, when Mike pointed
to the clock. It read 3:14. “Pi,” he said. I said that made
perfect sense, because we had just completed a circle, and Pi is
round. At that very moment, a car pulled in front of us with
an Arizona license plate, not just an Arizona plate, no, a
vanity plate from ASU in Tempe.
When we finally pulled up to the old hide-out in Tolovana,
and I unloaded my stuff, Mike didn’t want to come up for a
cup o f coffee even. It was a time to be home, and alone. It
was time to walk on my beloved beach, and watch the weather,
to turn the radio to KMUN and listen to the familiar voices, to
take an old book off the shelf and sit by the fire. It was time
for vespers at Bill’s and I had a whole bunch of new stories to
“Hogs on the Hiway”
Getting out of Tempe was easy, compared to getting through
Phoenix; the town is huge. Driving through what was
obviously the old red light district, a young man approached
the car while we were stopped at a light, and after bumming a
cigarette indicated that cocaine and female companionship were
readily available. We declined both and drove on. And on and
on. Once you get out o f downtown Phoenix you have to get
through Sun City, the largest retirement city in America.
Finally getting to our beloved two lane black top we started
noticing a lot o f motorcycles. “Great country for
motorcycles,” Mike said. I slipped the Bad Livers tape in the
deck, and “Hogs on the Hiway” blared away as the Harleys
kept coining behind us and then pulling out to pass. "This is
getting ridiculous,” I said. Apparently there was some huge
rally going on somewhere near.
Sure enough we passed a cutoff road where a steady stream
of bikes made the turn. Cops from several jurisdictions were
in evidence, and seemed to be working hard at enforcing
whatever laws they could. They seem totally ineffective at
even slowing down the flow. Motorcycles stretched out for
surely ten miles in both directions, mostly Harleys, but a few
BMWs and Kawasakis and Triumphs, some with trailers, some
with side cars, some stripped down choppers and some full
dress Glides. Truly a sight to behold.
Nothing, Arizona, Nowhere, Nevada
Checking the trusty Nat’1 Geo map we realized we would be
going through Nothing, to get to Kingman. No, not just
empty desert with no towns, but Nothing, Arizona, Pop. 4.
We had to stop. It is aptly named, and we met the entire
population. They were all in the tiny store surrounded by old
dying trailers and assorted out buildings in various states of
decay. The rest room was a Sani-can off to one side. We
bought over-priced postcards and got back on the road.
When we reached Kingman we found a cheap Motel with a
pool overlooking the railroad tracks, and went off to find
Mike’s friend, whose name is none of your business. She
turned out to be a beautiful young woman (why are you not
surprised?) with a two year old equally beautiful daughter. I
mostly sat there with my mouth open as she and Mike talked
about literature, and she quoted Thomas Hardy, and generally
destroyed any illusions I might have had about beautiful
women being airheads. Mike had told me that he had met her
in Portland where she was dancing at some bar. I sat there
shaking my head, trying to visualize this woman taking her
clothes off in front of Neanderthals, while reading the classics
on her breaks. I must say I am still having a great deal of
pleasure trying to picture it in my mind. She and Mike made
our dinner plans while I was given the task of entertaining
some one closer to my intellectual level, the two year old.
There are few pleasures in this world equal to having dinner
with a beautiful woman. The service is always better, the
drinks come faster, the view is delightful and if, as in this
case, she is also very intelligent, the conversation is
stimulating. As we finished dinner she excused herself and
went off to change for work. These days she works at Denny’s
and keeps her uniform on. She explained it was honest work,
the people were nice, and she was a single mother who was
trying to find a place in the community. Like I’ve said, an
intelligent woman. Getting back to the motel we soon found
out that the railroad tracks kept very busy all night, which
explained the cheap rent.
The next morning Mike started his pitch for spending some
time in Las Vegas. As we headed for the Nevada border, he
talked about the 99 cent steak & eggs breakfast. As we wound
our way past the Hoover Dam (Surreal Industrial Strength Art
1,
freeways, especially truck drivers, laughing on the trip It
wasn’t Mike’s fault, he likes to drive in the right lane, like all
rational human beings, so when we were suddenly surrounded
by trucks, and the lane we were in became the lane for the
weigh station there was nothing that could be done I'm sure
it happens all the time. The truckers on both sides each in
turn would look down from tlieir cabs and shake their heads,
and then they would smile The guy with the clipboard at the
scales saw us coming, and so did the State Patrol guys, and
some of them pointed We were weighed, the scale said, ‘0’.
When we got back on the highway and were forced to pass a
semi, inevitably the driver would look down, smile, shake his
head and roll his eyes. It reminded me tliat these people were
working on that road. Both the weighing lanes and the
‘runaway truck’ lanes are an every day part of their job We
were tourists here, they were locals.
G O C u b b ies!!!
tell.
“Everybody’s jivin’ and shuckin’, everybody’s drivin’ and
H ogs on the H ighw ay.
truckin’ .”
Some mention should be made of the state of the American
Hi ways at some time in this narrative. Two incidents come to
mind, the first was coming down the Coast Hiway, where the
road rises and falls, twists and turns and is filled with log
trucks for some reason. There are things now called runaway
truck lanes.” No, they are nothing like ‘car pool lanes’ . And
they are something to see On this particular stretch we saw
two. The first consisted of a wide slightly uphill lane that was
lined with plastic water barrels and then turned into a deep
loose gravel pit roadway that then went steeply up hill. It
looked like it might actually work. The second was a little
different. There were the barrels, and the gravel, but at the end
wasn’t a hill, but a cliff, dropping several hundred feet. We
figured the driver should try to jump when he hit the gravel,
but either way, he wouldn't be blocking traffic.
The other little bit of truck stuff was getting caught in a
herd of semis and going through a truck weighing station on
Hiway 40. Neither Mike or I like freeways; of the three
thousand mile we traveled we figured that we did no more than
500 on freeways, and none of it was fun, except going through
the weigh station. It was the only time we saw people on the
I
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