Hope Springs Eternal, which is probably a mistake.

THURSDAY: GHOST TOWNS OUT AND AROUND COBRE, MONTELLO CEMETERY, THE TEN UNKNOWN


We had been there now for two days and had not seen any sign of human life except for the trains and that one lone step-van on that desolate road. Low clouds boiled and melted in the hot sky. We loaded up to go check out some ghost towns.

Tecoma was seven miles east of Montello, as the crow flies, maybe a mile off the highway, just south of the second set of tracks, which here separates from the northernmost track by about a quarter mile. We crossed each set of tracks, and there we were, at a cross-roads, and a simple metal sign on a tall wood post that read ‘Tecoma’.

“It’s kind’a sad when you have to have a sign to mark where something was.”

“Well, the cemetery is what we’re looking for anyway,” I assured everyone, and turned south-west.

The road was exceptionally good, recently graded, and skirted the spot on the map with the square and a cross within. The GPS started saying we were further away then before. We turned up a side road, and found we were heading for what we were calling a ‘homestead’, a sudden collection of buildings or trailers, set out in nowhere, who knows by what inspiration. In this case it looked like there were perhaps two single-wide mobile homes. We had not seen a sign saying ‘private property’ or ‘no trespassing’, but it was looking more and more like this road headed directly into this compound.

Robin pulled out the binoculars and called me to a halt. She spied the homestead ahead.

“Looks like new cars,” she said.

I took a look. There was smoke rising from one trailer’s kitchen stack, and there were three vehicles that were newer than the Bronco we were driving parked nearby. Logical assumption, it wasn’t an abandoned homestead.

We were still a mile away from the cemetery. According to NVGhostTowns.com, the only real remains of Tecoma is its cemetery.

We started back, looking for a road that we might have missed. No joy.

“y’ook o’ber d’ere!” Nick bellowed.

We’d been looking to our right. Nick had spotted something to our left.

From the road I could see the remains of some trailers. A road led right to it.

What we came upon in short order were two large travel trailers and a camper sans truck, and everything that had once been inside, been hauled out and dumped all around, left to the elements. Windows shot out, propane tanks of various sizes and style sporting rust covered bullet holes.

A half dozen rabbits dashed out below the larger trailer, but somehow the dogs didn’t see them. While on leashes, If they spot something and you’re not prepared, you’re in for a painful jerk and wrestling match.

We quickly realized this was not a dump. These trailers had been lived in here. Considering the road looked like it made this spot something of a wash, that seemed incongruous to me. In a rain, there must be standing water all around these trailers. Past the trailers, at a right angle, the road continued, making these two trailers nothing less than road blocks.

I didn’t dare let anyone go in for fear of the floor collapsing or cornering a rattler, but through the shattered windows we saw clothes in the open drawers, dishes and utensils in the sink. Much of the debris littering the ground was electronics reduced to the rubble you get when you blow something to pieces with a shotgun. Still, this wasn’t from the sixties, this was much newer than that, maybe computer boards or CD players. The smaller trailer had an extensive battery system for power that had been peppered with bullets and shotgun blasts. Nick was all excited as he found red twelve-gauge shotgun husks all over the place.

“Daddy!” Nick bellowed. “De’ T’wuck! It’s ‘eaking!”

“Condensation from the AC,” Robin cooed.

“Ik’s G’ween,” Nick countered.

I jerked up and looked back at the truck. Something was indeed leaking, and the puddle below the radiator was indeed that fluorescent emerald green of anti-freeze.

I rushed back, jerked the hood up. Robin sighed with disgust.

The radiator is relatively new. The old one had so many pin-prick holes that the guy at the shop assured me, there was no way in Hell to repair it. So I’d gone and found the best price for the most heavy-duty-est radiator I could find, and installed it myself. I’ve done simple stuff like that my entire life. The one hitch I had with this radiator is, there’s two outlets on the neck. One is for the reservoir, the other, I assume, is a safety valve, if the pressure inside the coolant system should exceed a certain level. On the old one there’s a simple rubber cap on this second stem. The new radiator had the two stems, but no cap. I pulled the cap off the old radiator, but it leaked. Pressed for time, as I always seem to be, I grabbed a plastic bag from the floor of the Bronco, wrapped it around the cap, then threw a small screw clamp on it, figuring I’d get down to the parts store and get a new cap as soon as I had time. That was two years ago.

And now the cap had decided to start leaking. I noted the reservoir was empty.

Once again, ten miles from the nearest town, forty miles from the nearest parts store, what the hell was I going to do?

“Is everything okay?” Kellian asked with a rush.

“Yes, of course,” mother cooed, and gave me a death-ray look. Make it better. Now.

I pulled out the toolbox, found a screwdriver, tightened down the clamp, and the drizzle of fluid stopped. The engine was too hot to pop the radiator cap and check to see if we were running dry. I recalled the temp had been good during the whole trip, so I assumed this had just started. I didn’t have much choice but to assume that.

“Let’s go down and see if we can find anything of Tecoma,” I suggested.

The Horde clambered in. I cranked the engine. If the engine had no coolant, it would surely be too hot to start.

But it did, and the coolant gauge showed what I would expect. We drove down to Tecoma, still looking for the trail that would take us to the cemetery, if it existed.

It doesn’t. We pulled over to the sign that announces ‘Tecoma’, and piled out again.

There are foundations and bits of debris, probably the remains of a cesspool, very large and weathered concrete steps that lead to the entrance of nothing.

All the while we explored, I stole glances to the truck to see if it was leaking again.

If I had studied the map more thoroughly, I would have seen that further up the road we’d been following were the former towns of Tuttle and Buel. Tuttle is on private property, but Buel at one time had a spur line to it to bring down gold ore and later copper. There’s all sorts of mines, mills and remnants of gear. With the truck acting up, it’s probably a good thing I hadn’t read the NVGhosttowns.com write-up on Buel, Sounds like an excuse to go back again.

When we finally were sated, we loaded up and headed for the Montello cemetery, and the Ten Unknown.

We threaded through Montello, straight dirt streets with shuttered houses, sheds made of railroad ties and single-wide trailers, until we came to the cemetery north of town, not even really out of town at all. To the left of the dirt road was a forlorn playground fenced off and choked with weeds, and on the right, the Montello Cemetery, and the Ten Unknown.

This is not a ghost town graveyard. This is an active cemetery. There’s new graves mixed in with the old, and very old. In fact, some of the headstones date back further than when Montello was supposed to have ascended Tecoma as the local dominant railroad terminus. The huge water tower for the Big Boy steam engines is gone, the hotels and depot, gone, but the cemetery remains.

There is more recent pain, contemporary loss. DEAN WILSON, 1964-1983. Nineteen years old. I was eight years old when Dean was born, twenty-seven when they laid him in his grave, twenty-three years ago. Someone has laid out an elaborate pile of stone, and red bricks that make a cross over his final resting place. Then, behind the simple monument, between two railroad ties, reinforced with a metal frame, is a round piece of plywood with the scene of an elk astride a mountaintop carved into it, clouds in the sky around it, pines in the lower corners. It’s degenerating and chipped now, the elements having their way on all things Man. I always am humbled before the Dean Wilsons. I have done so little with my life, life denied this young man. What would he have done if he’d even had half my years?

And then little Dustin. No headstone. Two pieces of pipe painted tan, a metal band stretching between them, welded in place that announces. ‘Dustin D Kelso’. Hanging from steel chains below that, another piece of metal, blazed into it, ‘June 1st, 1995’, another piece of metal hanging from chain below that, ‘Still Born’, and hanging from that, from a single piece of chain, a blue half-moon. Stones form a cross atop the grave. Stuffed animals and plastic flowers disintegrate at the base of the monument.

“Dave,” Robin called and pointed at a group of whitewashed wooden crosses awry and leaning with the years. “Here they are.”

At one end of the simple markers, a relatively new marble stone reads:

10 UNKNOWN
US Soldiers
Buried Here
Victims of
Flu Epidemic
World War I


Montello is listed as a ghost town at Ghosttowns.com, but there’s a saloon, a store, a motel, and a grade school. In fact, the school website is a hoot, with lots of pictures of Montello when it was an important stop on the railroad. It also was the first time I’d heard of the Ten Unknown.

