The Road to Olympia, Part 6: Love Me, I'm a Liberal

Reading is for suckers.  Click the video below to have the article read to you in my dulcet tones:

During my drive to Las Vegas, the Veteran’s Memorial Highway brought me through a handful of Indian Reservations.  I’m not particularly educated on the state of Indian-Government relations but I’ve read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and I’m a fan of Ward Churchill so I have at least a baseline understanding of the savage, locker-room rogering that was Manifest Destiny.  All the same, actually seeing the Godless stretches of sun-withered rock that the government assigned to its defeated enemy really drives the point home in a way that books can’t.

Though I know full well that the Indian people had no voice in the decision I imagine that the U.S. Government, having thoroughly won the American Indian Wars, called forth a representative from the surviving tribes when it was time to assign living space:

U.S. Government:  That is some lovely property you all were living on, wasn’t it?

Indian Representative:  Yes, that is why we liked living there.

U.S. Government:  Well, we need it

Indian Representative:  For what?!

U.S. Government:  Stuff.

Indian Representative:  What stuff?

U.S. Government:  Jamba Juices, hockey rinks, hot dog stands.  White people stuff.

Indian Representative:  But what about us?

U.S. Government:  That’s what I wanted to talk to you about!  Using the most scientific methods currently available we have located the absolute worst parcels of sandblasted hell in America

Indian Representative: Why?

U.S.G: Because we want to give them to you!

Indian Representative: I’m sorry?

U.S.G.:  So you can live there, silly!  All of you.  Bring sunscreen.

Indian Representative: I have a few reservations about this.

U.S.G.:  Great!  That’s what we’ll call them.  Now get out of here you crazy kid.  Remember what I said about sunscreen.

Indian Representative: But I don’t…is that a shotgun?
U.S.G.:  I said get

Since NPR liked to disappear on me whenever I got interested in a subject, thoughts like this were all I had to keep me company.  I’d given up on country radio after hearing Tim McGraw’s “Indian Outlaw” three days running.  It’s a catchy song and I’m not particularly sensitive but every time I heard “You can find me in my wigwam /I’ll be beatin’ on my tom-tom / Pull out the pipe and smoke you some / Hey and pass it around” I wanted to throw up.

A mild diversion came when I saw a sign advertising a Wildlife Viewing Area.  The last several hours of driving had brought me endless vistas of windswept hardpan and I was a little sceptical as whether any wildlife not existing solely at the microscopic level could possibly thrive here.  A tour guide would have to be a Zoloft-popping mixture of cock-eyed optimist and Spalding Grey to sell that particular Wildlife Viewing Experience:

“Here in front of us we have some rocks, heavy ones by the look of them.  To our left if you look closely you can see more rocks, one of which looks like an anvil.  Oh!  Look!  Just over there I thought I saw…no, no…that was a rock too.  Isn’t this fun?  Who else could go for a Jamba Juice?”

Night had fallen by the time I got close to Vegas and traffic had fallen off to almost nothing.  As Highway 95 slipped by beneath the moonlight I had a look at the map and realized I was driving parallel to Department of Defense land.  Then it hit me – this wasn’t just any DoD land – this was the Nevada Test Site, formerly Nevada Proving Ground, one of two nuclear testing sites used by America during the Cold War.  Hey, I read books.

From 1951-1992 over 1,000 nuclear devices were tested on-site, often resulting in fallout that insisted on ruining the day (and genetic material) of anyone who happened to be downwind.  These blessed souls are cheerfully called “Downwinders” by those who take an interest in the subject – I imagine this is because “Boy Howdy, You Are Boned-ers” is too much of a buzzkill.  Over the years there were a number of settlements paid out by the government although the official figures are apparently well-hidden.

Scenes from The Hills Have Eyes came flooding into my head and in desperation I reached for the radio.  Even “Indian Outlaw” was better than that.

Post Index:

Part 1:  Get on the Boat, Son

Part 2:  Radio Nowhere

Part 3:  By the Side of the Road

Part 4:  Cthulhu & the Dirty Shame

Part 5:  Like a Bat Out of Hell

Part 6:  Love Me, I'm a Liberal

The Road to Olympia, Part 5: Like a Bat Out of Hell

Reading is for suckers.  Click the video below to have the article read to you in my dulcet tones.

