RIP Cindy Williams (photos)

I’ve been wondering how I could possibly have known Cindy Williams, as I'm no fan of American sitcom TV, having avoided it like the plague most of my life. I never watched Laverne and Shirley. I'm no groupie either, as I was a theatre brat—some of my babysitters were the funny men, not to mention Sea Hunt. I've only been starstruck twice, when I met Col. Chris Hadfield, and Eric Idle. Not at the same time! Well, maybe Brian Cox too. Robin Williams doesn’t count because I went to college with him. Then I remembered where I’d met Cindy who starred in Menopause, the Musical, at Harrah's, Las Vegas, April 2017. A promoter gave us free tickets at the Las Vegas Highland Games. I’m no fan of musicals either, but I LOVED it. I think it was her closing performance. After the show Cindy and cast waded into the audience and dragged my friend Chris (center) and me (left) onstage for a rousing can-can finale. I love the way all three of us are making beseeching little church mice paws after the leg-leg-dance. And for the record, I'm wearing an elegant baggy flannel PJs top—after a long grueling weekend as a volunteer booth wench in the desert, you wear whatever’s left in the bottom of your suitcase that isn't stiff with alkali dust. It took me a while to place Cindy, but I never forget a face. She was so talented. And she was an absolute gas. The musical was about the empowerment of women. And Cindy was a powerful force. She had a fire burning within. May she RIP. Happy Saint Bridget’s Day.

Ivanpah, World's Largest Solar Array

If we can’t use the Mojave Desert, then what the hell good is it? —Arnold Schwarzenegger, Yale Climate Conference

In the good old days, when folks headed for Las Vegas, they stopped off at the Mojave desert oases of Barstow, or Baker. Crossroads to Death Valley, and half-way to Hell, someone once said. These two towns were the last major watering holes on Interstate 15 (once called the old Arrowhead Trail, and/or the Mojave Barstow Highway—depending on where you were coming from, or going to). Barstow is also the fabled half-way mark from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

 At the Bun Boy restaurant in in Baker, home of the world's tallest thermometer (134 feet)—commemorating the hottest day in Death Valley, the hottest place on earth. On July 10, 1913, at Furnace Creek, the thermometer reached 134°, the hottest day ever recorded. We very nearly beat that world record this year—it was 135.5° on July 1 at Badwater, but that didn't count—as it's not an official weather official station which recorded a mere 129 or 130°, depending on the tilt of your head. —Mo Hurley photo

Once it was a long haul across the fabled Mojave Desert, where fuel and water were non-existant, and it was always a long way to the next big watering hole, Las Vegas (which means the meadows). Not only is Barstow an important crossroads, it's the Southern Pacific train hub for the region.

Barstow, on Historic Route 66, often called the Mother Road. Most of the diners and motels (a Route 66 invention) are gone, replaced by Mcdonalds and Marriotts. —Mo Hurley photo

Farther up the Highway 15 grade from Barstow, you pass Zzyzx Road, cross the dry soda lakebed at Baker, head up another steep grade to Halloran Springs, then onto Valley Wells, and finally the ghost town of Cima and then Mountain Pass. Most of these places were once historic mining claim settlements—little more than wet spots along the way with interesting mom & pop curio shops. But that's what makes the Mojave so interesting. Who stores visits to corporate franchises in their memory banks?

Way back when, cars regularly overheated, people would sit a spell, and sip on a coke or iced tea and maybe chew on the weather while waiting for the coolness of evening before driving on. Travel was a more leisurely affair. Like William Least Heat Moon, I favor those blue highways. You're closer to the land, not being held prisoner on the conveyer belt of the interstate highway with its paucity of off-ramps.

I remember stopping off at Halloran Springs in the 1970s, and it cost the equivalent of $5 to use the toilet. There was once a gas pump in Halloran Springs too but prices were astronomical. The LoBall and Eat gas sign is an iconic desert rat's dream.

In those days, State Line (two words—not to be confused with Stateline, NV, at Lake Tahoe) was a cluster of trailers, and one rather iffy-gas pump with the cool red floaty balls leaping inside the glass tube on the face of the gas pump. Primm didn't yet exist. Business was so bad in the 1920s, that "Whiskey Pete" MacIntyre gave up pumping gas and turned to pumping bootleg. In the 1950s-70s, State Line was a gas station, with a tow truck, a large monkey wrench, and a formica lunch counter with slot machines.

If you broke down near State Line, you could get your car fixed, gamble and suck down a cold one at the same time. Some gamblers considered that wide spot in the road a little slice of heaven. Las Vegas was 40 more miles down the road.

Then in the 1980s, cars became more efficient, they had air conditioning. They could travel 350 or more miles on a tank of gas. It put State Line right out of business.

Alluvial rocks from the base of Frenchman's Mountain

Alluvial rocks from the base of Frenchman's Mountain (4,052 ft)—sometimes erroneously called Sunrise Mountain, North Las Vegas (eastern side of North Las Vegas—facing west). 

Some rocks look like the sparkly blueschist embedded with garnets we used to find in Sonoma County. Granite/volcanic, sedimentary mudstone, metamorphic rock—a new one for me: Vishnu schist. I like the black schists and pink granites of the Vishnu Group—from the ancient core of the continent. 

