no, it's not

no, it's not

Las Vegas, New Mexico

It's crisp December and the high mountain air has that sweet familiar scent of pine. Strings of tiny Christmas lights have just snapped on in the old Las Vegas Plaza, outlining the massive, leafless cottonwoods. Crows swoop down into the empty bandstand. I don't know what they could be looking for. One sits on the bronze plaque commemorating Stephen Watts Kearny's speech in August of 1846 when he climbed atop a pueblo here and addressed the entire plaza of bewildered Mexican citizens, some of whom had never seen a white man and had no notion of anywhere called "The United States of America": "I have come amongst you by the orders of my government, to take possession of your country, and extend over it the laws of the United States." After a long list of reasons why this idea should be appealing, not the least of which was offering better policing than the Mexican government could provide against the savage raids of the Navajo, he capped the whole thing off with this blunt threat: "He who ... is found in arms against me, I will hang."

From my second-story window of the historic hotel where the likes of Buffalo Bill and Teddy Roosevelt had laid their heads and dreamed their dreams, the plaza is completely empty now and silent. Only the crows strutting in snow. My cell phone glows green on the little round table beside the bed. Downstairs there's a loud man in the lobby bar. I've encountered him before and I avoid the bar now because of him. His name is Lorenzo. That's the way he introduces himself. "Lorenzo." No handshake, just the name. There's good reason to believe that Lorenzo has had his mind shattered by methamphetamine and various other destructive powders. When he smiles at you it has an intrinsically malicious bent as though slitting your throat would be as simple as starting a car. Like some dogs, you don't want to catch his eye.

Parked directly in front of the old hotel is a giant-wheeled pickup truck that looks like one of those Tonka Toys except it has a dead mountain lion strapped with black bungees across the hood. Its mouth and yellow eyes are wide open. There's very little blood. Inside the cab of the truck two crossbred coonhounds are barking savagely and slashing at the window glass as though it might be their own reflections that have triggered their fury. Two fiddle players (I don't know where they've come from; everything just seems to appear) are playing in a big open brick room at the back of the hotel. No furniture, no plants, just a big empty room. They play in the old Appalachian Mountain style with fiddles braced against their hip bones and laid flat so the bows work at about waist level, giving them an odd detachment. They seem to have no interest in an audience and that's good because there isn't one. People (tourists?) stroll through the lobby and peek into the empty brick room then stroll on. I don't know if the hotel has hired these fiddle players or what. Now Lorenzo the Madman is suddenly screaming from the bar. He's screaming about football; something he's just witnessed on TV. A referee deserves to die. A huge athletic man on the bar stool next to Lorenzo is the owner of the pickup parked outside. He's a professional lion hunter, hired by the government to keep them thinned out and appease the surrounding ranchers. The lion hunter has a Mohican haircut and a turquoise earring. He's married to the plump bartender who speaks with a thick Australian accent and has a flamboyant way of drafting a Guinness. The lion hunter is in agreement with Lorenzo about the offending referee, ratcheting up Lorenzo's impotent violence. The willowy cocktail waitress is making every effort to be courteous and efficient as she weaves her way through the mayhem. Lorenzo screams and drools. She pretends that everything is absolutely normal. She has such innocent country eyes, a Mormon ponytail that bounces. I don't know where she's come from or how she arrived in this little corner of Hell but she won't last long. She keeps coming over to my table and asking me if everything's all right, as though I might be able to reassure her that the world is not coming to an end. "Yes," I tell her. "Everything's fine. It's just history running its course." She smiles sweetly and flees.

Nauvoo, Illinois

Site of the Mormon exodus to Utah. Seventy thousand of them crossed the wide Mississippi here in 1846, fleeing the rabid mob. The righteous drove them out. One testimony on the side of a building in block letters: a woman who hangs all her straight-backed chairs on the wall, sweeps out her plain board house, closes up all the shutters, puts the broom back in its proper place, locks up the front door, and says good-bye forever to her blessed home-place. She turns west to face a sea of salt.

