HERE'S ONE VERSION I WROTE ABOUT DAY 7 FOR THE book that never got finished. Part of the reason I was spinning my wheels on this project was because I'd write multiple versions of the same day, never feeling like I got it right. But after 13 years of letting this stuff languish, my attitude now is — "Screw it. Get it down and be done with it." So here we go:
DAY 7
Destination: Amarillo, TX to El Reno, OK
Date: 7.14.97 (Monday)
Mileage: 20,428 to 20,663 (235 miles)
Bar(s): Reno Cocktail Lounge
Imbibed: 2 1/2 Miller Genuine Drafts
There's a million things the road has taught me. One of the most important being this: Never underestimate the potential benefits of a bad break or unfortunate fork in the road.
One of my most memorable rendezvous with this philosophy occurred when I was 25. I was about a month into riding my mountain bike from L.A. to Boston when I encountered an out-of-service bank machine in a strange new town. This was back in the days before ATMs began multiplying like rabbits. I was in the midst of slogging through Kentucky, armed with a thin handbook from Bank of America that gave the location of every ATM in America that accepted my bank card.
And the only ATM in Bardstown, KY wasn't working.
Which was a serious problem. Due to the fact that I was penniless. With neither car nor credit card. If this had been the days of the scarlett letter, I surely would've had the loser's "L" tattooed on my forehead. Especially when I realized that the nearest acceptable ATM was more than 40 miles away in Louisville.
Turns out, that's where the pretty girl in line behind me — who looked like a young Jessica Lange — was living. She glanced at my bike, loaded down with enough gear to get me from coast to coast, and asked what I was doing. After hearing my sad story, Emily offered me a ride to an ATM up the road in Louisville — the town that spawned Muhammed Ali and Hunter Thompson, 2 of my all-time favorite wordsmiths.
By the next morning, I'd met Emily's mom and gone to dinner with her sister — both of whom were no doubt curious about the stranger Emily had brought home. We stayed up 'til 2 in the morning swapping life stories and I even spent the night at her 1-bedroom apartment.
All thanks to that busted ATM.
And, no, we didn't sleep together. Thanks for asking. But I did learn a thing or two about being patient through life's tiny nightmares.
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That's why I knew somehow today's 19th nervous breakdown would work out for the best. In another time, another place, I would've been PISSED about what happened.
Okay, for a while there I WAS pissed.
How many mechanical nightmares can a person have in one week?!
The bus ran better BEFORE I took it in for the pre-trip tune-up. Now that $1200 I spent on preventative maintenance in L.A. is turning out to be my worst investment since I gave a guitar player named "Shark" $100 bucks for a pyramid "opportunity" that evaporated as soon as I bought in.
Rotten luck or fuck-up? You tell me.
My friend G.G. chimed in with a piece of unsolicited advice when I left L.A.: "Just don't make it 100 days, 100 mechanics." G.C. was all too aware of my endless automotive horror stories. But his innocuous little comment has been on my mind ever since I left California. All week long I'm thinking — that visit with the mechanic in Vegas, the conversation with the mechanic in Flagstaff, the phone call back to my guy back in L.A. — all pivotal moments that I SHOULDN'T be writing about because of what that bastard G.C. said.
Well, too bad. What happened today can't be avoided.
Today is the 14th day of the 7th month — on Day 7 of my trip. You'd think with all those 7s and multiples of 7 floating around — the day I drove past a town called Shamrock, Texas, no less — there would have been some GOOD luck in the air.
Not quite.
Then again, if you spend $1200 bucks to fix a rig you only paid a total of $2000 for, you'd think that rig has been serviced well enough to keep from breaking down every day.
Think again.
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Here's the scenario: We're on a semi-busy stretch of Oklahoma interstate an hour outside of Clinton, which is less than an hour past Carter. Closing in on 6 p.m. under charcoal gray skies. In the midst of a serious thunderstorm that's spitting raindrops the size of lougees. And I'm hunched over the VW's large pizza-sized steering wheel. My nose 6 inches from the windshield — which is fogging up nicely, since my defroster doesn't work.
Neither does my heater, for that matter. But that's not really an issue, seeing as how it's so fucking humid out here.
And then came the sputtering.
At 60 mph in a downpour, my bus suddenly starts lurching and popping, choking and wheezing. My muffler's farting firecrackers and now I'm doing 50...35...20. With a battalion of big rigs in the rearview barreling down on me through the rain.
