[Beatrice Larned Massey, The Nevada Desert, from It might have been worse; a motor trip from coast to coast (1920)]

 

            That evening we pored over maps. There was no route across the desert that was good — only some were worse than others. Everyone advised us to take the "Pike's Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway," which follows the Southern Pacific Railroad (at intervals), and is considered a "safety-first" way.

            I never see that word "highway" that I don't want to laugh! A "cow-path" would more nearly describe any that we traveled in Idaho or Nevada (not to mention a few others).

XIII

NEVADA AND THE DESERT

            WE did not look forward with an atom of pleasure to this part of the trip. We dreaded it. It simply had to be done. The officials told us that nearly all the tourists shipped their cars to Reno. That was valuable information to give us, when not a train was running west. The clerk pointed out a dried-up little woman of seventy, and said, with a withering glance at me: "See that old lady? She has driven her own car across the desert twice this summer !" Well, you know how such remarks make you feel. Not that you care a —— bit what that clerk thought of you, but you don't like to realize that you are a molly-coddle or a coward. Besides, my husband had laughed at my apprehensions, and that wouldn't do either. So I thought of our good fortune so far, of our slogan, and of the old party of seventy, and I gave my pride a hitch and said, "Let's start"—and we did.

            Our route lay over the same road back through Brigham, a beautiful drive that far,

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then it turned northwest, over the northern part of the Great Salt Lake desert, ninety miles to Snowville. The sand was so deep that we crawled most of the way. The sun scorched our skin and eyes until they felt dry as ashes. We had left the railroad and telegraph poles and had but a single-file path through the sand, with chuck-holes every few feet. When the wind blew it felt as if an oven-door had been opened in your face, and the snow-white sand covered everything, including the tracks in the road, which was not pleasant. Nothing was to be seen except the endless sand, dry sagebrush, cactus, and an occasional prairie-dog. We met but two cars that day. I can conceive of nothing more utterly desolate and God-forsaken than the desert. There is a silence of deathlike stillness that gets on the nerves, and the sameness is wearisome.

            We were glad to see Snowville, although Snowville was not much to see. It consisted of one street, with possibly twenty houses, a garage, two stores, and a few trees. The people who owned the grocery-store rented rooms. They were kind and hospitable, and made us comfortable as they could. One can-

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not pick and choose in the desert. You are glad and thankful to find anything that looks like a bed and water. The woman told us that the two stalwart young men were her sons, just returned from service ; one was a major. They were running the garage and helping in the store. The whole family were educated, intelligent people, except the old man, whose vocabulary was limited to "You bet !" and "By heck!" What they could find in life in such surroundings, with nothing, absolutely nothing, to commend the place, was hard to conceive. And yet the mother told me that the women in the village had done more Red Cross work during the war than those of any town of its size in the state, and they had oversubscribed their quota in the Liberty Loans ! "The war did not seem very real to us 'way out here," she said. "What we read in the papers seemed like a novel. But when my boys went it brought it nearer home to me. We were so far from the busy world our lives were too limited to realize what was going on across the seas." I could understand that, for one day of the desert made me feel an isolation that I never had felt in the middle of the Atlantic.

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            They had a bathroom; but if the water was being used in the garage or kitchen, it would not run upstairs. Someone had driven miles away to get some meat for supper; so it was quite late before we had anything to eat. Fried meat, fried eggs, fried potatoes—all soaked in grease; no milk or butter, and the coffee and tea we could not drink.

            Across the street was a little patch of green corn. I went to the house and asked the woman if she would sell me a few ears. She told me that they were leaving the next morning — moving away — as her husband could not make a living. He was a professor of languages from Massachusetts,a cultivated gentleman! When he rode up on horseback I went out and shook hands with him, and laughingly said:

            "I am your long-lost sister from Massachusetts."

            He was off his horse and bowing in a Chesterfieldian manner. "You are most welcome, madam; but, alas ! we have nothing to offer you."

            "Oh, but you have, sir—the pleasure of meeting you both and some of your green corn."

