Two Wheels To There

Two Wheels To There

Two Wheels To There

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Pherther-Grams

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The mid-May weekend was looking decent, so Surtch Pherther, jonesing for a desert rip, would hit dirt again. He’d aimed to dark-wander with good tunes and smoke, but ride-tired and for the week’s work and a nightfall chill, was fine turning in early to breeze on the fly and nothin’ otherwise. The next morn, he tracked dawn up a near, near-familiar ridge for fossil-hunting and a sudden snake-watch after a biggun rattled itself know, and then throttled off for fuel, food, and a Bud at a state-line oasis, where he met two dudes who’d cycle-slogged two-hundred-fifty-ish miles through downpours and desert heat just to carve a glacier.

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The mid-May weekend was looking decent, so Surtch Pherther, jonesing for a desert rip, would hit dirt again.  He’d aimed to dark-wander with good tunes and smoke, but ride-tired and for the week’s work and a nightfall chill, was fine turning in early to breeze on the fly and nothin’ otherwise.  The next morn, he tracked dawn up a near, near-familiar ridge for fossil-hunting and a sudden snake-watch after a biggun rattled itself know, and then throttled off for fuel, food, and a Bud at a state-line oasis, where he met two dudes who’d cycle-slogged two-hundred-fifty-ish miles through downpours and desert heat just to carve a glacier.
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The Desert River Will Steal Your Heart – 2011.10.01(b)

Published on March 13, 2016 by admin 9 Comments

With a thumbtip flip, Surtch Pherther flicked the first ash cap from his maduro corona cigar. Half across that old highway bridge in the muggy fall night, he listened for its hit against the Crosscapes River, invisible in the dense dark, thirty feet down: Nothing. He listened for water shoosh-shoosh-shooshing through salt grass, snake grass, tamarisk, and willows. For ripples, he listened–but no: A flow without stones has no reason for that.

Wide water in a waste goes slow, bends big, is nigh on level with its ‘scape and would have you believe that it’s on the level too–but no: On sand alone, a river moves like a serpent, by stealth. It can pick your pocket, take your land, pluck your dreams like fruit, and it has the means to do the job and a place to hide the body. Give it a chance, and the desert river will steal your heart.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Surtch had checked in late that afternoon at Blakesville’s old Parker Motel, where a younger self and his kin had once snagged shuteye after a small hours, sixty mile, lonesome highway bicycle ride through the clayscape waste full of heat, skeeters, drizzle, and the push and pull of barreling rigs. They’d gotten spaced out, outta sight, and off in their own worlds, but regrouped late in a turnout for a thunderstorm’s blitz and boom of the scene–a worn timber corral nearby, the gnarled terrain beyond, and looming behind, the craggy Bucksaw Cliffs.

And all the while, from the first crank out of little Seeley’s town park at midnight to the last at the motel many hours down the road, that younger self had been tuned in to Enigma’s debut album loud on auto reverse continuous on the Walkman clipped at his hip. Man, what a trip that had been.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

From a hot shower linger, Surtch–combed, brushed, free of the dirt-riding dust of the day–had walked out early that evening to stalk dinner. Not a block down he came upon a newly painted, old cafe with a roadside sign still wearing the name of some past venture, something only relative fortune or irrational confidence could change. “Well,” he said, “what the hell,” and his entry was announced with a screech from the dull chrome door.

Almost acrobatically, a wiry, little guy sprang from the kitchen. “Welcome! Villa Rica Restaurante! Pleece. Seat. Drink?” Eager to convey what his broken English might not, he held a grin on his face and a menu out from his side, presenting–like a spectacle–his place of specters: the burgundy, bombproof carpet with Atomic Age starbursts in gold; rain-stained popcorn ceiling like surf from the ocean blue walls; wagon wheel chandeliers, right for the town, but wrong for the times; mottled blue counter spottily worn down to kraft paper brown by decades of diners gone by; and every place set, and Surtch the only customer.

“Um, coffee please,” and he slid into a front booth with taped-up seats and with views of the old highway main drag, the overcast lowering like a stage curtain before the setting sun, and the west end of Blakesville.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Born a way station way back when at a wide river ferrying site for folks and things on the move, and come of age with the railroad boom, but left on the platform when the hub was switched, little Blakesville now bore, in boarded-up motels and expired eateries, the scars of a brief, postwar uranium boom, sixty-odd years back. Adding insult to injury, it was soon thereafter bypassed like a blown fuse by the interstate and all that came–or went–with it.

