Joyce Kiefer

POSTCARDS FROM THE ROAD

Where have we been?
Well, check these out!

By JOYCE KIEFER
of TheColumnists.com

 

Somewhere beyond Needles, California, we pull over to a state inspection station. The heat has passed 90 degrees and it’s 10 in the morning. A burly, florid-faced inspector looks us over--my husband Bill and I, our Prius, and our California plates. He asks, “Where have you been? Where are you going?”

These are far deeper questions than the ones they used to ask at the state border: “Do you have any fruit, vegetables or plants?”

Bill replies that we are returning home from Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

I think the best response would have been a series of postcards sent ahead to prepare for our arrival - the large 50-cent size. The cards would be mailed from key places along our 3,500 mile trek.

From Hole in the Rock, Utah.

Nothing like roadside kitsch to make you feel you’re in America after all.

The fire-red canyon along the Colorado River near Moab belongs in a Western, the Bible, or on another planet. We found the turn in the road where Bill and I camped with his parents when I was about six months pregnant and could hardly stand in the stiff wind. This time we stopped at Hole in the Rock. Nothing like roadside kitsch to make you feel you’re in America after all. In the ‘40’s and ‘50’s a couple scooped a 5,000 square foot cave out of a sandstone cliff for a diner and 14-room Flintstone-like home. The husband, a Renaissance man, tried taxidermy on his favorite horses after they died and used them as interior decor. You should see one side of Horse Harry’s face, his first job.

From Gallup, New Mexico

The rug room has a huge stuffed buffalo bleached white.

We’re on Route 66, the Mother Road. I-40 deposited us about five miles out of town where all the modern motels are. Things looked familiar closer to town where I spotted stucco auto courts that must have been there when my parents and I traveled this way in the late ‘40s and early ‘50’s. Bill and I checked out the Bill Richardson’s Trading Co. (no relation to the state governor/possible running mate for Hilary). The rug room has a huge stuffed buffalo bleached white. The place is filled with jewelry, rugs, and wooden Indians. You should see the inside of the huge safe where the walls are hung with a treasure of silver and turquoise belts and necklaces. This is Indian pawn. The clerk who watched over us explained that the Indians pawn their jewelry to cover expenses until they complete and sell the projects they’re working on. This loan system has worked between craftsmen and trading posts for generations.

Here in Gallup I began to leave a trail of forgotten things to prove where I’ve been. The Day’s Inn has my nightgown and back pillow.

From Greer, Arizona

My hat fell out of the car, probably at the lookout point where I took a picture of the storm.

Arizona actually possesses mountains covered with trees instead of cacti. For close to a year we’ve planned to meet with Marge and Bill for a hike at 10,000 feet here in the White Mountains. Then came radiation treatments for Bill and a sore back for me. I worried about breathing at such altitude with my sea level lungs. Bill’s lungs remain set for the Colorado heights where he was born.

But I got acclimated and my back snapped into place. Radiation had never kept Bill down. It was the weather that beat us. When we arrived at the long-anticipated trail, lightning began to strike. God probably had other ideas for our day all along. As we drove out, never having left the car, the hail began. It sounded like we were in a tin can pelted with pointy rocks. The booming thunder made the aggregation of noise unbearable. Finally, sheets of rain made the road invisible. The hike was a washout.

From the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert

We stopped in Holbrook to see the Wigwam Motel. The wigwam cabins are still shiny white but the office sign said “closed”. I looked again at the place. The cars parked in front of each unit were all from the ‘50’s.

Petrified Forest, Painted Desert. The names sound like roadside tourist traps. The former is a national park set in the latter. The park entrance doubles as an inspection station for stolen petrified wood. The ranger asked if we have any. Yes we do. My brother-in-law gave me a piece as we left his house in Colorado. Where did it come from? Not sure but probably the Utah desert. I could call him but cars were lined up behind us. The ranger wrapped and sealed my wood in a plastic bag. We learned a ton of petrified wood is stolen from the park each month.

No wonder. The agatized centers of the logs look like jewels. The entire stone forest is lying down now after 225 million years. The surrounding desert is a series of multicolored mounds that stretches beyond the park toward the shadowy San Francisco Peaks to the west. As a kid I stared at that desert from the Painted Desert Inn and never forgot it.

Heading toward Holbrook, I-40 is downright fun just like its predecessor, Route 66. A series of billboards announced a knife store with “items of self defense, items for your kitchen, clean rest rooms.” Statues of dinosaurs lined the road, some depicted as eating smaller, road kill dinosaurs. Petrified wood was strewn all over the landscape.

From the crossroads

Joyce's family at the Grand Canyon during an earlier trip in 1982.

Late in the afternoon we drove past Williams, the gateway to Grand Canyon. I’d been to Grand Canyon twice before–as a 12-year-old on a family cross-country trip and again with our own kids. Last week our son Dave took his own family to Grand Canyon on the way to the Kiefer reunion in Colorado where we all met.

His three girls complained about all the stops their dad made. They didn’t want to leave the air conditioned van and the books and videos inside. But he made them do so. So did I when Dave and his sisters were in tow in our non-airconditioned VW station wagon. And so did my dad on our trips in our ’48 Pontiac. Part of my grandkids’ journey is to discover what makes their dad tick and by extension, their Grannie and the great grandfather they never met.”

From the Mojave Desert between Kingman and Needles

'On the first part of the journey I was looking at all the life.
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings.’
--lines from America's "The Horse With No Name."

The endless drive through the desert prompts soundtracks from the past and a slide show of random thoughts. ‘America’s’ nameless horse is the only thing to get better mileage than our Prius–50 miles per gallon average, mountain driving included. Bill keeps a car journal. On this journey I’ve swerved from the present to the past and the future, the navigation coming from shards of memory. I wanted to stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, but now the interstate gives this town and most others a very wide berth.

I’ll address the questions in the mind of any border inspector worth the taxpayers’ money: The only drug I have is Aleve. An illegal alien would never fit under our junk. As for the other kind, we bypassed Meteor City.

California here I come, home again. I look forward to getting postcards of my own someday–sent from the desert by my great grandchildren.

©2007 by Joyce Kiefer. The illustration is a modified version of a drawing from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. The photos are courtesy of the author. All rights reserved. This column first posted Sept. 3, 2007.

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