Little People

The European missionary sat hunkered down in a squatting position with the Huron tribesmen in a great circle around the bonfire. It was a posture he was unused to and instinctively felt put him at a disadvantage insofar as persuading the Indians into his point of view. Nevertheless, he bravely presented the notion that he was not one but two. When the warriors heard this they broke into wild laughter and started throwing sticks and dirt into the fire, which created a strange mixture of terror and resentment in the missionary's chest. When the laughter subsided he pressed on with his contention. He patiently explained to the savages that this corporeal body they saw sitting before them was only an exterior shell and that inside him resided a smaller invisible body that, one day, would fly away to live in a heavenly domain. The Huron all chuckled and nodded to themselves as they knocked the ashes from their stone pipes into the crackling fire. The missionary felt deeply misunderstood and was about to get up and return to his tent in a huff when an old man next to him held him in place by the shoulder. He explained to the missionary that all the warriors and shamans present in the circle were well aware of these two bodies and that they also had "little people" residing inside them deep within the chest and that they too flew away at death. The missionary became excited at this new news and felt reassured that he and the tribesmen were now on the same path. With renewed zeal he asked the old man where his people thought these little interior beings traveled off to. The Huron all laughed again and the old man pointed to the crown of a massive ancient cedar nearby that flashed in silhouette from the firelight. He told the missionary these "little people" entered the very top of that tree and descended into its trunk and branches, where they lived in eternity, and that was why he could not cut it down to make siding for his little chapel in the wilderness.

They say, these days, standing out on the rim of the Grand Canyon, the brightest lights in the night sky are not the stars in the heavens but the glow from casino neon in Las Vegas-one hundred and seventy-five miles away.

Lost Art of Wandering

(Highway 152, continued) I try calling Luis again from the yellow pay phone. I'm yearning for some variation on the company I'm keeping but he's still not there. A different woman from the first but with just as strong an accent tells me he's down in Chihuahua now and won't be back for at least a week. I tell her I thought it was Oaxaca where he was last and she says she doesn't keep track of him that closely, he moves around a lot; then she hangs up on me just like the first woman did. These two must be something to behold.