Damn right I panicked. I'm either not vain enough, or too stupid, to deny it. But I'm a coward. I admit — I'm yella. In that spot, my hazards are flashing. My heart's jumping out of my chest. My fingers are locked in a death grip on my large pizza wheel. And I'm getting a grim visual of what it looks like when a speeding big rig swats a 25-year-old tin box-on-wheels across wet Oklahoma pavement.
I think the decapitation occurred on the 3rd roll.
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But somehow I made it. Guided by the spirits of Kerouac, Kuralt and any other fool crazy enough to dive into the belly of the beast, I was able to coax the tired old German lemonade wagon off the interstate.
A cluster of trees loomed a few miles on the horizon. I've been on the road enough to know that after endless rolling hills and corn fields, the tree cluster is heartland shorthand for a town with a gas station. Maybe even a motel.
I must've driven it 3, 4 miles like that — all stops and starts, lunging and gagging. Off the interstate. Down the bridge that crossed over I-40. Onto the long road to God knows where. Barely staying alive. In 1st or 2nd gear the whole way.
At one point the bus looked dead in the water. Miles of highway stretched behind us without a single car in sight. Ahead was a slight hill, the crest of which we barely made. As we reached the top and began rolling along a slight downhill grade, east towards the tree cluster, I felt my crapmobile about to burp its last breath.
Then I realized that if my machine were to stop dead right now, we'd be directly in front of the FORT RENO FEDERAL PENITENTURY.
More panic. There were now no other cars on the road. No inmates in the yard. No guards at the gate. The only sign of life was the guy stressing in the wet red-and-white hippie van from California. And I'm thinking — I break down in front of this place and they might turn an inmate or 2 loose on me. Just for kicks.
I'm not quite sure how — by the grace of God or me starting and re-starting the engine after it died every 5 seconds? — but we made it to the cluster of trees beyond the big house. Even got to a garage, where a greasy young guy with a small team of moles on his face said he couldn't even get to my ailing ride until tomorrow night.
That's how I found this here Budget Motel, which is over-priced even at $25 bucks a night. It's across the street from the big city-sized auto repair shop. A little hint to you travelers: If it's a mom and pop operation with "budget" in the name, you best lower your expectations. That way you won't react too harshly to conditions like those I'm coping with right now in room 1 — a musty over-sized rat hole with an old AC wall unit that seems to be coughing out the humid fumes of a high school locker room after football practice.
Then there's the dysfunctional fire alarm and that annoying BLOOP...BLOOP...BLOOP every 7.9 seconds. Sure, if a tragic fire sweeps through the place tonight I'll surely perish. But like some middle America McGyver, I yanked the Duracel coppertop from the back of the thing, detonating the buzzing time bomb. Saving me the disgrace of screaming into the streets at 3 a.m. like some homicidal maniac from the prison up the road.
When I checked in I was greeted by a mini newspaper advertising various local businesses. On the cover was a child's drawing of a park, with a sign that read:
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I'd soon learn all about El Reno family values from a woman who shared some ugly secrets with me at a nearby bar. But first, I needed to check out my surroundings. The rain had stopped, so I took a quick spin on my mountain bike. Through the comatose little town that had me feeling like I was twilight zoning.
Hello?...Does anybody actually live here?
Downtown El Reno — with its frozen in time Mayberry vibe — was almost entirely empty. Shut down and silent by 7.
Determined to find someone who actually inhabited this place, I rode back towards my dingy motel and beyond. Looking for any sign of life besides the multi-moled mechanic and the Pakistani woman who checked me into the lowly Budget. I pedaled past solid red brick homes on curbless empty streets. I rode by teenagers hanging out in a damp parking lot next to the local rodeo arena.
A quick stop for dinner chow at the local Valu-Mart — a honey-I-shrunk-the-store version of Safeway — was like walking into a carnival freak show. A skinny toothless geezer with 1 foot and 4 toes in the grave shuffled by with just enough of a pulse to push a mini-shopping cart.
In the nearby cereal aisle I caught a glimpse of the old man's companion: a large woman in stained sky blue stretch pants that could stretch no more. Her dirty gray t-shirt looked like it may have been white once upon a time. I caught her looking at me like I was the X-Files freak.