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            He picked me a half-dozen ears, and when I offered to pay him, he said, "Please, no !"

            He asked where we were from. "The East sounds very far away.  I wonder if I shall ever see it again."

            I gave one of the children a dollar, and returned with my precious corn, which the good-natured Irish cook boiled to a rock for our supper.

            There was a small piazza in front of our room, the only place to sit except in the street or in the private parlor of the family. The moon was coming up over the distant mountain, red as blood and big as a cart-wheel. While we were getting cool and enjoying the scene, Mary appeared with the remainder of the raw meat, saying:

            "We put it out here to keep cool; there ain't no ice in this hole of a place. I'm going to leave first of September. Gee, but I'll be glad ! They couldn't hire me to stay here any longer for fifty dollars a month !" (She evidently felt that it was up to her to entertain us.) "Nothing but work and heat—and not even a movie !"

            "How early can we get breakfast ?"

            "Seven o'clock. I wouldn't get up before

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that for President Wilson." (The picture of President and Mrs. Wilson in that place made us smile.)

            "Try a little vamping on Mary," I suggested to friend husband. It worked. She called us at five, and by six we were out again on the desert, with the sun rising behind us, and Montello, the next town, 115 miles to the west.

            That day stands out as the worst experience of the trip. We went fifty miles without seeing a living creature except jack-rabbits and one coyote. The coyote ran across the trail and stopped fifty feet away, watching us drive by. The sand was deeper and the chuck-holes, even with the most careful driving, seemed to rack the car to pieces. If we had had an accident, the outlook would have been decidedly vague for us. Not a car or a telegraph pole in sight. By ten o'clock that morning the sun scorched our skin through our clothing. But we had one good laugh. Over a deep chuck-hole there had been built a stone bridge. On one end, in large black letters, was "San Francisco" (the first sign we had seen with that welcome name) and on the other end was "New York" ! The incon-

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gruity struck us as being so absurd that we roared with laughter. Here in this God-forsaken desert, a "thousand miles from anywhere," to see that sign ! It took some joker to conceive of that.

            By noon we were in sight of the railroad, feeling as if we had found a long-lost friend. A freight station, some oil-tanks, a few shanties, and a lodging-house for the men, where we got some food — that was all. We filled up with water, and on we went. A wind had come up and the sand blew in eddies, almost blinding us. The Nevada roads were no improvement on Idaho, and the trail was obliterated many times by the swirling sand, making the going almost impossible. Before reaching Montello, a real desert sandstorm so covered us with sand that the car looked white; our clothes and our eyes and ears were full of it. We thought the top was coming off, or the car would turn over, and it was difficult to see the road, much less to keep in the trail. By crawling, we reached the town and stopped in front of the first building and got out. We were blown off our feet. We staggered and waded through the sand, hardly seeing where we were going, until we reached

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a door; then we were blown in ! After we recovered our breath and had shaken off a little of the sand, we watched the storm, which by this time was a howling gale and the sand so dense that you could hardly see fifty feet.

            "Just suppose this had happened out there ?" pointing back of us.

            "Don't think of it. Come and get some ice cream."

            I had not noticed that we were in a small café, with drinks, ice cream and cakes, etc., for sale.  The ice cream washed down the sand and cooled our dry throats. A nice little woman ran the place, and she gave us this information : There was a Southern Pacific railroad hotel in the town, but, owing to hundreds of men being idle on account of the strike, the place was full, and it was the only place to get lodgings. It was a hundred miles and more to Elko, where the next hotel could be reached. We inquired if the way to that town was as bad as the roads we had come over that day. "Worse," was the reply; "you are foolish to attempt it."

            As soon as the storm let up we went across to the hotel, only to be told that there was not an empty bed or a cot. We canvassed the

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town with the same result. So there we were, worn out, dirty, hungry, and feeling "all in," with the cheerful prospect of sleeping on a pile of sand in the car or trying to drive across more than a hundred miles of desert to find a bed that night. Here is where I "struck."