There's music and singing coming from the mission chapel so we head over there. We're just leaves in the wind. We pass a very Teutonic-looking tourist in a neck brace and a fringed Davy Crockett jacket who's trying to figure out his Kodak Instamatic. John stops and helps him with it. John is very good with cameras, I must admit. He loves fiddling with them, the lenses and straps and stuff. He's a natural with cameras. The tourist guy is overjoyed that a total American stranger has stopped and gone out of his way to help him. He's very impressed with John. I think he must be German or Dutch or gay or something. Very strong accent and he's wearing those weird European sandals that buckle up the ankle and look like they're made out of phony leather. And on top of that he's wearing them over a pair of thick army-green wool socks. It's funny but I've found you can actually pinpoint where people come from by the sandals they're wearing. Like Mexicans, for instance, prefer those huaraches with black rubber soles made out of old tires. Pakistanis generally like those flimsy jobs with the leather loop around the big toe. I've gotten pretty good at identifying nationalities that way. Stereotyping. Of course, you're bound to make a mistake now and then. John looks like he's finally solved the problem with the man's Kodak and the man is extremely grateful, trying to give John money and bowing and scraping, hauling out twenties and tens but it seems like he doesn't quite know the difference in the denominations so he's just holding out fistfuls of money but John won't take it. Deep down, John is basically a very honorable guy. He has what you might call true moral fiber although it beats me where he came up with it. He's done a lot of reading and he once attended a Krishnamurti lecture. I think it was actually a series of lectures out in Big Sur somewhere. I'm not sure. Now Dennis is telling John that he should accept the money from the German guy; we could use it for gas and cigarettes but John still won't take it. So now the German guy tries giving the money to Dennis but Dennis says he wasn't the one who fixed the camera. The German keeps insisting, shaking the money up and down in both fists, so finally Dennis pockets forty bucks of it and hands the rest back to him. Then John starts yelling at Dennis to give the forty bucks back so Dennis pulls it out and tries handing it back but now the German refuses to take it. He throws his hands up and steps back as though saying, "A deal's a deal." Now John really goes ballistic and starts screaming at the German, "Take your money back you stupid fucking Kraut! What's the matter with you?" People are turning to stare at us now from across the plaza. Peaceful people on vacation. "Do you think Americans are all on the take? Is that it? Huh? Do you think we're incapable of generosity and goodwill? Or is it your historical racial guilt that's causing you to treat me like some lowlife beggar?" The German keeps smiling and nodding and thanking John then turns and walks away, just like that, leaving Dennis with the forty bucks still clenched in his outstretched hand. John snatches up the money and goes running after the guy, yelling insults all the while, but the man keeps right on walking, ignoring John and taking snapshots of the mission and the tower where Alfred Hitchcock shot Vertigo. Finally, John just throws the money at the German's sweaty back, yelling more insults about the Third Reich, then stomps back over breathlessly to where we are. I've never seen him in such a state. He's trembling now and spitting at the ground. Quite a little crowd has gathered to watch this altercation, but now, seeing that it's not going to develop into physical violence, they disperse. Dennis says we should go and pick up the money that John's thrown away. The German's making no move to retrieve it and we could really use it for the miles up ahead. It's ridiculous to leave good money lying in the dirt, he says to John. John's eyes are glazed over as though he's about to throw up. It's the principle of the thing, John pants, as we watch two little Mexican kids in shorts and bare feet go running across the plaza and snatch up the forty bucks. Dennis yells at them but they just run off as fast as little ponies. Dennis isn't about to chase them. He's in terrible shape. We're all in terrible shape. I don't know how we got this way. We used to be young and vigorous; now we're standing here like a bunch of desperate winos or something. How does this happen?

We wander our way into the little Mission chapel where all the singing is coming from. Kids are running up and down the aisles laughing and giggling while the old people stand singing "Glory, glory, hallelujah" in Spanish. We try to sing along but our Spanish isn't that hot and religious hymns never turned me on anyway. Nobody seems to mind that we've just walked in and joined their ceremony even though we're strange-looking gringos with bloodshot eyes. Maybe they've just grown numb to the presence of tourists in their town. Or maybe they possess true Christian spirit. Doesn't seem like they care one way or the other. Nobody's trying to control the kids either. They just keep running wild up and down the aisles. The priest doesn't care. It's great. The women all have these snow white embroidered panuelos on their heads. The men hold their straw Western hats in front of them with both hands, heads bowed and eyes open; eyes wandering around as they sing almost mechanically. It's beautiful, though, the singing. Even though I'm not normally moved by religious hymns. There's a beauty to the whole simple event of it. A few of the older men have their eyes tightly shut and their lips are moving silently; speaking to the Lord, speaking very personally. No sound, while the singing surrounds them. Then the singing stops and the people all sit back down in the wooden pews. It strikes me that this moment and this repetition has been going on for centuries; praying, singing, sitting, praying, on and on like that. And here we are with nothing to hang our hats on. The kids settle down and group up with their parents and families. The priest steps up to the altar in front of a huge golden crucifix. It looks like it was dipped in caramel like a candy apple from the county fair, the whole agonized Christ and the cross and everything, as though the real Christ were suffocated under layers of goo like those ancient victims from Vesuvius. The priest adjusts the gooseneck microphone at the podium, obviously uncomfortable with technology and even slightly irritated by it. The mike makes a growling sound. The kids giggle. They remain right in the moment. No one reprimands them. Then the priest has a little coughing attack right into the microphone. He stifles it and apologizes. The kids think this is hilarious. Even some of the elders find this funny. The priest looks embarrassed and adjusts his stiff collar. Dennis leans over to me and says in a hoarse whisper: I wish I'd have been raised Catholic, don't you? I love all this stuff. I have no idea what he means and I'm not going to ask. We leave the little chapel just as the priest gears up for his sermon.

