April 24, 2017
The Man, the Myth, the Legend
Deciding to leave the American Southwest is one thing. Leaving the American Southwest is something very different. Yesterday's thirty-five miles of swearing, sighing, screaming, despairing, and existential angst along the razor-thin shoulder of the death trap called U.S. 93 delivered us to the town of Alamo, Nevada, population 1,080. From a dark, tiny room in the back of the Alamo Inn, it took no more than fifteen minutes for us to realize how much of a corner we'd just ridden ourselves into.
You can't rent a car in Alamo. You can't rent a truck. There is no airport. There is no Greyhound bus station. The county bus travels to Las Vegas exactly one morning per week, and that morning was not this morning nor the next. Our best hope was to post an ad in the rideshare section of Craigslist in Las Vegas and see what kind of responses came in.
This did not go the way we hoped.
"u still need a ride?" went the first message.
"Yes. We're trying to leave today or tomorrow. What would you charge?"
"i dunno u tell me"
After that awful sales job, I thought we had something with the next guy: a fast response, a good rate, and ready to show up at 6:30 a.m. However, Kristen was concerned that the driver wasn't interested in our money, but rather in heading all the way out to Alamo to pick me up and then slit my throat with a knife and dump my lifeless body behind a creosote bush where no one would ever find it. She made me ask the driver for a copy of his ID and proof of insurance. This did not go over well.
"I don't send no picture of driving license," he wrote back. "I'm a taxi driver no taxi drivers don't send no license over the phone."
And so we found ourselves ready to go to sleep no closer to an escape plan than when we woke up.
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On the second day, God created Vern.
Vern owns the Alamo Inn. He's at least six-foot-three, has the deep and booming voice of a movie superhero, and could break all of the bones in my palm with just a handshake if that's what he wanted. The day before I had asked him for advice about how to Las Vegas. He said he wasn't sure, but with a smile and a nod told me he'd ask around and see what he could find.
When I step out of our room late in the morning, he just happens to be walking past.
"Well, it turns out the bus runs tomorrow," I say to him. "So I guess we'll be heading out of here then."
"Yeah, I guess you could," he says and then pauses. "Or you could just head down there with me today."
"Today? Like, when today?"
"Oh, about like now."
Vern has no specific reason to drive ninety minutes south to Las Vegas and then back home again. He says he's going under the guise of taking some shirts to the dry cleaner's, because he's flying out to Michigan in a few weeks to watch his daughter graduate from college and needs them laundered and pressed. But we both know that if Kristen and I hadn't shown up and been in need, this is a trip that wouldn't be happening.
"That would be great!" I tell him. "How much?"
"Ah, forty'll do it. Just enough for gas."
Fifteen minutes later, he and I are at the Sinclair gas station just down the road. When the gas bill comes to thirty-nine dollars, he hands me back a single. Then we fly south toward Las Vegas and the rental car that will take Kristen and I toward the America that's, well, a lot like what we found in Vern and in Alamo.
We talk all the way. Vern tells me how his grandfather came out to Alamo in 1881 and his family has been there ever since. He's come and gone over the years — New Jersey, Reno, Vegas — but he always comes back. He knew there wouldn't be good paying work for him when he decided to return, so he created his own job by buying and running the motel. We talk about all the places Kristen and I have traveled over the years; about the decline of small-town America; about the optimism we both hold that some day that tide will stem and prosperity will return. He tells me how he's involved in all sorts of local boards and commissions and political processes, because all of them can use a dose of common sense. He's intelligent, well-read, pragmatic.
And then we reach the rental car complex for the Las Vegas airport, which itself looks like an airline terminal. We say goodbye, exchange a firm but not pulverizing handshake, and then Vern — the man, the myth, the legend, the real-life superhero for Kristen and me — drives away and disappears from our lives forever.
Back in Alamo two hours later, Kristen and I strap bikes into our rented minivan, wedge small piles of panniers all around them, and blast off from our little motel launchpad to parts east. Our pace turns from slow to fast, as day becomes night, as Nevada becomes Utah and then Colorado.
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6 years ago