Nipton In The Rearview And The Hottest Spot On Earth

October 14, 2018
   On Wednesday, we lounged around Nipton until noon, enjoying the quietude (full disclosure: Nipton is right next to a branch line of the Southern Pacific train tracks and about every hour or so a long freight train comes blasting through with sirens blaring).

   Kathy and I were headed for the hottest place on earth. Driving west to I-15 we headed southwest to Baker, California, then headed north into the the least popular National Park in America. 

The Longest Vanishing Point I've Ever Seen

   Back in the day, New York art directors were fond of vanishing point desert vistas and I remember driving all over Arizona with a professional photographer from Phoenix who got the assignment to find a two-lane highway example for a national ad shoot. We found the one on the back side of Monument Valley, heading for Mexican Hat (it is seen prominently in the film "Forrest Gump") but this one, above, is about twice as long as the Arizona one.

   Of course, I couldn't drive through Shoshone without sampling the local museum and I wasn't disappointed:

 Local bad girl, "Shotgun" Kitty Tubb

   From Shoshone, Kathy and I motored over the divide and then stopped at Badwater, which is 282 feet below sea level.

Badwater Boze

   According to Roger Naylor's fine book, "Death Valley: Hottest Place On Earth," that white stuff I am standing on is 95% pure table SALT, and it covers 200 square miles and is 9,000 feet deep and consist of accumulated sediment and SALT. All from lakes drying up during the ice age. And it is still damp now! 

  From this interesting hell hole, it was only a hop, skip and a jump to Furnace Creek in Death Valley.

The Oasis at Furnace Creek

"It was so hot that swallows in full flight fell to the earth dead and when I went out to read the thermometer with a wet Turkish towel on my head, it was dry before I returned."

—Oscar Denton, caretaker of the Furnace Creek Ranch on the record hot day of 134 degrees, the hottest ever recorded on the planet, July, 1913

Nipton Teepee Girls

October 12, 2018
   I've got a thing for wide spots in the road. You know, those little roadside attractions with one or two businesses, maybe five houses and a stray dog, or two.

   To me, the heyday of these settlements was 1957. I have such fond memories of my father driving us through places like Hackberry, Truxton. Leupp, Cubero, Cline's Corner, and on and on. In 1957 every section of the country had them, but they are in decline now and too many of them look dilapidated, or worse.

   Last Wednesday, Kathy and I took the backroad from Searchlight, Nevada and landed in this cozy, little wide spot in the road out in the middle of nowhere:

Nipton at Sunrise

   Nipton, California has a general store and a small hotel. It's so isolated, an alleycat jaywalks with impunity:

Nipton Cat Crossing

Here's a close up of the jaywalker:

Cat On A Hot Thin Asphalt

   The service in Nipton is a tad spotty, but then that is part of the charm. It took me about 45 minutes to get a key to my room. One of the problems was the Cal Lottery was up to $545 million and construction workers from a nearby highway bridge project were pouring in to the general store and lining up to buy tickets.

   I wasn't in a hurry. In fact I had actually driven four hours out of my way to avoid being in a hurry. That's why I came to Nipton in the first place. I took the time to look at the store full of trinkets and T-shirts and books (Sherry Monahan, one of your books is carried here!). Plus, they carried the usual wide spot in the road sense of humor: 

Remember the golden rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

   Finally, this old hippie guy (four years older than me) saved us. Sam saw us waiting and he jumped in to get us checked in. There was one problem: nobody in the store had a key to our room. Sam finally got in his truck and personally drove across the road to a line of trailers to hustle up the key to our room.

Sam The Man gets the key

The Hotel California

   Had a great evening and in the morning, I walked the entire town without seeing a car or a soul, except for that cat. 

   About an hour later I met two, brave souls who spent the night in one of the teepees. 

The Louisiana Teepee Girls

   Kristen Fallon, on the right, and Noelle Henderson were driving from Louisiana to Sacramento for Kristen's first nursing assignment and they Googled AirBnBs and rather than stay on the Interstate, they decided to get off the freeway and stay in a teepee. They get major points, from me, for being so damn adventuresome. They did admit it got a little cold during the night but they were game.

