Shootin', Huntin', Ridin', Saddle-makin', Eatin' Human Flesh and Giant Basque Steaks in Elko, NV

This entry will be short because we have to get up at 4:30 to get to the Mormon Tabernacle, but today was a day full of museums!  We drove from Eureka to Elko, spotting herds of antelope along the way, singing "Home on the Range" through an ever-changing vista.

It was like one long field trip here in Elko, NV:  First, the Northern Nevada Museum.  This had three sections: one was old timey artifacts from Elko (the most interesting was a HUGE collection of firearms from the collection of Bob Chow, a former NRA board member and Olympic Champion pistol shooter.  I had never heard of him, but I guess firearms fanatics are obsessed with him and his collection); the second was a giant collection of really disturbing taxidermy animals (I skipped it once I spotted the polar bears) donated to the museum by some rich big game hunter named Wanamaker; finally, a very lovely collection of drawings by the western author and artist, Will James (not to be confused with William James).
The story of Will James
Will James was actually a French Canadian from Quebec, but most "authentic" cowboys who tell and retell the myths of the American West aren't from here.  They love to invent and re-invent themselves, and Will James was a great storyteller for young people, sort of a Frederic Remington of childrens' books.

Next, we visited the California Trail Interpretive Center.  It was a great interpretive site for learning about westward expansion, and the route that settlers had to take to "see the elephant," as they called it.  Across the Ruby Mountains, down through the Humboldt river basin, across the desert and finally the Sierra Nevada range.  It was a gruesome and grueling journey, and we especially enjoyed learning more details about the Donner Party and how they (mostly) survived the harsh winter in the mountains by resorting to cannibalism.

I love these historical re-creations of old pioneer stuff.  Would I eat human flesh if I were starving?  I don't know.  I had some Cheezits on the way to our next stop, the Western Folklife Center, which hosts the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering every year. I first heard about this from "The Cowboy Prof," Richard Slatta, when I was in Michigan a couple of years ago, but never thought I'd visit the site.  The Center is a wonderful resource, not just for the poetry, but for all the Cowboy traditional arts, from music to silversmithing to saddlemaking.  They had a wonderful exhibit of these arts, and we were amazed at the skill and craftsmanship that these artisans had; most of them worked full time as cowboys and ranch hands, and then in their "spare time" made beautiful saddles, rawhide braids and silver jewelry.  Read about the Western Folklife Center Here

beautiful hand embossed saddle

lots a spurs

Across the street was the store where they sold some of the amazing saddles, spurs and chaps, at the JM Capriola company, which was like a museum in itself!

Finally, we had to have some Basque food.  Did you know there was a huge Basque community here in Elko?  I first learned about it from one of my students, who attends a Basque summer camp here every year.  At first, there were two Basque families outside of Elko; both became very wealthy ranchers, and other Basques were encouraged to settle here.  They still have a huge festival every summer, and a restaurant that serves steaks like this:

 

 After that ribeye, and a little time at the Dean Martin Wild Party slot machine at the Stockmen's Casino, it's time to hit the hay at the Esquire Motel, with my alarm set for 4:30 on the "Love Boat Theme" ringtone.   Utah and the Mormons await!

Stagecoach, The Loneliest Road, and Unexpected Shakespeare

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.

Wild Horses

Tales of John Wayne: 48 Hours in Reno

We needed a vacation from the vacation, and what better place to relax than Reno?  I wanted to stay in the ritziest, glitziest place in town, so I chose the Peppermill, a faux Italianate wonder of a resort with half a dozen restaurants, nightclubs, pools, a 33,000 square foot spa, and of course a large casino.  We drove through the strangely small and quiet downtown area a couple of times, but I guess Reno is becoming less popular for gambling and nightlife than it used to be, partially because of the Indian Gaming Acts, which mean that people from California no longer have to drive all the way here to gamble. We gambled at the casino,  had a luxurious "Coconut Dreams" spa experience and a "La-licious" pedicure, listened to the lounge singer at the piano bar, and basically did all the things you are supposed to do in Reno.  The hotel was strangely empty, except for the Western States Livestock Inspectors convention, which was taking place, and of course that was fun to see them all in their big Stetson hats and boots and Wrangler jeans with large stomachs sticking out over their silver belt buckles.   The Reno crowd is a lot older than the Vegas crowd; there were many retired couples enjoying the 55+ menu at the cafe and lounging in the jaccuzzi at 9 AM.  Read more about the Peppermill in Reno, where even the private offices have signs that say "privato," and all the buildings are "Tuscany," "Florence," "Roma," etc.  Suzanne asked me why it was called the Peppermill, what with all the Italian themes, and I had no idea.

