Jim Colbert Memorial Road Trip, Part 2 - No One Expects the Unexpected

June 20, 2009 - A Change of Plans…

We start the morning greeted with the aftermath of the overnight storm, one which has left this little corner of Western Nevada feeling just a bit more “crisp” than the day before. While nothing to rival the feeling of a good autumn morning, the weather is a bit cooler, there is fresh smell to the air (the combination of the morning air, a good rain, and the particular mix of minerals that one finds in the desert), and everything seems to be slightly more in focus than it was the night before. Although the clarity may be more the result of a good night’s sleep I choose to give credit to the brief evening shower. Everyone looks and smells a bit better after a good shower, even the desert. Having showered ourselves and almost ready to hit the road, there are a couple more things we need to do before we move on. The first is paying tribute to the soul of the Clown Motel. While they have committed to the general theme around the motel (wooden clowns serve as the room numbers on each door, clown art hangs in the rooms) the pièce de résistance is found in the lobby. Walking in, the first thing you see are shelves full of clowns lining the walls. Crocheted clowns, porcelain clowns, hobo clowns, baby clowns, clowns playing the piano, clown dolls in Green Bay Packer gear, carnival clowns, a clown clock, a clown toy top, any kind of clown you want you can probably find it at the Clown Motel -though none of them are for sale. I guess you don’t get to be the Clown Motel by selling all of your clowns.

A Wall of Clowns…

Standing, taking in this wall of clowns I wonder when they first decided to take this route. Did they model themselves after Circus, Circus in Las Vegas only without the casino? Maybe an old circus clown owned the place and liked to surround himself with reminders of the glory days. It could have once been the stomping grounds of an old traveling circus, the members of which are buried in the cemetery next door, and sometimes, late at night when the moon is full….the longer I allow my imagination to go, the closer I get to the premise of an 80’s horror movie.

I realize that I have failed to mention that the Clown Motel lies right next to the first Tonopah Cemetery. First used in 1901, the cemetery was active for only a short time, until the growth of the town as well as mining in the area made further expansion impossible. Between 1901 and 1911, in excess of 300 people were laid to rest in this cemetery (including 30 men who died from the mysterious “Tonopah Plague” in 1902 and 14 victims of the Tonopah-Belmont mine fire in 1911).

The First Tonopah Cemetery…

The cemetery itself is not that grand, most of the markers are far from original, added when the Central Nevada Historical Society fenced in the cemetery in 1979 - weathered wood posts and crosses with simple tin or plastic signs attached to note who is buried there. However, there are still some gems to be found. A few small wooden markers that look like they could date back much further – all but the faintest hints of writing long since faded in the desert sun, the wood drained of color. A single headstone shattered but kept where it was broken. Dust to dust. The last reminders of those who are long gone, their memories given over to history.

Faded Grave Marker…

Dust to Dust…

I have no connection to those who were laid to rest here, but it is still a place of remembrance for me. I can distinctly picture my father, camera in hand, walking among these graves as I walk among them now. Another connection to our shared past, my history remembered. I pay my respects to the long forgotten and the recently departed and then we move on.

After a filling breakfast at the Tonopah Station, the only hotel/casino in town (roll the dice for a free night at the Tonopah Station), we strike out for our first stop of the day – Coaldale Junction. The last time I had passed through this way, on my first road trip after the passing of my father, I had stumbled across a more modern ghost town. A gas station, bar/restaurant, and motel - a rag tag collection of decrepit buildings sitting right next to the main road where US routes 6 and 95 meet. I’d taken a few photos my first time through but since I’d passed by at the end of the day most of the shots were taken into the sun and were fairly washed out. Only a half hour or so out of Tonopah, I wanted to take advantage of the morning sun for a few more shots before we turned west and made our way back into California. After a short drive, I pull in and am disappointed to see that we are not alone. Someone is parked on the other side of the site, nestled in with the main group of buildings. From a distance it is hard to see who it is or what they are doing there. Based on the mass of stuff scattered around a beat up pick-up truck I assume that this is someone that is trying to fix up the place a bit. Visions of beautiful shots of the isolation of this spot in the lonely desert start to evaporate. I instead start looking for angles of the solitary building that is on our side of the site where I can still showcase the isolation. It isn’t too long before we both notice that there are also some dogs milling about. I’m not thrilled, but they seem to be the kind that you don’t generally have to worry about so I put them to back of my mind and set about to salvaging what shots I can get out of this stop. A decision that I end up regretting.