During the Great War, the War To End All Wars, 1916 through 1919, troop trains trundled through Montello on a daily basis. One of those trains had an outbreak of Spanish Flu, the dreaded influenza that would ultimately kill a tenth of the population of the world. The train stopped at Montello, as there was a doctor there, and where ultimately at least eleven young men died, and were buried at the Montello cemetery. Simple wooden crosses were placed over the final resting places, but, inexplicably, nothing else. No name, no rank, no date of death. Nothing.

Years later, in the fifties, the sting and loss of World War II still fresh in the hearts and minds of Americans, a woman in Elko heard the story of the Ten. Outraged that soldiers in the service of their country should be so casually forgotten, she investigated the incident, and ultimately determined the identity of one of the young men. She contacted the family, who made arrangements for their kin to be exhumed and sent home. The other ten, however, she could never resolve. So instead, she erected the simple monument, to the Ten Unknown.

Years later, a teacher at Montello Grade School, looking to make their website more interesting, went around and gathered stories and pictures of the local area, and heard the tale of the Ten Unknown, and started doing some research of her own. She contacted an historian, I don’t remember where, but a Nevada University, who said, no. In battle, where bodies are torn apart, dog tags are lost, men separated from their units die all alone, their remains not found for days or weeks, then you have unknowns, a tragic reality in the horrors of war. For the rest of the time, all those months of boredom between the hours of sheer terror, there’s divisions of bean counters tracking everything GI. The train left Reno with a thousand men, nine hundred and eighty-nine disembark at God-Forsaken Army Camp, Colorado. Where are those eleven missing men and what are their names? Ah, a stack of death certificates signed by a doctor in Montello, Nevada. A list of names and numbers with corresponding Next of Kin on file in Reno. Letters are to be sent out to family, as per Army procedure, soldiers names’ scratched off the roster and not declared AWOL. For any soldier who died within the United States in transit, there would be an easy paper trail to follow.

Yet there is no trail. The records that survive contend only one soldier was buried in Montello, and he was returned to his family, albeit thirty years late. The fact that this one soldier did not get processed as per Army regulation does suggest there was a breakdown in protocol in this incident. Still, the historian postulates that perhaps the ten remaining fatalities were civilians that died from the flu, transients, perhaps, moving through the town in that time of war, rushed to their graves as the locals tried to bury the spread of the killer flu, the victims’ identities lost in the panic of the moment. In fact, the only identity that did survive was the single soldier’s. Perhaps what happened was all the victims of the Epidemic buried with the one soldier became soldiers themselves, in the re-telling of the story.

So here is local legend smacking into logic. This is not a condition unique to Montello or Elko County. In my own county the story is told how during the mining boon, Julian, the town of gold in the mountains, had been deemed so important that serious consideration was given to transferring the county seat from San Diego to Julian. Yet there is no record of any such consideration, whimsical or serious, until the 1950’s, long after remote Julian had become a sleepy tourist attraction and apple festival. As I understand it, the hard-pressed Democrats chose to hold their local convention in Julian in its heyday, since that was the only place they had any voting power in the ‘Black Hole of Republicanism’ that Alonzo Horton, the founder of ‘New Town’, swore he’d make San Diego. There is no Spanish Galleon laden with pearls in the Salton Sea area, either, but people still search for the masts buried in the shifting mounds of sand, preserved, as is the hull, by the briny water that once engulfed it.

On the way out, we stopped at the store to use the pay phone. I wanted to call the mechanic that Carl Kelso in Wells has recommended, and make a reservation. We’d be in Elko tomorrow, a mere eighty miles away. Calling on the cell meant roaming charges, and call me frugal, but why pay five bucks for a fifty cent, or maybe dollar, phone call.

They didn’t have a pay phone. In fact, there is no pay phone in Montello.

“They used to have one down to the bar,” the curiously timid girl behind the counter offered. “But they –um, took it out.

“You could check t’see if they’ve put it back in,” she offered hopefully.

Maybe Montello is a ghost town after all.

Half-way back to Cobre we found a sweet spot, digital roaming. I got out and dialed the number Kelso had given me for Gary Westwood of Roadside Automotive. I don’t know if I spoke to Westwood or not, but the idea of making an appointment seemed a foreign concept to the aged voice I spoke to.

“Get here before twelve, and I can take care of ya’ right away,” the old gentleman said. He gave me explicit directions to his shop.

We got back to camp, and there it was again, the green leak from the Bronco.

Robin went to feed the kids while I contemplated what I was going to do.

You know that stem serves a purpose. If the cap should become stuck and not release the pressure, you’d prefer it blowing the rubber cap off, and not the radiator or hoses, or even worse, the head gasket. Still, I needed a quick permanent fix that would last until we got home.

I looked in my tool box and spotted two silicone tubes, one a marine sealant, the other a gasket sealant/maker.

By the time I had plotted my plan, the engine had cooled enough that I could pull the radiator cap. There was no coolant showing, and there was nothing in the reservoir.

I pulled the rubber cap off, filled it with the gasket stuff, then squeezed it back onto the stem. For an interminable time the gasket silicone squeezed through the stem hole inside the radiator. I had to keep wiping it away quickly, so it didn’t fall into the radiator core. After it petered out, I strapped the cap back in place with a clamp. I waited a short time, then started to fill the radiator with the half gallon anti-freeze I carry around in the RV. The radiator and the reservoir didn’t even take a quart, so we must have caught it right at the on-set.

It was time to go to the property. I wanted to try a different route, to see if we could find a better way there. We’d gone by two roads below. Now I wanted to try a high road that worked its way around the top of the mountain to our property. It was a longer route, but it also put us up into the juniper, pines and firs that grow along the ridges.

Once you’ve gotten up the rise, there’s a plateau of flat land, and also several structures, ‘homesteads’ we call them, for lack of a better name. The first one you come to, just north of the cemetery, is a fenced compound with signs saying ‘no trespassing’, ‘Private Property, Keep Out’ There’s a ramshackle structure with a long ‘50’s or ‘60’s travel trailer up along side it, several rows of vehicles and busses which range from the sixties to the eighties. .

The road here is good, straight across this flat plateau, all the way to the mountain. There’s no trees, tall brush or rock outcroppings to block your view, and shortly we came up on another structure that you can see for a mile in any direction. Although the out-buildings look like something from the thirties, the main structure appears to be more from the seventies or later. The lower floor has all the appearance of being a small stock home. The second story is clearly a structure of the same design, but placed on top of the bottom. I’m afraid my ignorance of construction comes in here, but someone hauled a set of structures up into one of the most remote places in northern Nevada, removed the roof from the lower one, then mated the second structure to the roof of the first structure, and did a very clean professional job of it. I can only imagine a crane doing this. It all sits on poured concrete foundation, and through the sliding glass door you can see that inside it has a small but bright and modern kitchen, the walls throughout painted a fresh Navajo white. If we hadn’t taken notice of this building two years ago, we would have thought someone had painted it yesterday. What grandiose plans did the owner of this property have that they built such a house? What twist of fate led them to abandon it after so much effort?

We were supposed to turn left and follow the road through a small canyon, according to the map, but there was yet another distant structure off to the right. After a little debate, we turned to check this facility out as well.

The main structure, Alex volunteered ‘hunting cabin’, plywood and two-by-four framed construction, had been thoroughly trashed. Someone must have hooked a corner stud to their ride with a rope and driven off. It had that blown-out kind of look. You didn’t need a window to peer in, and there was nothing to see on the inside, but the debris laying around marked the place as circa 1980, even later than that. The half buried tank alongside the structure, was it a septic tank that never got buried right, or a water tank, or maybe a fuel tank? It appears to be covered with tar, cracking in the sun.

There’s several cars parked nearby. How did they get the sedans back here? Was the road once a better thing than it is now? Is there another way in not on the map? It would have had to have been within the last twenty years, one car is a 1986 Ford. Their windows have been shot out, hoods lifted and engines mangled, but not as bad as you might think. Very few parts have been taken. There’s a step van and a truck parked nearby. As we approached the step van, an ad for a plumbing company in Wendover painted on its side, two small birds shot out of its missing windshield. Next to that is a pair of snowmobiles, still on the trailer that brought them.

