Travels With David, pt. IX

June 23, 2001: Barstow, CA - Albuquerque, NM

By prearrangement, we rendezvoused at the car at 7 AM this morning, and David slept while I drove. Consequently, I was alone with my thoughts for the first few hours, as we headed out of Barstow and picked up Interstate 40 heading east. If you're really in the mood for a long drive, you can take I-40 all the way from its origin at Barstow, to the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Fear and Wilmington, NC -- but our objective was a mere 675 miles, ending up in Albuquerque.

It was still relatively cool at 7 AM, but there was a bright sun -- and I was happy that we would finish our crossing of the Mojave Desert before the full heat of the day set in. David had loaded up the CD player with a combination of what he called "sleeping music" and "best of the best" from the previous week's albums; as he settled himself into a comfortable position for a car-nap, Dirty Three's Ocean Songs began playing softly in the background. It didn't seem quite as appropriate as it was when David first played it along the Big Sur coast line yesterday, but it was pleasant and soothing; I enjoyed it.

I suppose that one can give a detailed description of the terrain along the 132-mile stretch from Barstow to Needles, but a single word says it all: desert. High desert and low desert, desert with sagebrush as far as the eye could see, and then desert with nothing but rocks and outcroppings of small hills and buttes. Abandoned gas stations and tourist shops appeared from time to time, and there were a couple of places -- like Ludlow -- where a desperate traveler might try (unsuccessfully, in the case of a ghost town like Ludlow!) to get gas and water and refreshments. Train tracks ran parallel to the highway, and at one point, an enormous, mile-long freight train came out of the hills in the distance, around a bend, and caught the morning sunlight to create a glittering silver line in the desert. But for the most part, there wasn't much to look at; mile after mile passed away, and I made the drive to Needles, near the Colorado border, in an even two hours, as the CD player switched to the soundtrack from the movie The Sweet Hereafter.

I-40 is obviously a popular route, with tons of heavy trucks barreling along at 80 mph; next to them, the cars and even the SUV's looked almost like mosquitoes, weaving and bobbing in and out of line in order to pass the trucks that just couldn't manage to go any faster than 75 mph. David woke up just before we crossed over the Colorado River at Topock, and supervised the changing of the CD player for a reprise of Nick Drake's Pink Moon. He also noticed, both on the California side, and then several times as we moved into western Arizona, billboard advertisements for 40-acre plots of ... uhhh, well, certainly not farmland or grazing land ... the billboards didn't actually acknowledge the obvious: it was 40 acres of desert they were offering for sale, at prices ranging from $695 to $795 per acre, or a monthly fee of $175. The best price we could find, somewhere around Kingman, Arizona, was $173 per month for a 10-acre plot.

"Just think," David mused, "if I got 9 of my friends, then each of the ten of us would have 4 acres all to ourselves -- and it would only cost us $17.50 per month! That's a lot of land, for not much money..."

I pointed out to him that there was a pretty good chance that the 40-acre plots would be somewhere far off the highway, with no electricity, water, gas, cable TV, phones, or sewage. That seemed to discourage him a bit, so I suggested that he could get a mobile home, or a camper, with solar panels and a wind generator on the roof to generate electricity; propane for cooking and heat; on-board water tanks that could be refilled weekly at a local gas station; cell phone for communication, and satellite TV in order to watch Dave Letterman and Conan O'Brien. That cheered him up, and we brainstormed about the possibilities of living such a lifestyle, while the CD player moved on to a reprise of Jim O'Rourke's Eureka.


"Just think," I suggested playfully. "Since there would be absolutely nothing to do while you sat in your mobile home in the desert, you could finish writing your novel in a month. Then you could produce an album each month for a year or two, and you'd be so rich you could probably buy 40 thousand acres of desert!"

"And if your nine other friends each had a mobile home, too," I continued, "then you could switch around each month, so that you each got a new 4-acre plot, with a new view. The possibilities are awesome!"