The highlight of our visit to Reno was meeting my dad's old college roommate, Stan Burroway, and his wife, Liz.

 They gave us lunch at their lovely home on the outskirts of town, and we talked for several hours about politics, love, writing, the history of Reno, and all manner of topics.  Of course I had to catch Stan up on my dad's doings, and he told me a couple of stories about my dad's Bahai days, when his Jewish friends would come over to the room and say, "Et tu, Hillel," as they pretended to stab themselves.  Liz told me tales of working at the Reno hotel where the cast of The Misfits stayed, the time she met John Wayne, and the way she and Stan met over 15 years ago.  

This morning we headed out to Virginia City, a rootin' tootin' old west town where Mark Twain worked, and which he wrote about in the hilarious memoir Roughing It.  If you haven't read that book, you are missing out on an amazing experience. We got to see the desk where Mark Twain worked, the printing press where his newspaper was produced, and even the bathtub and toilet that he used!  We saw the "Bucket of Blood" saloon where there were so many fights they had to mop up the blood daily (hence the name). I wore my fringed jacket so I could blend in with the locals.

We had a very Mark Twain-esque encounter with this fellow, who was all in black, complete with silver spurs on his boots.  "Ya need a hat, young feller," he said to Matt.  He pulled one off the rack.  "How ya like this one?" he asked.  It was too small. Matt said he felt like he was wearing a toy hat.  "Fifty bucks," said the man from behind his curly mustache.  "No thanks," says Matt.  "It's too small and I have enough hats."  

     "Okay, I'll give it to ya for thirty bucks."

     "No, really.  It's much too small."

     "How 'bout twenty five? Twenty five cash.  Firm."

     "No, I really don't want a hat."   I then tried to change the subject, and ask if I could get a picture with him.  "No, no, I'm sick of takin' photos with people," he answered.  "I hate it."

     "Well, why do you dress like that if you don't want your photo taken?" I asked him.  He had no answer for that, but paused and thought for a minute.

     "I'll take a photo with ya, if ya buy that hat for twenty dollars."

We didn't end up buying the hat, but he finally agreed to get his photo taken with me.  

read more about Virginia City and the Gold Hill Hotel

We ended up at the Gold Hill Hotel, the oldest hotel in Nevada.  We had dinner in the restaurant here, and the waiter told us he had been John Wayne's butler earlier in his life. Now retiring for the evening, awaiting a visit from Rosie, the friendly ghost who is supposed to haunt our room.  I will be sure to report if she appears in any form.  

Resistance is Futile

This morning we started our day with breakfast at a restaurant called "Captain Jack's Stronghold" in Tulelake, California.  This restaurant is not named after Captain Jack Sparrow, but after Keintpoos, a Modoc chief, who was known as "Captain Jack" by the whites.

He and a few of his companions were responsible for the most costly Indian war in the history of the United States, as well as for the death of the only US general to die in an Indian war.  Lava Beds National Monument is the site of Captain Jack's Stronghold, where Keintpoos and about 50 of his followers managed to hold off the US Army for six months in 1872, despite the fact that they were outnumbered ten to one.  Our first mission of the day was to visit these lava beds and see for ourselves how the Modoc accomplished this amazing feat.

Now here's something very odd: literally within sight of this place of siege, where the Modocs fought for the right to stay in their home (the government had assigned them to a reservation up north, to be shared with the Klamath tribe, instead of allowing them to remain by the Lost River), another group of people had been uprooted from their homes and placed in a segregated facility by the white man's government. Just down the road lies Tule Lake concentration camp, where more than 18,000 Japanese Americans were sent in 1942.

