The Life in My Years

The Highway 395 Chronicles: Truck Stops, Lonely Roads and Bio-Terrorism

Paul

August 14, 2023

The ninth in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395. Note: This post rated R.

It’s six o’clock in the morning and the day didn’t begin as planned – I overslept. Next stop is Pendleton in Northern Oregon. It’s a six and a half hour drive, and I’d hoped to get out earlier. That’s six and a half hours, straight through with no stops and no detours, except to fuel up the car and the inner man.

I don’t do road trips that way anymore. I used to, until it dawned on me just how much you can miss when your final destination is the only destination. I’ve learned since, that the destination of a road trip is not a place on the map that you reach at the end of a day’s drive. The destination is not a single place at all. It’s all the places, experiences and people that you encounter from the starting point all the way to the terminus. The destination is the quirky signs along the road. It’s the museums that celebrate things like Spam, barbed wire, Jell-O, and Tabasco; things that you never realized were worthy of a museum. The destination can be a small-town, somewhere out in the boonies, ice cream shop that’s gained national acclaim through word of mouth because the milkshakes there are so fucking, awesomely delicious.

For so many years, my final destination was the only destination, and it makes me wonder just how much I’ve missed.

***

Today’s drive will take me north, with a slight skew to the east, up U.S. Highway 97 to where it ends at Biggs Junction on the southern shore of the Columbia River, the border with Washington State. From Biggs Junction I make a hard right onto Interstate 84 to Pendleton and my rendezvous with U.S. Highway 395, which, in a sense, is the real start of this road trip; an exploration of one of America’s loneliest highways.

***

I spent the night at a Super 8 Motel, located next door to a Pilot Travel Center. Before going to sleep, I put down my reading and listened to the sounds of the big rigs at the travel center; the rumble of idling diesels punctuated at times by the hiss of air brakes. These are sounds that keep some awake, and prompt them to post complaints on travel websites. “I couldn’t sleep for the sound of big rigs all night long.” Well, maybe you should’ve realized that you’re parking your head a few hundred feet where long haul drivers are parking their rigs. Me? I enjoy those sounds. They remind me that I’m embarked on the adventure of a road trip. They’re sounds that lull me to sleep.

The Highway 395 Chronicles: Part Two. The Road to Klamath Falls

Paul

12 comments

August 4, 2023

Banner Photo: Dorris, California

The eighth in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395.

Eugene Charles Valla spent four years of his young life hanging onto the edge of his boyhood dream. Valla was 21 years old in 1947, when he was signed to a minor league contract with the New York Yankees organization. His dad, also named Eugene, was a fleet footed outfielder who spent eight seasons in the minor leagues, most with the San Francisco Seals. Minor league balls was in the genes.

Gene (later known by his nickname, “Duke”) spent two seasons with the Ventura (California) Yankees, followed by a split season with the Kansas City Blues and the Newark Bears, before he was shipped back to Kansas City. Valla learned the grind of minor league ball. He played for love and a pittance. He rode buses to play against teams with odd sounding names in cities that longed for the majors, just as their players did; the Toledo Mud Hens, Indianapolis Indians, St. Paul Saints, and Louisville Colonels.

“Duke” never wowed the Yankees enough to get a taste of the big club. He was 25 years old when he appeared in only 20 games for his hometown team, the San Francisco Seals, and then found himself out of baseball for good.

Gene Valla would later assume ownership of his father’s business, The Blue Gum Restaurant and Lodge, just south of Artois, California. Valla died in 2009.

***

I’m stopped outside of The Blue Gum Restaurant. By accounts it was a popular place in its day. Now it has the sad look of a place that will never see another paying customer, and will continue to deteriorate until a “mysteriously set” fire puts it out of its misery. A passerby called the new owners, or maybe they’re just squatters, “a bunch of Jesus freaks.” I stopped to wander around out of morbid curiosity, drawn less by the building and more by the “Jesus freaks” signs. One of the signs announcing that Jesus is Coming Soon is placed next to a No Trespassing sign. I can’t help but wonder if no trespassing applies to Jesus as well as the rest of us. In any case, I did note the irony. I mean, isn’t Christianity supposed to be a welcoming thing?

After wandering around I head back to the car. I’m not about getting into it with some pissy, and possibly armed, “Jesus freaks”.

***

Is America a Racist Country?

Paul

22 comments

July 29, 2023

Banner photo: Detail of a mural in Oakland, painted in the aftermath of the slaying of George Floyd

Tim Scott said it. Nikki Haley said it. Both are running for president and both are out on the campaign trail road testing the lie that’s become a GOP shibboleth. That these two are people of color is what causes my eyes to bug out and my head to shake.