Yes, I know it sounds pretty silly ... but I have to admit that the landscape on both sides of the road was beginning to look as if one could contemplate settling down on a 40-acre plot. We were slowly moving up into higher elevations, past Seligman and on toward Ash Fork and Williams, and the landscape was beginning to look more like the ruggedly beautiful high desert plateaus that we see in Taos -- with occasional fields of short grass, and stands of mesquite trees among hillier terrain. Meanwhile, the music had switched to The Handsome Family's In The Air, which I had first heard on the afternoon that we drove past the Grand Tetons, near Jackson, Wyoming; this time, I paid more attention to the music and lyrics, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Some 20 miles before Flagstaff, the elevation had reached 7,000 feet, and we were surrounded by pine trees and the 9,000-foot peaks of the San Francisco mountains. The sky had been steadily darkening for the past hour, and as we moved into the mountains, a lightning bolt suddenly struck up in the hills beyond us, and the heavens opened up into a quick, sudden downpour.

Meanwhile, I had noticed, for the first time, an unusual yellow warning light on the instrument panel of the car; fearing that it might be an indication that the engine was overheating or hemorrhaging internally, I asked David to look in the owner's manual for an explanation. It turned out to be an interesting one: according to the manual, the yellow light was an indication that a "spoiler" had deployed in the rear of the car -- i.e., a 4-inch thick plastic strip between the roof and the rear window had suddenly lifted up to a 45 degree angle, presumably to stabilize the car at the high speed I was driving. It's weird when these high-tech cars start doing things you never asked them to do, and that you've never experienced before ...

We pulled into Flagstaff, and after an unsuccessful search for a Denny's restaurant (my choice) or a Wendy's hamburger joint (David's preference), we ended up at a small Burger King just off the highway. As we wolfed down our food, I asked David how we was doing on his Proust readings; I hadn't been hearing anything about it for the past several days. It turned out that he had finished the first volume, and was now 50 pages into Volume 2. "Is it better? Worse? Exciting? Boring?" I asked. David shrugged: Proust apparently isn't the sort of author to be pigeonholed by such trivial characterizations.

After lunch, David reshuffled the CD rack again, and took over the driving chores, to the accompaniment of Ladybug Transistor, with a reprise of their Albemarle Sound. As we pulled out of Flagstaff, David noticed a state police car sitting half-hidden on the side of the road; he slowed down abruptly and we waited anxiously for a moment or two to see if the trooper would pull up behind us.

"I guess this is one time when it's not a good idea to have a conspicuous yellow-colored Beetle to attract the attention of policemen," I said, as the trooper veered off on another exit and left us in peace.

"This is only one of many times when I'd rather not have a conspicuous yellow-colored Beetle," David retorted.

As we moved on across the high plateau, highway signs kept announcing that we were coming closer and closer to the next town: Winslow, Arizona. Having noticed it on the map the day before, I pointed out to David that we would have an opportunity to personally experience the surroundings where the Eagles had composed their popular (though ancient, by current standards) song "Take It Easy." David pointed out that he didn't like the group (perhaps because they're now old and fat and dissolute) and didn't know any of their music; finally, grudgingly, he acknowledged that he had heard the song in question ... but that it didn't improve his opinion of the town. Anyway, a huge billboard on the outskirts of town implored us to exit now (exit 252 on I-40, if anyone is desperate to know) if we really wanted to "take it easy" -- which was probably an indirect ad for a tourist shop selling autographed Eagles T-shirts and memorabilia. David sped up, and we were soon back in open country again, in what should have been a simple, fast stretch of highway leading to the next small town of Holbrook.

Unfortunately, we ran smack into a construction delay that backed traffic up for a solid two or three miles -- and there was nothing we could do but wait patiently, as the long line of trucks and campers and tourist vehicles inched along for what seemed like forever. Meanwhile, the CD player hiccuped again, and we were listening to Johnny Cash once again, doing the same Love, God, and Murder album that we heard on the afternoon we pulled into Jackson, Wyoming. Next came Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue, and I was enjoying the music as we finally reached the end of the construction zone, and zoomed through the surrounding terrain of red, rocky shale until we reached Holbrook.