Vacancy…

As I’m focusing on the derelict buildings I hear a cry from Courtney. I’m not aware of any barking (and thinking back on it after the fact I still couldn’t tell you if they were barking or not) but I turn to see Courtney being confronted by two of the dogs, one having already bitten her on the leg. Not sure what I plan on doing other than keeping them from attacking her any more I quickly move between her and the dogs and find myself in a bit of a standoff. Everything becomes a blur as I try to think if there is anything bouncing around in my head that would prepare me for a situation like this. What are you supposed to do? I’m pretty sure you don’t turn and run, but that’s about all I can think of. I’m suddenly aware of how soft and fleshy I am. If they lunge what do I do? Do I use my feet? Try to kick them in the head if they come with fangs bared? Thankfully I don’t have to find out what I would have done as the lady who owns the dogs is now fully aware of our presence. She runs over, calls off the dogs and then turns on us herself. I dislike confrontation but at least I’m fairly sure she isn’t going to bite us and so settle in to the more preferable attack. The explanations flow - we just wanted some pictures, we’re sorry that we disturbed her, yes they did bite Courtney and it did break the skin, no we’re not quite sure which dog it was. She started off angry but after talking to us a bit seemed to calm down. Being very apologetic seems to have transformed us from the a-holes that were trespassing to the flakes from California pretty quickly.

The Last Shot Before the Chaos…

Once she has calmed down a little, and I think realized that we aren’t going to fly off the hook or cause her a lot of grief, she becomes a lot more open. She says that she has some peroxide in the truck and can clean up the bite if we get back in our car and drive over to her truck while she puts the dogs away. Safely back in the car we consider driving away, looking for our own peroxide or just soap and water. The bite isn’t deep. Thankfully Courtney was wearing pants and we aren’t even sure that the bite broke through the pants, though would later find a small hole that lined up with one of the tooth marks on her leg. For the most part the damage seems to have been done through brute force and not by piercing anything. There is a little blood, but it looks like the sort of thing you would shrug off under any other circumstances. Maybe it would be better to just be done with all of this. After a bit of debate we decide that it won’t hurt to go and get a little peroxide on it and so drive slowly over to the woman while she “locks up” the dogs - of which there are considerably more than either of us had previously thought, approaching ten to twelve dogs. Being in the middle of nowhere, locking up consists of putting a few on chains, shutting others inside her truck, and corralling the rest inside a house with no doors or windows, only a sheet of plywood to block the doorway. While I had imagined this woman to be someone in the process of fixing up the place when I looked from a distance, on closer inspection it’s clear that she is someone that doesn’t have anywhere else to go. There are a lot of random possessions strewn about the place and she is quite disheveled herself. Wild and untamed white hair through which a ladybug slowly crawls the entire time we talk to her, a dirty sports bra, large belly sticking out over oversized and well-worn shorts, and blackened/missing teeth - which she claimed her husband had paid her a lot of money to make that way. With the dogs safely tucked away for the time being (several dogs would free themselves while we served as a captive audience) the woman cleans off the bite and proceeds to weave an amazing tale. Standing in the open door of the mini-van, keeping us from closing it and moving on she begins to talk and with each new claim I’m no longer sure what is fact and what is fantasy. Among the believable claims she says that she is renting the space from someone in town, someone who told her that the site was livable and would be fenced off so she could let her dogs run free with no one to bother her. Based on the state of the site she planned to sue this man and wanted our information so she could include us as part of a class action lawsuit. We avoid giving her any address or home phone information, while at the same time getting her name, address (a P.O. box), and license plate number. She claims that the dog that we think was the culprit had already bitten someone else and was supposed to be quarantined per Nevada state law, something that she says she is in the process of trying to do. And then the stories take off in interesting directions. The prior victim…well she was a mafia princess. And that is not the last we hear of the mafia. I am still uncertain of all the connections, but she tells tales of her mother owning land, perhaps inherited, which either had belonged to the mafia, or was coveted by the mafia. We are told that she is planning on taking her dog to someone in Beatty because she has a hit out on her and has been threatened with bodily harm in Tonopah if they see her or her dogs there. She tells us that she is a documentary filmmaker, working on two different features. The first, “The Granddaughter of Ma and Pa Kettle” in which she seems to be claiming to be that granddaughter – amazingly so considering they are fictional characters. The other film, “Down to the Frame” deals with her attempts to free the plantation slaves by stealing the motor homes that they are kept in and striping them down to the frame. Neither Courtney nor I can recall there being many plantation slaves still being kept, nor there being a large plantation industry in Nevada.