   Oh, and one more thing: when we finally got to the hotel room, Sam gave me the door code: it was 1957.

"You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave."
—Eagles, "Hotel California"

Nipton Or bust!

October 11, 2018
   A year ago, the noted historian, Doctor John Langellier, and myself, were going the back way from Bullhead City, Arizona to the Lone Pine Film Festival in Lone Pine, California, when we chanced upon a lush oasis, clustered in the barren high Mojave Desert. It turned out to be an outlaw way station with 15 residents. Here is the sign on the edge of the wide spot in the road:

Nipton Stop Sign

   And here is the general store, at left, below, with a crazy painted car outside. It took me a year, but I made it back with Kathy yesterday to try out the place.

Nipton Flies Its Freak Flag

& The U.S. Flag

   They have five rooms in the Hotel California, and nine Tee Pees and maybe four eco-cabins parked on the desert outside the tightly clustered trees of the town. We decided to spend the night. Pictures and details tomorrow.

"The Internet: whose idea was it to put all the idiots on earth in touch with each other?"

—P.J. O'Rourke

London Bridge Homesick Blues

October 10, 2018
   Gave a history talk last night in Lake Havasu on Olive Oatman and all the ne'er-do-wells from Mohave County (my home stomping grounds). 

   The talk was filmed by CSPAN and will appear on the channel in early November. Here I am this morning on the waterfront with the notorious London Bridge in the background.

On the waterfront with BBB

   When I was in junior high, in 1961, my parents took me and my grandparents on a Sunday picnic down to Site Six, on the arid banks of Lake Havasu and I remember there was just one lonely boat dock building on the edge of the water. A local historian told me last night that in WWII the army scratched out a dirt airfield and put a couple barracks out there to support it. This was to protect the rest of the country in case California was invaded and taken over by Japan. Ironically that is also the origin of Rocky Point, Mexico which was also established by the Army Corp of Engineers as an alternate sea rout to the States if Japan blocked off the Pacific Coast.

   I also remember Charlie Waters (his father owned the Mohave Miner and they got the scoop) coming to my parent's house on Gates Avenue in Kingman and telling me the developer, Robert McCulloch, of McCulloch Chain Saw fame, had just bought London Bridge and was going to ship it, brick by brick, to Site Six and that he was going to call the proposed town Lake Havasu. It just seemed so insane at the time, but it was a brilliant stroke of promotional genius.

   That was fifty years ago.

   Today there are some 55,000 people living in Site Six, I mean, Lake Havasu.

London Homesick Blues

Well, when you're down on your luck
And you ain't got a buck
In London you're a goner
Even London Bridge has fallen down
And moved to Arizona
Now I know why
And I'll substantiate the rumor that the English sense of humor
Is drier than than the Texas sand
You can put up your dukes, and you can bet your boots
That I'm leavin' just as fast as I can. . .

—Jerry Jeff Walker, "London Homesick Blues"

Missed Taken Identify

October 9, 2018
   One of the weirder phenoms of this world, to me, is all the look-alikes who pass themselves off as famous people. I have an old bandmate who looks like Carlos Santana and he has played in front of 50,000 people in Sun Devil Stadium, more than once, accompanying the ASU marching band, doing Santana songs at halftime. Many, if not most, of the people in the bleachers are convinced he is the real Santana and after thunderous applause (Mike is a very good guitar player) the crowd clamores after him to get an autograph, and, or, to touch him. He told me it is a strange sensation, having that much power for being someone who you aren't.

   When Kathy and I were on the Rock & Roll Retirement Home tour last Saturday, our guide, Charlotte, told us they had a resident celebrity, who came out of an elevator just as we were going up to the second floor.

   "He was in the 'Our Gang' movies as Freckles," she told us proudly. He carried himself well and is apparently 98 years old.

Freckles

   When I asked him if I could take his picture he agreed and was gracious and when I asked him about being Freckles in the "Our Gang" flicks he quickly added that he was in the silent versions which have all been lost.

   Oh, how convenient.