Not much remains of the original Tule Lake Segregation Center, because most of the buildings were repurposed by "homesteaders" later, and the barracks buildings used for houses.  There was one remaining building on the site, and another one that they took to the museum we went to.  I tried to imagine myself being given two or three days to leave my home, taking only what I could carry with me, and being sent to this place.  I tried to imagine the mixture of feelings of anger, confusion, shame, denial.

Just across the road was the Stronghold, with its magnificent view of Mount Shasta in the distance.  It's easy to see how the US Army could miss seeing the people hiding down in the lava formations here.  The Modoc men were here, and so were their families.  The old chief, Schonchin, had signed the treaty promising to relocate to the Klamath reservation, but young Keintpoos was tired of being harassed by the Klamath, and of the harsh conditions on the reservation.  He asked for a separate reservation, which would have cost the US only 10,000 dollars.  The Modoc war ended up costing the government half a million. 

The Modocs spent six months in these narrow lanes and lava caves while the army tried to flush them out.  Finally, a small group of unarmed negotiators arranged a meeting with the Modoc.  Under pressure from his friends, after his final request for a separate Modoc reservation had been refused, Captain Jack shot and killed General Canby, who had come to negotiate a treaty.  Shortly thereafter, the Modoc warriors were captured, and Captain Jack and two of his companions became the only Indians tried in a military tribunal.  Gallows had been constructed even before the trial began.

Tule Lake became a segregation center to contain the most "dangerous" of the Japanese-American prisoners, because of their answers to two questions on a "loyalty questionnaire" provided by the US Government.  The first question asked if these prisoners would be willing to serve in combat duty in the armed forces of the United States, and the second question asked them to swear unqualified allegiance to the US and to renounce any loyalty to Japan.   Anyone who answered "no" to either of these questions, or who refused to fill out the questionnaire, or who wrote anything like "yes, if you will let my family go home" was deemed disloyal and dangerous.  These prisoners were called "no-no's" and most were ultimately transferred to Tule Lake, which was the only one of the internment camps to be put under martial law.

In my "Visions of America" class, we do a "Monument Project" every year, where I ask the students to select a monument or memorial and analyze it.  What does it commemorate? Whose story does it tell?  Has it been moved or changed?  What, if anything, is written there?  What is not written?  It took the US Government until 1988 to say sorry for the wrongful imprisonment and the violation of the rights of American citizens, and until 2008 for the Tule Lake Camp to be designated a national monument.

The Historic Marker by the side of the road: very difficult indeed to find!

It took just nine years for the soldiers to erect this "Canby Cross" to commemorate the killing of General Canby by Captain Jack. 

Finally, there has never been an official monument to Keintpoos, his warriors and their families, who, after the trial and execution of the leaders of the rebellion, were moved to reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma.  Despite General Sherman's stated wish not to leave a Modoc man, woman or child alive, they are still around today and you can read all about them here:
Read all about the Modoc Tribe today!

We did find a monument, although not an official one.  It's a pine tree post, its branches decorated with wind chimes, scraps of fabric, bells, plastic wrist bands, key rings, Mardi Gras beads, bottle openers, and at its foot had been placed pairs of shoes, a three month sobriety coin, rosary beads, hand warmers...I couldn't tell what they all meant, but as I stood there, moved, at this memorial to the "no no's" of 1872, I realized that I was also looking at the site of Tule Lake Segregation Center just across the way.  You can see it in the background of this picture.

Read more about Tule Lake here

Timberline Lodge, masterpiece of the WPA

I originally wanted to go to Timberline Lodge because it was the place they filmed The
Shining, using it for haunted The Overlook Hotel.  It was only the exterior scenes they filmed there, and you can see why:  they get so many feet of snow that the windows are all covered up and it looks creepy, like you would go crazy if you stayed there for the winter.  This was actually the least amount of snow they had ever had.

I had planned to run around the outside holding up my finger and saying "Danny isn't here, Mrs. Torrance" in that creepy voice, or yelling "Redrum!  Redrum!"  or even having Matt chase me through the snow with an axe and then pretending to freeze to death and have that Les Brown big band music playing and that voice of the bartender saying, "You've always been here, Mr. Torrance" and all that.  But instead, I was bowled over by the amazing craftsmanship of the lodge itself, and forgot all about re-enacting The Shining.