Now only where ramps tied it to traffic at both far ends was there any semblance of prosperity, in branded gas stations and fast-food joints, just more spots on the system to get the same old shit between untold heres and theres. It was like Blakesville was being forced to hold its breath, to wait—for rebirth, or its last gasp.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

With the final shred of tortilla, Surtch wiped his plate clean of beans and rice and the fajitas’ spicy sauce, popped in that pinch and tossed back the lukewarm last of his second cup, paid up and swapped thank yous with wiry, little guy, and with a screech from the dull chrome door fairly bidding him well, returned to the sidewalk and into the evening that had meanwhile gone dim.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

He’d unburdened Escape Artist upon arriving that afternoon, leaving its top case in his room with the full fuel cans like a bomb wanting a spark, so it took him but a second to soften the spring, gear up, start up, butt-bounce the rear just for fun, and twist from the lot and onto the old highway main drag, hardly checking for traffic, but minding his speed ’cause if Blakesville was especially hungry for one thing, it was revenue from throttle-happy travelers.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

On the far side of an east-of-town mound that left him in the dark on the decaying old highway frontage road, Surtch cranked it up, keeping his peepers peeled for pronghorn out to broadside him from the blue and fling him roadside, broken and bruised–until about three miles out, where he rolled off the gas, swung under a crumbling overpass, and struck off on a desert dirt road that fled further into the black.

Aside from precious nothing, the only things for a while within reach of Escape Artist’s slight light were road grader leavings, scattered rabbit- and sage-brush, and here and there huddles of scheming tumbleweeds. Soon pale bluffs emerged left and right, looking like ruins and appearing dead at first glance–too dry for life, too barren for hope–but no: Vigorous they were, fragile but hardy, vulnerable but resilient, quietly vital. And that’s the desert in a nutshell–a paradox.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Down a snaky draw the road dove, teasing the wash with parallel runs, shoulder bumps, and pointless crossings, while from heaps and boulders Escape Artist’s light conjured shadows, raising them to monsters tall and twitchy across the terrain and driving them off all the same, until–abruptly–the bluffs receded and the draw dwindled, the shadow play ceased for want of a source, and the road just stopped. There was a small, tracked-out flat, a wet mound of travertine, and the open wellhead pipe from a prewar oil bore. It was Codd-Bottle Geyser, and all they’d struck was club soda: carbon dioxide-propelled groundwater.

To Surtch, it seemed like odd geology for a petroleum prospect, but what did he know? In the sandstone labyrinth down the Crosscapes from Blakesville–far by flow or sand, but a wink as the crow flies–were many such geysers. Of course, those had been sunk with water in mind, by ranchers and by sand settlers supposedly taking root with riverside cultivation of gardens and melons and–believe it or not–peaches. Really, though, it was the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition era in the US, and most of those so-called homesteaders were just lawless desert rats–off their rockers, out in the wastes, lost in the maze, down in the sheer-walled canyon shade, brewin’ hooch.

Surtch imagined himself kickin’ back with a cactus quill toothpick twiddlin’ ‘tween his lips in a scrub oak-shrouded alcove with its seam seep quenching critters and small ferns and traveling songbirds–moonshining with the rest of ’em, bootlegging maybe with the best of ’em.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Patient Escape Artist idled in neutral while its slight light dissolved in the dark, like damp in the dry, above where the Crosscapes moved by stealth, twenty feet out, ten feet down, and for what it’s worth, over seven hundred miles long.

Surtch might have shut it down and let the night wash over him, might have waited for his sight to catch up, might have alighted to drift in the dark, might have listened to Codd-Bottle blow, might have lain still on the sand to be more aware, might have pushed through the brush and the riverside reeds, and might have crouched on the crumbly bank, straining to hear the wide water’s whispers, begging to know its wisdom, and pleading to keep its secrets. He might have tried to endear himself to it as he’d tried with every desert river since the Johnsie stole his heart when he was just a little boy.

Yeah–were it not for campers in a Vee-Dub pop-top overnighting near the geyser, he might have. But they’d stirred at his arrival and stayed anxious about his presence, so around he turned to return to town. And that likely was for the best anyway: Love of a desert river can be a smothering thing.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

The full fuel cans he’d left like a bomb wanting a spark had not meanwhile rubbled his room and inflamed the Parker Motel, so Surtch–adding foolishness to recklessness as though two such negatives might mathemagically make a positive–planned to leave them there overnight. Onto the bed he tossed his gear, into his rear pocket he stuffed his wallet, and out the door he set off on foot to the Zephyr Truck Stop, mid town, to gather the next day’s breakfast and lunch.

Along the old highway main drag stood many streetlamps, too few lit, and the town was home to far more crickets than it deserved. Where lots remained wild, the temperature dropped, and through Russian olive hedges a few campfires flickered afar in the Crosscapes River State Park. In a night that would have been young for a city, Blakesville was all but dormant.

Three kids with bicycles goofed and gabbed in the town park pavilion across the road–Surtch could hear them, but not what they said–and when they noticed him, they hushed, watched, and then vanished into the shadows. Seconds later, a deputy drove slowly through town, the only car in the scene right then, and Surtch was left feeling criminal for no reason.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

At the Zephyr he grabbed granola bars and some jerky, a Gatorade, a banana, a small milk, two cereal cups, and he plucked a plastic spoon from a bin near the chili and cheese dispensers and the wiener rollers. He also snagged a cold beer–one of those cheap, pale lagers in a twenty-four ounce can ’cause that was precisely the kind that a Blakesville station would sell: The town simply wouldn’t have tolerated anything remotely highfalutin.