I know nothing of snowmobiles, but I find it hard to believe that they could be so worthless as not to be worth hauling, out at some point in time. They might only be worth parts now, seats rotting, paint faded to the fiberglass in the sun.

Nearby is a cargo container, the metal containers that they ship all over the place, the kind that come off the container ship, onto the railroad flatcar, onto the flatbed trailer. These things must wear out pretty quick. I see them for sale all over the internet. They do make a nice instant shed. With a vent on the roof, and some bracing below for leveling, I see them in the back country in San Diego all the time. I assume they’re relatively light. How would you get something like that this far back?

The doors were wide open, inside was furniture. The furniture at the entrance appeared to be set up as if it were a living quarters, but at the back, mattresses were stacked up as if for storage. I looked at a petite desk with its doors partially opened, but we did not enter.

I suppose I should review our rules of such explorations. We’ve been doing it for fifteen years, and there’s things we don’t think violates anyone’s rights, and there’s things that we think do potentially contravenes the rights of those not present. We don’t get in vehicles, we don’t get into structures. I worry about them collapsing on us, but also it seems to cross that line between looking around and invading someone else’s privacy. We’re not worried about the lawful definition of trespassing. There’s no one around to enforce it, but even so, if there’s a sign specifically saying ‘no trespassing’, we respect it, we don’t go past it. Things not marked, we poke around, but we don’t take anything and we don’t enter the buildings, deferring to our moral definition of trespassing.

I wonder about that furniture, though. I wished I had taken a better look at that little desk. I could rationalize gathering up good furniture left out there for the vandals to shoot up

Right next to the metal cargo container is a row of sheds and stalls that look like they date back to the turn of the twentieth century. Perhaps there was a scrap of the cowboy and wild west in the weathered withered wood with rusty wire screen in the windows, and I smiled as I walked around the corner of one stall, anticipating a little insight into another time. I stopped in my tracks.

In the stall was a small cow. The hair was still on the hide, the hooves looked intact, the rope around its neck was still tied to a hitch inside the stall.

Someone had tied a calf up and just left it, who knows how many months ago. It had practically mummified there in the high dry air of Toana Valley.

“Kids don’t wanna see this,” I announced, too late as I found the entire family on my heels.

“Oh Lord,” Robin cursed.

“It’s just a baby,” Kellian whispered.

“Wha’k Ha’bben he’w?” Nick cried incredulously. I think he went on to denounce the base nature of Mankind, and then I think he quoted Voltaire, but I’m not real sure.

I pondered how long the animal had been there. As I turned back toward the junkyard of machinery we’d already inspected. I caught a whiff of the stench of rot, but the carcass looked like it was way past that stage of decay. Now I feared I might find other dead things.

We migrated back to the Bronco. The discovery of the calf had dampened our curiosity, but now I wish I had walked past the calf and inspected the rest of the older structures. They looked enclosed, perhaps a chicken coop, a tool shed. The shrunken wood looked exceptionally dark, but it was not the ever-present railroad ties.

Don’t you have to wonder what circumstances or state of mind would lead you to restrain a living creature, then leave it to die of slow dehydration, at the mercy of any predator that might come along? Had the acts of vandals so disheartened the owner of all this property simply to abandon it all, leave it to the elements and more vandals and looters?

Loaded up, we drove back to the main road, headed north on the new route back to our forty acres.

On the map the road does a slight swiggle around the edge of a draw, then goes straight again to a road that shoots right to our land. I brought the truck to a halt and studied the swiggle in reality.

The road canted into the slight, plant-covered draw by about fifteen per cent.

Another day, Robin and I would have puckered up and eased along, hoping it wasn’t as bad as it looked, although usually it was worse. But with kids, things change.

“No,” the wife stated bluntly before I even had a chance to say anything. “No way.”

The alternate route to our property was not viable. I backed up and headed back to find the other way to our property.

Before we did, I took a wrong turn on the flat treeless plateau, and ended up on the wrong side of the two story structure that is such a prominent landmark. I ended up driving through this property, once again admiring the painted interior of the first floor.

I’ve got to thinking; the road we turned onto that put us on the wrong side of the road looked like it went straight on, and if it did, it might end up at the tracks, as most things around here have to. We had seen a large van heading out on the road that we had first started down in the RV when we first arrive, looking for a camp spot. What if the road that had put us on the other side of the two story house, and the road that we’d first started down and that the van had been following were one in the same, and an otherwise good road? It still wouldn’t get us all the way back to our property, but it would put us a whole lot closer.

The twins grew quiet in the back seat, the heat, the short hikes, the monotonous drone of the ride wearing them down. We turned at what I remember after two years as the route back to our property, and dropped the speed down to five to ten miles an hour.

At this rate we would reach our land somewhere between forty-five minutes to an hour. Driving to Lucin took less time.

The brush had grown considerably since the last time we’d been there, reinforcing the impression that this remote place had become even more forgotten than the last time we’d been there. We cruised for what seemed a long time, across terrain that seemed familiar, although once again I began to feel the thrill, and the fear, that comes from being this far out. No one knew where we were. Break down here, blow the radiator, flatten a tire. We could walk out, back to the RV, but it would take hours, and I would be carrying the twins before we got there.

We had plenty of water, plenty of food. I inventoried our supplies as I watched the road ahead, but still my anxiety haunted me. Considering what a hard-core desert rat I’m supposed to be, this phobia I experience in Toana country is quite an admission.

We came to an intersection, and I remembered it. If you turned left, it would take you down to the road that ran along the tracks, but there’s a section halfway along where it turns into a bog, and the reeds are two feet high, right down the center of the road. We’ve never gone to the right, which is east. Straight takes you to our property.

Only the rains in the last two years has washed a chasm along the road in this otherwise flat bland terrain. Wide enough for the tires to drop into, it was deep enough to reach the frame and undercarriage.

We sat there and considered our options.

I could get out with the three-fold shovel and knock down the edges of the washout. It was clay or sand, easy enough to do. We didn’t really discuss going to the right. I don’t know why. What I sensed in the clan was, getting back to our property didn’t seem to have a high priority at that moment. We’d traveled about a thousand miles to get here, but when it came to the last ten miles, we did not seem to have the energy or interest to do what had to be done to get there.

I looked back at the kids. Both the twins were sound asleep.

This seemed to be the excuse we needed to turn back. The quest to get to our property for only the third time, ended.

I felt vaguely bitter as we drove back over the terrain we’d already covered, but it was as much my decision as anyone’s. The twins woke up before we got back to the Bounder.

The last ghost town to check out was Cobre. Having read more about the town, I realized that the cinderblock locomotive barn that everyone associates with Cobre actually didn’t get built until the 1960’s, long after Cobre had ceased to be. The actual townsite is a little further north, the only thing remaining, according to NVGhosttowns.com and Ghosttowns.com, is some foundations and concrete sidewalks.

I can’t remember what happened, but shortly after getting back to camp, there was some kind of acrimony that built up until everyone was screaming at everyone, Robin and I basically bellowing, ‘stop screaming!’.

“All right,” I roared. “You guys, get in.”

I turned to Robin.

“You wanna go check out Cobre?”

“Not with them,” she answered. “I swear, Dave, all I want is a little peace and quiet. That would be a vacation to me.”

I nodded.

“I will take them away for a couple of hours. You and Kellian enjoy yourselves.”

I don’t think Robin perceived this as any sacrifice on my part.

I tried to find a short-cut across the tracks to Cobre, which was just about straight across from us on the west side of the tracks, but the nearest crossing turned out to be the one we’d originally used. So then we had to work our way back to the highway and go in by the once-paved road that winds itself up and down to the cinderblock locomotive barn from the 1960’s.

“Dad,” Alex announced. “There’s a no-trespassing sign.”

“Yes, there is,” I agreed as I drove. “We’re going to ignore it.”

Alex is GATE, that’s ‘Gifted And Talented Education’ in California School System jargon. The description the System likes to use for GATE children is, ‘they think differently.’ GATE children potentially are the Albert Einsteins and Charlie Mansons of the future. The mission of all parents and, maybe, the school system, is to get them to Go Albert. Robin and I are assuming the Twins also will fall into the GATE category to one degree or another.

