Turning off the Interstate a half-hour out of town, we headed north on US 93. I’d never been through this section of Nevada before. I had assumed it would be like all the other roads throughout the West, where you usually see a town, a ranch, a mobile home, something at least every 30-40 miles. But here – 120 miles from Vegas to Alamo through complete desolation. Even the sage brush looked lonely, individually highlighted in the endless high beam from my Dodge. Dave had spent his whole life in Long Island and Los Angeles, and he was totally wired by the emptiness.
We had gassed up in Baker, but the neon nightmare of the Vegas stripe numbed us into forgetting to check the fuel gauge as we drove through North Las Vegas past Jerry’s Silver Nugget. On into the night we sped, slurping the Persian Gulf prime at 15 miles per. As we turned off I-15 onto old 93, Dave stirred enough out of his reverie (induced by a combination of the blank panorama and Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia” sputtering in from KTWO in Casper, Wyoming) to rustle the Rand McNally from under his seat.
Flicking on the under dash light, he mumbled, “Does Nevada come before or after New Jersey? Hmm, I though Nebraska was a town, not a state!” I was all set to berate his bi-coastal provincialism, accuse him of confusing Idaho with Iowa, when he sat bolt upright and said, quite loudly for the compact space we sat in, “Jesus!”
At his outburst, my elbows locked the steering wheel; I started to see lights flashing, and dropped our speed a bit to just under 80 mph.
“Sorry. Did I wake you?” he said. “Look – there aren’t any towns on this map until Alamo!”
“So?”
“Well, that’s about 80 miles from here. How much gas we got left?”
The tank was a quarter full.
In our sleepless state, it took us forty miles to argue out the merits of slowing down to 60 to conserve fuel, versus trying to hit Alamo before midnight, when, theoretically, a gas station might close. Finally, we decided that with two more towns, Caliente and Pioche, 10 and 20 miles beyond, we should slow down, enjoy the country side, and hope the road went downhill.
Alamo proved a bust. The one station there closed at eight pm.
“How much gas now?!”
“We just hit the bottom line – maybe a gallon or two left.”
“Think there’s a station in Caliente?”
“Well, we either park here all night until this one opens, or see what’s up ahead, right?”
“Sounds good to me!”
Caliente sits at the bottom of an arroyo, a one-horse town bracketed by railroad crossings. In the middle was a blazing Chevron sign, giving enough light for the whole town.
“Looks like it’s open!”
“Ah, you saw Vegas. These bastards here burn lights just to keep the juice flowing out of Lake Mead. It’s their patriotic duty to help keep the Colorado River rolling.”
But, praise the Lord and pass the petrol, the place was busy pumping gas – the only place open between Vegas and Ely, 120 miles to the north.
The excitement of our gas scare had fully revived Dave, and he offered to drive. “Which way?” he said.
“Just follow 93 until we get to Baldy – it’ll be on your left when we reach the Yacht Club.”
“What?!”
But I was already gone, the Beatles crooning me to sleep with “Let it Be”.
“Hey – Hey! Wake up; ya gotta see this!”
“Wha – what? Are we there yet? Geez, it’s still dark. What is it, anyway?” I said, seeing nothing but mountains – valley – mountains all around me. Not even a rock to break the central Nevada monotony.
“Look!” Dave said, his eyes wide with a manic glee induced by seeing nothing but straight-line pitch dark blacktop for 2 1/2 hours. “A turn – we’re gonna turn!”
“So?”
“So?! It’s the first one in forty miles. This place is amazing – there’s nothing here. No houses, no cars, no rivers, just a couple of rabbits jumping across the road now and then.”
I looked at the speedometer. It was somewhere above 100. I went back to sleep, mumbling, “Wake me when we get to Jackpot.”
Naturally, Dave couldn’t wait until then. He had been sneaking peeks at the map, and had discovered that the next landmark would be a spot called Contact, thirty miles before the border burg of Jackpot.
I awoke to silence – no tires, no engine no muffler. Just the creaking of a metal sign dangling from a chain outside my window.
Dave was not in the car. Wearily, I turned my head to see him tapping on my window. His eyes were blazing brighter than the late night moon slung low over the desert hills. He was pointing at the sign, smiling gleefully, raving some gibberish about “so small, it’s on both sides!” and cackling his asthmatic laugh like some allergic refugee from a Marx Brothers marathon film festival. I decided the time had come for me to take command; he’d obviously cracked, and couldn’t even be trusted with so simple a function as piloting a motor car down a deserted unbending road. Now he was probably going to tell me he’d stopped because this was the first sign he’d seen in 2 hours. Just before I flipped the door handle to “open”, I realized that the white stuff coming from his mouth was frosted breath – that maniac was out there freezing in his short-sleeve California special Dacron/polyester college frat boy shirt. Arming myself with ski cap, gloves, and down parka, I stepped outside and was shaken fully awake by the sudden complete reality of the cold, dry air. I was at that time half-way through my first Southern California winter; never have I been so shocked by a blast of cold air; how quickly we forget, I mused. Still, there was Dave to consider and, hopefully, corral back into the shotgun seat. I briefly contemplated direct physical force, but quickly realized that, encumbered as I was by my cold weather accoutrements, he easily had the upper hand in that department.
So I tried humoring him.
“Whatsamatter this time, huh?”
“Look, this sign: this place is so small, they’ve really got the name on both sides of the sign!”
It was true. And you can verify it for yourself, should you ever drive through the town of Contact, Nevada, 30 miles south of Jackpot, on US 93.
Despite all obstacles, we eventually did arrive at my sister’s in Ketchum by 9:30 in the morning. She lived in a little gingerbread house half-way out Warm Springs road, just above the golf course. We started to bring our stuff in, stacking it all in the corner of her kitchen. In the middle of our third trip, Leigh walked in, looked at our pile of clothes, skis, and books, and started laughing. We looked quizzically at each other, then at the pile.
“What’s so funny?!” I demanded.
“What are you planning to do with all these books?” she laughed.
If you ever saw pre-meds grind in college, you can triple the intensity they have for studying, and you’ve got the average medical student. We had decided we might get a few a few hours of study time in while we were there, so we’d brought along several textbooks, as unconsciously as some people bring tooth paste. But medical texts are each about two or three inches thick, so the pile was about three feet high and weighed fifty pounds – just the bare essentials, really, we’d thought. Wouldn’t go anywhere without ’em, just like a spare pair of underwear.
“What books?” I said, innocently.
“Hmm, I see we’ve got to loosen up your attitude a little bit. King! Come in here a minute,” Leigh said.
Her boyfriend, King, came in from the living room and surveyed us. He had lived all his life in Ketchum and sported that odd combination of rural airs and clothing, with jet-set sophistication common to residents of mountain resorts.
“What’s up, Leigh?” he asked.
After introductions, she explained the situation, meaning the books.
“Well, they came here to ski; maybe we’d better go skiing!”
(To Be Cont’d)