Two in this little travel-inspired trilogy!
As thrifty on gas as it is, we had to top off the Prius in Lee Vining before heading east. As Sara topped off the tank, I used the Shell station’s surprisingly clean but dilapidated restroom. As I stood there and started to get rid of the morning’s coffee, my eyes drifted across the various graffiti messages written in pen, pencil, sharpie, and, when desperation struck, the point of some sharp object.
It was such a message in jagged diagonal lines carved into the dingy white paint that caught my eye. “Havin A Good Trip Basil?” One, that’s a lot to carve without any profanity. Two, Basil is my name and no one ever writes graffiti to “Basil.” You’re never going to find one of those souvenir license plates with “BASIL” on it. Seriously, despite being Arabic for “Brave,” it’s got to be on the top ten list of most made fun of names in middle school. No, it’s even too obscure for that list – maybe it might make the top 50. Three, I was on a good trip.
“You look… distracted,” Sara said as I climbed into the passenger seat.
“Weird coincidence graffiti,” I said.
“That’s a thing?”
I shrugged. “It is this morning, apparently.”
“What’d it say? No, no, let me guess, the ‘For A Good Time Call’ listed a number for your ex?”
I laughed. “No, it said ‘Havin a good trip Basil.”
“Basil? It had your freaking name?”
“Weird, right?”
“Maybe they’re gourmand graffitists and were so particularly satisfied with a tomato and basil salad they felt the need to commit it to the wall of the Shell bathroom? Wait, was there a question mark at the end?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, then probably not gourmand graffitists. Damn, that’s weird.”
“Let’s just get going.”
And we did. We visited the Panum Crater and South Tufas at Mono lake before the Jeffrey pines and yellowing quaking aspens along the twisting and dipping highway 120 gave way to creosote and yucca of interstate 6 leading through Nevada.
“There!” I pointed at the Tonopah Brewing Company. “I think we need to stop.”
“I was already aiming for it!” Sara said. “Look, a smoker. That means barbeque! Nom!”
She was right, and the brisket was better than the 999 IPA, though I was grateful for both.
“Bathrooms this way?” I asked the bartender. She nodded and I made my way down a narrow corridor. I was grateful there was practically no graffiti on the wall here. However, when I went to wash my hands I noticed a sticker plastered on the corner of the mirror. “Basil, I’ll See You Soon!” in Helvetica bold font. Below the text the logo for “CraftHaus Brewery” in “Henderson, NV”
“No,” Sara said when I came back. “Not more graffiti?”
“Not graffiti,” I said as I showed Sara the picture of the sticker I took on my iPhone. She gasped audibly.
“What the…?”
“I don’t know, but I think I need that double IPA now.”
Henderson, Nevada is on the outskirts of Las Vegas. If whoever was anticipating my movements was counting on us going all the way to Las Vegas, he or she would be sorely disappointed.
No, our next stop was the International Car Forest in Goldfield, Nevada. We wandered around the brightly colored cars spray-painted with garish designs of cartoon ghosts and faces along with seeming non-sequiturs like “It’s ok to be bad” and buried at unnatural angles in the Nevada desert. Given the bathroom-centric nature of the last two messages, I flinched when I saw the shaky black lettering on the rusted once-yellow school bus now planted like a javelin. It read, “BASIL, I know UR Here.”
“What in the everlasting hell?” Sara said stepping up next to me.
“I haven’t the foggiest… But I’m more than a little freaked out.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Where?” I said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“I don’t know…” she shrugged. “Make a beeline for home. Call off this trip.”
I shook my head. “No, whatever this is, it’s not going to win. It’s weird, but, come on, what can it do?”
Sara took a deliberate step away from me.
“What’s that for?”
“Did you really just tempt fate?”
“Seriously, Sara, messages on restrooms and a bus? If something is anticipating me… what’s it going to do?”
Sara changed the subject abruptly. “Oldest operating bar in Nevada next?”
“Yes, sounds perfect.”
While the slowly dying town of Goldfield, Nevada itself feels like it’s off the map, the Santa Fe Motel and Saloon sat on the ragged edge of town. Sara took a picture of the Nevada Historical Society plaque extolling the historic nature of the place, but when we stepped in I felt transported to a dive bar from the 70’s – 1970’s, not 1870’s. No craft brew taps, no obscure artisanal liquors. Instead, the mahogany bar was obscured by more than a little cigarette smoke. Some, no question, came from more than a century of cranky Nevadans, but the bartender watching the University of Texas game while dragging on a Marlboro Red clearly contributed to the most recent haze. “What’ll you have?” She asked.
“Seven and seven,” I said, ordering my dive-bar standard.
She looked at Sara. “Rye and ginger?”
The bartender’s wrinkles creased as she raised a drawn-on eyebrow. “We don’t have rye.”
“Oh, uh… Whiskey soda?”
“Which whiskey?”
“Jack?”
The bartender nodded, took a draw off her cigarette before setting it in a well-used ashtray and preparing our drinks.
“I’m going to use the bathroom,” I said. “You got this?”
“Yeah,” Sara said. “Be careful,” she said touching my arm. The serious tone in her voice frightened me more than the idea that I’d find anything in the bathroom.
I nodded and walked to the bathroom that consisted of two under-sized toilets in barely-larger rooms. I closed and locked the door of the unnecessarily-marked “MEN” door and started looking at the graffiti while I unbuttoned my pants.
The walls were adorned with especially colorful epithets against Nevada state troopers as well as University of Texas fan comments.
And then there it was. “Hi, Basil. Knock knock.”
A rap came at the door just behind me.
