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Motel Sunsets Jason Baldinger
“…and so the day goes, the night comes, and again the day- and still the same, night after night and day after day–majestic, unchanging sameness of serenity, repose, tranquility, lethargy, vacancy–symbol of eternity, realization of the heaven pictured by priest and prophet, and longed for by the good and thoughtless!”
Mark Twain
Day 1: Dull Miles & Acid Dreams
Pittsburgh to Fenton, Missouri (666 miles)
There are endless dull miles; the drift of long hours melting into acid fuzz testaments. Cadres of mentally ill men walk Columbus expressways in pajama pants, gawking at concrete block buildings. These weeds of highway frontage stand as plain reminder of the paranoia that plagues this existence. Passing Plain City, there all plain cities as road expanse stretchs into real strip malls that dull as punctuation. There are reptiods at home at the Pilot, tongues flicking at air, hissing as loud speakers crackling “Reptiod #437 shower stall number 5 is now open and waiting.”
Roadside reminders; “Jesus is Real” lords over yellow and blue blankets of flowers. Spring is crawling slowly, fields stand fallow, but somewhere there are fleeting reminders that if you stand still, you can see the future from here.
The future, lunar landings, jet plane highways. To have been in this one day; soldier in the panhandle of West Virginia, barreling across barren Ohio landscapes, flying fleeting Indiana farmlands and enduring endless Illinois plains. The highway only revealing glimpses at or above the hemline of the skirt of Old Weird America.
Day 2: More Dead Armadillos than Live Wal-Marts
Fenton, Missouri to Carthage, Missouri (350 miles, counting getting lost)
I’ve spent most of the morning trying to figure out a joke for prairie rehab, most of the day trying to find Route 66.
Times Beach; abandoned due to chemical pollution, now as a state park, it is subject to contorted detours leaving the motorist lost for the first time, and ultimately unsuccessful in finding the ability to motor.
Tally ho, carry on, carry on…
Lost and lost again, fabled blacktop locations, mysteries found accidentally. The Mother Road, Route 66 once the greatest dream of all American Roads. Now, a ghostly remembrance winding around Route 44, sometimes close enough you seem about to be swallowed by the monstrous oil-slicked maw of superhighway. Even with a decent map, good eyes, a compass and or some fucked up super intuition this road is beautiful in its impossibility.
Tally ho, carry on, carry on…
Lost and lost again, but in a surprisingly easy stretch of the Mother Road sits the Jesse James Wax Museum, an annexation of Meramec Caverns. A tourist trap of the highest order, a pull my finger joke that you just can’t pass up. I rest on the side of secrecy; you should pay the price of admission and see it for yourself.
Tally ho, Carry Oo, Carry on…
Lost and lost again, Circle Inn, burgers, coke and a waitress who exclaims she would have married her high school sweetheart.
The rest of the details, too boring to rehash, interstate to Mother Road, Mother Road to lost, the Missouri landscape grows tall then falls. These days you give into rolling hills that beckon flat farm lands that wind farther than eyesight allows.
Tomorrow: I go back in time to participate in the great Oklahoma Land Grab.
Day 3: The Battle of Carthage, Fought in the Precious Moment Chapel
Carthage, Missouri to Okemah, Oklahoma (about 300 miles)
After yesterday’s continuous meandering, I put on a lucky T-shirt to court kinder fate. That fate shimmies up and recognizes my better side, as I cross into Kansas, then Oklahoma.
Kansas speaks little in thirteen miles. Oklahoma rustles on flat earth, far then wide.
Today’s Highlights of Oklahoma:
Coleman Theater, Miami – Great Art Deco Theater completed in 1929 and closed for the day. Although some kindly ghost allowed entry and so long as I didn’t interrupt the documentary crew, I had free reign to wander and witness a truly outstanding restoration.
Clanton’s – Since 1927, you could not be modest in declaring: the best fucking chicken fried steak ever!
Totem Pole Park – Outsider art, the world’s tallest totem pole, Indian dreams rising like peyote visions.
The Catoosa Whale- Once a water park, now just a lonely whale floating in a shallow lake.
This boat runs aground in Okemah, Oklahoma–once hometown of Woody Guthrie. After Mexican dinner fortifications, I walk through town, the ghost of Woody at my heels. The town tries hard to hide it, but I spy a bar called the Rocky Road Tavern. Upon saddling a bar stool I get the full view of a drunk Indian making out with this equally drunk white girl, it’s not very appealing pawing but I suppose it’s better than the company. There’s a drunk EMT, across the bar making jokes about darkies, there’s his girlfriend, and a bar maid that’s been on shift for 20 years, she tells me about Woody Guthrie Days. Overall, the Budweiser isn’t cold enough and there are too many stereotypes to be comfortable with. I saddle an old paint, ride into motel sunsets and try and forget the whole thing ever happened.
