On the Back Roads (8 page)

The leader and organizer of the tour, Matternst from Reno, provides the Suzuki off-road motorcycles and the truck and driver to haul their baggage from town to town. Matt said that he has strict requirements about who goes on these wilderness excursions. “The crazies who want to tear things up don't make it. I don't want them. I have to go there again, remember.” Nor will he take anybody from Nevada or neighboring California, saying, “You wouldn't show the locals your favorite fishing hole.”

These guys roll in here periodically on Matt's Suzukis. They come from all over the country, spend a night here at Sue's Motel, and maybe have dinner at the Silver King Café across the road. The next day they are at it again, exploring
Nevada's abandoned outback. They will probably never come back or even remember the name of this town, but their encounter with Nevada will stick with them. Nevada has a way of doing that.

P
izen Switch. What a great name for a town! That's what it was, and would still be, were it not for some persnickety latecomers who didn't much care for its derivation. Pizen, with a long i, was what the miners and cowboys called the homemade whiskey that sold for ten cents a cup at the Willow Switch. Know simply as the “Switch,” it was a dirt-floor saloon with a roof of bulrushes and a siding of willow switches.

The potent pizen made at the Switch was potluck booze that never tasted the same twice. When the pizen barrel got low, most any liquid was considered a filler. Peddlers of hair tonic, liniments, and turpentine could often unload a whole wagon at the Switch if their timing was right.

As things typically happened in the Old West, the saloon and everything around it became known as Pizen Switch. Road signs pointed to it. It was a scheduled stop for the stagecoach.

Then the new-fashioned reformers, who today would have to parade their cause on TV talk shows, created a ruckus by arbitrarily renaming the town Greenfield. That was in 1873. After that, you could tell the old-timer from the newcomer by which name he called the town.

This grudge lasted until the townspeople were overcome by universal greed, which they called “a quest for growth.” The railroad was coming west. They all wanted to be part of it. The general manager of the railroad was named Yerington. To butter him up, they gave the town his name in 1894. It didn't work. The railroad went elsewhere. All they got was a rail spur. Nevada got a town named Yerington.

Today, with a population of 2,400, Yerington is on Alt. U.S. 95. An alternate highway is normally a short offs hoot that parallels the main road. This alternate, however, is 106 miles long, goes through three towns, and even twists a bit. A whole new highway number might make navigation more intuitive through here, less complicated. I guess if I am going to roam the back roads, I will just suffer the complications that go with it.

For many, probably most, the cultural and social centers of this farming and ranching town are Dini's Casino and Casino West. The owners of both are blood relatives and descendants of Italian ranchers who, along with many Portuguese, sett led this rich valley.

Dini's is the oldest family-owned casino in the state. Known for good drinks and the best food in town, its customers are essentially local and mostly retired. The casino floor is an overcrowded maze of glowing coin machines, mostly nickel, that play every game of chance but craps. Dini's has one blackjack table, but the game is seldom played for lack of a dealer.

Almost next door is Bryan Masini's Casino West. It's bigger, less down-home than Dini's, but again, its patrons all seem to know each other. Bryan, in his forties, a father of four and an active member of the school board, became a state-licensed casino operator at the age of twenty-four—the youngest yet.

The tidal wave of family-fun centers now flooding Las Vegas has trickled into Yerington. Obviously, a casino's sole existence is to promote its games. If it takes a carnival ride for the kids to get their folks in the casino, the kids will get their carnival ride.

The Macini casino/motel complex now has a movie theater, a swimming pool, a twelve-lane bowling alley, a mini-mart, a video-game room, and an RV park. To call it an RV park, really, is stretching it. It's a parking lot with utility hookups behind the casino. But I stayed there a couple of days. I thought it might get noisy and maybe wild at night, but it never did.

The keno game at Casino West has aged well, considering its hardware may have been used by the game's inventor: two spindles, a hole punch, a lighted display board, and a spinning wire barrel that blows out numbered Ping-Pong balls.