   I flashed back to working at New Times in the eighties when a news report in the Republic claimed a bagger at one of the local grocery stores was, in fact Buckwheat from the "Our Gang" series and several TV news stations did stories on him. Then another guy, back east, claimed to be Buckwheat as well, and I realized there are probably quite a few Buckwheats—and Freckles— passing themselves off as members of a very porous cast of characters in a long-running show.

   Another time a New Times reporter came in the office and told me that Hank Ketchum, the creator of the comic strip, Dennis the Menace, is a homeless person living in Phoenix and the reporter had a drawing of Dennis that the down-on-his-luck cartoonist had done to prove it. Being a cartoonist myself, I quickly saw that it was not the real deal. Homeless Hank claimed the syndicate had robbed him of all his royalties and he was forced to live on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona. Unfortunately, when our editor did a little research he easily found the real Hank Ketchum who told us this bum imposter (literally!) was causing him all sorts of problems. The real Hank Ketchum was living on a lake in Switzerland and was very much alive and receiving ample royalties for his cartoons.

   On another occasion, one of my New Times amigos came in the offices, upstairs in the San Carlos Hotel, and said Glenn Fry of the Eagles was downstairs drinking in the bar. Being a big fan, I ran down there, only to discover some hippy guy with long hair who sort-of looked like Glenn Fry, but not quite. Anyway, I didn't bust him and besides, he was holding court at the bar and, of course, everyone was buying him drinks and fawning over him.

   Probably the most bizarre encounter with one of these taken-identity people was when I was a drummer in a Country band in Tucson playing the VFW circuit in the 1970s. We were told in hushed and reverent tones by the wait staff of the VFW that was just outside the gate at Davis Monthan Air Base, that one of the women who came into the bar regularly was actually Ronald Reagan's first wife, Jane Wyman. Well, there was a decent resemblance, but REALLY, she's hanging out in Tucson in a VFW? To this day I don't know if it was the real Jane Wyman or not (although a quick search shows that the real Jane Wyman had a home in Palm Springs!),  but then, that is the thin line of believability all these Taken-Identity people play on.

 "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."
—Cary Grant

Caught In A Downpour

October 8, 2018
   Rained a couple times yesterday and we have had multiple downpours since Monday. This has inspired me to do some gully washer art.

Daily Whip Out: "Caught In A Downpour"

Sketch for "Rider In The Lane"

   Finishing up the new and revised Doc Holliday book with Robert Ray.

"Fame is a vapor. Only one thing endures and that is character."

—A magnet, Lukas Nelson's mother bought for Lukas's tour bus.

Pondering The End of My Career

October 7, 2018
   We got slammed with rain last night at about two in the morning. Started with a gentle patter on the roof but it quickly turned into a deluge with sheets of rain and ripping wind. Woke up this morning to standing water everywhere and no paper delivery (washes running too high).

   Went out on the road for my daily walk with a sweatshirt on! I swear I have not had a sweatshirt on in seven months. Crazy. It was 55 degrees out and after this last crazy, hot summer, it was a total joy to be walking in the crisp, cool air.

Sunrise Saguaros On Morningstar

      The heavy cloud cover started to clear out at sunrise.

Sunrise Over Ratcliff Ridge

   Had a sobering encounter yesterday at the Rock & Roll Retirement Home. That is the name Kathy gives to all the assisted living facilities cropping up everywhere here in the Valley. We were visiting her mother, who is 94, and the campus where she is temporarily staying is on a huge, sprawling apartment-condo type piece of real estate that takes up most of a city block.

   Kathy thought it would be fun to take a tour of the facility, so she inquired at the front desk, and one of the residents, who volunteers for this kind of duty, took us all around to see all the social areas, the library, the bistro, a high end dining restaurant and a model condo furnished with interior decorator flourishes. 

   Almost every one you meet in the halls is very friendly and also using a walker. That gets surreal after a while in a walking-dead kind of way. The big man on campus has his own little car (I'm not kidding) and as he shot by us, Kathy's mother said, "I want one of those." I quickly realized they call it a "campus" for good reason because we were encountering all the cliques and popular kids and study hall passes and classrooms of a typical high school. I wondered where the make-out halls were located.