The last thing I did before leaving for Nevada the next day was wash my car.It’s not that I thought it was going to stay clean on the drive to Winnemucca but I wanted to make sure I washed off every trace of John Day before advancing further. I was going to burn my laundry too but my car has suffered enough without the added indignity of coming into contact with my bare ass.

See you in Hell

Fittingly, the car wash was the second worst I’ve come across. The soap smelled like the chemical development team had started off aiming for “lilac” but given up somewhere around “How long has this sandwich been behind the radiator?” It did the job but only after the investment of six dollars and about a dozen passes with what may be the western world’s feeblest foaming brush. 

I hit the highway at speeds that would have made the protagonist from Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” look like he was driving a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade.  Trees, mailboxes and hitchhikers whizzed past as I desperately tried to out run whatever white trash Wendigo haunts that town.

This haste was to blame for the lives I took – for my becoming a murderer.  A mass murderer, really. In my defense it’s hardly my fault – these hapless victims should have known better than to wander directly into the path of a man recklessly fleeing a Mayberry so awful that Andy Griffith would have eaten Opie at birth as an act of mercy.

The victims in question were hundreds of small white butterflies that swarmed the road at several points in the Malheur National Forest. At first I thought there were tiny balls of fluff bouncing off my windshield, then I looked closely and noticed they had wings. 

I do not know how many of them I killed but should there ever come a day when butterflies rule the earth I will be the first against the wall.

Crossing into Nevada was a relief – not only was I able to put Oregon’s weak-kneed speed limits behind me but I was pretty sure that the Wendigo’s house-arrest anklet would stop him from crossing state lines. 

I have no more affection for the desert than I do any other climate that will kill you without taking the slightest notice but I concede that it has a grandeur all it’s own with jagged outcroppings of rock silhouetted against the sky and the way shadows of clouds lay across the mountains like drop cloths.

It’s not all grand, of course.  Much of it is, as my Saskatchewan-born grandfather once said of his own home, “as flat as piss on a plate”, and driving through it can become wearing over several hours.  At one point the boredom became so acute I found myself listening to finance shill Dave Ramsey‘s radio show and being deeply concerned about the fate of those calling in.  I actually teared up after one caller confessed that her husband was adamant about keeping their new truck, even though the prohibitive monthly payment meant they would lose the house they currently shared with their children.

The shedding of a tear not related to immediate physical injury or the loss of a sporting contest shocked me out of my stupor and I snapped off the radio. To reclaim my masculinity I turned up the CD player and sang along to “Sylvia’s Mother” until I arrived in Winnemucca.  Before you talk smack about Dr. Hook all I have to say is this – there is nothing more distinctly male than trying to talk your way past a woman’s mother.  

My hotel room at Winner’s Casino would have been unremarkable under normal circumstances but after the Little Pine Inn it felt like the Taj Mahal - ”I can walk around in my bare feet?  I don’t need to sleep in my clothes?  I have arrived in life.”

And in rarefied company no less

Post Index:

Part 1:  Get on the Boat, Son

Part 2:  Radio Nowhere

Part 3:  By the Side of the Road

Part 4:  Cthulhu & the Dirty Shame

Part 5:  Like a Bat Out of Hell

Part 6:  Love Me, I'm a Liberal

The Road to Olympia, Part 4: Cthulhu & the Dirty Shame

Reading is for suckers.  Click "play" on the video below to have the article read to you in my dulcet tones:

It was late afternoon by the time I arrived in John Day, Oregon via highway 395. The light had taken on a beautiful golden tint you sometimes see at the end of the day – the kind that can make a garbage dump look like Venice in the spring.

395 turns into John Day’s main street, with most of downtown lining either side. Signs welcoming home 3 local boys from their tours of duty in Afghanistan were up in every window and there were yellow ribbons around the trees. Unlike Fox and Dale, two down-at-heel hamlets I’d passed through earlier in the day, John Day, seemed like a pleasant, welcoming example of Small Town America.

The first crack in that facade came when I pulled into my motel, the Little Pine

Looks nice, right?

Inn at the far end of downtown. On the outside it looked no worse than anywhere else I’ve ever stayed. Sure, the rough-looking woman who checked me in had a voice like Captain Beefheart and the only other guest was a bearded man who claimed to live in the mountains but I wrote it all off as part of being in a blue collar town well off the beaten track. Then I saw my room.

