This morning we left the Gold Hill Hotel, Nevada’s
oldest hotel, disappointed by both the poor upkeep of the beautiful historic
property and the fact that Rosie the ghost did not make an appearance. Matthew
did fall out of bed in a very dramatic fashion at about 4 am, with a scream and
a thud (followed by some expletives) so maybe that was Rosie’s doing. The highlight of our visit had been Vic, the
former valet to both John Wayne and Red Skelton.
Undaunted by our mild disappointment, we set out for
our first stop: Stagecoach, Nevada, which sits right at the western end of
Highway 50, called famously, “The Loneliest Road in America.” AAA advisors used to warn travelers not to
drive along this road unless they possessed survival skills. We ignored this warning, as we needed to meet
with another of my father’s old college roommates, Thornton Watlington Garret,
aka “Watty,” who has known my dad for over sixty years. I was sent on a mission to remind the Garrets
to come to the Stanford reunion this fall. Watty and his wife, Shirley, live in
a large and lovely ranch style home, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Watty is as gung-ho about Stanford as my dad,
to the point of having the Stanford fight song as his cell phone ring
tone. Watty was a pilot in the US Air
Force, so you can imagine that he had a lot of stories to tell. Shirley cooked us a lovely breakfast of Eggs
Benedict, and Watty made us Virgin Mary “mocktails” (after he offered us Bloody
Marys and we said we didn’t drink) which were really delicious!
After a couple of hours of wonderful stories
(including one about my dad helping Watty’s kid brother to sneak into the Rose
Bowl by using his trombone as camouflage), we tore ourselves away and began our
drive across Highway 50 to Eureka, Nevada.
On the way, we saw wild horses, ancient stone petroglyphs, and
magnificent vistas of mountains, desert, and vast expanses of sky. There are only a couple of towns along this
road, mostly tiny ones with very few services.
We stopped in Austin, where they still have a working turquoise mine. I entered a store to shop for turquoise and
encountered the largest and most beautiful stuffed elk head I have ever
seen. I remarked on its majesty, and the
man behind the counter said, “And he tasted great, too!”
This was Jason, a gifted jewelry artist and
big game hunter, whose store was full of breathtaking works of art. I had promised myself on this trip not to buy
a bunch of crummy souvenirs, and only select mementos that were truly unique
and especially reminiscent of the places I had been. It was almost impossible to choose from among
his lovely pieces, each one hand made, but of course in the end I picked a pair
of heart shaped earrings, made of turquoise which Jason had actually mined
himself. He also had fabulous lapis
lazuli pieces which had come from stones in Afghanistan. When I told him that I taught the epic of
Gilgamesh, which mentions that precious ancient stone, he gave me a sample to
bring back to the students at Northwest School!
We then continued on to Eureka, Nevada, another
mostly abandoned former mining town in the middle of nowhere. I took some artsy photos of the street and
the sky, trying to imitate the Stephen Shore photographs we had seen in the
Nevada Art Museum in Reno, not very successfully, obviously.
There are a couple of beautifully restored
buildings here and after settling into the Sundown Motel (the only motel in
town), we went to look at the museum, the courthouse, and the opera house. The Eureka Opera House only hosts about six
public performances per year, and we were fortunate enough to be here on one of
those nights. We got to see the Utah
Shakespeare Company’s traveling production of Taming of the Shrew. The
play had been cut down to a spare 75 minutes, and was just excellent, way
better than the Seattle Shakespeare Festival production from last year (or any
Seattle Shakespeare production, for that matter). And the actors are staying at our hotel!
(They don’t really have a choice.) The
audience was small but appreciative of the show, with some younger audience
members seeing their first Shakespeare play and shaking their heads at how good
it was. It blows my mind to think that
over 400 years later, in a country that didn’t even exist when Shakespeare
wrote his plays, people are watching and laughing and wondering and his genius.
Highway 50 continues clear across the country to
Virginia, and that would be an amazing route to take someday. However, we need to leave the loneliest road
tomorrow for Elko, site of the annual Cowboy Poetry Festival and other visions
of the West.
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| Wild Horses |
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