Blue Highways: A Journey Into America

  A man named Vern said, “Mines gonna come back, Johnny. Soon as the price of silver gets high enough.”

  “Been slinging that for a hundred years,” Johnny said. He put his arm on my shoulder. “Right here’s the only mine worth talking about now—these Californians and New Yorkers. Mining and ranching together don’t equal half what these boys bring in to the state. I read that in print.”

  A woman playing the slots stepped to the bar for a rum. Her T-shirt once carried a message, but soap and sun had bleached it to unreadability.

  “You wouldn’t play those if you were deaf,” Johnny said.

  “I’d play them if I was dead.” She returned to her relentless pulling.

  I asked what he meant. “People play slots because of sound. Gears turning, money jangling like in an old trolley. Same reason pinball machines got noises. Bandits wouldn’t turn a dime if they didn’t rattle and roll.”

  Johnny and Vern took the bar dice and rolled horses to see who would plug the jukebox. Johnny won. “Don’t play the dirty one, or my wife’ll get wind of it again.” Vern made the selections and went to the toilet. The music came on. Country and western. Thump, thump, thump. “Dang him!” Johnny said. “He played that dang song. Now he’ll tell the wife I paid for it.” Johnny yelled toward the back, “Dang it, Vern!” A cackle from the jakes. Johnny didn’t talk during the music. I think he was listening. As best I could make out, this was the dirty part: “I got the hoss, she’s got the saddle”… dum-dum-dum… “together we gonna ride, ride, ride”… dum-dum-dum… “all night long.”

  We ordered another round. Johnny said, “Bag of flour sold here once for a quarter million dollars. That’s why the town seal’s got a bag of flour on it.”

  “What?” He repeated it very slowly. In my mind I saw a furred, aquatic animal balancing a sack of daisies on its nose. “I don’t follow you.”

  “In bonanza days, after the Civil War, a grocer made a bet with a fella on an election. Whoever lost had to carry a fifty-pound bag of wheat flour up Main Street. Now just walking that street taxes a man. Grocer lost. So he carried fifty pounds up Main to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body.’ He was a Southerner. After he got to the top, he auctioned the bag off and gave the money to charity. Man who bought it auctioned it off and gave the money to charity. And so on. Made ten thousand dollars that day off the same bag. Later, another town got wind of it, and they wanted in. Last time that flour got auctioned was at the nineteen oh four World’s Fair in St. Louis. That dang bag raised better than a quarter million dollars, and that’s why the official town seal is a bag of flour. It’s over in Reno now.”

  “You mean with all the great natural wonders around Austin, the town symbol is a sack of stale flour?”

  “Tell me, mister, what’s more unusual: a pine tree or flour at five thousand dollars a pound?”

  We bought each other a third round, and Johnny said, “Think a smart New Yorker like you can tell a religion by the way people pay for their church?”

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “Three new churches built in Austin after the Civil War when the town had money. Methodist, Episcopalian, Catholic. This is a true fact. One church pays for the building with one pass of the collection plate on Easter Sunday. One pays with donated mining stock, which it sells in the East. And one makes the first mortgage payment by charging admission. Who did what?”

  “All right,” I said, “the Catholics charged admission.”

  “Okay.”

  “Episcopalians had the stock.”

  “Wrong. I said the church was given the stock. Episcopalians had the cash. Methodists had the investments. Businessman’s religion. You oughta know that.”

  Just before I left, the woman at the slots gave the quarter bandit a perfect pull, and the machine clattered coins into the metal cup and onto the floor. One made a long, circling roll across the room and passed by the nose of the sheep dog. The animal half raised its eyelids, saw the coin, and went back to its snooze.

  8

  NEW Pass Station, under cliffs of the Desatoya Mountains and half an hour west of Austin, used to be a stagecoach stop. The cold morning I pulled in to make breakfast, it was a tumble of stone walls and the willow-thatch roof had long since gone to compost. These stations were crude shelters even when the Overland ran the route; a traveler in 1861 described Cold Springs, the next stop west, as a “wretched place, half-built and wholly unroofed.” He spent the night in a haystack. What I took for a ruin was, perhaps, a reconstruction.