Where is your God now?

“Lived in” is one way to describe it, “I expected to find Bob Crane’s tenderized corpse in the bathroom” is another. The brown shag carpet was long enough to hide a marijuana grow-op from passing helicopters, several of the lights didn’t work and everything was covered in what is best described as a thin film made up of equal parts dirt and neglect. When I looked in the bathroom what I saw made me wish I’d found Hogan’s moldering corpse instead. Radiating out from the toilet’s base was a thick ring of accumulated dirt (I refuse to believe it was anything more) and nothing, from the sink to the shower stall, was quite what I’d call clean.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!"

After dropping my luggage and vigorously washing my hands I set off down Main Street to find dinner. The sun was now almost fully set save for a pink band where the mountains met the sky. The downtown that had, not two hours before, felt like a living advertisement for war bonds now felt like a small seaside town an in H.P. Lovecraft story right before something tentacled rose from the sea and caused everyone to require fresh underpants.

The Mayberry facade cracked and fell apart when I noticed that in many of the windows – right next to the signs welcoming home John Day’s troops – was another sign forbidding entry to anyone displaying neo-Nazi apparel or tattoos. They warned that in the eyes of the community everyone was created equal and hate would not be tolerated. Suddenly I regretted shaving my head before leaving home.

Just then, as if to drive the point home, a scrawny twenty-something with a shaved head and swastika tattoo on his bicep rode past on a bicycle. I guessed John Day, like a lot of towns that have seen better days, was having a hard time keeping its young men occupied when work ran thin.

Dinner was beer and pizza in the Dirty Shame Saloon, not far from the motel.

And I'm pretty sure the pizza
gave me food poisoning.

It was your typical small-town watering hole where the menu incorporates the entire nutritional pyramid (pizza, hamburgers, chicken, deep-fried) and the locals eye you up as you walk in.

Ever paranoid I sat with my back to the wall and ate while a fat woman in a tie-dyed T-shirt sang along with the jukebox.  To distract myself I set my mind to figuring out whether the mullet-sporting person who kind of looked like Meat Loaf in the video for “I’d Do Anything For Love” and was stood at the far end of the bar was a woman or a man.  After 20 minutes I failed to come away with an answer.  

When Aretha was done at the jukebox I could suddenly hear a group of middle-aged tourists at a nearby table discussing “The Celestine Prophecy”, a 1993 novel full of New-Age hooey.  The conversation was more literate than I was expecting, given that the book has less intellectual value than “Go Dog Go”.  Then one of the participants said, “I’d rather read a list of quotes than an entire book” & I realized I wasn’t listening to people, I was listening to organic tape recorders.

Then I heard “Where love rules there is no will to power” and decided it was a good time to head back to the motel.

Where I was murdered. The way my stomach feels right now I only wish I was joking.

Post Index:

Part 1:  Get on the Boat, Son

Part 2:  Radio Nowhere

Part 3:  By the Side of the Road

Part 4:  Cthulhu & the Dirty Shame

Part 5:  Like a Bat Out of Hell

Part 6:  Love Me, I'm a Liberal

The Road to Olympia, Part 3: By the Side of the Road

Reading is for suckers.  Click "play" on the video below to have the article read to you in my dulcet tones:

Leaving Bellingham with a stomach-full of breakfast quiche that wouldn’t have made the cut in a retirement home cafeteria wasn’t the best way to start my September 11 but it was all I had. The restaurant recommended to me by the

motel desk clerk turned out to have a 40 minute wait, unless I wanted to sit in the lounge next to the loud, pudgy blonde who had already started drinking. I didn’t. Instead I ended up eating the unfortunate quiche at a nearby Tully’s Coffee, just around the corner from Deseret Books (now selling the Mormon-approved Harry Potter alternative “Janitors”, in case you’re interested).

My target for the day was John Day, Oregon and traffic was heavy as I drove I-90 east. All the things I love about interstates – sudden lane changes, yuppies in SUVs whose engine power far exceeds their driving capabilities, and the idiots going too slow infuriating the idiots who want to go too fast – were in abundance until traffic thinned out just short of Ellensburg, which was, fittingly, when I had to break south.