Geologist Garry Hayes says: "Most of the rocks are mica and garnet-bearing schist and gneiss, and they are 1.7 billion years old, some of the oldest rocks in the American West." 

Gary says the pink one is orthoclase feldspar. It was different than quartz in that it fractured with smooth planes. It's related to the moonstones we find at Point Reyes. I once found strange pink dradel-like gobs embedded in granite in the Trinity Mountains that reminded me of it. 

Frenchman Mountain was named after Paul Watelet, a European immigrant who claimed  a mine after a 1912 gold strike. Watelet was a Belgian, probably a French-speaking Walloon, the locals thought he was from France.

The Great Unconformity, 1.7 billion year old Precambrian granite and schist. I am trying to contemplate how tectonic plates moved the mountain 50 miles.

Some folklore I found online: 

"I've lived in the Vegas valley since 1978, i met some local teens who were born in the valley I hung out with them at the base of Frenchman mountain at the end of Bonanza Rd. there was a porch and a cave at the foot of the mountain where teens gathered to drink and smoke pot. I remember stories of an old woman living in the mountain inside a cave, the story was she had owned the mountain or had inherited it from her family and chose to live there some time during the late 1930s to the mid or late 1960s when she was found frozen to death. Has anyone else heard about this story?" 

 I wonder if that was Paul Watelet's mine? His daughter?

Chris Callaghan, our host said: "I've lived here since 1960. The cave and parties are true, kids from my high school did this. The old woman was still there in the mid-60's. Don't think she really owned it, just lived there, an early squatter. It was very far away from town in those days. I remember when she died."

Pretty cool finding Vishnu schist studded with garnets in her back yard! And mica schist/gneiss. Sandstone, limestone and shale sediments metamorphosed and recombined with metamorphosed lava flows to form Vishnu schist. Even older Zoroaster granite metamorphosed into gneiss. 

Geologic remnants of the Grand Canyon and the Great Unconformity right in her  back yard. Who knew. She was right about that other rock—it is resin. It burns. Smells like pine. Unless, of course she has a strain of amber in her yard as well!

Musician's Special

I'm stealing wifi, poolside at the Golden Nugget (can't get on via their room wifi). Remodeled rooms are a darned sight better than 4 years ago. They stuck us in a time capsule of a dingy corner room off an old mezzanine, that was built in the 40s, replete with sagging mattress, chenille bedspread, in battleship gray decor redolent with the odor of stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer left over from the days of Bugsy Malone. The lone window overlooked Fremont Street, it was like a bad movie set. We were horrified, I slept on the balcony, rather than spend one night in that room. We couldn't complain. The contract said a room, It didn't say what kind of room. A real Musician's Special.

4/13/2012
rev. 4/2016

We're at the very bottom of Fremont Street. No sign of the flying Elvises—but the sling-line's as close as we're gonna get to flying. Last year, men in kilts on the (zip) sling-line, was a sight to behold. Talk about galloping bollockitis! The weekend is young.

Petroglyph hunting at Mouse's Tank, Valley of Fire, NV

Petroglyph hunting at Mouse's Tank, a box canyon in the Valley of Fire, NV. (Eastern Mojave Desert). The Navajo Sandstone is the same formation found in Red Rock Canyon and Utah's Zion National Park. The Valley of Fire, once the bottom of a deep ocean basin became a desert 150 to 180 million years ago; the dunes fossilized into sandstone; 65 million years ago, subduction along the North American plate caused faulting, uplifting so older limestone rock is now on top of younger redrock!

There were so many petroglyphs we couldn't see them all in one day! There were two hidden sandstone pools like large baths at the end of the boxw hich are catch-basins for runoff—and occasionally become a cistern for a waterfall.

The entire canyon (1/2 mile) is one vast storyboard. Sad that erosion has taken its toll and sides of rock faces have sloughed off, taking the ancient stories with them. We didn't have time to hike to AtlAtl Rock (even more petroglyphs). Next time.

 The canyon is named 'The Mouse's Tank' because a Southern Paiute Indian renegade,'Little Mouse,' who went wild whenever he got drunk, was accused of gunning down two prospectors and other crimes, hid out there in the 1890's.

 The petroglyphs are 4000 to 700 years old, and many were re-eched later. Different styles, enigmatic symbols. Not necessarily Paiute as the Lost City—aka Virgin Anasazi pueblo is nearby in the Moapa Valley.


added 4/17

ALKALI DUST OVER DEATH VALLEY

Yesterday we watched dustdevils
whipping up from the alkali flats
and deserts of Badwater and Armagosso Valley
dissipate like a maya veil toward the east,

over the mountains of Las Vegas.

The dust turned the deep cerulean sky
into a pale shadow of its former self.

We gritted silica dust between our teeth,

tasted ancient salt on our lips

and though our eyes blurred and burned,

the sunset was a spectacular flash of fire.

The next day, the poet William Pitt Root

wrote from a neighboring state

how the dust blew in from the west 

dimming even the sun.

I thought of Dorthea Lang's photos

and the Saharan dust cloud visible from space. 

The sharqui and the shumali sandstorms of Iraq.

The lack of rain and snowmelt. The names of wind.

In this way, I realized how everything, 

even distance and time 

is right on our back doorstep.

4/18/09 

Medusa's Kitchen, 2010