  I found my cooler empty except for some sardines and the can of chopped liver, so I went on along the stage road, also once the Pony Express trail and the route of the first transcontinental telegraph. Add to those the journeys of Indians and Forty-niners, and highway 50 is one archaeological layer of communication upon another.

  Regardless of the utter fierceness of desert winters and summers, the Pony Express riders, they say, always rode in shirt-sleeves; considering the real hazards of the job, that may be true. The Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express (the actual name of the Pony Express) used to run notices that are models for truth in advertising. An 1860 San Francisco newspaper printed this one:

  WANTED

  Young, skinny, wiry fellows not

  over eighteen. Must be expert

  riders willing to risk death

  daily. Orphans preferred.

  Despite or because of such ads, never was there a shortage of riders.

  The only baggage the boys carried—in addition to the mail mochila—was a kit of flour, cornmeal, and bacon, and a medical pack of turpentine, borax, and cream of tartar. Not much in either one to keep a rider alive. A letter cost $2.50 an ounce, and, if the weather and horses held out and the Indians held off, it might go the two thousand miles from Missouri to California in ten days, as did Lincoln’s Inaugural Address. But the primary purpose of the service was neither the speedy delivery of news or correspondence; rather, the Express comprised part of the Northern defense strategy during the Civil War by providing a fast, central link with California that Southern raiders couldn’t cut. For the seventeen months the Pony Express existed, it helped to hold California in the Union; what’s more, this last of the old-world means of communication before mechanical contraptions took over left a deep mark on the American imagination. The riders, going far on little, became touchstones of courage and strength.

  9

  FRENCHMAN, Nevada, population four, sat on the edge of a U.S. Navy bombing range. As if that weren’t enough, it was also on a fault zone that still wobbled the seismographic instruments around.

  Frenchman appeared on my map as a town, and, in the desert, it probably was a town, consisting as it did of a cafe-bar-filling station, four-unit motel, trailer, and water tower all huddled on an expanse of dry lakebed mudflats cracked into a crazed jigsaw puzzle of alkali hardpan. In a state abounding with uninhabitable places, Frenchman excelled. Without vegetation, suffering from unrelenting wind and extremes of temperature, no source of food or supplies closer than thirty-six miles, no medical care other than Band-Aids and Mercurochrome, frequently rattled by bombs and earthquakes, Frenchman somehow survived on a single source of income: highway travelers.

  A little east of town, a road sign warned of low-flying airplanes in Dixie Valley. Since Ghost Dancing was not equipped with antiaircraft guns, I took cover in the cafe, where red neon tubes spelled out ICE CREAM and a scrawled sign said NO GUNS IN BAR. Just what you’d expect of a bombing-range cafe.

  The warm knotty-pine room smelled of hot coffee and a baking cake. I ordered a standard road breakfast, then noticed the peppermint-green Hamilton Beach mixer—the old drugstore model—and added a chocolate milkshake. A young woman poured coffee although I hadn’t asked for it. “Better unthaw. Cold air’s numbed you out if you’re ordering a milkshake. I mean, it’s fifty degrees and breakfast time.”

  “Any time is chocolate milkshake time.” She stared at me. “The best part is the beate
rs hitting the metal cup. That’s what puts the flavor in.”

  She went to the kitchen, and I heard her say to someone, “I believe the desert’s got to that boy.”

  Two men sat down. One asked for an egg and a slice of lemon pie, the other a vodka and rootbeer. She didn’t bat an eye at that order. The lemon pie man was a geologist who carried a trail bike in his pickup to check claims in the real back country the truck couldn’t reach. He talked about a mountain lion someone had shot in the Toiyabes; he couldn’t remember when that last happened.

  Vodka and rootbeer said, “Why don’t somebody shoot one them damn mustangs?”

  “Guy down in Tonopah got acquitted for stealing mustangs,” the woman said.

  “Of course. He probably saved the horses. Hell, they’s a place in Idaho where the wild herd went from a hundred to five hundred in seven years.”

