The Great (green greasy) Texas Dereferencing Tour of 1998 and Almost 1999

By Leonard Richardson

Part Three: In Which The Chipmunks, Having Secreted Their Deadly Venom, Advance Upon the Unwary Octopi

Alpine->Deming

At the Ramada we had one of the better continental breakfasts I had on the trip. There were lots of pastries and they were very fresh and tasty. The orange juice was good as well. This is represented in my notes as "cnt bkfst @ Remada". [sic]

In the breakfast room at the Ramada there was a cactus anomaly, cactus growing out of a Hawaiian foliage plant. My mother made me stand next to it to take a picture. I was of the opinion that if she wanted a picture of the plant she could take a picture of the plant without dragging me into it, so I was grumpy about it, but now that I'm using these pictures in a travelogue I can see it from her point of view.

Near the Ramada is a trading post and petting zoo called "Jackassic Park". Everyone except Rachel thought this was very funny. Rachel might even think it was very funny, but she didn't react to the news at all. We didn't go there, as it didn't open til 9, although they had videos to show about the Marfa lights, and presumably old geezers who would tell you all about them.

We loaded up and drove north like the north-driving people we were. Today was to be the day of towns with funny names, partly because in San Antonio I had planned our trip home by looking on the state maps for towns with funny names. I now realized that this generally meant additional hundreds of miles added on to our drive. However, by this time my mother was set on seeing all these towns with funny names, so I had created a monster beyond my control.

The first town we passed was not on the state map, but it had the best name ever: Balmorhea.

Hey Bill, I got the AMA to name a disease after meeeee!

There was a Balmorhea Medical Clinic. I wanted to take a picture of it, but we did not. We did take pictures of a cool road sign in Balmorhea which had a turkey on it. It was a "turkey crossing" sign.

My mother expressed doubts that Pecos actually had a rightful claim to the world's first rodeo. However, I came to Pecos' defense, as the AAA book backs up this claim. We did not test the truthfullness of the cantelope claim.

• coyote
• some kind of bird
• possum

We continued driving north. It was about a hundred miles to our next silly-named destination, Kermit.

We entered Winkler county, named after the former Fonz and executive producer of Sightings. Andy and I used to have a lot of fun ridiculing Sightings. The announcer always looked like he was just a floating head, and his body was projected underneath him. Andyway.

• rabbit

Before Kermit came Wink, birthplace of Roy Orbison. It was my plan to send Jake a postcard from Kermit, as he had earlier sent me a postcard postmarked from Melber, KY (Melber is not a particularily funny name, but it does have the ZIP code 42069). However, my plan was hampered by lack of postcards (I had a HERE IT IS postcard, but that was going to Andy). We stopped by the Wink post office to buy postcards. They had none. The lady at the post office suggested we try the Chamber of Commerce or the Roy Orbison museum.

Against my better judgement, we went to the Chamber of Commerce, which was right next to the Roy Orbison museum. The nice lady there offered to call the other (presumably) nice ladies who ran the Roy Orbison museum so that they could open it up and I could buy postcards there. I declined, not wanting to cause trouble for said ladies. I began to feel bad for visiting small towns in Texas solely for their silly names.

We went on to Kermit. We took pictures by the city limits sign. I felt bad about this. We looked and looked for the Kermit post office, finally finding it. I bought a postcard there and wrote a note to Jake. He later informed me that he could barely read the postmark on the postcard. Phooey.

• Whiskers Place

In Kermit there was a thrift store called a Pay N Save. The concept of a "Pay N Save" is flawed, as, in all but pathological cases, you save more by not paying than you do by paying.

We crossed the line between Texas and New Mexico. We stopped, again, to take pictures of us by the Texas sign, as though sufficient pictures of us in front of signs has not yet been taken on this trip. The crumbling statue of Texas was made out of fossil-laden rock. There were shell fossil indentations in the rock. This was fairly interesting.

• The Hill's

I'm Conoco Jack.

• coyote

That's even better than the stone-encased hammer!

Actually, a lot of places in this area of New Mexico/Texas have "Permian" in their names, as that is the layer of rock which is exposed there and which makes oilmen very rich. There is a Permian basin around there or something.

Looking at my notes, I can only wonder what a Nutrition Vendor or Cow Camp is, and how a situation would arise where you had so many you would have to number them.

Also, here is a line straight from my notes. Any attempt at interpretation would be pure speculation on my part. I have no idea whether this constitutes one, two, or three notebook entries, or what any of them mean:

Prefered Trust the king It's Big!

This was around Hobbs, NM, if you want to go scout around and see what that notebook entry could mean. I doubt you want to, though.

Our destination was the infamous Roswell, NM, where in the 1940s a flying saucer crashed and was promptly forgotten about until the 1980s. I had put it on our itinerary mostly out of morbid curiosity.

It was like Bakersfield. Bakersfield with an alien district. Coming in were billboards like Roswell -- Gateway to Industry (not really, but stuff like that) and Roswell Ford (cf. Permian Ford).