The lodge was build as a WPA and CCC project during the Roosevelt Administration, and he and Eleanor came up here to dedicate the lodge in 1937.  It was stunning to see the way the huge beams had been hand-hewn and set perfectly, with no metal whatsoever holding up the massive structure. The ironwork was incredible as well; I could see the care and pride in each individual piece. I thought of all those men and women who worked on the lodge, people who had been out of work probably for years.  It reminded me of that part in The Grapes of Wrath where Tom picks up the shovel again, and Steinbeck defines humans as "muscles aching to work, minds aching to create."  Our tour guide started crying as he recalled meeting the last living man who had worked on the lodge  in 2012, a man who had cut the beams for the main lodge room with his father.

These beams are all perfectly straight.  Each weighs seven tons.  All the rocks in the central column were cut by hand.  It's been 75 years and there are NO CRACKS anywhere.  It is truly one of the seven wonders of Oregon. 

More about Timberline Lodge

Every detail of the lodge was a detailed masterpiece that obviously took time and care.  On the left is a camping scene, carved from linoleum.  On the right, a wrought iron, hand forged picture of Paul Bunyan's blue ox, Babe.  The WPA wasn't just about putting people back to work; it was about restoring their dignity.  This lodge is one of a kind, irreplaceable, impossible to replicate. However, there are reminders of the WPA and CCC all across the United States, from little stone amphitheaters in campgrounds to massive lodges like this.

Click here to learn more about the WPA

Speaking of the wonders of Oregon, we drove down to Bend after lunch, through some really beautiful scenery, and stopped at the Old St. Francis Hotel, whose soaking pool should be on anyone's seven wonders list.  We watched the second "Hunger Games" movie, (really bad except for Donald Sutherland who is so evil and Stanley Tucci who is so hammy).  It was very odd to see Philip Seymour Hoffman on the screen, too; I didn't even know he was in that movie until he showed up. Speaking of Visions of America, the parish priest here who oversaw the building of the St. Francis School had been exiled from Ireland after he was the chaplain to the Sinn Fein mayor of Dublin during the uprising!  He was sent to Bend, Oregon, of all places, and was greatly revered by the Catholics here until the day he died.  

Lake Oswego, Oregon - Uneventful and Wet

Well, after two days in Seattle getting ready, putting the cargo carrier onto the roof rack, sorting stuff out one more time, we said goodbye to our friends and drove off in the rain, south on I-5 towards our first destination, Lake Oswego, Oregon.   There is nothing much to report on this first day.  We stopped off to see the "kids" (Rowan, Coby and Jack) and took them out to lunch at the vegan restaurant, "Quickie Too."  It was pretty good food, homemade seitan and so forth, but the milkshakes were 8 dollars, which seemed pretty steep.  It had a Rastafarian theme, with lots of pictures of Bob Marley.  The service was kind of slow.   The advice I got (not that I was anxious or anything, as we are on a road trip and in no hurry) was "just pretend you're stoned."  That way, I guess, I wouldn't have to worry about the service.  But I wasn't worrying; I was being happy.  (Get it?  hahahahaha)

Here's the gang, with their eight dollar vegan milkshakes.  

Our next stop was supposed to be the world's largest wooden bird statue.  I was really excited to see it, but it was bucketing with rain, and it is in Centralia, so it's not like we're never going to get a chance to see it again.  It's at a huge flea market, and it would probably be fun to drive down there some time, visit the bird, go the the flea market (and the western outlet store of course), and stay at McMenamins Olympic Club Hotel.  Here's a link to the Yard Birds Mall if you want to go there without me:

Yard Birds Mall

There is also a link on the Roadside America site, which is a great place to find quirky stuff at the side of the road, if you go on a road trip.
Roadside America tip about the giant bird
We drove right past the bird this time, dropped Jack off at college, and now are relaxing at the Lakeshore Inn in Lake Oswego, a nondescript hotel by the lake, whose patrons, I am sure, are mainly parents of Lewis and Clark college kids.  We should probably make our reservations for Jack's graduation in 2016 while we're here.