Green forest gave way to sunbaked yellow grass as the landscape changed and the mercury rose.  Just south of Yakima there was a family clustered next to a car that had broken down by the side of the road. The eldest son, a tall, slim, bespectacled kid in a yellow T-shirt was holding up a small handwritten sign and even though I couldn’t read it at speed I more or less knew the content: “It’s broke, we’re hot, this sucks. Please.” I kept driving and I don’t know why – I can still see that poor kid standing in the sun with a disappointed look on his face as hundreds of people drove their air-conditioned cocoons past him and his family.

In 2001, America was rocked by a sucker punch that shook the country and its people out of their insular, capitalist stupor.  It reminded them that the people around them were neighbors and friends rather than competitors, stepping stones or dangerous lunatics. Ten years later, to the day, and no one, myself included, could remember that message long enough to stop for a family of five in obvious need of help.But hey – they remembered to put up flags along the highway.

The interstate eventually gave way to state highways, long, empty roads through farmland that stretched off to the horizon.  The sky was a dark grey, threatening rain, and the air was rich with the smell of soil and raw onions. Dump trucks filled with these, thousands of fresh, fragrant bulbs would pass by at intervals and the smell would become almost overpowering.

As I passed into Oregon the smell of farmland faded and the temperature rose to to the low 90s, which was cool in comparison to the previous weeks according to Mike, a gas station attendant in Pendleton.  Oregon is one of only two US states, New Jersey is the other, that doesn’t allow you to pump your own gas, and so Mike’s job is to run around outside in 100 degree heat for 9 hours while enjoying the heady smell of gasoline.

“This is fine,” he said, sweating and lying through his teeth.  ”The breeze helps.”

Just outside of the Battle Mountain Forest on Highway 395 I saw another drama played out by the side of the road.  A bright white motorcycle lay on its side at the edge of the gravel and EMTs were clustered in the high grass just beyond.  Next to the ambulance was a cop car, it’s flashing blue and red lights unnatural among the yellows and greys of the landscape.  Three other motorcycles were parked further down the highway, their riders standing together just behind the EMT crews.  It looked like a group of white-collar guys on a motorcycle trip and their faces had the hollow, disbelieving looks of people who have never seen something go so bad so fast.

Post Index:

Part 1:  Get on the Boat, Son

Part 2:  Radio Nowhere

Part 3:  By the Side of the Road

Part 4:  Cthulhu & the Dirty Shame

Part 5:  Like a Bat Out of Hell

Part 6:  Love Me, I'm a Liberal

The Road to Olympia, Part 2: Radio Nowhere

Reading is for suckers.  Click "play" on the video below to have the article read to you in my dulcet tones:

That old familiar road trip feeling – a spreading sense of wonder & possibility – didn’t settle over me until about an hour into the voyage, after I watched the sun set over San Juan Island’s Friday Harbor.  My spirit rose at the idea I was off to see places I had never seen and drive roads I had never driven.  In celebration I decided to browse the duty-free.

San Juan Island has had a long and storied history which includes being home to one of the longest running wars on American soil that didn’t cause unnecessary delay in airports and of course the famed “Pig War” that you should look up because it was called the Pig War.  Friday Harbor itself was supposedly named for Joseph Poalie Friday, a Hawaiian in the employ of (then) island owner the Hudson Bay Company.  As the Chelan set off towards a rose-hued horizon I realized that this more or less meaningless gesture (“British colonists may have brought about the ruin and subjugation of your homeland and people but hey – we named a sheep station after you”) would turn out to mimic western foreign policy throughout most of the 20^th century.

Night had fallen by the time our ferry reached the dock at Anacortes.   I started making my way through darkened residential streets (I despise interstates and avoid them whenever possible) toward my destination for the evening, the Homestead Inn & Suites in Bellevue, Washington.  During a pit stop on the Swinomish Indian Reservation  I saw what may have been Skagit County’s most dilapidated functional automobile – some nameless four-door beast, vast in the way only American cars can be, painted the same shade of green as my grandparents’ bathroom.

It was covered at intervals in patches of rust, with a roof that had faded from black to a Library of Congress gray.  Despite being rundown, the car somehow retained an air of dignity and sunset splendor, like an elderly drag queen.  It certainly caught the eye of the overweight Latino women who had gathered in their Friday best outside the liquor store to get a solid buzz going before heading to the nearby casino.  They tottered over unsteadily on too-tall heels to coo at the driver, an angular middle-aged man with iron grey hair cut close to the skin, while he polished the windshield.  Never let it be said that small-town Friday nights are boring.

