My feeble attempt to adequately render the surreal firewood story
Background: Rick and I are on our way to the Mojave Desert with our friend C. and his friend A, and we realize that we forgot to buy firewood in the last semi-commercial town on the trip (Barstow. It ain't LA, but it does have an In 'N' Out Burger...).
We consider stopping for wood in Daggett, but A. informs us that Daggett consists solely of two gas stations.
(Amusing tangent: C. realizes that he called one of these gas stations the time he lost his wallet in the desert in college. Long story short, it turns out both the gas stations are owned and operated by the same people. One gas station has restrictive opening hours and cheap gas; the other has good hours and expensive gas. Well, the locals have to gas up somehow...)
A. claims that if we get off at the exit for the Calico Ghost Town, she knows a place we can buy wood. The ghost town is essentially a laid-back Old West theme park, but the actual town of Calico is pretty ghostly, too. We pass a whole lot of nothing, except for junk abandoned on the side of the road, some of which we consider scavenging and burning instead of the wood.
We take a few turns and enter the town of Yermo, host to a creepy looking military base. We try to imagine being stationed out here in the middle of BF Nowhere, and theorize that the local Marines simply go to Vegas for every possible weekend (and help keep rural Nevada's whorehouses in business).
Eventually, we arrive at a house with a sign advertising firewood, worms, and other sundries for sale. Score! We're most of the way to the house when a shirtless aging farmer calls to us from the field adjacent to it.
He has a shirt on by the time he reaches us, which I thought was cute (aw, he's shy...). He tells us that he just sold half a cord of firewood, but that there should be enough left for us. It's $10 a wheelbarrow, he tells us, and starts walking off towards the wood.
"What's a cord?" A. asks.
"A bunch," C. replies with authority.
Right. So Mr. Firewood loads a wheelbarrow with wood, chatting with us about where we're from and all the other usual travelers' questions. He seems bemused and not impatient when we then spread a blanket over half the backseat and throw the wood into it (the trunk was full...) He tries to get us to sample some of the pickled onions he has for sale, but we're all too full of In 'N' Out burgers to contemplate any food.
He also tells us about his worms. They eat garbage and fertilizer, and he always has plenty of both. It turns out a worm can eat its own weight in a day. Local schools take field trips to see the worm farm!
We remember to ask if we can take some sticks for roasting hot dogs, and throw them in the backseat, too. (Amusing tangent #2: I didn't hear this, but apparently the wood man joked to A., "Just don't take any of the oleander!" while we were foraging for sticks. She told this story around the fire later, just as we were about to roast our hot dogs, and we got good and paranoid -- in the desert wilderness, you'd be long dead before any sort of ambulance could find you. But hunger prevailed, and we lived.)
Finally, the worm 'n' wood guy bids us farewell, and we promise to buy wood there every time we go camping in the area. He gives us each a hot pink business card and says we can also stop by for "energy work" -- and that if we see any UFOs in the area, we should come get him.
The business card advertises "Reiki Treatments/Classes" and "Local or Long Distance Attunements."
Ah, California.
We later vow to try the pickled onions next time.
Background: Rick and I are on our way to the Mojave Desert with our friend C. and his friend A, and we realize that we forgot to buy firewood in the last semi-commercial town on the trip (Barstow. It ain't LA, but it does have an In 'N' Out Burger...).
We consider stopping for wood in Daggett, but A. informs us that Daggett consists solely of two gas stations.
(Amusing tangent: C. realizes that he called one of these gas stations the time he lost his wallet in the desert in college. Long story short, it turns out both the gas stations are owned and operated by the same people. One gas station has restrictive opening hours and cheap gas; the other has good hours and expensive gas. Well, the locals have to gas up somehow...)
A. claims that if we get off at the exit for the Calico Ghost Town, she knows a place we can buy wood. The ghost town is essentially a laid-back Old West theme park, but the actual town of Calico is pretty ghostly, too. We pass a whole lot of nothing, except for junk abandoned on the side of the road, some of which we consider scavenging and burning instead of the wood.
We take a few turns and enter the town of Yermo, host to a creepy looking military base. We try to imagine being stationed out here in the middle of BF Nowhere, and theorize that the local Marines simply go to Vegas for every possible weekend (and help keep rural Nevada's whorehouses in business).
Eventually, we arrive at a house with a sign advertising firewood, worms, and other sundries for sale. Score! We're most of the way to the house when a shirtless aging farmer calls to us from the field adjacent to it.
He has a shirt on by the time he reaches us, which I thought was cute (aw, he's shy...). He tells us that he just sold half a cord of firewood, but that there should be enough left for us. It's $10 a wheelbarrow, he tells us, and starts walking off towards the wood.
"What's a cord?" A. asks.
"A bunch," C. replies with authority.
Right. So Mr. Firewood loads a wheelbarrow with wood, chatting with us about where we're from and all the other usual travelers' questions. He seems bemused and not impatient when we then spread a blanket over half the backseat and throw the wood into it (the trunk was full...) He tries to get us to sample some of the pickled onions he has for sale, but we're all too full of In 'N' Out burgers to contemplate any food.
He also tells us about his worms. They eat garbage and fertilizer, and he always has plenty of both. It turns out a worm can eat its own weight in a day. Local schools take field trips to see the worm farm!
We remember to ask if we can take some sticks for roasting hot dogs, and throw them in the backseat, too. (Amusing tangent #2: I didn't hear this, but apparently the wood man joked to A., "Just don't take any of the oleander!" while we were foraging for sticks. She told this story around the fire later, just as we were about to roast our hot dogs, and we got good and paranoid -- in the desert wilderness, you'd be long dead before any sort of ambulance could find you. But hunger prevailed, and we lived.)
Finally, the worm 'n' wood guy bids us farewell, and we promise to buy wood there every time we go camping in the area. He gives us each a hot pink business card and says we can also stop by for "energy work" -- and that if we see any UFOs in the area, we should come get him.
The business card advertises "Reiki Treatments/Classes" and "Local or Long Distance Attunements."
Ah, California.
We later vow to try the pickled onions next time.
Labels: travel
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