Rote learning is like fingernails across a chalkboard to GATE kids. In first grade, Alex could do addition problems in his head, but couldn’t tell you how he did it. He just knew. Alex could not learn his multiplication tables. It seemed to physically hurt for him to try. When they started doing division, though, he saw the purpose of the tables, and then just knew them seemingly overnight. Nick sees no purpose for school. “I know all that,” he contends. Well, he doesn’t, and his grades reflect that, but give him a topography map and a compass, and its just plain scary. He knows most of the legends and symbols, and is trying to figure out how to correct for declination, that’s still something of a challenge. Couch something as a Cub Scout project, and he absorbs it with the passion of a scientist. Mind you, this will be his first year as a Scout, but he’s attended all of Alex’s camping trips and meetings for the last four years. Kellian hides her candle under a basket. She gets everything right in school, never is disruptive, but she’ll come out of nowhere, saying things like ‘Diamonds are forever’, and walk into the room, pointedly swinging her hips, proclaiming, “See, I walk like a lady.” I tell the story of her first day out of her mother’s womb in ‘Suddenly Babies’, so I won’t repeat it, but seriously, right now she seems to have all the potential to be the greatest pole and lap dancer ever, anywhere. You might as well shoot me right now and put me out of my misery.

The reason I mention this GATE thing is, besides being extremely sensitive, even overly sensitive to sound, light, tactile experiences, and smells, GATE kids have rigid moral absolutes. You have a rule, you live by it. Right and Wrong are set in stone. They see no grays, no shades, and I could see in Alex’s eyes the utter agony of breaking one of our rules for exploration; Respect private property, do not jump fences, respect posted signs.

“That looked like a new sign,” he offered.

“So’s this one,” I pointed out the windshield at the cinderblock barn. Close to the metal door on the side, which has been busted open, there is a new sign that says; “Property of the Northern Nevada Railroad Museum.”

“Recognize the name?” I asked.

“That’s the train in Ely,” Alex answered.

I motioned at the ground.

“This is the terminus of the Ghost Train,” I explained. “The trains we were riding two days ago once traveled a hundred and some odd miles to this location, and switched out there cars.

“I figure,” I continued, “We’re just continuing our tour, self-guided, of the Museum’s property. Lord knows we’re not going to damage anything.”

I could tell this did not mollify Alex. I suspect a GATE child would have to snap, basically embrace the dark side, if they were not to see things in the unconditional reality they perceive. Actually, I admire the absolute of it, even as I break my own rule.

The last time we’d been there, two years ago, there’d been a row of fifty-five gallon barrels of something marked ‘toxic’, and the remains of a single wide mobile home that had been reduced to scraps of metal and wall insulation blowing across the landscape, on the far side of the barn. A local dump. That’s all been cleaned up. Besides the door being busted off its hinges, someone invested a great deal of effort trying to pull out a corner of the cinderblocks in the back of the barn. They failed, but now some of the large white bricks are no longer aligned with the wall they’re apart of. I don’t remember that from the last time we’d been there.

Behind the barn there’s a formidable foundation that must have been for a water tower. It looks just like the foundation for the water tower that still stands at Dos Cabezas on the San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railroad line back home.

Beyond that is something even more intriguing.

The Bronco climbed along a hillock until we looked down into a gully that had been cut out of the mound, accommodating track that has since been removed. What remains is a tangle of huge wood beams that once stretched across the slit, a squared funnel-shaped hopper, and the mechanical apparatus that would have rolled the hopper along the thick beams from the side to over where an open ore car must have waited.

There’s a graded area over the hill from where we stood, several abandoned vehicles spilled about it, that conforms to how we’ve seen mills set up, the ore loaded from the top, crushed, and gravity fed down to a lower storage spot. I’m wondering if there hadn’t been a time when someone hadn’t processed the copper ore here. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have done that back at Ely, or McGill, right at the start, which is where the mills and fining pools are today, but then I don’t understand why they only half-processed the ore at McGill either. What makes this slit and extensive machine interesting is, while there’s pictures of both the barn and the Cobre town site all over the Internet, there’s no mention of this operation in anything I’ve read. At least pictures I would think. I saw nothing about it at the museum in Ely, even though I had it in the back of my mind all the time.

So we’ve got our own little mystery at Cobre, along with the ‘Chinatown’ we were camped in.

We took pictures of the jumbled pile of machinery from above. I don’t know why, but we didn’t get down to the track bed and walk into the slit. It’s strewn with a hundred years of debris, but that’s what we’re looking for anyway, little scraps of history to see, maybe touch, take pictures of.

I’m up to three, maybe four reasons, to go back and spend a week there: Walk down the slit and check out the wreckage of the machine, get back to the ghost town of Buel, walk back to where the cemetery of Tecoma is supposed to be, and follow the road we had to run back on in the Bounder the first day we were there, and check it out in the Bronco. There’s no way we could have seen it all in three days.

We once again loaded aboard the Bronco, ran down to the town site The only thing remaining is concrete foundations and sidewalks. Here, too, someone has cleaned up the trash and piled it up, I assume for later pick up. There’s a large water tower that’s been blown around by the wind on the rise to the west, and concreted remnants of a structure built into the ground. My sons and I spent time guessing what it might be, then followed the road over the rise.

According to the map, this road leads out to a ranch site, Squaw Creek Ranch, but right there at the crest was a dump. I’m surprised this spot hasn’t been picked over and torn to pieces. There’s several cars from the thirties and maybe the forties, a wood or maybe coal burning stove, probably from the fifties, the porcelain finish cracking like stars from bullet holes, and a wringer clothes washer, sans the wringer. I could have spent the rest of the day just picking through that dump.

Alex and Nicholas found a telescopic sight lens cover, the kind that has two strands of elastic to hold the two caps in place. With hardly a heartbeat ‘s worth of time to admire their treasure, they burst into a passionate feud over who owned it, the first person to spot it or the person who picked it up. The rancor, the bile of betrayal and greed, the wails of heart-wrenching acrimony surely could be heard across the track at camp. I offered the option of chucking the lens cover out of sight, but Solomon could not have adjudicated this issue, since the weathered device dropped by a hunter last deer season was not the issue, but the ego-laden principal of the thing. I can’t quite remember how the matter was resolved, but getting back to camp seemed the next logical call.

(After we got home to California, I found the lens cover on the back seat floor. The plastic was baked brittle with the sun, the elastic crumbled in my hands. I threw it away.)

No one even suggested sleeping in the tent that night. We went to bed early. Tomorrow we went to Elko.



DAY SEVEN, FRIDAY, ELKO, RUBY MOUNTAINS, THE GENERATOR DEBACLE



The day was going to be another scorcher. I fired up the engine, the anchor warning beeped monotonously. I pulled the plug and drained their hydraulic fluid off. Leaving the engine to warm up, I went around and pulled the tin roofing out from under the rig and made sure the legs rose. The front one gives me trouble every time. The springs must be worn and the arm just doesn’t rise all the way up. I end up taking a board and leveraging it. The driver side rear anchor gets stuck some times, but take that same board and whack it good, and it rises back into place.

Instead of loading the Bronco back on the trailer at the campsite, my plan was to have Robin drive the Bronco ahead while I followed in the Bounder. On Highway 30, there’s a turn-out just past the paved-over track, apparently for putting on chains. I figured we’d get there and then load the Bronco. That way there’d be less chance of the RV getting stuck in the soft dirt, and if it did get stuck, I wouldn’t have to haul the Bronco off the trailer to pull it out. We’ve had to do that before, out near Fish Creek along the narrow gauge railroad just east of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. In low range, the Bronco makes it look easy.

The road less traveled would aptly describe the rest of the loop that the trail to the stable looks like. There’s some pretty mature sage plants growing down the middle. In the center of the loop is an ancient telegraph pole hewn from a long Juniper trunk, and to the right is a wooden box around a two inch iron pipe that I’m sure once supplied water to the large corrugated steel reservoir next to the stable. I had to pull forward and back up several times before I was able to get the RV and the trailer aimed down to the main dirt road. When I finally was headed out, Robin went back and hopped into the Bronco.

I pulled out onto the road. Robin was still back at the stables. She could have come out the other end of the loop, but she just sat there.

“Alex, go find out what’s taking your mother,” I ordered.

