On the road

Something about the open road.

When the daily rhythm needs a change, when it is time to let the mind wander for a while, let events and life settle to a solid bottom, then the road to some distant place becomes a solace that is yearned for, the two-lane blacktop stretching out in front, the mountains and fields left and right, the small towns that drift by — the road crooks its finger, it beckons.

So it is that I welcome the road trips that require me and a bureau chief to travel from small court to small court through places where I would otherwise not go. It is a way, and an excuse, to see the parts of America away from the tourist trail, places where the land is still the source of work and sustenance, places where America exists outside the news of war and politics, away from the spread of asphalt, concrete and housing.

The reason this time was that a couple courts in Nevada were keeping us from extending Courthouse News coverage to the entire state. An in-person visit is usually the best way to figure out where the hangup lies. So I was off on the road to Pahrump and then north along the western edge of Nevada.

Taking off from Pasadena, the journey starts with a couple hours of driving along a massive interstate freeway to Baker, a desert town with a general store and an old Mexican restaurant that has just a couple customers. It is dark and cool in there, as you look out the big windows to a sun-filled junction where a two-lane highway, the 127, starts and runs northwest for 60 miles through a territory with no water, no towns, and no gas stations.

The landscape along the 127 is open and dry. Evenly spaced brush grows on long, sloping plains that rise to black mountains. One valley follows another, one low mountain range follows another, in a vast land that is sacred to the Shoshone Indian Tribe.

Arrived in Pahrump, where, with the Courthouse News bureau chief for the West, we will visit the courthouse in the morning, I realize that the town economy revolves mostly around motels, because it is close to Death Valley, and gambling casinos.

I have a theory about restaurants in gambling joints which is that they are subsidized by the casinos in order to keep the patrons in place. So you tend to get a good meal and nice glass of wine for a decent price.

But it’s also the vibe in a desert casino that I love. I was telling our bureau chief that it reminds me of the movie The Big Lebowski that mostly takes place in a bowling alley.

The casinos are dark and cool, while the neon greens, blues and reds of the machines dance through the big space. A few people are spread out, often older women, playing slots. A couple men are seated at an island bar, playing machines on the bar top while a baseball spring training game plays on a screen above the bar.

But most of the vibe comes from the soft, musical dings of the machines, as they are played. With the neon colors, they give a slow, odd, fantasy-land atmosphere to the cavernous room.

So we walk over to Jackpot Joanie’s to have a biftek frites and, in my case, a glass of red wine.

Our waitress tells us she moved from Texas to Pahrump to help take care of a brother-in-law after the sole parent died. A petite woman in her 30’s, she tells us she will inherit her grandmother’s Beretta shotgun which she notes, tapping her shoulder, is perfectly fitted for her frame. In Texas, she loved to go hog-hunting where farm owners paid her to blast feral pigs.

She has filled my wine glass to the brim with a decent cabernet and says she was never into gambling until she came to work in a casino. Now she has a drink and plays Keno when she gets off work. But, she says, she limits the amount of money she spends.

So what’s your limit, I ask.

“Whatever’s in my pocket.”

On the way out, after paying the bill and tipping, I hand her an extra twenty for her pocket.

The next morning, we visit the Nye County Superior Court, where the staff and the clerk herself are friendly and helpful. The clerk gives us her card and says she will send us any new pleadings and rulings we ask for.

A successful visit and access resolved in one court, we are back on the road, heading north through the desert toward the old silver and mining towns, including a couple populated only by ghosts, rusting rail cars, and crumbling masonry, strung out along the western edge of Nevada.