Now we find ourselves ambling down to the rodeo grounds, having nothing better to do. Whatever happened to our jobs? Didn't we once all have jobs? John was working in a Mexican delicatessen making up breakfast burritos with white rubber gloves on. Dennis was working as a dogcatcher. And I had something connected with the Highway Department, mowing the medians. What happened? Did we all just up and walk away from being responsible adults? It's a mystery to me. We still have a lot of miles to cover down to Los Olivos but there's no deadline. There's nothing like having no deadline. John and Dennis are much better at it than I am. They seem to be able to totally accept the mutable nature of things whereas I'm always looking for an objective of some kind, somewhere down the road. John has actually become an artist at doing nothing; totally satisfied with just being here and not worrying about the next thing coming up or stewing about something in the past you can't do anything about anyway. The Lost Art of Wandering, he calls it. He's put a title on it so as not to confuse it with plain old indolence. That's what his stepfather always accused him of, he says-laziness. He's told me that since he was about thirteen years old he's had the distinct sensation that he's been living in his own past and observing it, as though he were already dead. Kind of like that narrator guy in Our Town. I admire that about John even though I don't quite get it. He comes up with some profound shit sometimes.

We encounter a strange glass display booth in front of the rodeo stands with an earthquake seismograph inside it. The whole thing is sitting on a kind of Greek pedestal as though it were commemorating something historical. There's a handwritten sign on the glass that reads: OUT OF ORDER. We're in earthquake country. I forget that sometimes. I forget lots of things these days then suddenly something will come back, some thought or something, almost like a picture in my head that gives me this whole feeling about pieces of the past. A past I never lived in. Like, for instance, that book Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana-what a book that was. This aristocratic New England Yankee guy who sets off on a sojourn around the Horn in a three-masted schooner clear up the entire coast of early California and writes this detailed diary at a time when Spain and Mexico owned the whole damn thing. The Hide and Tallow Days they called it where they'd toss dried-out cowhides off the cliffs down to the beach from the mission near San Luis Obispo to the schooners waiting in the cove below. Stiff cowhides sailing hundreds of feet through the blue Pacific air so they wouldn't have to carry them down the steep incline where even burros couldn't make it. Things like that just break my heart.

Duke of Earl

Writing to his London superiors in 1771 regarding the Appalachian border and the impossibility of keeping Scotch-Irish settlers east of an imaginary line running down the spine of the mountains; the very last English governor of Virginia, the Earl of Dunmore, wrote: "My Lord I have learnt from experience that the established Authority of any government in America and the policy of the Government at home, are both insufficient to restrain the Americans; and that they do and will remove as their avidity and restlessness incite them. They acquire no attachment to Place: But wandering about seems engrafted in their Nature: and it is a weakness incident to it, that they Should forever immagine the Lands further off are Still better than those upon which they are already settled.... they do not conceive that Government has any right to forbid their taking possession of a Vast tract of Country, either uninhabited, or which serves only as a Shelter to a few scattered Tribes of Indians. These notions, My Lord, I beg it may be understood, I by no means pretend to Justify. I only think it my duty to State matters as they really are."

Taos

Squawking magpie. Brilliant light. The past gone past. The past gone by. Kit Carson's grave site on the back side of town. Forgotten, by the kid's slide. Ragged chain link. Old Kit at fifty-nine. My passport keeps falling to the ground like a dead blue leaf. Slipping away. This brilliant sight. Golden shaking poplar. Great cottonwoods. Shaking in the sun. Trembling like the tremblers of old. Navajo. Feathered helmets. Puma skulls. This brilliant light of day. Indifferent to sunken graves. Molding stone. Weathered away where you can't even read the names. Metal plaque honoring the hero. The scout. The man who crisscrossed the country by mule. Whose dying words were in Spanish. Graffiti knife slashes across Kit's neck. As though he'd feel a thing. As though a vengeance could still hold power in this bright corner of buried bones and no feeling; absolutely still except for the twirling golden leaves.

