Nowhere Café

Nevada Diary

For seven long hours we drove on the endlessly straight, mind-numbing US Highway 50, also known as the "The Loneliest Road in America." No matter how fast we were moving the mountains on the horizon refused to come any closer to us as if attached to the front of Judy’s truck by an invisible arm.

The dessert landscape outside of the car windows stayed flat, monotonous and bleak for the last two hundred miles of our journey. The beauty of this desolate place was in its infinite vastness. We didn’t need to strain our eyes to see with perfect clarity in every possible direction, almost capable of detecting the curvature of the earth. But the open spaces can be deceiving. Suddenly, right in front of us materialized a sign, “Nowhere Café”, with a big arrow pointing in the direction of a nearby lonesome structure. We gladly dismounted and went inside for a cup of mediocre coffee and a chance to use running water and a proper toilet. Looking at the map and the distance we still had to travel to reach Utah, I insisted that we should keep on going until I either started falling asleep at the wheel or we got abducted by aliens, which according to local lore happened all the time in this forsaken part of Nevada. The first scenario quickly became an impossibility. As the moonless night fell over the Silver State and I turned on the high beams, every jackrabbit that saw us coming would move to the side of the road with the clear intent of playing a game of Russian roulette with our vehicle. Bang, Bang! We hit something big, it was horrifying, Judy screamed. I knew I had killed an animal, but kept on going in shock. Only seconds later another bang! “What is the point of stopping?” I thought to myself. In the far distance I could already see another group of jackrabbits lining up to test their destiny. And sure enough, two critters ran across the highway only seconds before our car appeared in front of them. I swerved like crazy, but ended up crushing both animals. “Stop!” Stop!” Stop!” Judy screamed. I think we both did. I pulled the truck over to the shoulder. Judy and I stepped out, nervously lit our cigarettes while observing a myriad of little beady eyes staring at us from the darkness. Our bumper was covered with rabbit fur and blood. Shit, what to do? Slow down? Stop driving? Camp out in the dessert and drive at sunrise? After weighing our options we decided to proceed with caution and get a hotel at the nearest town. There was one on the map only 125 miles ahead. I think at that moment, we both secretly wished to be carried off by a UFO. In the end we were left no choice but to get back on the road of death. After only ten minutes of driving I lost all hope of saving any suicidal rabbits. Judy stopped screaming and withdrew into herself, wincing with each new bang. Me? I got into a fatalistically maniacal mood, picking up speed to over a hundred mph and dispatching to heaven many rabbits eager to gamble with their lives. I was certainly not in danger of falling asleep at the wheel. Serial killers don’t sleep a lot.

Around midnight, feeling like hardened road warriors we finally rolled into a small dessert town. Because of its insignificance even on a completely unpopulated stretch of US Highway 50, its name never registered in my memory. If you really want to find it, I do recall seeing many signs advertising a casino built in 1800’s as the town’s main attraction. Otherwise the place was a one-street metropolis with a few smaller streets branching out from it, inevitably dead-ending in a dessert brush.

We drove by the old casino standing vigilant at the head of the main strip. It was as beautiful and ornate as it was portrayed on the billboards. The lights were on, but we saw no cars or people near it. Although it was Saturday night, the streets were practically empty except for a few pockets of activity further down the road. We rolled slowly past two bars and a strip joint, all positioned in a row, one block apart. Unlike the rest of the town, these raggedy-looking watering holes exhibited all kinds of action - cars coming and going, people hanging out, arguing, screaming, all without a doubt in advanced stages of inebriation. Police cruisers with flashing lights were parked near each establishment. A couple of shirtless guys and a young female were sitting handcuffed on the side of the road getting booked. Near one of the bars two drunks were fist fighting each other while cops watched them from the safety of their service vehicles.

Our hopes of having a cold beer in a cozy local tavern before turning in for the night were quickly abandoned. We kept on driving and eventually came to a Motel 6 strategically positioned at the end of the strip away from the local combat zone. It was adjacent to a truck stop housing at least a dozen eighteen-wheelers. We thought that the motel might be packed, but it proudly displayed a glowing VACANCY sign.

We got a room on the second floor with a door facing the walkthrough balcony looking down on the unlit, kidney-shaped swimming pool. Unable to see all of the details, I could tell that despite the late hour there were people in the water. As exhausted as we were, we couldn’t fall asleep, and not only because we were so wired from spending two hours killing local wildlife with our car. The noise and the chatter coming from the pool area suddenly gained in intensity until we could hear it all; and it was ugly.

Around 1:30 a.m. Judy passed out. Wide-awake and ready to kill a human, I stepped out on the balcony for a cigarette and a bit of Nevada porn rapidly unraveling downstairs. I leaned over the railing and stared down at the pool, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. There in the murky water I counted five burly guys and the same number of the ugliest whores one could find between Salt Lake City and Reno, all having an orgy.

I couldn’t believe it. This group was truly uninhibited, not with each other and certainly not in front of anyone who might be witnessing this lewd public display. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could only turn off the sound - the stupidity of their sexual crooning, the cheering of the especially successful deep throats and the grunting as they were getting their rocks off. The place was an epitome of debaucherous anarchy – the hotel staff had gone for the night.