“America is not a racist country,” they said.

Taken at face value, that statement is a myth.

In the interest of transparency, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have said essentially the same thing. It is after all, the realpolitik thing to do.

That said, there are differences. While Biden, Harris and other Democrats might say that America is not a racist country, they recognize that racism exists in America and they are quick to call out its instances. Republicans, on the other hand, not only consistently refuse to call out racism, some have been busy little bigots in their promotion of policies that are clearly racist.

From the Democrats, ‘America is not racist’, is a statement describing values and hope tempered by the reality of existence. From Republican mouths, ‘America is not racist’ is fantasy and campaign hooey.

There are examples aplenty but one need only focus on two recent events to prove that the GOP is doing everything but making the white sheet its party uniform to demonstrate that it has a race problem.

***

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge (Monthly Monochrome): Unbound

Paul

19 comments

July 24, 2023

Banner photo: Shipshewana, Indiana

Dan, author of the site, Departing in Five Minutes, leads this week’s Lens Artists Challenge, and he’s selected the topic, Unbound: Escaping Your Confines And Seeing The World. Once again, I’m combining the Lens Artist Challenge with my Monthly Monochrome series.

Dan writes, “From a day trip to a road trip to a great escape to a far away place, you have the thrill of a new experience.”

For me the much of the thrill is in leaving the planned itinerary to see where an offramp goes and what an unintended detour leads to.

***

Mabry Mill, Virginia
In 2015, Cora and I took a trip to Washington D.C. to see the San Francisco Giants play the Washington Nationals. We extended our stay in the nation’s capital and then took a road trip through Virginia. On the way towards Richmond, our final destination before flying home, I detoured to see the Mabry Mill.

Edwin Boston Mabry began construction on the mill in 1903. It started as a blacksmith and wheelwright shop and then, in 1905, became a gristmill. Five years later, Mabry had installed a double-bladed jigsaw, a wood lathe and a tongue and groover, converting his operation into a combined gristmill and sawmill.

In 1938, the National Park Service acquired the mill and by 1942, the mill was completely restored. Since then, the Mabry Mill has become one of the most photographed structures in America.

Taking Flight: From Purgatory to Madrid

Paul

9 comments

July 17, 2023

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
It’s a constant migration. Every hour of every day of every year. A single year’s migration consists of more than 200 million travelers on over 2 million flights. Short hops and long hauls, they pass through podunk airfields and airports that are self contained cities. Not unlike the Arctic Tern, the travelers are moved by an instinct. Unlike other species that migrate for food or reproductive instincts, the travelers are driven by an impulse to see new things and new places and to meet new people.
It all seems so chaotic. Imagine if a giant hand were to peel the roof off of San Francisco International Airport. From an airliner’s eye view, the observer might think he was looking down on an ant colony. A horde scurrying in all directions, each individual with his or her own mission.
Cora and I were gliding on a moving walkway in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, one of those city sized airports. The long steel belts can seem like a Godsend after you’ve unfurled yourself from a cramped airline seat and are faced with a trek from one end of a boundless terminal to the other end. That’s when they work. If you’ve caught a walkway that’s worn out from hauling the migration then you pack it and hack it. We’d just deplaned from San Francisco (SFO) and were headed for another terminal far, far away to catch a flight to Madrid.
As we were swept along with the mass, moving without moving, I watched a hollow eyed multitude, confused and harried, being hauled unconsciously along the steel belt and I thought of parts on an assembly line. They dragged bags, kids and the elders who couldn’t keep up, and wore polar expressions of anticipation and exhaustion.
As I glided along in my own stupor, it occurred to me that there was something Orwellian about this airport migration. Directed by LED status boards and the instructions of a spiritless omnipresent voice from unseen loudspeakers, the weary travelers reminded me of automatons; silent, weary, eyes front, unflinching and unquestioning, conveyed from one unknown point to another.
The moment we enter the airport we give ourselves and our persons over to various agents, guards, attendants, handlers, assistants and machines. From one line to another and through detectors and into a scanner that sees through our clothes but, ‘not to worry,’ we’re assured, the scanner doesn’t reveal the goodies.
When was it that the excitement, the glamor and the romance of the airport turned into a temporary layover in purgatory? Was it when armed nuts demanded that planes be diverted to Cuba? Was it Bin Laden or that other nut who tried smuggling a bomb in his shoe? Maybe it was when the airlines decided that stock prices count more than the comfort of the flying public. I mean, what’s the traveling public gonna do about it? Take the bus? I guess it’s some measure of all of it.