But I was too busy debating whether to buy the Just Right or the Lucky Charms to care. Due to my dire circumstances today, I felt compelled to forgo the nutritional value and go with the product with the word "lucky" in the name. Plus, I love those marshmallow treats.
With dinner procured, I dropped off the goods at my room and kept riding. Past a beauty salon, an Auto Zone and a nearly empty junior college no bigger than your typical SoCal junior high school.
Then I figured out where everyone else in this town of 15,000 was. If they weren't in their homes or farmhouses or at the Valu-Mart or just hanging out in a dirt parking lot, chances are they're at the Wal-Mart out near I-40. There must've been 100 cars in that parking lot.
Meanwhile, back in the old downtown district, there were almost no cars. The place was a ghost town.
Who needs a quaint little downtown district when you can buy your clothes, shop for groceries AND eat McDonald's all at the massive one-stop Wal-Mart monster? Yet one more snapshot of America's idyllic past killed by the culture of convenience.
At least the Lucky Charms worked.
Because when I got back to the room, the weak-ass AC unit was unable to do much good fending off the killer humidity. So I decided to at least ACT like a man and take a look at my car's engine. Maybe the problem will be so obvious, even a mechanical idiot like me could figure it out.
Well, it was and I did. A small tube from one of the 2 carbs had come off. Even I could see that. I reattached it in 13 seconds and started the old boy up. Much to my surprise, the sputtering had ceased. I took the bus for a test run and discovered...YES!...we're back in business. With crossed fingers, legs and anything else we could find to cross. Praying that tomorrow everything will be alright.
But first a shower. Then it's off to learn the dirty little secret about El Reno family values at a half-empty cowboy bar across the interstate.
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The Reno Cocktail Lounge was nothing fancy. A simple shoebox of cinderblock next to the Red Carpet Inn. By the time I walked in just before 10, the rain had let up for good. There were only a few cars in the gravel parking lot, mostly American-made trucks. The spot was a few hundred yards south of I-40, where I nearly became a grilled big rig burger earlier today.
If the place had any windows, I sure didn't see 'em. The better to keep those secrets hidden.
Most of the light was provided by the greedy booze peddlers at Budweiser and Coors Light. On the parquet dance floor near the door, a frumpy bleach blonde with chutzpah and a home perm was lost in a seductive 2-step. Her partner was a nimble dude in khakis and a beeper. As I reached through my backpack for a pen, I caught the tail end of their conversation as they came off the dance floor.
"...That's 'cause I ain't been laid enough," she laughed loud enough to hear over the sad jukebox cowboy whining about how some girl's gonna miss him when he's gone. "I haven't had sex since 1989," added Ms. Bawdy Heat.
For someone who hadn't been laid in nearly a decade, she sure was jolly. As she waddled back to her friends a few tables away, the other 7 guys in the place tried to be discreet about watching her. Maybe tonight the drought would end — if it ever really existed.
Hell, with the limited entertainment options out here, you'd think folks would be fucking all the time.
Up at the bar, a thin, weary woman in black flip-flops and wheat-colored courduroy pants was talking to a tank-topped guy wearing a backwards 49ers cap. They were both smoking. Just like everyone else in here, including the unassuming bartender in stiff Lee jeans and a black cowboy hat.
I sat a few feet away at one of the chipped wooden tables just off the bar. Taking notes in the dark. Nursing the first of 3 Miller Genuine Drafts. In the middle of his gabfest with the 2-step dancing queen, the guy in the 49ers cap turned and noticed me writing. He leaned down towards me.
"You gettin' all that?"
I glanced up and saw that he wasn't much bigger than me. Still, I'm not the type to stop in a small town and start sniffing around for trouble. Too many years of movie violence and too many stories of random urban tragedy have left me skittish. Everyone back home kept saying I was in for at least 1 good barroom ass kicking. I've even been having dreams about being in an alley with faceless, gun-toting cretins who decide to fill my head with lead. P.'s had some dreams about me dying out here, too. So has my friend Carver.
Welcome to Tabloid Nation. Where the anxiety can't help but seep into the bloodstream, like a slow drip of paranoia.
That's why I responded as politely as I possibly could tonight.
"Excuse me?" I said like some highway Eddie Haskell.
"I said, you gettin' all this shit down? Can you hear okay? Should we speak up?"
The guy didn't seem drunk enough or mean enough to break a Bud bottle over my head. Still, you never know.
"Nah, man," I told him with benign indifference. "I'm not writin' about you guys. I can't hear you, anyway. Why? Is it good stuff?"