My passport keeps falling to the ground. Maybe it's trying to tell me something.

Wyoming

(Highway 80 East) The long haul from Rock Springs to Grand Island, Nebraska, starts out bleak. After two runny eggs and processed ham I hit the road by 7:00. It's hovering at around nineteen degrees; light freezing snow and piss-poor visibility. Eighteen-wheelers jackknifed all along the high ridges between Rawlins and Laramie. Tow trucks blinking down into the black ravines. Through wisping fog, things loom up at you with chains and hooks and cranes; everyone inching along, afraid to drop off into the wide abyss. Just barely tap the brakes and the whole rear end slides out from underneath you. I'm trying to keep two tires on the shoulder in the chatter strip at about five mph hoping the ice will get dislodged between the treads. Only radio station is a preacher ranting from Paul-something about the body as a tent; "this tent in which we groan." Same preacher segues into a declaration that, for him, 1961 was the absolute turning point where the whole wide world went sour. I don't know why he landed on that particular year-1961-the very year I first hit the road, but he insists this is the date of our modern dissolution. He has a long list of social indicators beginning with soaring population then family disintegration, moral relaxation, sexual promiscuity, dangerous drugs, the usual litany. But then he counters it with the imperious question: "What must the righteous do?" As though there were an obvious antidote which we all seem to be deliberately ignoring. If we could only turn our backs on this degeneration and strike out for high ground, we could somehow turn the whole thing around. It seems more political than religious. "What must the righteous do?" An "Onward, Christian Soldiers" kind of appeal. I've lost track of the centerline. Snow boring down into the windshield so fast the wipers can't keep up. Your heart starts to pump a little faster under these conditions; not knowing what might suddenly emerge. Not knowing if the whole world could just drop out from underneath you and there you are at the bottom of crushed steel and spinning wheels. What must the righteous do?

Buffalo Trace

I am stuck now in a town of backyards. This is not a dream. There are no houses to speak of so it can't really be called a town, certainly not "Our Town" or downtown Milwaukee or something identifiable like that. There is no center; no Main Street but the people stroll along as though they had somewhere to go; some destination or another-purposefully but without any urgency like they would in a Big City, hustling and bustling just because everyone else is, as though caught up in a fever they can't escape. More like a walk in the park; meandering but not really wandering so much; not really lost like me who seems to be the only one the least bit bewildered. And it's not as though I don't recognize certain signs; not signs like stop signs or signals because there are none. No advertising of any kind. Very much like the East Berlin of old, before the wall came down. (Hard to believe I once drove through there in a gray Ford Anglia, reading Brecht quotes below the barbed wire while they wheeled a mirror back and forth under the axles, searching for something I might be bringing across illegally.) But now I do recognize certain backyards from years and years ago; certain fallen fences, single-track dog paths worn down through the cooch grass connecting immense vacant lots where vague footprints of very large warehouses once existed and there must have been a great traffic of oxen teams and black mules coming and going, throngs if you will; blacksmith hammers ringing down the broad avenues. And beyond these lots, fields stretching right out to the highway with volunteer oats and blue timothy undulating in the prairie breeze. And the highway itself, now broken up with tall yellow weeds and potholes deep enough to kill a Ford of any kind and, what's even more revealing, is that now the dead highway seems to be returning to the ancient buffalo trace beneath it where someone must have tried to copy the migrations of vast herds that once blackened the landscape. Maybe they felt the buffalo knew where they were going even if they themselves didn't have a clue.

"Our dwelling is but a wandering, and our abiding is but a fleeting, and in a word our home is nowhere."