At one point, our guide, who has been living in the facility for ten years, turned to me and said, "What was your career?" I realized she assumed Kathy and I were checking out the facility for ourselves,

   I told her I was still publishing a magazine and writing books, but the question really kind of set me back on my heels. No one has ever talked to me about my "career" in past tense. Sobering to say the least, because at some point it will be true, whether I like it or not.

Daily Whip Out: "Midnight Customer"

"We begin our life in diapers and we end in diapers. From ashes to ashes from incontinence to incontinence. It's all one big, damn circle, Dude."
—Old Vaquero Saying

Head Banger

October 6, 2018
   From an early age I've had a thing for metal.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

      As in, heavy metal. The first song I heard that made me realize this was "Rumble," by Link Ray. The growling same two chords, thumping to an incessant beat, both invoking the menace and the seething that gets my motor running, in a head-out-on-the-highway, kind of way.

   Fast forward to "Highway to Hell." Now that speaks to me. Sure I love the Beatles and the Stones and Eric Church and Chris Stapleton, but when push comes to shove, it's hard to beat that Aussie band of brats.

   Speed Metal, not so much. It's a bridge too far.

   Last Thursday I ran into a female millennial order-taker at Janie's Coffee Shop and she was wearing an AC/DC T-shirt. As she finished my order I commented on the shirt and asked her if she was a fan. She said she was and, jokingly, I told her she was going to get a bigger tip because of it. She smiled like waitresses do with old men who think they are funny. 

   When she delivered our food I asked her what her favorite AC/DC song was and she drew a blank. She looked flustered and she couldn't name one (in that moment it became blatantly apparent to me she was just wearing the damn shirt and didn't have a clue about the band). I wanted to tell her she just lost her tip, but what I really said was, "Young lady, you are on a highway to hell."

"Hey, grandpa, get off the stage!"
—Old Vaquero Saying

In The Doorway at The Dance

October 5, 2018
   Some of my earliest memories are being at dances in Kingman and on the Big Sandy. My mother had four sisters and they were all good dancers:

At The Mule Shoe Ranch

L to R: Allen P. Bell, Minnie Bell, Carl Bell, Jean Linn, Budd Linn and BBB

   When I got older and got in a band I graduated to playing in honkytonks and that gave me an inspiration:

So, I've beeen studying doorway lighting effects from the master of moonlight, Frank Tenney Johnson. I've seen this scene many times:

Daily Whip Out:

"In The Doorway at The Dance"

"All that stuff you've always been ashamed of, you're now going to turn into your art, and it's going to heal you, and also make it meaningful, and a productive thing."
—Elizabeth Kemp (Bradley Cooper's mentor)

Clouds Clowning Around

October 4, 2018
   The remnants of Hurricane Rosa are finally moving out of our part of the Southwest leaving some pretty amazing clouds behind.

Clouds over The Seven Sisters

Clowning Around

   Before Rosa departed she dumped three inches of rain on the Cahava Ranch Road area and flooded out all the roads leaving our house. I actually got a "snow day" at home, the first time that has happened since grade school in Swea City, Iowa in 1955. 

   My production manager, Robert Ray, who made it out to the True West World Headquarters, from his home in Phoenix, had to send me pdfs via email to approve the issue, which had to go to the printer, in Liberty, Kansas, on Monday afternoon.

Soaked

   This is looking west towards the cave that Cave Creek is named for.

   Today, it's a balmy 80 degrees, the nicest it's been since last April. I'm not even exaggerating. 

"When it rains it pours."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Why Red Loves Black And Red Light Patrol

October 3, 2018
   One aspect of Wyatt Earp's career doesn't get much attention, at least from painters or illustrators.

"Red Light Patrol"

      Also, don't ask me why, but red loves black.

Red and Black Love Each Other

Observation #307

   Another example of red loving black. I could post more, but you get the drift.

"Armed And Red"

"Everybody is talented at one thing or another, but having something to say and a way to say it, that's a whole other bag."

—Bradley Cooper, on directing the new "A Star Is Born"

The Lonely Caballo

October 2, 2018
   Can a horse be lonely on a beach in Mexico?

The Lonely Caballo

  Is the Pope up to his eyebrows in pedophile scandals?