Take off his red tie, white tennis shoes, and jelly-donut-size belt buckle that read Casino West in sterling, Sal Pezzino could be an orchestra leader or college professor. He's got that look of intellect. While most proper keno games operate with a minimum of three people—manager, writer, and runner—Sal is a one-man show. On his feet most of his four-to-midnight shift, he never takes a break. His dinner is delivered, when a waitress gets to it. He runs to and from the men's room. Facing Sal's corner dominion were a row of empty chairs and a table. Even with no apparent players, he kept running games as if all Nevada were watching. “I've got multi-race tickets,” he explained. “You can play up to five games ahead.” Sal is seventy-three and a widower.

A lady all in pink, including hair and eyeglass frames, gave Sal a flirtatious greeting and filled out a chair. One hand, heavy with yard-sale jewelry, was black as coal from rubbing money. Sal appeared neither to have the time nor the interest to give her much attention. She played no keno and soon left.

At the table, a lady about thirty-five in a glittering Uncle-Sam outfit called herselve Sage Saber. “That's my professional name. Do you want my real name?” she asked me.

“No, one's enough.”

Sage explained that she is a psychic, astrologer, and numerologist. She also con ducts seminars on Eastern medicine and holistic health. Today, she was here running a bazaar.

Sage is hard to miss in her tall, sparkling gold hat rimmed with a red, white, and blue banner. I ran into her later seated
in front of a slot machine. She was losing big time. For you or me, it would simply be bad luck. For a fortune-teller with her credentials, it must calamitous.

A side-street building, which over the last century has been everything from the city morgue to a poodle parlor, is now the Hitchrack Deli. A burned-out Merrill Lynch broker from Boston, Joe Arnote, runs it. He came here in 1987 cause “Nevada is the cheapest place in America to open a bar.”

“Small towns are great. When I opened this place, even my competitors sent me flowers,” Joe said, as he pulled out a sheet of aluminum foil to wrap a “to go” sandwich. “I can tell you right now,” he stopped to look at his watch, “who is in Dini's, what they are drinking, how many they have had, where they are sitting, and probably what they have on.” Joe laughed. “What's that tell ya about a small town?”

“Habits die hard, I guess.”

He handed the sandwich to a waiting customer.

“Small-town people.” He paused. “They accept you for what you are. What you once were doesn't matter. There is no pretending or fake stuff in this arena. A phony won't last six months here. This town is too tight a circle.”

Joe said that many come to his place from the casinos after they have lost their twenty bucks for the day. “This has become a gamblers' refuge. I don't see them much when they win. So I see them a lot.”

I spent my last night in the hills above Yerington at a new but almost empty RV park overlooking the old Anaconda copper mine at Weed Heights. Anaconda left behind an open pit 650 feet deep and huge piles of dirt. An Arizona company is now processing that dirt, shipping out 40,000 pounds of pure copper a day.

In the row of RV sites behind me, an old and rust-streaked Coupe de Ville cranked like a new one but did not start. Even from here, I could smell the gas. I walked up to the couple inside and offered my guess: “It's flooded.”

The man got out in a rage. Through white hair that covered his face like a string mop, I could see his red eyes, wide
with anger. He slammed the driver's door and kicked it. I was afraid that I would be next.

“I know exactly what's wrong! Total obliteration of dynamism. Absolute. Total.”

“That's it, for sure. It's nice that you know about cars,” I said, backing off.

“Aliens have controlled this planet for ages. They turn energy off and on, on and off.” His arms moved up and down like pump handles, synchronized with the rapid wrinkling and unwrinkling of his brow. “I have an appointment right now. That's the reason. They don't want me to get there. So the car will not start. No dynamism! It's that simple! Later, you watch, it will start in a snap.”

“I'm sure it will. You guys have a nice day, now.” I took a few more steps back.