-Separatist leader at Plymouth, 1620

Original Sin

Now, I've heard this story before, bandied around, about "original sin." The Adam and Eve deal. The snake in the garden and all that shit. She bites the apple. He goes along with it. They take the plunge and fuck their brains out. The spare rib syndrome. The pains of childbirth. They have to start hiding their genitals with fig leaves. The guilt and remorse. I've heard that one. My grandmother read me that story while I balanced on her knee. I've heard about the Pilgrim Fathers and how we descend directly down from the Mayflower folks and the Plymouth Colony and those same Puritans tramping around on Cape Cod in their funny hats, digging up Narragansett burial mounds and stealing their ceremonial corn when they're supposed to be doing God's work. I've also heard how Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead. The Holy Ghost. The roll away the stone. How we need to constantly beat ourselves up for being such miserable thankless Godless creatures, crawling around on our bellies like a bunch of reptiles. But how in the world are you supposed to make a living? That's my question. How are you supposed to scrape two nickels together? I've tried everything: busboy, waiter, fence painter, wrangler; raking up chicken bones from fancy picnics. Nothing pays as good as shooting some fool in the head and moving on down the line. Believe me, nothing. With a check like that I can lose myself down in the Yucatan for months on end. Live like a damn potentate. Brown beauties all around me. Tequila up the ass. Float on my back in the green Caribbean. Are you kidding? One less tyrant in the world is the way I look at it. Jesus might have died for somebody's sins but they sure as hell weren't mine.

The Comanche were known to plunder English Bibles in their raids on westering wagon trains; ripping out the onionskin pages and stuffing them into buffalo hide war shields emblazoned with blue horses, red hawks, and running dogs.

Choirboy Once

I can hardly believe I was a choirboy once. There it is. Evidence. Picture of me in the fifties. Back there in the fifties. Innocent. Or so it seemed. Snapshot: Ike and Spot. Frigidaire gleaming. Picture of me in black robes. Puritan floppy white collar. Butch haircut. Waxed and perky. Look at that. Crooked squinting smile, unsure what it's projecting exactly. The smile. Pinched lips. What's it trying to say? What's it hiding? I can't remember being there, to tell the truth. But something must have been. Some other one. Not me now. This me now. Not this one here. Some other. Watching. Staring out. Watching very closely. The proceedings. Rituals. Nothing escaped me, if that's what you think. Wafers and wine. Flesh and blood of our Lord. Cannibal congregation. Swarming sex. Submerged. Fever. Bulging behinds. Crotches rock hard. Christ on a stick. Blood of the feet. Dripping nails. Mothers of friends. Sisters. Girls' rear ends. Sex. Chicas. Lipstick so thick it crumbled right off into their steaming black laps. Fingernails of the Virgin Mary. Raw smell of pussy. Right through the cotton. Singing. Chants. Incantations to the one and only. The Holy of Holies. The Triple Threat. Voices praying. Knees buckled. Going down on the velvet. Rustling thighs. Silken calves. Going down on Jesus. Crucified. Bleeding through and through. Then gathering back up. Struggling to the surface. Gasping for air. Back up to the Lord. For mercy or what? Echoes off the stone walls. The droning voice. Sermon. Protestant. Certain. The whole effort of it. The jaw. The teeth. The distance from life. The great distance. Outside. From here to there. Out there. Where the hot cars sit parked. Waiting. Steaming black top. Outside in the heat. Hot air. Just waiting to roar off to anywhere but here. Tonopah. Wichita. Anywhere but right here.

Cat in a Barn at Night

If you go to shoot a cat in a barn late at night and you want it quick and sudden so as not to wake the children; whatever you do don't use a pistol. You'll never get it done. The son-bitch will run howling all up and down the rafters with a slug right through his skull and you'll never find him in the dark. I'm telling you. Don't even think about using a handgun. If you can manage to catch the bastard, drop him in a burlap oat sack and tie it shut with baling wire. Don't forget to use mulehide gloves and long sleeves or he'll slash your white skinny ass to ribbons. Hang the sack to a stout beam and back off no more than five foot. Shoot the sack point-blank with a full choke twelve-gauge loaded with steel goose pellets and have a whole boxful on hand in case the bag keeps twitching. I'm telling you. Don't even think about using a pistol.