I heard the door swing open, something of a scuffle, and then, what had to have been the most God-awful, blood-curdling scream I have ever heard come out of my eldest son. I jumped out of the driver’s seat, ready to gather up severed limbs and get my son to the nearest ER, abandon the Bounder where it stood. Instead, I watched Alex running wildly away from the RV.

“THE DO-O-OGS!” Alex wailed at the top of his lungs. “THE DO-O-O-O-OGS!”

Nitro and Starfire had slipped out the door as Alex had tried to get down the steps.

At home, the two dogs have the run of half an acre of fenced land with no leashes or restrictions. During this entire trip, their first, they had been on their leashes or confined to the RV, except for the dog run at the KOA. Now they dashed, headed for the railroad tracks. Starfire slinked away, her head down, tail right back, straight as an arrow, while Nitro bounded along, looking like a antelope in full gallop, bouncing along like his four paws were springs. He covered as much ground up and down as he did forward.

Alex sounded like a Palestinian at a funeral. I wonder if there’s still a market for professional mourners

At home I clap my hands three times, and both dogs come prancing back to the house. When I did it here, Nitro collapsed to the ground like he’d been shot in mid-flight. He pulled himself together and came racing back, looking more like a greyhound than a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Starfire ducked into some brush and was gone.

Alex charged toward Nitro, and the dog immediately assumed it was playtime. He dodged around the Eldest, who gave chase, making the game oh-so much more fun. The dog seemed oblivious to Alex’s hoarse screeching.

“Nitro!” I bellowed in my best command voice. “Here!” I pointed at a spot in front of me.

The dog buckled once again and half crawled double-time to the spot I pointed at, all the while wagging his entire body.

I moved back from the steps, pointed in. Nitro crept up the steps, the proverbial tail tucked between his legs.

I slammed the door , then started looking around for Alex, Robin, or Starfire.

Starfire had slipped back across the road toward the stable where Robin stood. Alex was still screaming hysterically.

She didn’t want to get away, I thought as she skulked in and out of the brush, she just wants to run loose for awhile.

But like I said, I think she’s got coyote blood in her. She’s the smallest dog we’ve ever owned, yet she wiped out our entire flock of new chicks, twenty-five of them, in less than four hours. She chewed right through the chicken wire of the run, and I can see her saying, ‘I’m only going out for a little while, I’ll come back’. Then it’ll get dark and she’ll see the figures moving like she does, slithering through the brush. She’ll approach the Alpha Male, preening and squirming, lying on her back and exposing her throat like she does to Nitro. He’ll sniff her, sense her compromised blood line, her sterility, and rip her neck out. The pack will be fighting over her liver while her heart still beats.

Robin would move toward her, and she would begin to circle, always out of hand reach, playing back and forth between Robin and Alex. I stopped, and while she panted and pranced, watching her two unwilling playmates, she drew closer to me until she got too close and I lunged and grabbed her collar.

Now she knew she was in trouble. The happy pant disappeared and I practically had to carry her to the Bounder as she groaned with fear.

“What’s wrong with the truck?” Robin demanded. I looked back at the Bronco. I could hear the engine.

“It’s running now, I finally got it started,” the wife continued as she confronted me. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I started defensively. “You have to really push the clutch all the way to the floor.”

“I shouldn’t have to,” she countered.

“Well, I’m sure it’s a minor adjustment,” I started.

“Then adjust it.” Robin demanded. “You took a whole week off, just to make sure everything worked right, you said. Well, the generator doesn’t work, the Bronco’s radiator starts leaking, the Bronco’s clutch isn’t working right. What next? Make it work, David.”

Robin turned and stormed off to the truck, and after a moment, I turned back toward the Bounder.

Actually, it probably isn’t something as simple as an adjustment. The clutch pedal actuator is hydraulic. I’ve tried to find something simple, like a worn spring that needs replacing, but there’s nothing like that. I’m wondering if there’s air in the line, like brake lines, then there should be a bleeder. Bleed it a little, or a lot, for that matter, and see if that fixes the problem. The thing is, its not getting worse. Just one day, it did this to me. I’ve adjusted myself instead of the pedal, which is stupid, I know.

I wish now I’d paused to look around and have a final vision of this place that I want to go back to more now than ever, see it, smell it, touch it, hear it, taste it. I didn’t though. I’ve gotten into the habit that when we pull out of somewhere, it’s in a rush. I focus on the things that must be done and go step-by-step through them, avoiding distractions, trying to get it right.

We made the highway. At the end of the dirt, we stopped and took the Bronco out of four-wheel drive. I snapped the manual hubs to ‘free’. From there we drove to the turn-out, where I quickly and silently loaded the Bronco.

All strapped down, we made for the freeway.

The first five miles after getting on I-80 west is uphill, eight per cent grade, through that brutal Pequop Pass. The engine whined as I dropped down to first-and-a-half. The tranny temp climbed. Just as we reached the crest, doing thirty-five miles an hour with a concrete truck right behind us, it started to rain.

I gritted my teeth. Eight per cent grade downhill. And with rain comes wind. The Bounder really hates wind. I slid down that in two-and-a-half gear, doing maybe fifty-five. Mercifully, the concrete truck went even slower. We cruised through Freedom Valley with the State Penitentiary, up the other end, fell down into and climbed back out of the valley Wells dwells in, getting down to fifty before cresting the west end. I sighed with relief as the rain slackened, then disappeared. There had been no wind to speak of.

Both sides of the highway showed signs of the wild fires that have ravaged Northern Nevada. It’s flat out here, and the freeway runs smooth, straight and level with just enough wide curves to keep you awake. At one point we went through a tunnel that’s not on the map, the countryside for a short time becoming rocky rugged stuff that looked worth exploring. Then it was back to flat and straight. No wind, no issues. The engine hummed clean and strong, and the speedometer crept up until we were doing somewhere between sixty-five and seventy. We just sang along, everything operating like it was supposed to, the kids watching the scenery, excitedly talking about cattle they saw, and what surely must have been wild horses grazing out in open prairie land. Communities were few, and off-ramps were named after ranches.

We kept saying about the ragged upsurges of mountains to our south, ‘Those must be the Ruby Mountains’, they were all capped with white snow, but we glided by all of them until they were in the rear view mirror.

We came up on Elko in record time.

Coming off the freeway, the businesses we saw had a curiously new, even temporary feel to them. We turned left and under the freeway, then turned right, looking for the repair shop we had an appointment with.

Elko started looking more substantial, a park on the right with monuments and an old log cabin. Again on the right was the courthouse, an impressive structure in the Greco-Roman style with a copper dome that shined like a new penny. We turned left before reaching downtown, three to four-story buildings on both sides.

I missed Roadside Automotive the first time and had to turn around. Then I had to find a place to park our fifty foot rig. I ended up pulling into a lot where I hoped I didn’t block too many people, got out and went into the shop’s office.

Very professional, clean and tidy. The whole family could sit down in the place, on new-looking chairs, and be comfortable here. A young woman with glasses was sitting behind a reception desk, stretching the phone line from one end of the counter to the other, apparently nursing something from a fax machine. She raised a finger, as if to ask me for a minute, as she spoke on the phone.

“Yeah, I got it. That should do it. If I need anything else I’ll let you know … Should be ready by tomorrow, but y’gotta talk t’Gary t’get that set in stone.”

I sidled up to the counter and waited as she got off the phone. She turned to me.

“What can I do y’for?”

I introduced myself, and she was lifting a clipboard with a work order. I continued.

“I have an appointment for someone to look at my genset in my RV,” I said.

“That’s right,” she answered and smiled at me. “Gary’s not here right now. Should be back in a little while.”

I frowned.

“Any idea how long that would be?”

Just then a big burly man who needed a shave and smelled of hard work stepped through the door.

“My oil pump, Moyra.”

I can’t remember her name, but Moyra is close. Moyra lifted a finger as if begging a minute.

“Let me go see if it’s come in.”

“It should be in and installed by now, Moyra.”

Moyra exited through a door into what looked like the work bays. The newcomer chuckled, and he looked over at me.

“Hope you’re not in a hurry.”

I coughed a laugh.

“Actually, I am.”

He pointed out the window.

“That your rig out there?”

“Hope I’m not blocking you out,” I offered. He chortled and smiled.