The next morning, or rather afternoon, feeling exhausted from the long road, dead animals and truck drivers’ orgasms, Judy and I stepped out of the hotel into the blinding sunlight and the ungodly temperature of 98 degrees. Before hitting the road we decided to cruise on foot to find some breakfast and to check out the old casino. After an uneventful steak and eggs at a local coffee shop we proceeded down the one and only Main Street. We passed the bars and the strip joint from the night before. All three establishments were locked up for Church Sunday, but the sidewalk in front of them was littered with broken glass and still smelled like piss. Otherwise, the daylight didn’t add any new substance to this snake hole of a town.

With little enthusiasm we looked around for something of interest. I think we simply wanted to find shelter from the deadly heat. Eventually we spotted an old, fading sign above a decrepit building – “Antiques”. The windows of what looked like a store were all boarded up, but the door was ajar. We crossed the street and entered. Inside it was so dark that even if our eyes weren’t pickled by excessive sunlight we probably wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyways. The moldy smell of old furniture hit our olfactory senses. My nose instantly started to itch from the dust hanging in the air. In a minute or so we began discerning the shapes of clothing racks and loose furniture, silhouetted against the light source positioned way in the back of the store. Strangely enough our eyes managed to adjust even more. As long as we avoided looking straight at the blinding doorway, which provided most of the illumination to the front of the store, we were we were able to see what was offered here.

“Antiques” was clearly a misleading name for this business. If anything it was a regular five-and-dime, filled in most disorderly fashion, with used clothes, cheap electronics, housewares and furniture, all made in the last thirty years.

As we moved deeper into its foul-smelling bowels, we realized that the store was divided into two parts: the back of it was separated from all of the junk by the wall with a large window and had its own entrance. Behind the window was a well-lit, orderly room with a glass counter and a wall displaying all kinds of weaponry, from grandfather’s musket to a fully rigged RPG. An old cowboy type, probably the owner of the store, was standing behind the counter, cleaning the barrel of a revolver with a brush.

The front of the store was suddenly submerged in complete darkness as a large group of tourists entered from outside. There were several men dressed in shorts, with wives, kids and strollers, all probably coming from the tour bus taking the back roads to the state capital of Nevada - Carson City. For a moment they all stood in one place, allowing their eyes to adjust to its subterranean darkness. As soon as their sight returned they began moving around the store, bunched together as if on a guided tour of a museum.

And then the store submerged into darkness again. Through the door came a big man, barefoot and shirtless, wearing only a pair of tattered pants held up by a piece of rope. He had a square face with closely cropped hair that made me think of Frankenstein. Holding onto the frame, this wild-looking specimen just stood there for what seemed like minutes, straining his eyes to orient himself to the darkness within. When his pupils finally opened enough to see, he rushed inside with great urgency and determination, cutting right through the group of speechless tourists. With an unusually wide gait he walked past the clothing racks and old sofas and straight into the armory at the back of the store. Without a greeting or even a nod, he stopped in front the old cowboy behind the counter and looking right through him began to examine the vast selection of killing machines displayed on the wall. After a tense silence which lasted several minutes the man uttered, “Lemme see this one”, and pointed at the single action rifle bearing a price tag of $53 dollars, on sale $35. Without batting an eye the owner took the rifle off the wall and passed it to his new customer. Upon gaining the possession of the gun, the man cocked it, aimed more or less in the vicinity of the old man’s face and squeezed the trigger. A loud click was heard. “I’ll take it”, said the man, “and a box of hollow bodies.” “You got a driver’s license?” asked the owner, flatly. “I sure do”, said the man and put the required document with a hundred dollar bill on the counter. And that was that. It took another three minutes for the owner to make a copy of the guy’s permit, get his John Hancock on some government form and give him his change. The entire process of buying a firearm took less than ten minutes.

Holding his newly purchased weapon in one hand and a box of armor-piercing bullets in the other, the shirtless Frankenstein stepped out of the armory and back into the moldy darkness of the so called “antique” store. As he walked right past me, I realized how silent the place was. I looked around. Everyone present seemed to have been frozen in time and space, watching in disbelief this real-life Nevada performance unfolding in front them. All heads turned in unison as the man approached the exit. Having one of his feet through the door and ready to step out onto the street, he abruptly turned around and with a menacing grin on his face said to his unsolicited audience–

“What you all staring at? I got a rattler in the backyard.” And he dissolved into Nevada’s sunlight.

The show was over. It was time for us to get the hell out of the pungent stuffiness of the store and hit the road again. Before the tourists recovered from the “true west” act they’d just witnessed, Judy and I followed the mad snake hunter’s example and stepped through the doorway onto the blistering sidewalk. We didn’t get to see the exotic casino and we didn’t care if we ever would. In less than fifteen minutes we were back on Highway 50 heading east. We didn’t stop until we reached Zion, making damn sure that we got there before sunset.