Philip, South Dakota

(Highway 73) He lost his head completely. I don't know what set him off. Just started firing and firing and firing. In a circle. Gas pumps exploded. People fell. People ran for cover. I don't know what set him off, tell the truth. They closed the Cenex-the feed store-Dairy Queen. All those little shops around there. They just folded up and went away after that. It's like a ghost town now. I'll take you down later if you want to see it. Shocking. Completely deserted. Weeds. Broken windows. Nobody. I don't know what set him off. I really don't.

Nephophobia

(Veterans Highway) Fear of clouds? Why? Out of the whole panopoly of phobias, why that? There was a name for it. He looked it up. A title. Something reassuring about it being named. Someone's had it before him. He thought. It's already in the world. He thought. Someone else is or has been already possessed by clouds. Succumbed. In this way. "Nephophobia"-that was it. Possibly Greek? Clouds. Antiquity. Ticking away. All across the naked Alleghenies that day. Driving the twisted 64. The "Veterans Highway." There they were. Extremely close. Hanging above the mountains. Piled up faces. Clouds misshapen. Faces in the heavens. Horrible. Bloated cheeks like those old cherub angel paintings. Medieval. Caravaggio. Gouged-out eyes. Gigantic demons from on high. This was going to be a difficult trip. Just getting across. Just getting over to Stonewall Jackson's old stronghold where he bled to death from "friendly fire." (It's not such a modern term.) Could he make it? There was no stopping now. No pulling over. He tried his best to not look up. Keep his mind on the road. What was left of it. Hug the rumble strip. But there they were-sucking his attention. Seducing him up into looking. And now they'd change-the eyes, the cheeks. Like flesh sloughing away. The heads sliding off. Joining other heads. A whole family. None of them looking related. But then they'd melt; one into the other. Becoming others. Ancestors, maybe. Could he make it across? Could he make it through this? Just stay between the lines. Grip the damn wheel and stay between the lines. It's not that big a deal.

Victorville, California

(Highway 15) Queens Motel, with a dull green plaster brontosaurus, all chipped and peeling from the desert sun, standing tall on its hind legs in front of a huge black satellite dish facing the Roy Rogers Mountains. I hadn't realized they'd actually named some mountains after Roy. I'd never heard of the Roy Rogers Mountains and I grew up here. I grew up with Roy. He was one of the first television cowboy heroes I can remember watching. I watched Roy in the flesh too, riding Trigger down Colorado Boulevard in the Rose Parade alongside Dale Evans. I had no idea he got some mountains named after him. That must have happened long after I left. I wonder who decides that, anyway. Who decides to give mountains a name-or streets? They must do that by committee or something. I know a guy down in Texas who got his dad's name put on a freeway outside Dallas because his dad owned the asphalt company that poured the road. Then there was a little side street in New York City called Thelonious Monk Place. It might still be there. I thought that was cool. Somebody must have really had to lobby for that one. And then, of course, they're always renaming stuff too. Taking the old name down and putting a new one up. That happens all the time. Dictators like to do that. Have you noticed that? Totalitarian tyrants. You never know how long a name is going to last from one regime to the other. Like, for instance, the Roy Rogers Mountains could have a Chinese name in fifty years. You never know. Roy could be long forgotten by then if he isn't already. Monk might last a little longer than Roy but you never know. Of course you can't really compare East Coast idolatry to West Coast and it's probably not fair to allegorize fifties cowboy heroes with iconoclastic Jazz Legends but there you go. In fact fairness isn't even part of the issue. I don't know why I brought it up. Maybe there won't even be any mountains left at all, let alone streets. Nothing left to name. I'm not going to be around, that's for sure. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing some of these names changed but it's not going to be in my lifetime. The Richard Nixon Library, for instance. Bob Hope Airport. Ronald Reagan Drive. How about having a Joaquin Murrieta Boulevard? He got his head cut off and paraded around the streets of Los Angeles on a stick and they don't name shit after him.