Then I thought: Is THIS what I'm gonna be dealing with for the next 93 days? Start taking notes in a bar and the guy next to you is liable to think you're spying on someone's cheating husband. I dread the wrath of the belligerent redneck who thinks writing stuff down over beers is for sissies. And forget about barstool poetry.
Bottom line is, it's damn near impossible to be inconspicuous jotting observations into a pocket-sized notebook in a bar — even if you are wearing cowboy boots in Oklahoma, like I was tonight.
Then again, if you can just avoid getting your ass kicked, scribbling ideas into a journal is a great way to meet people.
That's how I met the sad-eyed victim of love who was sitting next to the nosy 'Niner fan at the bar. The lady with the secrets.
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As soon as he took off for the men's room, the woman — we'll call her Amy since she never even told me her name — leaned over from her barstool and asked what I was writing.
"I'm, uh...actually, I..."
I didn't want the whole place to hear my strange story. So I motioned for her to join me.
"Have you got a minute?"
Amy grabbed her cocktail, picked up her cigarettes, then cautiously slid off her barstool and pulled up a chair across the table from me.
And that "minute" turned into about an hour.
Amy had a story that was country song sad. It didn't take long before she was telling me how one of her earliest memories is of seeing her father smack her mom around. She was maybe 3.
By the time she got to junior high, Amy's dad was into an entirely different form of abuse — incest.
Things didn't get much better once she was old enough to move out of the house. Amy's first 2 husbands used to hit her. Husband #3 never smacked her. All he did was walk out on her a week after her mom died of cancer in their home. Now, 3 years later, Amy works at a convenience store to support her 3 kids. A 4th kid — her oldest daughter — lives 2 towns over with her husband and baby girl.
Not yet 40, Amy is already a grandma. With 3 divorces under her belt — although that's still 2 fewer than her own mother had.
And I thought I had it bad.
"I can't believe I'm telling you all this," she kept saying.
I felt a little strange asking about her past. By the way she kept looking away or staring into her 7-and-7, I could tell she was uncomfortable. Understandable, given the topics we were discussing. But she could have stopped at any moment and said it was none of my damn business. But she never did.
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Amy told me how when she initially began blossoming into a woman, her relationship with dear old dad became a living nightmare. By the time she got to high school, about the only thing she was allowed to leave the house for were classes. When school was out, Amy was expected to come straight home.
"He was very protective," she said, her brown eyes darting around the bar like an abused mutt at the pound. "It was like he didn't want me to grow up. He didn't want me getting involved with boys or having any kind of fun."
No doubt the asshole was jealous. All this was a few years after daddy had begun molesting Amy, his oldest daughter. She had a younger sister, too, although Amy's not sure if dad was molesting her as well. They've never talked about it.
Yet I roll into town — only because my ride broke down here — and she's telling ME all this stuff. If you're inclined to think she was making it all up, all you needed to see were those wounded eyes. This, no doubt, was her truth. And she needed to share it. Even with a stranger. Maybe even ESPECIALLY with a stranger.
At 15 Amy met a boy at school. He was 17, "cute as hell" and eager to make Amy happy. Is it any wonder she fell for him? When Amy got pregnant, the only thing to do was get married.
"I think I was looking for any excuse to get out of the house," she muttered with her head down.
It didn't take long before Amy's teenage husband started cheating on her. She doesn't really blame him though.
"He was young," she said running her fingers through her coarse, straw-colored hair. "Young guys need to do that sort of thing."
Amy's nails were chewed down to the nub. She was thin, but her face was puffy. Almost like she'd been either sleeping or crying. Yet, you could see she must've been pretty in her day. And she still had the body — at least in clothes — of a wispy teenage girl.
By 20, Amy was on her 2nd husband. He ended up cheating on her too. Her 3rd husband was the only one who didn't fool around on her. But what a scumbag — telling her he wanted a divorce only days after Amy's mom died. This pillar of integrity is now living with HIS parents.
Amy told me all this without a trace of self-pity or anger. I suddenly felt guilty for bitching about my stupid little car problem. It wasn't until I got back here to my musty room that I realized how astonishingly similar Amy's story was to my own mom's: the mother of 4 kids from 3 husbands...dropped out of school to have her first child...molested when she was growing up...cared for her sick mom while she was dying of cancer.
Bizarre.
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