Tomorrow: Woody and I do some Red State Baiting.
Day 4: White People Heaven
Okemah, Oklahoma to Amarillo, Texas (400 Miles)
Morning starts at the Okemah Historical Society, listening to the mumblings of a seventy year old Okie, whose name I didn’t catch. He’s more of a tour guide terrapin, than a man, he ignores questions, laughs at his own jokes and generally is unintelligible.
Oklahoma City, the third largest city in area in the United States, which can be summed up as: miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of suburbs. Hurrah for tract housing and Wal-Mart. God Bless White People Heaven!
I stop for lunch at this part Tiki Bar, part Safari Themed diner called Mae’s in Yukon. The meatloaf was good with a little jalapeño sauce, the sign outside reminds us that Jesus is real. As you take time to read the back of the menu you learn that Druids hired priests that were Satanist, and Halloween, which is the Devil’s Holiday, comes from that.
From Route 66 to Interstate 44 Western Oklahoma flattens out even more, red dirt grasslands for miles hinting at the world of Texas to come. The real west is beginning to stretch out.
The last towns in Oklahoma as well the first hundred miles of Texas are mostly ghost or semi-ghost towns. Erick has the Sand Hill Curiosity Shop, with old road signs hanging off the building. On windy days you can listen to a symphony of squeaking metal signs. Texoma passed on, giving way to Texas, where grassland expands.
Amarillo, the Big Texan Steak House or gaudy cowboy play land. Fine steaks, animal heads cover the wall, roving string bands, 101 ounce beers, and 72 ounce steaks. There is blood in the water as tourist sharks photograph people in fake cowboy hats eulogizing the death of gluttony as a sin. Wonders of the Tourist Trap! Please God, bless us out here in white people’s heaven!
Tomorrow: The Intergalactic Meatball invades earth; humanity makes its last stand at Glorieta Pass.
Day 5: Waterloo at Bottomless Lake
Amarillo, Texas to Roswell, New Mexico (350 Miles+)
This Cowboy morning drifts the outskirts of Amarillo where somewhere in the distance Palo Duro Canyon, the second largest canyon in the US, defies geography. If they say everything in Tejas is big then they are lying, because words or pictures can’t explain this natural wonder. I will say that any remaining Pittsburgh still hanging on me is now gone after this. I wholly belong to the road.
Cadillac Ranch in a dust storm. Eyes burn, head down I see art, get dirt in my ears.
The last 20 miles of Tejas are incredible, mesas and canyons as far as the eye can see. Texas begins and ends with ghost towns. The last being Glenrio where you could count more stray dogs than people. Tucumcari, New Mexico a land of motels, slowly decaying. Even as the town dies, at least the signs survive.
It was too late for Billy the Kid’s Museum although I did see his grave, safely hidden behind a cage. Then off to Roswell by paved ranch access road where nothing moves for fifty miles except the occasional cow. I have been no stranger to long drives, but these miles move by like they forgot time. I forget time, the “Lone Ranger Theme” plays; dust devils become exciting as they try and skin bluebirds. By the time I pull up stakes I am nothing but numb. One question please. If a UFO crashed in Roswell how the hell did anyone notice?
All set for camping excursions at Bottomless Lake State Park. I borrowed a tent from my roommate, which when I said I’d like to practice setting this up, he said why (I should mention the last time I saw him set it up there were four people standing around attempting to assist him). With the best intention, ninety minutes of attempted assembly, darkness set and moonlight bearing down, I said fuck it. The pieces of the tent at random get tossed in the car. I head off to find a motel. The desert laughs at my Waterloo at Bottomless Lake. I curse my goddamn career as a survivalist and think what a damn shame to lose such a beautiful camping spot.
As I drove back to the lights of Roswell, I still wonder how the fuck anyone noticed a UFO crash around here.
Tomorrow: I take a casting call for the remake of Young Guns.
Day 6: Finding New Lows in Idiot Culture or This Used to be an Ocean now it’s Mountains of Dust
Roswell, New Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico (250 Miles)
Roswell, New Mexico is a tourist trap. Unlike most tourist traps where you laugh for ten minutes and walk away, this is a tourist trap that clings to your heels like a rabid dog. There are two Main streets, perhaps because someone has shame, one a typical business district. The other is an explosion of exploitive capitalist kitsch. There are aliens everywhere, UFO McDonalds Play Lands, R2-D2 mailboxes, the streetlights all have alien eyes, there are planets, spaceships or aliens on every logo. After a walk around two or three blocks as well as a stop at the museum, I believe that I’m converted to being a skeptic.
