Saturday, August 15, 2009 3:02pm
Outside the historic marker for what was once the mining town of Fairview, Nevada. These bizarre public plaques are mounted on dilapidated metal mesh, cut in the shape of the state and bordered by powder blue edges. The landscape on US-50—“America’s Loneliest Highway”—is straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Rugged, rock-filled wilderness that produces rugged, rock solid men. On the other hand, it’s another planet altogether: as though we landed on Mars, and the electric poles dotting the otherwise uninhabited landscape are ridiculous, completely useless relics of some bygone civilization.
The handful of signs for naval bases, or those warning you not to trespass on federal property, remind passers-by of mushroom clouds and Oppenheimer, tinkering with deadly formulas out here in the desert. The distant mountains reflect different colors in the sunlight. And our music is fantastic. It’s the instrumental parts of the Marie Antoinette soundtrack—I wish I knew the actual names of the pieces [ok, I've since looked this up: Tristes Apprêts, Pâles Flambeaux, Castor et Pollux RCT 32, Act I, Scene III: Air de Télaïre (performed by Agnès Mellon). A French opera singer belts it out. This is the intermission music between audio segments from The New Yorker. Rich descriptions of other times and places fill the air as I attempt to find the words that will do justice to this time and place.
The green bushes alongside the road are quite pretty—a rich array of green hues, some lime and others grayish blue. Two dust devils in the distance, faint ones. The Pony Express trail!
Austin is a small post-mining town of about 250 residents (on a good day). Its main street looks like it was the model for most spaghetti western “high noon” scenes. We stop for some overpriced gas ($3.26!), and the cashier man doesn’t seem to take to my kind. I politely stand in line for my receipt and when a local kid unknowingly walks up in front of me and plops down his twinkie, the old grump in glasses reaches right for it, despite the fact that I’ve been standing right in front of him, was clearly first, and the guy standing next to me starts to say something but I brush it off. After I walk outside I notice that his rusted pickup has a “McCain 2008” bumper sticker, whereas my red Corolla sports my Obama allegiance, along with my California plates and another sticker that says “Well behaved women seldom make history.” A third is a gift from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and says “Change Starts With Me.” So maybe I’m not his cup of tea.
We take a stroll around “downtown” Austin. There’s St. Augustine, the “mother” of Nevadan Catholic churches—the first one, built in 1866. Our pre-printed page of Nevada fun facts claims that its bell can only be rung by pulling on the rope, which hangs in the men’s room…but we cannot verify this, not because we’re not willing to go in there (we are), but because it’s closed. Across the street is a run-down shack that really looks like it has been there since about 1930 or perhaps earlier. There’s a Confederate flag further up on the hill, waving over a white balcony alongside the American stars and stripes. We are disturbed by this and take a picture of me, incredulous, in front of it, but choose not to investigate further. Instead we head back down to main street, past a bar with 2 guys sitting inside, some closed antique shops, and into a store filled with overpriced jewelry but a kind proprietor who wants to know all about our lives and tells us of her son who has been in Japan for the past 7 years and who married a Japanese woman.
We then walk up to another jewelry shop where we meet Jim, also extremely kind and helpful. He tells us about how hard times have been in those parts, but how he made a big sale ($17k) to a Frenchman and his wife who bought his various stones (turquoise, amethyst, picarite, etc.) with cash. He is patient as we pour over the little turquoise stones, deciding which one for each of us to pick and make rings out of as mementoes of our trip. We each choose small slightly oval shaped, almost robin’s egg blue stones, each less than $10.
When Martina tells Jim that he reminds her of Marlon Brando (an older Marlon Brando, but this goes unsaid) he gets a sort of hidden smile look on his face and gets her a highly polished black teardrop-stone with the image of a deer carved onto it. And he has me pick out one of the black arrowheads that he carves himself, even though it costs over twice as much as my little turquoise stone did. He warns us to be safe, not to drift over to the shoulder of the road because too many people do that, then over-correct and go skidding across to the other side. Apparently three drivers died like that nearby, and recently. We take this sobering knowledge with us and remain mindful of it. We shake hands with Jim and take down his shop’s information, and go on our way. As we drive through the West at sunset, Martina notes that many of the road signs have bullet holes in them. I keep failing to notice this fact.
Ely (“Eel-ee”) is Pat Nixon’s birthplace, and that explains plenty. There’s not much to it; a nice city hall, a two-storied middle school along the main drag and within feet of the casinos. We stay at the “White Pine Motel,” where Roberta the proprietor is very kind and tells me I remind her of her sister, who is a lawyer and married now but who used to “be wild” and travel all around. I take this as a compliment. Our room is very basic but cheap; $61 for the night. The comforters and towels are a bit dingy but the sheets are clean and all the motel staff are friendly; I speak with one of them as he is watering all the plants. The scene inside the room is a bit comical; I break out the 8-outlet adapter and we plug in our various devices: charge the phone, both of our laptops, the Kindle reader, the camera battery. The GPS is in the car; hey, we’re not afraid to use the technology available to us.
We put on CNN in the morning while getting ready, and I make hotel reservations in Grand Junction, CO and Hays, KS while the pundits grumble about healthcare. Martina and I yell at the tv whenever anyone uses the term ‘socialized” or attempts to shoot down the president’s reform plan. Then there’s an interview with the outgoing governor of Utah, a really popular guy who surprisingly supports equal rights and benefits for same-sex couples. Just before I turn off the tv, he is remarking on how undemocratic it is for landlords in Utah to be able to evict tenants simply because they “choose that kind of lifestyle.” As I walk towards the car, I think about how outrageous that really is. In this country, they used to do that to you if you were black, or an interracial couple.