Surtch Pherther at Two Wheels To There: A motorcycle blog by Ry Austin

Back half across that old highway bridge in the muggy fall night, Surtch Pherther–groceries warming at his feet, maduro corona cigar smoldering not an inch from his pinch, and brain abuzzin’–dragged once more for the last time and then flipped the hot butt far out and listened for its hit against the Crosscapes River, invisible in the dense dark, thirty feet down: Nothing.

Feeling a bit less criminal-for-no-reason with a grocery bag in hand, he would stroll back to his room at Blakesville’s old Parker Motel and, later, nod off fully dressed, sprawled across the bed–an empty on the nightstand, Cartoon Network on the TV, and during the small hours, drizzles outside.

 

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Filed Under: Blakesville, Escape Artist Tagged With: crosscapes river, johnsie river, lodging, mines, moonshiners, parker motel, railroads, recollections, storms, villa rica restaurante, zephyr truck stop

Comments

  1. SonjaM says

    March 13, 2016 at 07:10

    If it weren’t for the mentioning of Gatorade or the odd picture sporting a motorised two-wheeler the tale could have easily taken place a century ago.

    Reply
    • Ry Austin says

      March 14, 2016 at 23:52

      And what I wouldn’t do to experience the deserts of the American West a century or a century and a half back, Sonja. Thrilling times for sure–dangerous, but thrilling.

      You know, it’s fascinating and frustrating: You can be out wandering such wastes and you’ll happen upon evidence of past human habitation or activity–sometimes arrowheads, potsherds, rock art, or cliff dwellings 1,000-ish years old; other times strewn core samples, an eroded cliffside road, or settlers’ structures; and seldom insight into the goings-on.

      Those folks simply went about their daily lives. What was routine to them is history to us, or would be if only they had left accounts. We’re just left with questions.

      Reply
  2. Trobairitz says

    March 14, 2016 at 13:14

    The pictures do look like they are from a time gone by. My favorite was the cactus though. Great shot.

    Reply
    • Ry Austin says

      March 15, 2016 at 00:00

      Thank you, Trobairitz. I, too, am fond of that spiky pic from above.

      The narrative there might have been a bit misleading. That’s actually a type of yucca, though I can assure you, the human heinie hardly knows the difference: I couldn’t have been more than five years old when, one evening while around a campfire, I fell backward into a yucca that was about as big as me. Boy did that sting something fierce.

      (sigh) Good times. Good times…

      Reply
  3. curvyroads says

    March 16, 2016 at 13:45

    What perfect descriptions of the desert, and of crumbling old towns that have been bypassed by, well, almost everything. We just spent some time in the desert and I wish I had your way with words to do it justice, Ry!

    Reply
    • Ry Austin says

      March 17, 2016 at 15:38

      I am delighted that you enjoyed the read, Lynne.

      I often wonder if the rise of the Interstate Highway System affected towns in the east the same way it seems to have affected many in the west, and I’ve been surprised to learn that opinions at that time were split: Some folks, concerned about how increasing traffic was changing their main streets and noising things up, welcomed the interstates’ arrival, whereas others foresaw it as a virtual death knell for their beloved hometowns.

      Beware of the desert, Lynne: If you spend enough time there—whether in the high desert, the salt desert, or the red rocks—it’ll likely end up stealing your heart too (assuming that it hasn’t already 😉 ).

      Reply
      • curvyroads says

        March 18, 2016 at 19:02

        Ry, that is a very interesting question about the east. I had to think about it, and conclude that actually both situations exist here. We love the backroads and often ride on them as they parallel the interstate, and it is heartbreaking to see the shells of businesses that have been bypassed, but then, some of the quaintest historic towns stay that way only because the city fathers thought to create a bypass for the heavy traffic. So, yes it happens here too, but the density is such that it might not kill the whole town, but there will certainly be casualties.

        And I think the desert has already taken a piece of my heart…I am so fortunate to be able to travel more now, and I am pretty sure a desert visit will be at least annual for us for the forseeable future. 🙂

        Reply
  4. David Masse says

    March 25, 2016 at 10:31

    Ry I finally subscribed to your posts. Heaven only knows why it took this long. I added you to my blog roll, but Blogger said something about not finding a feed… so who knows. At least I’ll get the e-mails.

    Your writing styles reminds me more of Doug Adams than any other author. Is it just me?

    Reply
    • Ry Austin says

      March 26, 2016 at 18:43

      Thank you for subscribing, David. I’m perplexed by the whole no-feed-in-Blogger thing. Likely it has something to do with this being a WordPress-based site, though I’m sure you’ve added other such sites without issue.

      Perhaps if I establish a proper Blogger profile… Or maybe if I adjust the thingamajigs, twist the whatchamacallits, dial in the doodads, and disable the doohickeys entirely… Howsabout if I swap the gadgets and gizmos aplenty with the whosits and whatsits galore… What? What’s that? No, I’ve never seen Disney’s The Little Mermaid! Aw hell, one can never win with technology anyway, so why bother.

      Well, you succeeded in piquing my curiosity, so last night I picked up and began reading The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Though I’m only a few pages in, I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. 🙂

      Reply

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