“Hell, if I can’t get that thing into a parking lot, I got no one t’blame but myself.”

He motioned at a tricked-out F-350 parked right out front.

“What’s your problem?”

“Generator won’t run,” I offered.

He furled his brow.

“Oh? Let’s go look at it.”

I pointed at the door Moyra had disappeared through. He made a dismissive motion.

“She gets back when she gets back.” He opened the door. “I know her. She sold me a computer not too long ago.” He introduced himself as we walked around his truck. Bill something. Probably best I don’t remember his name.

“You staying in town?”

“One night. The Double Dice RV Park.”

“Hey, I stayed in the Double Dice when I first blew inta’ town! It’ll do, for a night’r two. I work over here at the gold mine. Not that I see any of it, all microscopic specks, get it out with fining and cyanide. Just got off shift.”

He had to work quick. I could smell both beer and whiskey on his breath.

“It’s a piece of crap,” he offered. “The computer she sold me. Top dollar, and it crashes like a Pinto. How far you come?”

As I lifted the gate on the genset, I explained the symptoms to him. He studied the machine for a moment, smiled, looked back toward the office.

“You sure you want Gary t’work on this?”

I leaned back and offered a pregnant pause.

“You got a reason I shouldn’t?”

Bill smiled tolerantly as he kept eye contact. After a moment he looked away, then back and pointed down the road.

“If y’go two lights, you ‘re at Idaho Street. That’s the main drag. Turn left. There’s a shop there, maybe a quarter mile. An RV shop. Did some work on my Toy Box a couple months back. I doubt Gary has ever even seen a generator set-up like this. ‘Course it’s your call.”

Kellian leaned out a window.

‘Hellooo,” she called out like she’s heard on ‘Winx’, the ‘hello’ that implies the question ‘what’s wrong with you’. Bill smiled up at Kellian as Nick shoved through.

“Aw kids! The sun, the moon and the stars!”

He turned back toward the office.

“Best I get back in there, not that I’ve seen Gary’s truck pull up. If y’decide t’check out that other shop, tell ‘em Bill sent you.”

As I watched Bill the Gold Miner walk back toward the office, I made the command decision. I clambered back into the Bounder and resumed my seat.

“There’s another shop down the road that Bill the Gold Miner told me about that specializes in RVs.”

“What’s wrong with this shop?”

“The guy we made the appointment with? He’s not here, and they don’t really seem to know when he’s coming back.”

I pulled out and followed Bill’s directions. We went through a small, but modern industrial park, turned left onto Idaho, and after about a mile came up on a shop with rows and rows of matching ‘toy boxes’. In San Diego, with all the duners and desert rats we’ve got, these toy boxes with the motor cycle and quad storage right there with living quarters are really popular. I have always suspected the dune racers of wanting to sleep with their motorcross bikes, and now they can.

I pulled in, walked to the entrance of a large bay where a young man stood with a clipboard.

“Hi,” I started, “Bill the Gold Miner sent me over here.”

The young man stared at me as I explained our situation. He paused too long and nodded, finally said, “Bill sent you.”

During my rehearsed explanation and the long pause, I noted the frame inside the bay, and the trailer frame further on, with some of the walls being put in place, and the frame beyond that, along the assembly line.

The young man sighed as he put down his clipboard. “Sir, we don’t even install Onan generators in our product.” He picked up the phone, turned to one of his men and asked. “You know the number for the Cummins dealer?”

He finally had to look it up in a yellow pages phone book about the shape and size of a big-letter paperback novel.

“Cummins owns Onan, and the Cummins dealer is on the other side of town. Their phone is busy, but if you go right down Idaho Street, past town, maybe three miles, it’ll be on your right. Can’t miss it, big Cummins sign, and come t’think of it, a big Onan sign under it.”

I walked out of the manufacturing facility, which may have done some repairs on its own warrantied products, drove through the rows and rows of freshly manufactured toy box trailers, and got back on the road.

Do not drive through downtown Elko with an RV, bus, or anything like that. Lovely city, stately five-story buildings, built anywhere from the twenties through the fifties, housing hotels and casinos. Wide sidewalks accommodate outdoor cafes with sun umbrellas and gilded wrought iron around the patio that made me think of New Orleans and Mardi Gras. But the streets were made for model Ts. There’s supposed to be two lanes going both ways. The Bounder blocked both east-bound lanes as we trundled through the business district. There were some righteously ticked Nevadans cursing California drivers that day.

So now we were back where we got off the freeway, still headed east. We passed the Double Dice RV Park, where we had reservations, and from the street, I was not impressed.

We pulled into the Cummins It was a modern, very large, sterile, metal structure with four bay doors in front, all closed.

I left the family in the Bounder as I walked around to a well-marked entrance.

The burly man behind the counter listened to my predicament with professional detachment.

“I can call over to Clinton, they have some people who can work on something that small, but y’gotta understand, all our business is for the gear the mines and cattle operations use around here. If you need parts, chances are they’d have to be ordered from Reno. You just traveling through?”

“On vacation,” I said. “Just spent two days at Cobre.”

The man straightened up, his face lit. He pulled out his pictures of All Things Ghost Town. We spent the next ten minutes discussing the ‘things y’gotta know where they are t’find them.’ He seemed ominously discreet about the lay-outs we seemed to agree on calling ‘homesteads’, like where we found the calf. As it turns out, this man runs a business on the side, giving tours of historic places and, yes, ghost towns. He called Carlin, and the man he was looking for, someone who used to work for him, was off that day. While Carlin dug around for the guy’s cell phone number, the ghost towner looked over at me.

“You here for long?”

“Just today. Headed for Tonopah first thing tomorrow. Say, what’s the best way down to Tonopah, 305 or 306?”

“You just wanna get to Tonopah? Highway 278 is the road you want, unless you just want hilly up and down sort’a stuff. You cruise west here on 80 to Carlin, maybe twenty miles, you get off there, no off-ramp right to 278 from 80, don’t know why, turn right when y’get in Carlin, then left, south, on 278. Takes you down to Eureka. Before you actually get into Eureka y’turn west, right, onto 50. That way you avoid Austin all together. And believe me, if you’re driving an RV, you don’t wanna drive out’a Austin. Three, four miles of ten per cent grade and hairpin turns. Nosir. Take 278.”

That little bit of information would save us fifty miles, roughly an hour of driving, while getting to Tonopah.

He got the man’s cell number, ended up leaving a message for me, took my cell phone number.

“He’ll call back, I’ll give him your number. If he can’t help, he’ll tell you, if he’s willing t’help, maybe he can meet up with you. Where y’staying?”

“The Double Dice.”

“Oh,” is all he said.

I got back out to the Bounder, told Robin the situation as I started up. She said nothing.

I’m afraid its one of those Check-out counter dilemmas. You’re in line at the Home Depot or the grocery store, the line you’re in is moving at a snail’s pace. Two check-out stands down you can see a line that’s shorter and its moving, so you bolt, switching allegiances, before someone else can take the spot. Damned if the person in front of you has a thousand items, a pile of coupons and food stamps, and the machine won’t accept their ATM card. You look over at the line you mutinied against, and you can see you would have been checked out five minutes quicker if you’d just stayed put. Your treason is punished.

We drove back to the Double Dice.

The central building to the Double Dice RV Park and Slot Casino is a low red and white structure with a grassy lawn before and behind it. Inside, it has the feel of a small modern hotel lobby. The slot bar was to the front, and smelled like a well-refrigerated cocktail lounge, the showers and laundry mat was to the rear, sparkling clean, modern, and well appointed. I checked in with the indifferent young lady behind the counter, pulled around back past the playground. At the far back , the playground sat on a baked sand surface with weeds growing all around it. It reminded me of the forlorn park we’d seen across the road from the Montello Cemetery, except the Montello playground had newer equipment.

We pulled in to our spot, right in front of the entrance to the slot casino. The parking spots were so tight that there was no way you could set up a table, or barely even chairs. If you left your drapes up, you were open to the scrutiny of the people of the rigs on either side of you, and vice versa. Most everyone had their drapes drawn and their air conditioners pumping. A pop-up tent trailer behind us had a barbeque, table and chairs set up in front of it. From the coming an going of retiree-looking people, apparently this was the local hotspot.