I did not want to spend a lot of time in Roswell, for various irrational reasons I can't explain (cf. Aunt Ann's Landing-related panic attack). I wrote a note to Andy on the back of the HERE IT IS postcard I had bought to write a note to him on. As with the note to Jake, I made no reference to the subject matter of the postmark. Also as with the note to Jake, I drew a little picture of a sign saying

with a pterodactyl perching on the sign. Pterodactyls are fun to draw.

We spent some time in a grungy tourist stuff store. You could buy various representations of alien heiroglyphics, and other alien-related things. You could also buy New Mexico related things, like T-shirts, and Native American jewelry. What do you want from a tourist stuff store in Roswell?

• No out of town check's

• rabbit
• coyote
• 2 foxes
• rabbit
• skunk
• deer (?!)
• coyote
• rabbit
• porcupine

On we went to Almogordo.

Guests of Los Alamos fly Almogordo Airlines!

We drove through more of the mountain forest stuff that I like. There was snow in some places, I believe. There were probably also deer that everyone saw but me.

Various shops and such higher up on the mountain had signs by the road trying to entice us to go up the tiny, practically vertical dirt roads off the highway. One such sign advertised the "Inn of the Mountain Gods". Talk about hubris! My mother said that the Mountain Gods in question are Native American Mountain Gods, rather than the Norse Mountain Gods one might think of upon hearing the phrase "Inn of the Mountain Gods". I don't see how this alleviates the hubris any, but YMMV.

We stopped at Almogordo to see the Almogordo Space Museum. I realized that I had actually been there before, when I was young (when I was young). We went in anyway. It was much the same as it had been before, except for a new exhibit on the International Space Station.

Time has not been good to the Almogordo Space Museum. Much of the exhibit text predates the fall of the Soviet Union, and the whole thing is dusty and creaky. I really can't recommend it. There are some great rocket parts and paraphenalia outside the museum, though, including an Apollo capsule which you can climb inside. The last time I was there, the switches were exposed, so that little kids like me could play Buzz Aldrin. However, the switches have now been placed behind a plexiglass screen, denying future generations this pleasure.

• M-60's

It was getting dark as we left Almogordo. Originally we had intended to stay there, but we decided to try and put in another hundred miles or so.

There was a muffler shop in Almogordo which had adopted the practice used by many churches of getting a plastic sheet-letter sign and putting some stupid message on it. This muffler shop said "If you have nothing else to turn to, turn to yourself." It was a nice secular alternative to the church messages, but still pretty useless, philosophically.

Speaking of which:

We ended up stopping in Deming (possibly Las Cruces, I'm not sure). There was an Italian restaurant we planned to eat at, but they had a 45-minute wait so we ended up eating at a cheap Mexican place called Chilito's. I had shredded tacos (the stuff in the tacos was shredded, not the tacos themselves).

You see how much gets crammed into a single day when I plan the itinerary? You're welcome. On to the last day.

Deming->Los Angeles

Let's do the roadkill first.

• rabbit
• unidentifiable
• rabbit
• rabbit
• dark animal with big bushy tail
• desert fox
• deer
• coyote

Okay, that's out of the way. Once you get into California the highway roadkill pretty much stops. Possibly the CHP takes care of it, or there are just more people using the highways in California, so it decomposes faster.

That watch lasted me about two months before it fell apart. I taped the LCD onto the wristband and it lasted a couple more weeks. Laugh if you will, but, dollar for dollar, that watch lasted longer than any other watch I've ever had. Well, actually not. I had a $60 watch I got as a present once which lasted me through junior high and high school. But the lie watch is certainly up there.

The Arizona section of the 10 has nothing anywhere near it. It reminds me a lot of the desert from the last scene in So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish. As far as I can tell, the only people in southern Arizona are those who are driving through it or those who make money on others driving through it. There are probably people who like the scenery, but if they like it so much why don't they put their money where their mouth is and move there?

McDonalds apparantly thinks that people like their food. Why else would they advertise their presence in the middle of the desert? There was a big ad for one of the little gas-and-food centers which said:

It was painted over instead of striked out, but it amounted to the same thing. From a distance, it looked like [Big Mac     ], which was very disconcertening.

Somebody woke up one morning and said "Wait a minute! Why are we selling Big Macs for 99 cents in the middle of the Arizona desert? We have a geographical monopoly! We ought to gouge our customers! Get someone to repaint that billboard on Highway 10!"

I don't know where we ate lunch, but I do know where we didn't eat lunch.

• Oscars (seen in Lordsburg)

There's someone who should be in advertising.

There should be a punk band called "Defacing Rocks Unlawful".

We approached the lair of The Thing?, the other thing which was advertised on Highway 10. My mother was not feeling well, and had to pull in to rest.

The lair of The Thing? was another place I had been a long time ago (the other two mentioned in this travelogue being the Caverns of Sonora and the Almogordo Space Museum). I can tell the lair of The Thing? from the other millions of tourist trap places because of the presence of a "Pacmania" arcade game near the entrance. "Pacmania" is a nice-looking 3/4-overhead-view Pac Man game in which the raytraced Pac Man has the ability to jump over the raytraced ghosts.