  “What’s the problem with the horses?” I asked.

  “The mustangs are sick and starving because they’ve overpopulated,” the geologist said. “Desert can’t support but a few things. Takes fifty acres just to feed a steer, and horses crop grass so short they kill it. Worse than sheep. People get emotional about mustangs because they think they’re wildlife. Horse apples. Half are strays—got brands on them. It’s not even like coyotes that’ve been here all along.”

  “Ever damn thing now is this invarnmint shit,” vodka said. “Gotta call Washington so you can cut sage on your own land. Shoot a sick horse and them invarnmentists sign a petition. Shoot a man and they smile.”

  “Those Eastern laws are creeping in,” the geologist said. “Nine-tenths of this state is in the public domain. Let’s keep out of each other’s way, okay, buckaroo?” I nodded. “Sure, we got to have laws and we do. And I’m not supporting the snake-oil boys in Carson City wanting to legalize Laetrile and Gerovital so they can turn Nevada into the monkey-gland capital of America.”

  The woman brought my breakfast and whipped up the milkshake. Vodka said, “What the hell’s going on with that goddamn milkshake?”

  “Him,” she said. The geologist asked her what the new powerlines coming out of Fallon were all about. “Navy’s converting to television and computers along the bombing runs. No more observers in the towers.”

  “I’d feel safer if the Navy was sitting out here with me instead of just a camera,” the geologist said. “They still drag out old trucks for targets?”

  “Sometimes. But planes are dropping more flares now instead of bombs. Saving money. When they make night runs, those flares light up the whole valley. Fantastic show. Just as well they can see us, I guess. Plane dropped a bomb on the highway last year, and nearly killed some clown in a car.”

  “Exploded on the road?”

  “Just bounced up on the pavement and rolled dead, and he almost ran into it. Came in here afterwards, white as salt. He said, ‘Miss, I haven’t been drinking, but I just got bombed out there.’ We called the Navy, and of course they claimed it was only a dummy bomb.”

  “Trying to get off the hook and ease your mind.”

  “Ease my mind! When a plane off course actually bombed Fairview a couple months ago?”

  “I never heard anything in the news about the Navy bombing a town,” I said.

  “Fairview’s a ghost town up on the ridge above the valley. Nothing but kangaroo rats. Navy sent out a crew and piled rocks back on the walls and shoveled dirt in the craters and picked up the shell fragments.”

  “Don’t tell me this isn’t a crazy state,” the geologist said. “A Navy jet in the desert bombing a ghost town.”

  “The planes used to fly off carriers in the Pacific for runs in here. Can you believe flying off the ocean to bomb Nevada? Now most of them fly out of the base at Fallon. They’ve changed it all over to electronic warfare—‘EW,’ they call it. Planes come in on a bombing run, flying real low. Almost reach up and poke them with a stick. They try to slip in under the radar, and that’s what worries me. Two T–twenty-eight trainers already crashed this year. I don’t mind the bombs, but I don’t want a jet in the cafe.”

  “Is the shelf booze behind chickenwire because of bombs?” I said.

  “Not bombs so much, although when they go off, everything jumps pretty good, especially me. One explosion opened that crack.” She pointed to an inch-wide fissure in the wall. “An explosion on Bravo Seventeen—that’s the closest run—that’s what did that. But the chickenwire’s for earthquakes. The big one in ’fifty-four broke every jug in the house.”

  A miner who had worked at Sheelite Mill a few years ago came in. “I’ll have a Wild Turkey on the rocks,” he said loudly.

  “Not here you won’t,” the woman answered.

  “Why not? Law won’t let you serve miners?” He guffawed at his joke.

  The woman said either, “Don’t have any Turkey,” or “Don’t have any, turkey.” I couldn’t tell which.

  “Make it a Beam then.” He pushed his hat back. “I see Sand Mountain’s moved across the highway.”

  Vodka and rootbeer looked up. “The hell you say.”

  “The hell you say! Used to be on the south side.”