Mourning The New York Times Sports Section, By Guest Writer Marc David

Paul

4 comments

July 14, 2023

My good friend Marc David is a journalist, author, avid runner (he has an outlandish, blows my mind, years long streak of consecutive running days without a day off), cross-country coach, teacher’s aid and traveler. When he learned that The New York Times killed its venerable sports section and shipped the body parts to its online site, The Athletic, Marc wrote the piece below. It’s a short poignant reminiscence about his years as a sports writer, the death of The New York Times sports section and the demise of sport journalism in general.

***

When I think of the New York Times, I think of a sports department teeming with legends. I think of Red Smith, Dave Anderson, Michael Katz, Roy S. Johnson, William Rhoden, George Vecsey.

I think of a young sports writer in the 1970s approaching Red Smith at a National League playoff game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia and introducing himself. “Mr. Smith. My name is Marc. I just wanted you to know how much I enjoy reading your articles. It is great to meet you.”

Today, the Times sports department is a thing of the past, swallowed whole by The Athletic. The Times purchased The Athletic eighteen months ago, so it is not as if those perusing the seminal newspaper’s website will go sports-less … they will be guided to another website. Still, this is the latest blow to the written word and another in a long line of counter-punches that have rocked the newspaper industry since many readers chose the Internet to get their (sports) news.

It is a sign of the times. Thirty-six years ago, I had to make a choice of taking a sports editor position at a small Caribbean daily or becoming a copy editor at the Arizona Republic. I opted for the former. Today, even if I was 36 years younger and infinitely more talented, I doubt whether any newspaper offers would come my way.

Most of us have learned to adjust. It’s a brave new world we live in today. I still write sports articles occasionally for newspapers. However, I no longer consider myself a newspaper journalist. I gave that up 11 years ago.

Lens-Artists Challenge: Simplicity

Paul

17 comments

July 12, 2023

Philo is the host for this week’s Lens Artist Challenge and he chose the topic, Simplicity.

Simplicity isn’t necessarily such a simple thing, so I decided to take my cues from the host. In his post Mr. Philo suggests making a single subject the star.

Valve wheel on a vintage locomotive

My Independence Day 2023 Struggle

Paul

25 comments

July 4, 2023

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It’s the most quoted sentence from the Declaration of Independence, the document that America celebrates every July fourth.

When he penned those exalted words, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and the idea that “all men are created equal,” Thomas Jefferson didn’t have everyone in mind. Unalienable rights were reserved for free white men. During his lifetime, Jefferson owned over 600 enslaved people, whose “Life,” from cradle to grave, was not their own, who had no “Liberty,” and were given no opportunity for the “pursuit of Happiness.”

And while Jefferson may have put the words “all men are created equal,” to parchment, there’s evidence that Jefferson saw little humanity in the people he enslaved. Eighteen years after the Declaration, in a letter to Madame Plumard de Bellanger, Jefferson imparted some investment advice meant for a family friend, counseling the friend to invest “every farthing in lands and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5. to 10. per cent in this country by the increase in their value.”

Jefferson’s apologists often turn to his public statements, calling slavery, “against the laws of nature,” “a hideous blot,” and “a moral depravity.” The problem with that is, talking a good game counts for nothing; not for those who lived in servitude nor for the historical record. Slavery may have been against nature’s laws but it certainly fit in nicely with 18th century Virginia’s laws of agrarian economics, and Jefferson was not above taking full advantage of those laws.

The Black man’s humanity didn’t come 11 years later when racism was baked into The Constitution with the three-fifths clause, stipulating that, for the purpose of representation, three out of every five enslaved people were counted towards the population of the slave holding states. It wasn’t lost on the southern states that counting a Black person as three-fifths of a man gave the southern, slave holding states, a huge leg up in the Electoral College (Five of the first seven presidents were southern slavers).

***

Monthly Monochrome: Portraits of Spain

Paul

16 comments

June 26, 2023

If I were asked to describe the face of Spain in two words I would offer, “joyful,” and “lighthearted.”

During three weeks of traveling throughout the country, whether it was in the metropolis of Barcelona or stopping for an hour in little Plasencia, I rarely saw anger or gloom or pessimism.

Okay, sure, there was that very first night in Spain and the sulky waiter at La Casa del Abuelo in Madrid. From seating, to the first portion of our meal he had the demeanor of a man who’d just sipped a bad batch of Tempranillo. It made us wonder if we’d stumbled into a nation of surly waiters. As it turned out, he’d apparently drawn the short straw and had to tend to the tourists; the greenhorns who didn’t know that in Spain, one doesn’t go to dinner at eight. He was a one man receptionist, bartender, maitre’d, waiter, cashier and busser. As reinforcements arrived, the man’s frown was turning upside down and by the time we left he was a happy chappy, bidding us a cheery “Gracias,” and offering a wave, as we left.