We had lots of company at the Double Dice. Once again I noted that our rig was the oldest and most beaten up there. A little old lady began running from rig to rig behind us, pointing at us.

“So he’s supposed to call us, and then what?”

“We make arrangements,” I said.

“And in the meantime,” Robin continued, “we’re stuck here, and we can’t go to the Ruby Mountains.”

I unloaded the Bronco. The space were so short, I blocked the lane until I could pull the Bronco around and put away the ramps.

As I finished hooking us up to shore power, my phone started playing Bethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and I answered it.

“What space you in?” the voice asked. He vaguely reminded me of Gary’s voice when I spoke to him back at Cobre. “I’m five minutes out. You’re between two a’ my jobs.”

I thought the guy back at Cummins had said this guy was off work. I decided everyone around here had a second job. In any case, if we could get him working on it, maybe we could still go to the Ruby Mountains. It was all probably under the table anyway, and beggars can’t be choosers.

In pulled a truck with the built-in tool boxes and slide-outs all over it’s bed. It parked in front of us.

The little man who hopped out, though civil enough, seemed to be in a hurry. I had the gen-set door open. He was displeased that it didn’tt roll out of its cabinet. He asked for, and I gave him, one of the blown AGC-5As.

“Doubt this is the right fuse,” he said. “Should have a slow-blow.”

(I’ve checked since getting home. The AGC-5A is what the manual says I should have.)

“I’ve worked on these things for twenty years now, twenty years! And I can tell ya’ right now, Onan makes ‘em more complicated than have to. And why? So they can charge ya’ an arm and a leg when they do break down.”

He looked at the manual a bit, all the while talking about how he works on the big generators now, the diesel units the cattle ranchers bring water up for their herds with, the even larger machines the mining operations use. He went back to his truck, pulled a box of fuses out, sorted through them, then stuck one into the gen-set.

The starter bucked and kicked, and then died.

He pulled out the fuse. Slow Blow or not, it baked just as quickly as my mere AGC 5As. A second fuse went in. The same thing happened.

With practiced speed he whipped off the front plate. There was a circuit board there.

“If there’s a break on this board, there’s not much I can do – No, no, that looks good, no breaks, no corrosion. Nice ‘n clean, least-ways as far as I can see. Where you folks from?”

“Crest, we like to say,” I answered. “Just above El Cajon in San Diego County.”

“I know El Cajon! That’s where Buck Knives is.”

“Used to,” I said. “California regs ran the Buck family off to Idaho.”

“Really! Sounds like you’re not too happy where you are.”

“If I could find work comparable to what I’m doing there, I’d moved to Elko in a heart-beat.”

The old-timer whipped the plate back on.

“And you and your family would be better off for it. I was stationed outside San Francisco when I was in the Army. A sick diseased place even then. I’m no prude, no bible thumper, but there’s free-wheeling, then there’s decay. Let’s try a higher amp fuse.”

I looked at the warning label about not using anything bigger than a five amp, but hey, you hire an expert, you let him work. If it did work, I’d be kicking myself for not sticking those ten amps I’d bought back in Ely.

He hit the starter button, but this time, it didn’t buck, the starter didn’t turn over. The old Onan guy pulled out the fuse. It was a fifteen amp, I could read, and it was blown. He stuck another fuse in there. Same thing. No kick, just a blown fuse.

“Yeah, it’s, ah – it’s your circuit board. No doubt about it.”

I stared at the old man, and thought, you son-of-a-bitch, you just cooked that circuit board. I tried to imagine my rebuke as he prattled on about a condenser on the board that holds the charge for the starter, and how that was overloaded, sure enough, but all I could think was, Robin is going to be pissed all to Hell.

“Won’t find one of those boards anywhere around here, mind you. Have to order it from Reno, and it’d be two, three days before it got here.”

So now we were guaranteed that the generator wasn’t going to work for the rest of the trip.

“How much is that going to cost me?” I asked, and what I meant was the circuit board.

“I’m going t’give you the best deal you’ll ever get for this kind of service,” the old man assured me, “Sixty dollars!”

Now, here was my dilemma. I knew he’d just fried the circuit board with an over-sized fuse -- or did I? I’m no mechanic, no Onan expert. If I did go off on the old boy, he could call the cops, and while his supremacy in that situation was doubtful, that still meant Robin would know I’d let the SOB blow any chance of getting that damn generator fixed during this trip, and who knows what other damage he’d just done. If I paid him off, just got rid of him, we could still make it to the Ruby Mountains and see the ‘Alps of Nevada’.

I went inside and got three twenty dollar bills, assured Robin that, though the generator couldn’t be fixed on the road, the old Onan Expert had indeed saved us money by diagnosing the problem, so that when we got home, I could fix it without taking it to a shop. She gave me a disgusted look.

“Now, there’s an outside chance,” the old Onan mechanic went as I counted out the bills to him, “That there’s a short, a ground, somewhere in the remote starter wires somewhere. That’s the only other possibility.”

When we got home, I went on-line to see if I could find the circuit board. Sure enough, at E-Bay, there’s a shop that has every conceivable Onan circuit board you could imagine, including ones for my unit. $230 plus shipping.

So Gary Westwood of Roadside Automotive, I could’ve saved hundreds of dollars by simply staying in your line, even if you’d just told me you couldn’t fix it.

We packed the cooler and loaded up.

Robin had scored several pamphlets from a display just outside the laundry room. ‘Nevada with Altitude’, read one pamphlet. I thought that was cute. Between attempts to stop the kids from torturing each other, and to keep the dogs from crawling into the front seats, she read out loud that Elko County is the largest producer of cattle and gold in America.

We headed due south out of town. The road was newly widened and paved, and new homes and construction abounded all along this thoroughfare. A brand new shopping mall with acres of parking caught my eye. Industry and commerce seem to be booming in Elko. At one point we turned east, following the directions I had gleaned from my topo map program and the internet. The houses here became more established, but never losing that neat organized quality, trees trimmed, lawns mowed, fields cleared, a tidiness that I have completely failed to master with my own acre in California. Another right turn headed due south, and things started to look more rugged. The patched road began to thin, houses disappeared, and very shortly we began to climb sharply, the road twisting and turning, and sheer peaks suddenly sprang up all around us, jagged toothy rock, dark chocolate-colored with pine trees growing right out of the walls. The temperature dropped. The rock walls continued to climb, hundreds of feet above us, and the valley dropped away below. A river splashed along the valley bottom, hemmed in by trees and rocky parapets.

In a matter of five winding miles, we had gone from bland rolling prairie land to craggy Alpine mountains. Snow capped the peaks ahead of us

A paved road appeared to our right, dropping down and traversing the river. We spotted a vehicle picking its way along a dirt road below us, so we turned.

We stayed on the paved road, crossed a bridge made of rock that spanned the river, and followed the road until we came to a sign that said, “Authorized vehicles only beyond this point.

There were campsites all along the road, pull-offs fit for nothing more than a vehicle and a tent. We drove back and, seeing the turn-off to the dirt road we’d seen the vehicle on, followed it down.

Not out of sight of the bridge there was a large fire ring in a flat clearing.

“Wanna see if we can get down to the water?” I asked. Robin shrugged. I pulled up.

The riot of dogs and kids fell from the Bronco, screaming, weeping, bickering, impatient demands, dogs pulling at their leashes. We found a trail.

At the bottom, another flat, idyllic camp spot, spoiled by the last camper leaving a pile of his waste, with toilet paper, unburied, not too far from the fire ring. We headed upstream to a rocky beach of sorts.

The kids squealed with joy, running up and down the little stretch of flat that disappeared under the cool clear water of the river that rushed by us. I was surprised the water wasn’t colder than it was. It had to be the run-off from the melting snow above us.

“We could stay here awhile,” Robin offered.

“I’ll go get the cooler,” I answered.

“Bring my cigarettes.”

The arduous climb back up tested my heart rate. While there I went ahead and loaded the backpack with the snacks on my back, and tried to imagine if there was anything else I should get.

There were flowers in bloom. Thick brambly plants with dark green leaves dipped their vines in the rushing water., that frothed and roared with the friction of its motion.

The dogs wanted so badly to run free. I crawled through bush for awhile, holding onto their leashes, hoping that would sate at least a little of their curiosity. Nothing, though, relieves a dog’s urge to be free than to be actually free, to run, to roam, to dig into places they probably shouldn’t.