After 45 minutes or so we finally manage to get the door closed and make our escape. Each mile we get away from the scene the enormity of the story that we’ve just heard sinks in a little more. I can’t help but think that my father would have been fascinated by this woman. He liked people and I can remember a previous road trip where he listened attentively to a man with a much taller tale than what this woman told (his tale included Buddhist monks, Angkor Wat, UFO’s, Area 51, and watching recordings of the American Revolution shot from orbit). Back to the present it is no longer business as usual and we decide that we should do our own triage, which requires a split from the plans we had started the day with. While the original plan would have taken us back into California through Benton Hot Springs, it would also take us over two hours to get to the next town of any size. So we head further north, along US-95. We pass through towns, but nothing of any size, nowhere that we can properly tend to the bite. Tonopah Junction – a fork in the road. Mina – population 250 at last count. Luning – population 87, often listed as a ghost town. Sodaville and Kinkaid, two ghost towns with little more than ghosts to be found. I only know that we pass through them because they are on the map. Through it all Courtney keeps consulting her phone, reading up on dog bites and I feel generally guilty for having put us in this situation in the first place. I know she doesn’t need protecting, but pre-historic instinct tells me that I’ve failed in my role as the protector. I also feel like I’ve failed in my role as master of the road. I think again how much easier it was when my father was in charge. Things like this didn’t happen when he led the way.

Our Original Route - Day 2…

Finally 63 miles and one hour later we roll into Hawthorne, Nevada. Stopping at a gas station Courtney pops into the bathroom to wash off her leg again and I get some Neosporin. Wound treated as best as we can we take a brief detour north of town to Walker Lake to take account of the situation. Standing at the side of this large body of water, which looks out of place after the expanse of desert that we have been driving through since yesterday, the adrenaline wears off and the events of the past couple of hours really start to sink in. Even if it’s not a serious wound, Courtney has been bitten by a dog. An unfamiliar dog. A dog that belongs to a crazy woman. A crazy woman who lives in an abandoned motel at the side of the road in the middle of the Nevada desert. The old adage “better safe than sorry” has never felt more appropriate. It’s time to consult a professional.

