A Traveling Man

Rifle. Gypsum. Basalt. Marble.Tincup. These are place names in Colorado. Also, Silt. Parachute. No Name.

   In Nevada and Utah,  Oasis and Helper.   

   In Idaho, Culdesac.

   I passed through or near these places on a tour of the West this summer that started and finished in Denver and covered 4,255  miles on the rental car’s odometer.  And I thought, these sagebrush names are not like northeastern ones, which so often look back across the Atlantic to moist, mild England: Salisbury, Avon, Tisbury, Norfolk, Sheffield, Stockbridge.

   Of course the West has gentler names, too, like Colorado Springs, Glenwood Springs, Aspen, and the beautiful Coeur d’Alene.  

   On the other hand,  Lakeville was once called Furnace Village, sort of like Gypsum or Basalt, but we changed it. It must have seemed too harsh.  In Colorado, however, they kept the ugly  name Smeltertown. And western names, even when they denote a town that has boomed on gold, silver, or copper mining and then died, look toward the future, like Golconda, Nevada. It may be that  Providence, RI, suggests God’s care and generosity,  but Golconda says,  “endless diamonds!â€� To be found, perhaps, in the big casino hotel called “Circus Circus,â€� where I stayed in Reno. Or perhaps in the smaller casino in Nevada, just across the line from Utah on I-80, called The Red Garter.

   These random and poorly documented  thoughts drifted through my head as I drove west on the interstates, or, later, north to Idaho, on Route 95, which is, through much of its length, one of the emptiest highways I have ever experienced.  Perhaps the initial explorers were thinking of that when they named the southeastern corner of Oregon, through which 95 pursues its lonely way, Malheur County.

   Perhaps, also, I was succumbing to the zombie-like state one slips into when the car is on cruise control, there is no one on the road, and the “mellow rockâ€� station has Arlo Guthrie singing “Good morning America, how are you?  Don’t you know me, I’m your native son.  I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans.  I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.â€�

   Well, I won’t be gone quite 500 miles today, but as much as  anybody loved that train ride “through the Mississippi darkness down to the sea,â€� I  love this dry western country, with its bare hills and mountains and little meadows with ranch buildings always sheltering beneath the cottonwoods,  alongside some tiny waterway with a name like Little Bear Creek.

   Somewhere on Route 95, between Winnemucca, Nevada and Boise, Idaho, there is a sign giving that day’s temperature (101 when I passed by),  and somewhere on the same route is a warning, “Next Gas, 100 Miles.â€�  Malheur indeed.

   These are some of my thoughts as I make my way north, heading from Yosemite through Nevada, through  Oregon and finally Idaho, where the country becomes greener, richer, more fertile. Where I didn’t see a cow or a steer in Nevada , now I see 15 or 20 of them at a time, grazing peacefully but without a cowboy in sight, and sometimes a horse or two.

   This country may have the disappearin’ railroad  blues, as  Guthrie sang in “The City of New Orleans,â€� but it surely does not have the disappearing automobile blues.  Pickup trucks, SUVs and good-sized sedans sit outside often modest houses. The vehicles are typically shiny, cared-for, sometimes better than the houses. San Francisco and New York City (and Lakeville) may have a sprinkling of Mini-Coopers, but they are  rare on the prairie. Americans  in these  Big Sky states  simply do not seem  ready to take very small cars seriously.

   Billboard somewhere in  middle of Wyoming reads  “Taco John’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken! Two great restaurants under one roof!â€�

   And speaking of roofs, I do not know why so many westerners keep their hats on indoors. In the small towns in the Big Sky states the hats  are often Stetsons or the like, but many men wear billed caps, too. Maybe it’s the glare.

   Hat or no hat, the people behind the counters  in the little roadside restaurants (I avoid the chains) are as friendly as the staff of Lakeville’s On the Run, which for me  is the gold standard for those virtues. But one day as I was nearing my goal of Coeur d’Alene in extreme northern Idaho after driving almost  since dawn, something extra happened. I stopped for a snack, just at Sunday noontime, in the tiny community of Tensed.  Every table in the little restaurant was crowded, so a waitress found a spot for me, almost the very last one, at the counter, sitting at right angles to some other people, who smiled in a friendly way. My food was  a long time coming, and by the time it did I had nodded off at least twice. I recall that they asked where I was going, and maybe  I told them I was headed for Coeur d’Alene to see an old friend from World War II days. And maybe I didn’t. But I don’t really remember because I kept falling asleep.

   Finally I woke up completely and asked for the check. The waitress said, “Those people who were sitting at the counter near you?â€�  (Those people were gone.)

    “They paid it.â€