            "I am not going another mile," I declared, with a finality in my voice that spoke volumes.

            "What do you wish to do ?" asked a weary husband.

            "Ship the car to Reno, and take the train."

            Our watches said five o'clock, and the Overland Limited was due at 6:15  P.M. Husband hunted up the freight agent. "Oh, yes, you can ship the car; but —" The first "but" was that the car was too large to get through the freight-shed door. We must leave it on the platform or in a garage until an "automobile car" came through Montello, and that might not be for several days. Besides, the agent said he could not give us a bill of lading if the car was not in the shed. It was out of the question to leave it on the platform, and to put it in a strange garage, with no one responsible for it, was taking a long chance

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that we might never see it again, or that it would be used or damaged or detained indefinitely. Here friend husband asserted himself.

            "I am not going to leave that car here unless it is locked up in the freight-shed and I have the receipt for it. You take the train and I will drive the car to Reno."

            "What ! let you go on alone, as tired as you are? Nothing doing! Mr. T. G. M., the car is going to be shipped, and we are going on that 6:15 train." I admit that my language was not very elegant ; neither was the place nor my feelings.

            "If that is the situation, then the car goes into that shed," he said.

            "It can't be done," said the agent. "We have tried to get Cadillacs and other large cars in there before. If you get your car in there, I'll eat it !"

            "What about time?" we inquired of the agent. He informed us that we must set our watches back an hour at Montello ; so we had over an hour, and the train was marked up "late." For the next hour my husband worked over that car, backing a few inches, going forward a bit, turning and twisting on the

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narrow platform; but the car was still diagonally across the doorway. Two men pitched in and helped. An inspiration ! — he poured black oil on the floor under the rear wheels and then tried to slide the wheels over. That would have worked if the floor had not been so rough. Another inspiration ! — he jacked up the wheels and gave the car another shove. Over it went, with both rear wheels inside the door ! Then he backed the car into the shed as neat as a whistle. It all sounds like a perfectly simple job. Try it some time in your leisure hours. The freight agent took off his hat in admiration. "Didn't believe it could be done," he said, looking at me with a grin.

            It cost $3.85 per hundred pounds and $5.73 war-tax to ship the car to Reno (or to San Francisco—no difference in the rate to either place). It weighed, including four spares and other equipment, 4960 pounds, and the bill was $196.69.

            On inquiring about reservations, the agent said : "I doubt if you can get even an upper berth ; the Limited is always full. Now that the strike is off, it is sure to be crowded."

            Would he wire ?

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            "No use; the train has left Ogden hours ago."

            I would have gladly sat up all night in the train to be out of the desert.

            In another hour we were in a drawing-room, scrubbed and brushed, looking less like two tramps and more like respectable people. Unless you have been through a like experience, you cannot share our feelings, as we sat down to a perfectly good, clean, wholesome meal in the diner, and slept in clean linen that night. I am glad that we had the experience and can appreciate that phase of Western life. I am equally glad that we shipped the car, which reached us at the California border a week later, in good order and still white with sand.

            The road to Reno, after leaving the desert country, follows the oldest transcontinental route to the Coast—the trail of the early pioneers, the gold-seekers of '49. For miles it follows the Humboldt River, through Palisade Canyon, past the thriving town of Elko, Battle Mountain, and Lovelock. Reno, the metropolis of Nevada, is the seat of the state university. There is much of interest to see and many side trips to the mining regions,

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all worth while. It is but a few miles from the state line of California, where the motorists' troubles are ended, for from here to San Francisco the roads are smooth as marble, with no dust, and the signs read "Smile at Miles"—"Miles of Smiles"—our welcome to California, the beautiful land of sunshine and flowers, of which so much has been said in song and story and the half can never be told.

            "Why do all the people have the tops of their cars up ?"

            "Why? Because the sun always shines."

            And we were soon to enjoy the glad sunshine that makes you feel young and happy, with a joy in living like that experienced in the Riviera.