The rest of the day was spent wandering the Capitan, Manzano, Manzanita and San Pedro Mountains. In Ruidoso, a Mexican American Diner called The All American put ample portions of pork chops down my gullet. At Fort Stanton, I learn of Kit Carson, Buffalo Soldiers, Consumptives and Detainees. At Lincoln, I chased the ghost of Billy the Kid through my Sam Peckinpah imagination.
In the long time encompassing flats, I ran across the ruins of Gran Quivira. One of three Spanish Missions founded throughout the 1500’s, the Pueblo and Plains Tribes came to call these places Cities that Died of Fear. O heart, these places reek of the growing pains of conversion, a precursor to the wonders of Manifest Destiny.
All these tiny Mexican towns passing by complete with stray dogs and heartfelt Adobe Churches. In between, the decay of the desert is everywhere, abandoned houses, tiny tin roof shacks, and a few abandoned cars to spice up the million cows grazing.
Albuquerque, like Pittsburgh is surrounded by mountains approaching from the south, as town gets clearer there is no way not to notice cliff dwelling trailer parks. The Mother Road has been returned to for another night, stretching eighteen miles across town, I see everything the city has to offer, but none of it compares to open face hamburgers smothered in green chilies.
Tomorrow: In Search of Townes Van Zandt’s Colorado.
Day 7: Tripping balls in the desert I am absorbed by the sun.
Albuquerque, New Mexico to Bloomfield, New Mexico (350 miles)
It’s a helluva day! First encounters on mile high mesa over Albuquerque, looking at petroglyphs a man (or woman) made somewhere between 400 and 700 years ago. The only unfortunate thing about this scene is that the ABQ suburbs are sitting less 500 yards away. As I’ve traveled the west, I find the sprawl of the suburbs even more insidious. There are roads leading nowhere except to future sites of housing plans, which have yet to sell a lot. At the same time there’s a Lowe’s nearby so you know someone will be moving in soon.
The lion’s share of today is spent whittling miles across Route 4 or the Jemez Mountain National Scenic Byway. First, to be greeted by Red Rocks, which roll slowly to 16th Century Spanish Mission Ruins then wind to Volcanic Ash rock formations formed by the eruption of a caldera. The real crown jewel of the trip is Bandelier National Monument. Bandelier is a Pueblo cliff dwelling site from the around (or before) the 12th Century. An almost two mile walk takes you past Kivas, up ladders into settlement rooms, past petroglyphs and then onto a bat cave.
As has become typical of these days, late afternoons I make miles up quickly. With the sunset comes blindness, a blindness that disorients. I crawl desert highways that witness a tortoise made of ash, headlights copping a feel of the landscape, sand forming perfect tits, rabbits growing larger the further they get away, oil rigs bobbling like soldiers in the wind, sunsets turning more colors than I’ve classified, and roadside shrines surrounded by angels playing hymns for the dead. Electric in moments, more machine than man and as man I am absorbed by the sun then teleported to Bloomfield.
Tomorrow: Outside of Aztec, I run into Coronado. I lend him my compass, and in a fit of generosity he gives me two Macaw feathers.
Day 8: The Canyons Have Eyes
Aztec Ruins, which are Anasazi Ruins that may have served as a Sun Temple. These places, these moments leave you with no choice but to interrogate the land, hoping to come together at the center of the universe, with the center of the universe. It is these places that remind you to sanctify your stay.
Leaving Aztec headed north, the skyline becomes crowded with the mountains of Colorado, snowcapped, visible from fifty miles away.
The Rocky Mountains are not for the faint of heart, climbing twelve thousand foot peaks, flying back down, two lane roads, no guide rail, brakes stink from the heat of constant use. White-knuckled I reach the bottom then having no choice I repeat the action again. I’ve had these days on the East Coast, but the mountains were tame, kittens perhaps, only about half this size.
Silverton, Colorado marks the first real Wild West looking town, the burger I had wasn’t worth talking about. Outside of Ridgeway I spy the first herd of elk, at the side of the road. I spend hours in the shadow of Mt. Sneffels, which once past I still find it holding sway over this ecosystem; Mount Peale dominates view for the next fifty miles.
With the afternoon comes a little drink of rain, a nap and the strange alien landscape of Utah.
Tomorrow: The Man on the Moon takes Mars to a dancehall, leaving her jilted, he goes home with Utah.
