Mountains, Deserts and Mining
Chapter Two: The Desert
By John Klein
March 15, 2010
I will continue the story in Chapter Two following, in which we learn that something else about that automobile, other than the wiring, had deteriorated with age.
Forty Eight hours or so after leaving San Francisco for the mountains of eastern Nevada my parents, two very young brothers and I at the tender age of eight left Reno toward the very small town of Sparks, Nevada, which I now understand has become part of metropolitan Reno.
We would continue thirty miles or so on US 40, now Interstate 80, and then turn off on US 50 and follow it to the vicinity of our destination. I am reminded here that some years later in time of my youth I was talking with a man, a San Franciscan born in 1872, who had taken up automobile driving early in the twentieth century and who had traveled extensively on the open road. He mentioned knowing highway 50 and described it as a pencil line someone had drawn on a map across the deserts of Nevada and beyond. Funny thing, I thought, because I had seen the monument on the overlook in San Francisco's Lincoln Park eastward of the Palace of the Legion of Honor which identified San Francisco as the western terminus of the transcontinental highway designated US 50. The impression I had from it was that this was somewhat of a grand boulevard across the country.
My elderly friend wasn't far from the truth.
The roadway was two lanes in width with narrow shoulders. I rather think it was a dirt road over some stretches, and I recall that over low spots in the desert it was built up like a railroad right of way. There was hardly any traffic. It seems to me we never caught up with anybody and no one caught up with us.
I saw mirages for the first time in my life. My dad explained them, and I watched them with great interest for many a mile. There were no buildings to be seen for miles upon miles, upon miles. There were no such things as service stations or rest stops, absolutely no places to get ice or ice cream or cold drinks. And, I wonder if generations younger than mine will believe that we didn't miss these things. We carried drinking water in canteens and were glad to take it warm, and for the car we had radiator water in a waterproof canvas bag hanging from the front bumper. We had food on board that required no refrigeration. The car of course had no heater or air conditioner, and we didn't complain. We wore clothing to fit the season and took it for granted that we had to adjust ourselves; we had no equipment by which to modify nature.
At one place my dad pulled to almost a complete stop and pointed to a huge rattlesnake coiled in the middle of the road. It was my very first sight of a rattler and I have never since seen a larger one. We had probably interrupted it in a journey across the road and frightened it into a coil, for I have heard the rattlesnake usually stays in the shade when the sun is high. My dad drove carefully so as not injure it; he respected the fact that we were the intruders, not the other way around.
The road, although primitive compared to today's standard, was quite passable, but sometime that day, probably early afternoon we began to find out that it wasn't too kind to our tires. A rear tire went flat and we rolled to a stop in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure that car carried a spare tire, but one way or the other a spare wasn't available at the moment.
Now this will be a keen reminiscence for those of us who "motored" in those days, as the saying went; and to the young folks a scenario that human beings should not have to face. My father without a murmur took his tool box to the rear, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. I squatted behind him with keen curiosity and watched his every move.
I learned the routine from watching how it did it, this time, and times before and after. This is what he did:
First he blocked the front wheels and with a hand jack raised the flat high for removal of the wheel. With the wheel resting flat on the ground he used two flat, iron bars to separate the tire from the wheel. He removed the inner tube and inspected both the casing and the tube for breaks. If the tube was cut he cut a patch to cover the wound. The patch material was in the tool box in fairly large squares. If the tire was cut he inserted a rubber patch called a "boot". These were held firmly in place by an application of liquid cement, given time to dry. But before he applied a patch to the tube he "vulcanized" it. First he scraped the wound area with a small tool resembling a cheese grater. Then he heated the tube with an open flame, cemented the patch and waited for the cement to dry.. Then he pumped a bit of air into the tube and squeezed it back into the tire and with the help of the two hand irons put the tire back on the rim of the wheel, placed the wheel on the axle hub and bolted it down. The jack was lowered and tools put away. That was it, but the hardest part of it I've just overlooked.
Before the wheel was bolted in place the tube had to be inflated, by a hand pump which was held steady by both feet and worked up and down with both hand. Tubeless tires today carry something like 30 pounds, but then 50 to 60 was closer to the mark and that took a lot of pumping, especially in the heat of an afternoon sun in a desert summer.
My readers may fault me for indulging in such detail, but I have a purpose. I want my readers to appreciate fully the fact that from that moment on and until we reached San Francisco again my father changed twenty-six flat tires on that car, all the same way. Yes, I said twenty-six. Dad and I kept a count; I was his phantom helper each and every time.
He deduced that like the insulation on the wiring that had caused so much trouble on our second day on the road and very nearly scotched the whole trip, the tires had also suffered deterioration while the car sat for several years on blocks in the drafty garage of the original owners. Most of those flats happened on rough roads in desert country. Of course, tires were not nearly as rugged then as they are now, and were much more prone to injury from ordinary road hazards.