He pulled the hair away from his face. “I've seen what they do. Can't see them, because they are on a different visual frequency than us. You should know, I mean you really should, they have no use for us men, but they inhabit women's bodies. My last three wives, they tore ‘em up.” He turned away. “Got to go now!”

He and his lady friend walked to a pickup truck. It cranked. It started. Off they went.

“Oh, good, that truck has dynamism,” I muttered, not too sure that someone, somewhere, wasn't listening.

T
he conical peaks of the Cascade Range run single file from northern California to ward the Canadian border, where Mount Baker pops up in Washington like a bookend. Mounts Shasta, Hood, Adams, St. Helens, and Rainier are the preeminent snow-covered pressure valves for the most volcanically active range in the continental United States.

Headed north on U.S. 97 in California, I decided to pull off the road and have lunch where I found a clear view of Mt. Shasta. Fortunately, a thoughtful road builder had found just the spot and had built a wide shoulder there to park on. I stepped from my motor home, staring at a mountain so enormous it filled the landscape. It took some staring just to take it all in.

Dining in the grand presence of Mt. Shasta, it seemed inappropriate somehow to be serving myself an unadorned ham sandwich with a glass of nonfat milk. I spread on a layer of Grey Poupon. That helped.

Haloed by a wisp of cloud that streamed off northward, Mt. Shasta is isolated by its hugeness. That it towers to 14,162 feet seems less significant than the hundreds of square
miles over which it spreads its soft yet jagged vestment of stark white. It dominates everything, even the sky.

A few miles back, I walked the main street of Mt. Shasta City. At 3,561 feet, it rests at the foot of the mountain. Mt. Shasta's peak, however, is a deceptive ten miles away and two miles up. It's an orderly town of trendy shops, four-wheel drive vehicles, and comfortable mountain homes. Most have a healthy pile of firewood neatly stacked outside. And the ladies who shop there, even those in jeans and ski jackets, wear expensive perfume.

U
.S. 97 originates in Weed, California, about twenty miles from the Oregon border. After running through the midsections of Oregon and Washington, it becomes the Alaska Highway in the middle of British Columbia and merges into Highway 1 when it enters the Yukon.

Its last town in California is Dorris. Traffic slows to fifteen miles per hour here. Not only is it the speed limit, the road also makes four ninety-degree turns. Since I was going so slowly anyway, I stopped in Dorris.

A sign put up by the Lions Club solicited donations to erect America's tallest flagpole. I wondered if they know about Calipatria, another California town that right now boasts America's tallest flagpole at 182 feet.

“Yes, we know about it, but not much. It's down by San Diego someplace, isn't it?” Donna Burcher, the city clerk, handed me a brochure about the Dorris flagpole and a donation envelope. “Our flagpole will be 200 feet high. We think it will give a positive impression on people coming into the state here. You know we are the highest town in California, so that's another reason.”

I challenged her claim to the “highest town.”

A man at a desk behind her spoke up. “She means the
highest
like on the top of the map—in
latitude,
not elevation.”

“That's what I said. We are the highest, the furthest town north.”

Back in the motor home, I ventured even higher, into Oregon. The next town was Klamath Falls, population 18,200. Tied to lumbering since its infancy, Klamath Falls was once the primary supplier of packing crates for fruit farmers. That all ended in the depression years of the 1930s. And from my view of the town from the highway, not much has happened here since.

The highway and the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad skirt the edge of Upper Klamath Lake north of town. (Lower Klamath Lake lies in California.) It's the largest natural lake in the state, but very shallow. Today its gray, choppy surface appears about to splash out icicles. A cloud bank that could bring rain, even snow, obscures much of the other side.

Although snow-covered ridges rise from the edge of the lake, the highway is at lake level, maybe even below it in some spots. It may be an optical illusion, but it appears that the bed of the railroad serves as a levee, keeping the lake off the road. Were it not there, things might be pretty wet where I am. It is too cold out there to stop and check it out, so I will never know for sure.