The last time I was at the lair of The Thing? (I was probably between 10 and 12), I had really wanted to play Pacmania, but no one would give me a quarter. Between then and now, I had reached the age of majority, and was allowed to play video games on my own quarters. Looking back on it now, I wish I had played a game, because if I had I could have forgotten about it, but now it is stuck in the back of my head until the next time I go through southern Arizona on the 10, and the next time I do I will be placed in the emberassing position of asking to stop at the lair of The Thing? so that I can play Pacmania, making it look like I'm some sort of connoiseur of Highway 10 attractions.

Instead of playing Pacmania, I got a frozen yogurt thing called a Breeze from the nearby Dairy Queen, which was terrible and cost as much as 15 games of Pacmania. I ended up throwing most of it away. I just couldn't eat it. I wanted to eat it, but it was not cooperating. All the Dairy Queen paraphenalia has Dennis the Menace crap on it, just as all KOA paraphenalia has Family Circus crap on it. [3]

I should explain the "the lair of The Thing?" thing. The name of the building appears to be "The Thing?". There is some allegedly mysterious Thing? which the proprietors of the building have in their posession, and which they charge 75 cents a pop to look at. They're apparantly not sure if it's really an actual Thing, though, thus "The Thing?" We didn't see it. I have no desire to see it. I'd much rather play Pacmania.

Had I seen The Thing?, I would have no qualms about telling you all about it, so as to save you the 75 cents if you are ever down that way. What are they going to do about it?

At the stupid-stuff shop of the lair of The Thing? there were a pair of huge bookends. I don't remember anything about them, but my notebook says BOOKENDS OF MONOLITHIC PROPORTIONS!, so they must have been pretty big.

• Exceeding customers needs
• The Courier of the 90's
• Tonopo Joes

All of those need aditional commentary. "Exceeding customers' needs" is very, very, very funny in its own right, of course.

Get out of my yard!
But ma'am, we're exceeding your needs!

That still cracks me up. I don't remember where I saw it, though.

The other one is on the Swift Trucking brand of big rigs, which always gives me a chance to call it "Jonathan Swift trucking" and explain for the nth time the Andy/Leonard Jonathan Swift Justice bit that nobody else will ever get without explanation. Even Andy might not get it by now.[4]

(Also, how about that cartoon skunk on the back of the Dick Simon trucking trucks which is holding a sign that says "Sweet Simon"? Just thought I'd toss that out and see who recognized it.)

I'm Tonopo Joe.

Quartzite is the site of the grave of Hi Jolly (né Haji Ali), a camel trainer who was hired by the U.S. Army during the civil war to train camels in the California desert for warfare. He has a large pyramidial memorial in the town's small graveyard.

That is not the weird thing about Quartzite.

The weird thing about Quartzite is that it is one big free-for-all county fair. The town consists entirely of trailers and RVs full of people who have set up tarps outside to sell you things ranging from shiny stones to rare books to pig knucles.

Given a day to spend in Quartzite, I could easily write another file the size of this one about it. Unfortunately, we did not have much time to spend in Quartzite, and most of my experiences in it were because we missed the turn into the graveyard and had to circle around the whole town.

Would you buy a shrimp cocktail from this place?

My mother does not believe that I saw that sign. I don't blame her for not believing me. But I did see it. In Quartzite.

In Quartzite I also saw a vehicle with the license plate GNU 052. No further information is avaliable about Quartzite.

Somewhere along the 10 there was a store called "The Carpet Empire". The Carpet Empire Strikes Back.

We stopped to rest and eat some stuff at the Denny's by the giant dinosaurs in Cabazon, out in the Mojave desert, as seen in the movie Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. This eating-at-Denny's business can be seen as bookending, if you like, although Denny's in this travelogue is more a leitmotif than a bookend (if a bookend, then a BOOKEND OF MONOLITHIC PROPORTIONS!).

• RV's welcome
• No part's for 90 days
• New RV's

I'm out of notes. By this time we were back in {the USSR, LA}, where everything is familiar and the absurdities are not as noticeable to me (except for the King of Wide-Screen, who belongs in the next travelogue). My mother and Rachel crashed in my apartment for the night and left in the morning. Our long journey was over.

[1] Look, I know what they were doing, you know what they were doing. Let's not corrupt any more youth than we absolutely have to.

[2] The Canton Cafe has sweet-and-sour sauce which is the color of translucent red Legos and as thick as corn syrup. It would probably make anyone else vomit, but for me it's the only way to make sweet-and-sour sauce. I love junky Chinese food, in case you couldn't tell. I can appreciate the good stuff, but the subtleties are wasted on me.

[3] I had zero respect for Bil Keane until recently, when he put this self-depreciating editorial comment in the margin of one of his cartoons (it was "[Apparantly not. -ed.]" but I don't remember the context of the cartoon, so it doesn't make sense) which many readers interpreted as a deliberate attempt by someone else to slander him, and reacted accordingly. I still don't have a lot of respect for Bil Keane, but the man hardly needs my respect.

[4] He satirized those the law couldn't touch! Tell me if you get this. If there is one person in the world I don't have to explain this to, I will be happy. The rest of you, watch out.