I have a new theory, that one doesn’t really know the soul of a place until they have spent some time in the emergency room there and our visit to the Hawthorne emergency room did a great deal to form our final impression of the great state of Nevada. Hawthorne’s hospital is a small single story building located toward the outskirts of town. On this lazy Saturday afternoon we are one of the few cars to be found in the lot, and I expect that most of the others belong to the doctors and nurses. If it weren’t for the fact that it was a hospital I may have wondered whether or not they were even open. Walking in we find what seems to be the bulk of the staff of nurses and a doctor sitting around the nurse’s station. We tell them our tale (only hinting at the level of crazy that we’ve dealt with) and are directed to the waiting room. It’s a small room, a few chairs along each wall, a TV in the corner. Clearly signaling that we aren’t in Los Angeles any more there is a sign advising that if you’ve been waiting longer than 15 minutes you should go and tell someone. After awhile we are joined by a very large man and an older woman with an oxygen tank who are loaded up with McDonalds. Eventually Courtney is called into the emergency room itself – hardly more than the size of any examination room I’ve seen in a Los Angeles doctor’s office. She gets a tetanus shot, is asked many questions, and asked to scrub off the wound herself (since it isn’t deep enough to require irrigation they figure she knows her own pain threshold and won’t scrub too hard). Comfortingly, no one aside from Courtney and I seem to be too concerned about the possibility of rabies. They write a prescription for antibiotics and I’m sent to pick it up from the Safeway while Courtney finishes up with the doctor. When I return Courtney is at the tail end of her dealings with the sheriff. State law demands that she files a report and through the process she learns what a delight it can be to deal with small town law enforcement.

Once again we move on, leaving another town in the rearview mirror, and head west. As I drive Courtney fills me in on what I missed at the hospital. Back in the waiting room she had talked with the large man and oxygenated woman. They told her that Coaldale Junction used to be a nice place. They had a good restaurant. But now people were burning down the buildings to spite the man who owned it. When they discovered the nature of our road trip they offered suggestions for stops. There were tales of ATV riding, bobcat shooting, and the revelation that apparently California is dumping its problem bears in Nevada. They may have also let slip the fact that everyone in this part of Nevada thinks those folks back Tonopah way aren’t quite all there. I’m sorry that I missed talking to them. As with the crazy lady, I think that my dad would have enjoyed talking to them as well. I can hear him asking them questions about their ghost town suggestions, picking out details of their stories. While it wasn’t how I would have chosen to spend the day, in the end it was interesting to be able to see a glimpse of what regular people are like in this part of the country. To experience a more local side. Too often we pass through cities and towns without really seeing them. We as tourists see only the surface, the façade that every town puts up for those passing through. We don’t see the normal day-to-day grind, the gears that keep the city in motion. Though I’m sorry that Courtney had to be bitten by a dog for us to have this experience. Otherwise, the impact on our itinerary was negligible. While we lost five or six hours in taking care of the situation our plans for the day were fairly light. I won’t lose any sleep over skipping Benton Hot Springs as it only severed as a way to break up an otherwise lengthy drive and had no connection to previous road trips. No memories of my father. Our only other destination could be reworked into our Sunday schedule and so, ultimately, nothing was missed.

Our Final Route - Day 2…

A little more banged up than we started the day we say goodbye to Nevada and in doing so also say goodbye to the desert. Sagebrush gives way to pinion and juniper pine, the endless flat expanse of the desert is replaced at first by hills and then mountains. Through the Toiyabe National Forest we crest Anchorite Pass and descend into California. The road straightens and levels out for a bit, taking us past Mono Lake. Courtney begins to nod off again and I declare myself ready to be done with the day, but still we must drive. North on US-395, back into the winding roads. We pass by the exit for Bodie, our first stop of the day tomorrow. We pass by several quaint motels where we could stop if I hadn’t made reservations somewhere further on – a choice that I am currently regretting. The sun has started to take on the golden hue of the evening magic hour. I wish that my desire to be done wasn’t overriding my desire to stop and take advantage of the gorgeous light by snapping a few photos. Through Willow Springs and into the ranching area around Bridgeport. Hundreds, if not thousands of cows and sheep watch as we drive by. Once again back into winding mountain roads until, at last, we reach our final destination for the day – the Toiyabe Motel in Walker, California. We’ve earned a little rest.

Continue to Part 3…

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For other shots of Tonopah or Coaldale Junction please follow the links…