   Last weekend Kathy and I were staying in Las Gaviotas at Puerto Penasco, Mexico, and the heat was pretty intense (93 degrees for the high but with 80 percent humidity). Our condo looked out on Sandy Beach and from our balcony I could see these rental horses standing there in the heat:

Rental horses on Sandy Beach

   I finally couldn't stand it any longer and went down to take some photos:

Rental horses with our condo in background

   I gave the wranglers 500 pesos to shoot. Later, on Saturday I didn't see anyone rent the horses, but several times the wranglers manning the site took them out, one at a time, for a run on the sand dunes.

   We were on the Mexican end of the beach, rather than at the rico Americano resorts further up the sand towards Cholla Bay. So we were serenaded all day and into the night by roaming bands of musicians who play the most eclectic rancho music I have ever heard. Each band features a couple drummers (usually a guy on a big marching band bass drum, and then another guy—sometimes two—with really shrill snare drums ripping out riffs right and left). But the one instrument that seems so incongruous, especially on a beach, is the tuba! And when the bands are far off in the distance, the tuba and the drums carry on the wind so you get a weird chicken scratch tonality that is so very Mexican. I love it because it is delightful and unique to Mexican beaches.

Twilight on Sandy Beach

   Of course, I did some artwork while I was there just to keep my hand in:

"Sandy Beach Tuba Player"

"Making art helps us heal ourselves and one another."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Twilight On The Truth

September 30, 2018
   The problem with the truth is that it comes in so many shades.

"Twilight On The Truth"

Can a false statement contain truth?
   "90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it's wrong."
—Yogi Barra, explaining Jazz

Can a true statement be false?
    Colgate's long standing claim that more than 80 percent of dentists recommend its toothpaste is at the very least misleading. Here's what happened: the company sent out a list of toothpastes and asked dentists to check all of the ones that were good for you and the dentists checked many other brands as well. So, while it's true, that 80 percent checked Colgate on the survey, they chose many others as well.  So, it's a misleading true statement because the impression is left that the vast majority of dentists "preferred" Colgate, when they clearly did not.

"The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth."
—Georg Chistoph Lichtenberg

Guilty As Charged

September 28, 2018
   Here is how I would have handled that hearing.

Confirmation Hearing for BBB

Senator: "Mr. Bell are you happy with the huevos rancheros we imported for you from Sophia's in Gila Bend, Arizona?"

BBB: "Yes, I very much appreciate the food gesture of good will."

Senator: "Perhaps someday you will try some authentic Mexican food from my great state of New Mexico."

BBB: "In my opinion, any state where the vast majority of Mexican food restaurants serve store bought tortillas cannot in good conscious call itself authentic in any way."

Senator: "Are you a virgin, Mr. Bell?"

BBB: "No, sir, I am not."

Senator: "Do you remember when it happened that you lost your virginity?"

BBB: "It was April 14, 1964."

Senator: "Can you be more specific?"

BBB: "Yes, it was at a place called White Cliffs, which is a favorite parking spot about one-half mile north of the Kingman, Arizona Courthouse. And it was in a 1964 Nash Rambler."

Senator: "So you lost your virginity in the back seat of an old car?"

BBB: "No, it was a brand new car, and the front seat folded down into a bed."

Senator: "Back in those days, would you consider yourself a gentleman?"

BBB: "No, sir, I was a complete horndog and I thought about nothing else but getting laid for years on end."

Senator: "Would you say you were selective in who you attempted to sleep with?"

BBB: "Anything that moved, sir."

Senator: "Do you believe in God, Mr. Bell?"

BBB: "I believe in the teachings of Squibe, Moon and Nay."

Senator: "Do they subscribe to the teachings of Jesus Christ?"

BBB: "No, sir, they are Haulapai In-dins but they do take the name of Jesus in vain quite a bit."

Senator: "And what do these Native Americans espouse?"

BBB: "Moon likes to say: 'What if I told you the left wing and the right wing are from the same bird.'"

Senator: "I think it's safe to say you have no business being a Supreme Court Justice."

BBB: "Truer words were never spoken."

Senator: "Any last words?"

BBB: "Yes, good luck with that frat brat."