That half hour or so was the outlier. Everywhere we went we felt like we were in the presence of friends.

***

El Mercado San Agustín was a five minute walk from our hotel in Granada. One Saturday morning, just as the market was waking up, we wandered around the many kiosks and purveyors. Though there were few customers, the place was already bustling. As the early shift busied itself with opening, more workers streamed in. It would, like every day at the market, be a busy day.

We were standing around figuring out what to do when a young woman motioned us over and asked us if we were looking for desayuno (breakfast). She had a bright, engaging smile.
“Si,” I answered, in a tone that must have sounded a bit uncertain. What was she trying to sell us?
Almost as if by legerdemain, a menu appeared in her hand and she began pointing out the different offerings. Her smile and her joy were infectious and we followed her to a table as if she were some culinary pied piper.

As Cora and I ate our breakfast I was struck by the camaraderie and cheer. There was work to be done and the day would be long and busy, but I saw no sign of discontent or grousing. Everyone seemed happy to be there and pleased with the company of their coworkers. Shouted hellos between kiosks, gossiping with regular customers and greetings for newcomers.

The Highway 395 Chronicles: Lone Pine and The Western Movies

Paul

15 comments

June 18, 2023

The seventh in a series of occasional posts about tripping along U.S. Highway 395.

After our visit to Manzanar, Cora and I continued our trip south along Highway 395 to the last stop on our journey, Lone Pine, population 3700 and a visit to the Alabama Hills and the surrounding area.

Festus Rogers squinted at the boulder strewn ground in front of him and saw right away, that it was good ground for a man bent on ambush, and thus bad ground for him. The trail he’d been following was arrow straight as it passed through the sagebrush carpeted flats. Straight, that is, until it hit this hard land of rock-bound gullies. Here the trail twisted past boulders and around odd rock formations. The path narrowed, grew faint in spots and nearly disappeared in others, as it rose and fell with the contours of that hilly terrain. It was as if the almighty had thrown a tantrum sometime during creation and just decided to toss boulders around willy-nilly. After making his way through a few switchbacks, Rogers pulled up the reins on his horse Jaspar, “Woah.” Festus took off his wide brimmed hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a dusty sleeve, leaving a streak of dirt on his brow. “It’s hotter n’ the devil’s griddle,” he said, before taking a pull from his canteen. Festus scanned the bluffs above. He’d been bounty hunting enough to know that his quarry, a named Kincaid, would probably make his stand in this Satan’s garden in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert. Kincaid was wanted for a string of robberies and killings from Tucson to Albuquerque to Las Cruces. Now he was on the run, headed for Ciudad Juarez, where Kincaid would be a free man, spending his ill gotten gains on tequila and senoritas “Helluva a place for an ambush, ain’t it, Jaspar,” he said, patting the horse’s neck. He pulled the Winchester 30-30, from its scabbard, double checked that it was loaded and then laid it across the pommel of his saddle. Festus then pulled his Colt revolver, and checked the six chambers to make sure the big pistol was loaded. He ran a finger along his gun belt feeling the lead slugs. He knew he was well armed, he just needed that tactile reassurance. Satisfied, Festus gave Jaspar a little nudge with his boot and rode on. Trusting Jaspar to make his way along the trail, Festus scanned the crags and natural hideouts and lairs. He knew Kincaid was lying in wait. It was only a matter of time before the outlaw would make himself known. Festus didn’t have to wait long. As Jaspar rounded a long curve in the trail, Festus heard the crack of a rifle shot and ducked instinctively. The ping and whine of the ricochet to his left told Festus that Kincaid was in the boulders off to the right. He jumped from Jaspar and took cover behind a boulder.
“That you, Kincaid?”
“It is Rogers. I been a feelin’ you trackin’ me. I’m gonna end it between us here and now.”
“Give yourself up Kincaid. Just make it easy on the both of us. I don’t wanna have to kill ye, but the reward money is just as green whether I bring you in dead or alive.”

Lone Pine, Alabama Hills, Hollywood and the horse operas
Ah, the old ambush scene. If, like me, you’re a fan of Westerns, then you’ve probably watched a similar scene played out in any number of movies and TV shows. The old box canyon ambush is a staple of Westerns, and there’s a better than even chance that the one you saw was shot in the Alabama Hills just west of the town of Lone Pine.

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