My father never uttered a complaint. He loved to drive, and was happy to be on the road. He was an excellent driver. The inconveniences of motoring in those days were just part of the game.
Granted that were averaging some twenty miles an hour and allowing for flat tires we were not destined to cross Nevada in one day. When the sun went low in the western sky behind us we had reached the town of Austin, some halfway across the State. There were no auto camps or other public lodging available, just a few stores for a block or two of the main street, which was the highway. Everything was closed. The sidewalks, if there were any, were already rolled up. It did have on extraordinary feature however. There was a group of Indians, thirty or forty in number, building a large campfire in the middle of an intersection on the main street, around which they sat in a circle, blankets around themselves, and at which they slept all night. Did I say above there was but little traffic to be seen on Route 50? There certainly was none on the main street of Austin that night, except for us, and we were not about to move around.
The Indians may have been in town for a festival or a tribal meeting perhaps. We didn't approach them, lest we invade their privacy.
So we parked our car on the street a hundred yards or so away from the fire, and slept for the night, my parents in the front seat, my brothers and I in the back. Early in the morning we awoke to start for a second day in the desert. We had a slight delay in getting started.
Dad had to fix another flat tire.
We will continue the journey in Chapter 3, in which we leave the desert and reach mountains again. Along the way we speak with people who personify the sprit of western hospitality.
Places I’ve Lived
by Robin Gail
March 15, 2010
On yet another occasion when I phoned my folks to give them an address change, my father asked, “Why do you move so often?”
I had reasons. “I moved in with a new sweetie. We broke up. I got a new job. I lost my job. I didn’t like my roommates. The house was sold. The rent was too high. The neighborhood wasn’t safe. The landlord was weird.” My reasons were as many as the moves I made, but the truth is probably that I was simply restless and rootless, always looking for the next best place.
I could pack tightly and move quickly. Moving was a skill I was proud of. I was good at it – after all, one does get good at whatever one does a lot.
In the 29 years from 1960 when I left my parents’ home to 1989 when I finally settled down, I had 44 different addresses. At least that’s how many I can remember. That averages about four months per place. In Sonoma County alone I’ve lived in Sebastopol, Santa Rosa, Camp Meeker, Cotati, Rohnert Park, Graton, Petaluma, Forestville, Geyserville and Windsor. In all those places I rarely even met my neighbors.
There are landlords who prefer not to know how primitive their rentals really are, and the people who live there simply do not have enough self-esteem to demand better. They are afraid to complain for fear they’ll be kicked out. I know because I was such a one. I lived in a barely-remodeled garage, an ancient chicken coop, a school bus, and a trailer with no plumbing. I spent one of the coldest winters on record in an uninsulated summer cabin.
But not every place I lived was dreadful. One of my favorites was above the ocean in Bolinas. I lived there in 1968 with three friends, and we had a happy dog named Herschel and some chickens in a little pen in the front yard. We had a giant wood-burning kitchen stove with an attached water heater. Someone could take a shower any time we cooked. It seemed like the sun was always shining.
On days the tide was out, I would climb down the cliff and walk along the beach, gathering shells and kicking sand, to the little town of Bolinas, then up the road and home for lunch. When the tide was high, I would go the other way, down to town and the lagoon to watch the waves. Living life according to the tides was peaceful and meditative, and I felt deeply connected to the earth and the ocean. I could have stayed forever, but life swept me along.
In 1972 when our son August was a year old, Chuck and I moved from a cabin in a canyon near Forestville to a little place on Hwy 116 on an apple orchard. When you live in canyon, the sun never rises and sets – it just passes overhead during the middle of the day, and it was a treat to live out in the open and to experience the sunlight all day long. I decided to be a farmer, and I planted beautiful garden – the best I’ve ever had. We got a baby goat, and we named her Snow. Baby August said, “Snow’s aw-wite.”
I put her on the back porch with straw for bedding and a light bulb for warmth, and I went to work building her a little house of her own down in the orchard. She grew fast, though, and before her place was ready she reached the electrical cord and pulled the light bulb down into the straw! When I looked up, smoke was billowing from the porch, and I ran to get the baby and then to save Snow and put out the fire.
I was savvy enough to unplug the electricity before I threw water on the fire, but I didn’t think about the cold water shattering the hot light bulb, and it exploded shards of glass everywhere in the straw. Being a farmer was more complicated than I’d thought!
I loved it there too, but again, life moved me along.
Finally the torrents of my life slowed down and I stopped living on the fringes of conventional society. I began to live a more ordinary life, and I have come to love it.
Today – and for the last 11 years – Leona and I have lived in our own lovely home in an older subdivision in Windsor. It’s not a rustic little hippie place; it has central heating and air conditioning, and we love making our home beautiful. We have giant oaks and daffodils in the yard and a plum tree and grape vines for making jam. We have dogs and cats and chickens, and we know our neighbors.
Life is good.