Day 9: Sunday Drives with John Ford
Green River, Utah to Flagstaff ,Arizona (450 Miles)
Part One: Lost in Utah, Outmatched by my Surroundings
There comes a point in time on a trip like this that you run out of words for things you’ve just witnessed. In today’s adventures JB views Arches National Park in Utah and in the afternoon Monument Valley in the Navajo Reservation on the Arizona/Utah border. Words fail at describing the impact of these places, as they have in many other places I’ve been over the last few days. Sure, we could use words like awesome, or amazing, or generically wow, but in truth none of these words come close to the jaw dropping beauty I’ve encountered. I’m speechless often, heart racing; the adrenaline of roads, the wonder of place, the opening of space, the fragmentation of mind.
Part Two: One drunk gringo drunk in a beer hall on Latino Night.
Almost full moon, Flagstaff, Arizona, Club 66 Museum, cougars stuffed, mounted on the walls. This is only the second bar I’ve shuffled into as I try to conserve cash over the long haul. The night air carries a chill, got long sleeves outta the car before I started to walk the half a block here. Seven thousand feet above sea level, I’m drinking Pabst, Tecate, Grand Canyon, Lone Star, all served up by Trisha who is working her first night which she hopes goes in fast forward. Bikers play pool, the DJ arrives with Tex Mex, Mariachi, Latin pop with a beat I’m not sure anyone can dance to. I keep sliding drinks back, renting beer then spilling it back in the men’s room trough after I pay my security deposit. Ghosts crawl around the room before the dance floor fills, you can feel them flitting around the trees, near the fire place, around that creepy barmaid painted on the men’s room wall with half her nipples showing. There’s this goddamn pronghorn antelope staring me down all night and damned if I’m not getting edgy. Latino Night starts to fill, mamacitas sway together, colored lights spin, illuminate the dance floor. The so tough Mexican cowboys keep talking down the shaft of their half-drunk Bud Lights. As I head out, I get called a pussy by the only other white men in the room. I suppose they don’t wanna be outnumbered, but I got news, we’re all outnumber and who really gives a fuck anyway.
Tomorrow: Grand or not Grand, I’ve been told that Bullhead City is the Place
Day 10: Easy Living
Flagstaff, Arizona to Bullhead City, Arizona (via the Grand Canyon, 350 Miles)
The change in time zone or the sun calling through hotel windows has ensured that I’m up by or before seven a.m. Today, with this hangover, being the early bird is inconvenient to say the least. Stumbling through morning rituals, my motivation is to find the diner at the end of the rainbow. In finding said diner and in eating ample portions of Huevos Rancheros I find my sea legs beginning to fortify. Pointing the car north and then climbing to 7000 feet I hear Blind Willie Johnson as Ponderosa pine and White Birch fill the landscape. At 8000 feet the Stills-Young Band takes the airwaves, and the White Birch has given in to a forest of Ponderosa. Now, in the thinness of the air, with the temperature barely topping at forty degrees I start to feel right.
The Grand Canyon on a Monday morning is amusement park crowded. Still, if you take the rim trail, and get yourself about a mile out, suddenly the isolation and pure beauty really start to sink in. I return to the village overhearing the park ranger telling stories of the last Havasupai who had just finishing planting corn when the Government Agents told him he had to move, this is now federal land. That man then hiked to the top of the canyon and cried.
Uriah Heep, Aerosmith and Ram Jam squeak outta the radio as I make my way to Williams, Arizona to rejoin Route 66. The rest of the day spent on the Mother Road through towns like Seligman that may not have ever left the Sixties, towns like Hackberry that barely exist, towns like Kingman that are burned out industrial wasteland and towns like Oatman that may not have left the 1890’s. As miles roll by I think that Arizona, in not having the sweeping landscapes of sister states like New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, got the short end of the stick. Then the Music Mountains and Black Mountains open up and correct me as the day winds down. The Mother Road spends the better part of forty minutes running through these Desert Mountains clinging hairpins along narrow roads looking down over broken rocks and occasional deserted human outposts.
Evening arrives; I moor in Bullhead City, bored by sprawl and another motel that redefines mediocre.
Tomorrow: The Second Third or California, maybe the Beach Boys have got you now.
[END OF INSTALLMENT 1]
Jason Baldinger has been published in The New Yinzer and Shattered Wig Press. He is author of two books of poetry, The Whiskey Rebellion (with Jerome Crooks) published in 2011 by Six Gallery Press, and the forthcoming The Lady Pittsburgh, out in this summer on Speed and Briscoe Press.
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