It was football Sunday and the Bills were playing the
hated Dolphins. With the time difference the game would start at 10am, which I
absolutely loved. I found a place in Twenty-Nine Palms called “Fans Sports Barand Grill,” which was a twenty-minute ride from North Joshua Tree. I went and
checked it out, but it wasn’t open till10am, which was fine since I
needed gas and groceries.
Besides paying five bucks a gallon, getting gas was
fine. What wasn't so fine was another unfamiliar grocery store—Stater Bros. After walking around in circles for a bit in Stater Bros. I flagged down a nice female employee who helped me find some salsa and dental floss. I’m glad I had
squared away the nail clippers in L.A.
It was right at 10am when I got to Fans and all the
stools at the bar were populated by Chiefs fans watching their game against the
Colts. I looked around and the plethora of TV's and all of them were set to the Chiefs game except for
a large one opposite the bar at the other end of the room which had on the
Raiders v. Titans. A young kid in a Raiders jersey and his girlfriend were in front of that TV, but they were
mostly making out and not really watching the game.
A guy in a Cowboys, Amari Cooper jersey came up to me and asked
what I was looking for and when I told him the Bills game, he pulled a clicker
out of his pocket and hooked me up with two TV's—one in front of me
over bar entrance with the sound down and one behind me with the sound up. He got
me an Irish red draft and apologized that his normal cook went into labor this
morning and was having a baby and her replacement wouldn’t be there for another
hour, which was fine.
What wasn’t fine was how the Bills game played out—losing
to the goddamn Dolphins after holding the ball for forty minutes and putting up
over four-hundred yards of offense. It was weird to be among a group of people
and be the only one interested in the game I was watching. Mary the bartender, who
was a sweetheart, was in a Saints jersey and
they were losing to the Brady and the Bucs. More Raider fans showed up and they
were losing to the Titans and the Chiefs were losing to the Colts. It was a bar
full of losers except for this one guy sitting across from me quietly cheering
on the Eagles to a 24-0 win over the Commanders.
Oh well, the Cali Burger with avocado was good when
the replacement cook showed up and I was among Chief fans who also had a WTF
loss.
From there I went to the Joshua Tree Laundry. I don’t
know about you, but I love the laundromat. There’s always characters at the
laundromat and the bustling JTL was no exception. Right away, there was an
older lady with a weathered face in a bandana who singled me out as I looked for
a washer and pointed to a heavy duty one and said, “That one’s free.”
Of course, I followed her suggestion, which was really more of a command. So did a young guy who was looking for an open dryer. She pointed to one in the top row and with a certain amount laundromat expertise she kind of snickered and said, “That load is a three quarter load.”
There wasn’t any seats in the laundromat that wouldn’t
invade someone’s space so I went outside and sat on a bench adjacent o the
front door. A thin old guy with long white hair wrapped in a bandana named
Terry sat down next to me. Terry didn’t have laundromat business. He was just
kind hanging out at the little plaza which had other shops and a Mexican restaurant.
He wore a red “Charlie Daniels Band” t-shirt with a big hole in it that exposed
his slight mid-section. This wasn’t a fashion statement—it was a t-shirt with a
hole in it. He told me right off he had recently lost some friends who had been
in Vietnam. I expressed my condolences and then he asked me if I believed in
God. I gave him my stock answer—“I don’t discount the possibility of God’s existence.”
Terry then got heavy with me about voting and how the world
is on fire. I thought to myself, everything he’s saying is true, but the Bills
just lost to the fucking Dolphins and I didn’t want to deal with the world is
on fire bullshit now and politely exited the conversation and went back inside
where my load had three minutes to go.
When the three minutes were up the lady with bandana
nodded toward an open dryer on the bottom row and I followed her direction.
I saw Terry had gone so I went back outside. Three
black boys maybe like twelve or thirteen came up to me and asked me if I had
change for a twenty. I did and gave him two tens. When the transaction was
complete the kid I gave the tens to, who was the smallest of the three boys
said, “This in that n----‘s twenty,” and looked at his friend or his brother or
whoever he was like he was running a scam. Not only didn’t I appreciate that
kid dropping the n-bomb, but I failed to see the scam and it must have showed
on my face because the n-bomb kid just laughed and they moved on. Maybe he was
just trying to get a rise out of me by using that provocative language.
Pondering that as I sat there a family pulling a big thirty-foot
trailer pulled up. The dad went inside and took care of the laundry and the mom
stayed outside occupying the kids by walking up and down the plaza. The kids
were very young, like one and three. I smiled watching the young one try to
negotiate a curb. Unsure of her footing she very creatively she sat down on her bottom,
wiggled her way forward and then put her feet back on the ground and stood up. The mom
smiled at me, smiling at her little girl. The older girl also picked up on
my smile and started to show off a bit by negotiating the curb in a normal grown up way. It was sweet.
With my laundry done my plan was to stay in the actual
Joshua Tree Park for the night. In the morning, before moving onto Flagstaff, I
was going to look for Cap Rock, where Gram Parsons’ manager unsuccessfully tried
to burn his casket. But there was no internet inside the park and I wanted to
hear about the late NFL games, so I made the executive decision to spend a couple
of hours in the air-conditioned Starbucks on Rt. 62 sipping an Americano and then head
back to the North Joshua Tree BLM where access to the internet was perfect.
Home
How we got here...
An Ode to Fire and Donna
Chronological Posts From The Road
Going Mobile: What We Learned
Our Rig: A Pictorial Essay
No comments:
Post a Comment