On my way off the reservation I found George Noory’s Coast to Coast on the AM band and kept it there as the miles slipped by.  Coast to Coast is talk radio specializing in the kind of things that only make sense after the sun goes down – alien abduction, ESP and government conspiracy theories, to name a few.  Tonight Noory’s guest was David Ruben, a modestly famous “life coach” and firm believer in “precognitive dreams” – dreams that are windows into the future.  Ruben maintains that just such a dream had helped him save the life of his son.

As I joined the interstate for the final stretch into Bellevue, Coast to Coast’s signal started to fade and every cloverleaf that passed overhead brought with it a wave of static washing across Ruben’s voice like waves breaking over the bow of a ship.  His thoughts on the continuance of life after death slowly began to disappear among the screeching phantom voices that live in the space between radio signals.  I’m far too practical to take any of what Ruben says seriously but all the same, every time the rolling static took more of the signal and the in-betweeners screamed in triumph a chill ran down my spine.  It was a comfort that my motel was only a few miles away.

Now I understand why no one listens to the radio anymore.

Photo by Nick Fisher, licensed through Creative Commons

Post Index:

Part 1:  Get on the Boat, Son

Part 2:  Radio Nowhere

Part 3:  By the Side of the Road

Part 4:  Cthulhu & the Dirty Shame

Part 5:  Like a Bat Out of Hell

Part 6:  Love Me, I'm a Liberal

The Road to Olympia, Part 1: Get on the Boat, Son

On September 9th I began my drive down to Las Vegas to blog the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition.  This six-part series of posts chronicles the people and places along my trip down Veteran's Memorial Highway 95.

Full blog coverage can be found at http://largelythetruthmrolympia.wordpress.com/

Reading is for suckers.  Click the video below to have the article read to you in my dulcet tones:

My trip officially started this afternoon at the Washington State Ferries terminal in Sidney, B.C. when the U.S. customs officer asked where I was headed.
“I’m headed down to Vegas to catch the Mr. Olympia competition.”

It was the first time I’d seen anyone fall asleep standing.  I guess not everyone has my appreciation of the unusual things in life.  Taking back my passport I pulled into lane 9 and shut off the car.

The ferry wasn’t due to leave for Friday Harbour & Anacortes until 5:55pm, which left me a little over 80 minutes.  It was only 82 degrees but on the tarmac of the ferry ramp it felt hotter and so I moved into the shade of the small gift shop/cafeteria at the rear of the ferry line-up.

Inside, shelves were lined with the expected fuzzy sweaters and Canadian-themed shot glasses.  I don’t know when these became ubiquitous but given all the hand-wringing about binge drinking it says a lot that transit hubs still sell them.  Call them decorative all you want but we both know that their sole purpose is to expedite the delivery of alcohol to your beleaguered liver.  Should marijuana ever be legalized I’m looking forward to seeing our ferry terminals and airports proudly displaying their collection of novelty Canadian bongs underneath a wallpaper of “stop toking” ads.

The counterman was trying to sell a group of tourists on blueberry scones ‘fresh from the oven’.  Someone finally took the bait but specified the scone at the very bottom of the pile and the look on his face was worth paying what I did for a hot dog & a bottle of Coke.

Afterward, I finished my food at one of the shaded picnic tables and took a walk through the lanes back to my car.  Most people were stewing in their vehicles, tapping away on their phones, reading the newspaper or arguing, just for something to do.  A pretty young American couple sat on the tailgate of their truck eating food from a blue and white Coleman cooler, their bronzed skin somehow impervious to the heat.

A while later, a man in the Nissan next to me took a break from playing with his car’s electronic locks and turned on a mambo CD, which wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn`t been keeping time by loudly slapping his steering wheel.  Every now and again he would look to his long-suffering wife and loudly lament how all the great mambo kings were dead. By the time our ferry, the Chelan, began loading I was prepared to send Mr. Mambo Nissan to join them.

On board the Chelan

Post Index:

Part 1:  Get on the Boat, Son

Part 2:  Radio Nowhere

Part 3:  By the Side of the Road

Part 4:  Cthulhu & the Dirty Shame

Part 5:  Like a Bat Out of Hell

Part 6:  Love Me, I'm a Liberal