The kids took off their shoes, but the water was moving too fast, and got deep very quickly, for them to go far out into the river.

A calm seemed to settle over the children. I hoped perhaps they were actually getting tired. We drank juice and ate peanuts and apples.

“Ready to go explore some more?” Robin asked the horde after about an hour.

There was the usual squabbling over getting the shoes on. Carrying the cooler and the backpack gave my cardiovascular system another good work-out crawling up the trail.

We considered going further down the dirt road, but we knew there was a car ahead of us, and we knew that the paved road went all the way to ten thousand feet before it ended in a loop.

According to my research, there are small lakes nestled in the crags of the Ruby Mountains, so remote and difficult to get to, only hiking will get you there. I had thought about trying to do a hike, but I wasn’t sure how much time we’d actually have in Elko. Besides, with five year-olds, more than a mile one way is about the limit before you’re carrying them.

We got back on the main road and continued up. At one point we drove through a campground and ended up having a short conversation with the camp hosts.

“Just looking at your campground,” I offered.

“That’s all you can do, is look,” the woman shot back. “We’re full for the weekend.”

The campground hugged both sides of the river that had reduced down to a stream. We weren’t far from the end of the road.

I thought about it again. What were we doing in an RV Park when there were places like this? There are hours when you run your generator, the rest of the time you shut down. I didn’t see a dump station, but once again, you find an RV Park and dump your tanks, pay a small fee, buy water, on the way out.

The trees thinned away as we continued to climb, replace by brush that looked like clump grass, the creek had turned into a cold marshy bog on both sides of the road, with piles of sticks and limbs in the middle of the quagmire that looked like beaver dens. The peaks around us didn’t seem so tall now, but sterile and cold, all black stone, ice and snow. Still, it wasn’t truly cold. The sky was bluer, but with a queerly sickly feel to it.

Ahead I could see a loop through a parking lot. The end of the line.

The road veered left into the parking lot at the far end, circling around a fairly large brick structure, bathrooms, I assumed. A threesome stood at the rear bumper of a Saab of some kind. It was flanked by a Prius and Mercedes Benz sports car.

I instantly didn’t like them as I drove by; impeccably dressed, fashionable shorts, L.L. Bean hats, hiking sticks and high-end hiking boots. A short lean man in his mid-fifties glanced at us, then made a point to turn away. I noted the vehicles’ plates; California.

A week from home, and I’d come to loathe Californians. I could easily hiss, ‘I’ve always hated those fat-cat elitist Northern Californians, Mercedez Benz Marxists, San Francisco Snobs, Napa Valley Feudalists hiding behind their politically correct Humanist rhetoric’, but what the hell, right then, I hated all Californians. I didn’t even think about the California plates our ride sported.

I got out and took some pictures both up toward the peaks, and down the long valley we’d climbed, working my way through skunk weed to get the deformed limbs of a lone, dead Pine in the foreground. The threesome was still standing there when we left.

We saw wild horses on the way back to Elko, grazing practically in someone’s back yard just outside of the National Forest. For all the pleasant countryside and scenery, the bickering and sniping in the back seat marred it all. We stopped at a grocery store and stocked up. Looking at the itinerary, Elko was the last major town we intended to stop in until we got home.

“I’m gonna need beer,” I said as Robin got out. She gave me a chilling look.

“You’ve gone through all the beer we had? In one week?”

I was taken aback. We would need to get wine now, or buy somewhere between here and home, as well.

“We’re on vacation,” was all I could think to say. One more withering glance, and she was gone, me left in the Bronco trying to keep the children from attracting too much attention with their bellowing and weeping..

I’ve been told this is the mind of an addictive personality, so I might have to review this issue a bit more, but I did the math. We had two twelve packs of St. Pauli Girl and a thirty-round case of Bud Light. Divided by fifteen days, that three-point-six beers a day. This is not excessive, I don’t think. In fact, for vacation, its down-right niggardly. Robin would end up buying another thirty-round case of Bud Light, and there would be about a six-pack left when we got home, so that works out to five-point-two beers a day for the vacation. That’s nearly a six pack a day, which is certainly more than I think is good, but I supposed this was vacation, and I was allowed a certain celebratory spirit. In any case, Robin pointing it out to me most certainly dampened the pleasure of a beer for the rest of the trip.

We got back to the RV and I pulled up to the bumper. By the time we got the groceries unloaded, Robin was spitting venom at the riotous kids.

“Let me take the kids to the park,” I suggest. “Maybe they didn’t burn off enough energy.”

She studied me suspiciously before nodding her head.

“We’ll be back in an hour,” I said.

“So soon?”

“Hour and a half?”

“Just in time for dinner,” Robin noted sourly.

We’d passed a park just east of downtown Elko and the kids had expressed an interest in going to it. Next to it was a large log cabin, which intrigued me.

I loaded the children and drove them over to the town park.

I didn’t see a name for it out front. There was a gymnasium to the east of it along Idaho Street, and a museum that I’d read something good about in one of the brochures, but quite frankly, I didn’t want to take my progeny into anything with treasures they could break at that particular moment..

This is a most pleasant park on a flat piece of ground with manicured lawns, flowers and trees. An access road through the middle separates a large picnic area, with dozens of tables in the dense shade of a forest of well-pruned pine trees to the north, from a gazebo, a flower garden, monuments and an expansive playground with some novel play equipment on the south, against Idaho Street. There’s picnic tables over there as well, under metal sun shades. Everything was new and painted. There was an exceptional statue by the sidewalk along Idaho Street of a Basque Shepherd, and it seemed as if many of the monuments were dedicated to the Basque.

Robin and I were rescued by a Basque family, on our Vacation Into Hell, on the Idaho/Oregon border, when the whole side of the radiator blew off, ending any chance of fixing the damn Escort again on that nightmare trip. We were twenty-six miles from the nearest town, Marsing, Idaho, so I have a warm spot for the Basque. I didn’t realize they’d made an impression this far south, but later I would notice at least one restaurant specializing in Basque cuisine in the downtown area. We read in the Elko Times that there was going to be a Basque celebration in the month of July, probably right there in that park.

My three children pushed and shoved every device in the playground, and successfully found the only mud puddle in the whole park, covering their shoes. They also managed to inflict themselves on a Mexican family that was also playing in the park, the only other souls I saw there on this Friday afternoon. Kellian declared the little Mexican three-year old her best new friend.

I would’ve expected more people there, but I also note that most homes in this region are on such large lots, that they have their own private parks in the back yards. It changes the whole nature and purpose of a park. In California, people flee the confines of their houses to be able to breathe, to shake off the claustrophobia of their apartments or condo or postage-sized-lot track homes, where in Elko they gather in a park for community, seeking each other out instead of escaping. I don’t recall seeing any apartment buildings, but we never made it to the north side of town.

I checked the time on my cell phone. It was 7:30. We’d been gone an hour and twenty minutes. I figured it was time to get back.

Robin did not seem in a much better mood. We were fed with bitter disdain.

“I have two hundred dollars here,” Robin informed us. “I stashed it aside for just this. If this doesn’t let up, I swear, I’ll get a cab down to the airport and catch a flight home. If I don’t have enough for a plane ticket, I’ll take a bus. This has got to stop. It’s gotta stop now.”

“Why don’t you take the Bronco,” I countered blandly.

“That would leave you without a car,” she answered.

That night as I drank the last of my St. Pauli Girl, I watched the comings and goings at the slot casino entrance our windshield faced. There was a group of young people, in their twenties, the guys shirtless with their pants falling off their hips, tattoos and piercings in uncomfortable parts of their faces, the bills of their caps askew, the girls, equally tattooed and pierced, dressed in shorts and tank tops hanging on every word coming out of the boys’ mouths. The next morning Alex complained he couldn’t sleep.

“I could hear those slot machine bells going off all night long.”

And that was the halfway point, one week into the Taylor Horde Grand Tour./Forced March of 2006.

What lay ahead was Tonopah and the Mine Park, Scotty’s Castle, Mummy Mountain, our property at Wikieup, The Grand Canyon by way of train, and finally the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge along the Colorado River. In fact, the adventure had just begun.