It was time for gas, a snack, so we stopped at a local gas station. To my dismay, the gas station was out of Diet Coke; I was beginning to think that a national conspiracy was being hatched, but finally discovered that they had smaller cans of the bubbly brown liquid. Suitably fortified, we jumped back in the car and headed off again, for an 85-mile segment between Holbrook and Gallup, New Mexico.

We passed through a section of the Petrified Forest National Park as we moved toward the eastern side of the state, and then through a corner of the Navajo Nation ... or maybe it's just the Navajo Indian Reservation (our vintage-1995 road atlas uses the former term, while the vintage-2000 atlas uses the newer term). However you characterize it, it's huge: it takes up 10-15% of the land area of the entire state of Arizona, and spills over into a corner of northwestern New Mexico. I suspect that it was considered the most desolate land on earth when the Navajo were herded onto the reservation in the late 19th century; for their sake, I hope they discover that the entire rugged terrain is one vast diamond mine.

Near the New Mexico border, the CD player moves on to a reprise of Mermaid Avenue, Volume II, which I've now had the pleasure of playing since David gave it to me as a Father's Day present. David zooms through more deserts, plateaus, and empty land for the first 20 miles into New Mexico, and pulls off at a Gallup gas station so we can swap driving assignments for the final 139-mile trek into downtown Albuquerque.

Gallup is a strange, forlorn little town of about 20,000 people; I can't figure out how it justifies its existence, or why anyone in his right mind would want to live there. But it's not my problem, and if those 20,000 people are happy doing whatever they're doing there, it's fine with me. Meanwhile, we've left them behind, and we pass through a succession of tiny, irrelevant villages that seem to be, for the most part, a few mobile homes perched a half-mile away from the interstate -- perhaps indicating where the old Route 66 used to carry tourists and truckers at a more leisurely pace through the area.

Out in the open area of western New Mexico, along the edge of the Cibola National Forest, the CD player runs us through a reprise of Cinerama's Va Va Voom. I liked it better on this second playing, but I have to admit that it's still not one of my favorites.

But the last album of the day, a reprise of Nick Drake's Bryter Later, is one of my favorites; I've made a note to pick up a couple of his albums -- or at least download one or two of my favorite songs from (dare I say it?) Napster. (Naturally, it will be downloaded via one of my friends who actually paid for his copy of Drake's album, and who felt it was his duty to share the MP3 digitized version with me, once or twice, before I buy my own copy.) David, as it turns out, does not play MP3 music on his Macintosh computer. "Music is meant to be heard in stereo," he says, "and not on a computer."

By now, we've lost interest in the scenery, the small towns, and everything around us; we've passed the 650-mile mark for the day, and we're down to the last 25 miles of the day's journey. I-40 runs straight into the heart of Albuquerque, where it joins up with the north-south Interstate 25 in a construction nightmare that has earned it the dubious honor of being one of the worst 10 highway construction projects in the country. But at 7:00 on a Saturday evening, there's relatively little traffic, and we move through the detours and construction by-passes without delay, and soon find ourselves navigating toward the airport, where we'll spend the night at a local Marriott Courtyard hotel.

We check into our hotel rooms, pick up our e-mail, and drive down the block to a local Fuddrucker's restaurant for a surprisingly good dinner meal. Then it's back to the hotel, where David will delve further into the mysteries of Volume 2 of Remembrance of Things Past, while I finish up this 9-part travelogue in time to get some sleep before delivering David to the airport for his flight back to Chicago tomorrow morning.

And thus, the official part of the journey comes to an end after 11 days and 3,963 miles. I've learned more about modern popular music than I ever thought I would; and David has seen more of the sights and sounds and day-to-day details of the western U.S. than he would from a hundred cross-country airplane flights. And for those who ask, "Yes, but what did you talk about? What kind of meaningful, heart-to-heart conversations did you have with one another?", the answer is: you don't always need traditional conversations in order to communicate. Sometimes -- especially with fathers and sons -- it's enough just to be together, whether it's fishing out on a lake, or watching a baseball game from bleacher seats on a hot afternoon, or driving through little towns like Wamsutter, Wyoming and McKittrick, California. It certainly was for me.

Thank you, David. Thank you very, very much. Maybe we can do it again next year.