  The geologist, who had pointed out earlier it was a crazy state, turned to me. “Hear that? Couple boys arguing about a mountain crossing the highway.”

  The men went silent, sipped their liquor, each convinced the other was wrong. A trucker came in for coffee. “You’ve lost weight, Lex.”

  “I’m working double shifts to pay for my new rig. Don’t know if it’s worth it. Guess it is for the little wife. Been up thirty-two hours now on a run to the coast and back. Just want to get home today.”

  When he left, one of the men said, “Sure hope the little lady knows Poppa’s on his way. She’s quite the little at-home entertainer.”

  I wasn’t ready for the road so I stayed on after the others left and talked to the woman, whose name was Laurie Chealander. She had attended the University of Nevada for two years while working the night shift for Nevada Bell as a long-distance operator in Reno, but the calls from drunks and would-be suicides depressed her. Looking for change, she had arrived in Frenchman four years earlier with her husband, whose parents had owned the town since 1970.

  “When I got married, friends said I wouldn’t last two weeks out here. They made bets on it. Now I love Frenchman, maybe because no one else does.”

  “Do you get bored? Or lonely?”

  “Let me put it this way: we’ve never plugged the television in. I work an eighteen-hour day with my mother-in-law. There aren’t many people around, but we see ninety percent of the ones here. Always something happening because this is the only place to eat, drink, and buy gas for a long ways east or west and even longer north or south. If it gets too dull, we climb the water tower and watch bombing runs. Night strafing with tracer bullets is better than the valley mirages.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be in the air during strafing runs.”

  “Safer up there than in here when miners from the tungsten pit come around. Maybe that stuff does something to the brain. They’re animals. Not gentlemanly like cowboys. When I was pregnant, one came at me with a pool cue.”

  “What happened?”

  “We ran him out. We’ve got guns hidden. Got to. Nearest law is a half hour away in good weather. Time the sheriff gets here, show’s over.”

  “Sounds like a good place for a holdup.”

  “All they’d get is a few bucks and a lot of lip. Then they’ve got to drive east or west. If they take a back road, you’d see the dust trail for fifteen miles. Can’t get away out here. Desert’s our defense. The only thing I worry about is the diesel generator going out. But I hope we can tie into that new powerline.”

  “And another town of the Old West bites the dust.”

  “Talk about biting the dust, look at this.” She handed me a photograph of the place in 1906. In front of the building was a stone well; painted on it: IF YOU DONT WANT TO PAY FOR WATER LEAVE IT ALONE. Chealander said, “That’s the second cafe. F
irst one was built in the eighteen fifties. We burn down about every thirty years. Ours is the fifth. That’s a hand-dug well in the picture. Now we have to drill three hundred feet to get good water.”

  “I saw where the Overland Stage and Pony Express ran this route.”

  “Everybody who’s ever had the station does the same thing: sell food, something to drink, and a bed. They used to sell oats for horses. We sell regular and unleaded. Paiutes and Shoshones used to come in for a drink, and they still do, except Paiutes call themselves Shoshones now because the Shoshones have a good name and a reputation of good-looking women.”

  “How did the name ‘Frenchman’ come about?”

  “It used to be ‘Frenchman’s Station’ when it was a stage stop operated by somebody with a French name. I’ve heard they couldn’t pronounce it, so they just called him ‘the Frenchman.’”

  Margaret Chealander came out of the kitchen. She had moved to the station from San Francisco with her husband after he retired from General Motors. She said, “We were living here when my husband died, but I’ve never wanted to move. Strange how this god-forsaken place gets in you. In the summer it’s a hundred and ten; in winter it’s fifteen below. Telephone lines get blown down regularly—or they did before the microwave relay came in. When the lines went down, we were cut off, and I mean off. But you get to know yourself out here—you have to. And you get to know the others around because we all have to look after each other. Out here, sooner or later, all of us need help. Look out for yourself, look out for each other. The law of the land.” She came around the counter to sit down. “I think it’s the distance between us that keeps us close. Everything here is important because there isn’t much of it—except weather and dust. Once you see that, you’re not lonely.”