Despite the uneventful and rainy start to our journey, we are wildly excited for the adventures that lie ahead of us.

First Stop: A Vision of German America

Last night, Matt and I went to the Dakota Inn Rathskeller in Detroit, just south of 8 Mile and Woodward Avenue.  This neighborhood used to be full of immigrant families who worked in the auto industry, and now is in a pretty run-down and scary area.  Most of the families who used to live here have moved to suburban areas, leaving people who can't afford to get out.  Signs of the times are everywhere: urban decay, abandoned homes, abandoned businesses, graffiti, garbage, huge holes in the streets - all in the wake of the city's bankruptcy and the face of the third largest snowfall in Detroit history.  But the Rathskeller remains exactly the same.

Here is the exterior with its original painted sign and Bavarian-style shutters on the windows in the brick facade, although now the parking lot is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire.  The parking attendant is the son of the previous parking attendant, whose father worked for the father of the current owner, Karl E. Kurz, whose grandfather, Karl Kurz, was a German immigrant who at the Highland Park Ford factory. According to the Dakota Inn website "history," grandpa Kurz worked nights and weekends to transform an old laundry into the kind of Rathskeller (city hall basement restaurant/pub) he remembered from his native land. The resulting pub/restaurant has been in existence, run by the same family, since 1933.

So why was this relevant to me, on my quest for Visions of America?  It all started when Michael, one of my seniors, started singing "Ist das Nicht Ein Schnitzelbank?" in the middle of class one day.  I had no idea why or how, but this kid knew a song that I remembered from my own childhood.  My Grandpa Max immigrated from Germany in the late 1920s, later bringing over his three brothers, Ulrich, Bernhard and Hans.  My parents lived in Germany before I was born when my dad was stationed in the Army there, and they used to speak a little German when they didn't want us "kinder" to understand what they were saying.  I learned the song "Schnitzelbank" from a piano roll we had, and even made little drawings to accompany the lyrics, little knowing how similar they were to the pictures on the wall of the Rathskeller in Detroit!

"How on earth do you know that song?" I asked Michael.  He told me that his aunt and uncle own a German restaurant in Detroit, a restaurant his great grandfather had started, and that I absolutely had to visit there the next time I was in Michigan.  

German Immigrants have contributed to this country to such an extent that we consider most of their contributions to be 100% American as apfelstrudel.  Hot dogs and hamburgers at baseball games, or on the Fourth of July. Christmas Trees. Kindergarten.  Budweiser.  ("In Himmel gibt's kein Bier" is a famous German song that has become "In heaven there is no beer; that's why we drink it here!"). We don't even think of most of these cultural icons as German any more, because they are so ingrained into our US culture, ever since Baron von Steuben helped George Washington whip the troops into shape over the winter at Valley Forge, shouting orders at them in his colorful combination of German with English profanity thrown in.  And if you then consider the second huge wave of immigration from Germany (and Austria) when people like my grandfather were fleeing from the Nazis, and others who came here in the 1950s and 60s, you have almost a million more people.

We went to celebrate Karneval (a German Catholic holiday, the Mardi Gras of Bavaria) with beads and chicken hats (part of the tradition, as is the "Chicken Dance.")  These traditions are more American than German these days, as most Germans living in Germany would not know how to do the Chicken Dance, whereas most Americans, German or not, would probably recognize that crazy music immediately, and probably know how to flap their arms and clap their hands along with it.

We listened to Harry Lutz and the Fahrenden Musikanten, danced the Polka, and ate Bratwurst, Knockwurst, Sauerkraut, Potato Pancakes and pretzels.  We did the Chicken Dance until, as one dancer confessed while we flapped and clapped, "I'm going to have nightmares about this!" The couple we sat with had been coming to the Dakota Inn since the 1950s.  "Detroit sure has changed a lot since then," I remarked.  "Yes," they replied, "But this place hasn't changed one bit!"  It was a fabulous evening, and a true Vision of America.  Click here to learn more about the Dakota Inn!