HIGHWAY DINOSAUR
Jack R. Nelson
Copyright 2012 Jack R. Nelson
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HIGHWAY DINOSAUR
My family moved cross-country from Florida to California in 1952, towing a 30 foot house-trailer behind a ’51 Dodge. This was high style; the car and trailer painted matching bronze brown, and blonde ash cabinetry. I was five years old. We took the southern route, entering California on Route 80. I remember sighting old sections of plank road abandoned in desert sands. Only recently I learned that my grandparents’ first road trip from New York to California included that wooden road. That would have to be before 1926, when blacktop two lane US 80 made it obsolete. Now western US 80 is likewise a relic, neglected fragments shouldered aside by modern superhighways.
A road trip is not what it used to be. Years ago we collected free maps from the AAA or Texaco or Sinclair, maybe checked the Rand McNally Atlas at the library. There would still be a lot of guess-work, a sense of launching into the unknown.
Today free online mapping programs reveal minute details in 3D color. Does that road wind through a rocky desert or a green forest? What kind of neighborhood surrounds that motel? Omniscient layered imagery is a commonplace.
Even from across the oceans, visitors plan a detailed itinerary. An Italian crowd on Harley Davidsons rolls into an antique gas station on Route 66. In Peach Springs, Arizona, a British family talks knowingly of ghost towns and Indian reservations, researched online before booking their rented van.
So the planning and navigation are easier. But the heedless days of leaded 94 octane 29¢ gas are long gone. And we still pay less than half the price common in Europe. Will mobile homes and camper trucks disappear? Will highway hot rods become quaint characters in period movies, like Hollywood swashbucklers and cowboys?
It isn’t just the expense. Dumping tons of carbon and nitrogen oxides into the air is a karmic guilt burden. My only car is a very modified 1962 Chevy II, or Nova, painted taxi yellow, with a high performance ZZ4 motor and trick stuff including independent rear suspension. It’s a brutal sports car thinly disguised as an antique grocery-getter.
Compounding my crime, age exempts it from smog checks. Open the hood, all you see is the big V8. No spaghetti of wires and hoses, no plasticky shrouds, prickling with sensors and motherboarded controls. Nope. All that widgetry for mileage and emissions; don’t got it. The exhaust stinks like a chemical spill.
While we’re on pollution, what about noise? Doobadoobadooba in the echoing spaces of a parking structure, twitchy car alarms chirp and toot nervously as I idle by. In merging traffic, just booting the gas works like an eighteen-wheeler’s air horn,
bwAAA…Look out! Comin’ thru!
Vulgar. Costly. Loud. Eco-recidivist. Not even comfortable.
Yeah. So what.
I open all the windows before I put it in gear. Out on the street I see everybody sealed up tight in their Climate Control capsules, head bobbing to Mega Bass. Their sporty sedans cost less to own and drive than my outré Nova. Certainly safer. I must be really stupid. On the freeway, guys stick their heads out the window and shout at me, “Hey! Sell me your car!” They must be really stupid too. What’s going on here?
Why do some people like riding horses? Big, dumb, dangerous beasts, uncomfortable, high maintenance and smelly. Thrilling, visceral, alive. An atavistic icon of migration, independence and power hardwired to our very DNA.
In 2005 I traveled with my sister and 90 year old mother in a rented mini-van. Mom and Sister are observant and witty, but they don’t drive. I was the exclusive designated driver. It was truly great fun. Reserved rooms every night in another picturesque setting, sumptuous breakfasts at mom ‘n pop cafes, an itinerary of museums and galleries, the Wine Country, and the gorgeous Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Francisco.
Now, road trips aren’t for everybody. This is entirely too pop-psych, but there are propioceptive and ambient input, internal and external social aspects, memory and expectations...one element out of sync can make the trip a bummer.
In the summer of 2008 I drove the hot rod Nova alone through California into Oregon and back through Nevada. Over 2000 miles. My solo ramble through three states gratified selfishly personal themes. The Nova is entirely different from the stodgy van of the 2005 trip. Even the weight of a passenger and baggage makes a difference. I would not compromise with any companion. Go when, where, and how I want.
I had contemplated Google Earth Mapping for every possible winding road along the coast and through the mountains, avoiding the autobahns and big towns. I got a 12 volt adapter and a GPS antenna for my laptop in the passenger seat, running the DeLorme StreetAtlas program. This may seem contrary to the primitive bad boy hot-rodder image. I don’t care about image, I ain’t styling.
Well…maybe that isn’t perfectly true. I do wear a Yellow Cab driver’s hat, in keeping with the car’s flaring yellow personality. It’s better than any gimme cap. It shades my eyes without blocking peripheral vision or the rear view mirror, it’s both cool and kool, and it’s quirky fun on the road. People wave and signal thumbs up. And for special occasions, a magnetic TAXI sign to stick on the roof. See, this is relevant to what I am getting at here. Stay with me.
Television was a novelty when I was four years old. A six inch round screen, Hopalong Cassidy and Buster Brown in tones of grey. I’m the first electronic generation. This is a tremendous divide of before and after, not only in the way we access information but mentally process it. It was a bigger leap than the subsequent digital revolution.
If you don’t have the Google Earth program yet, download it now. It’s free. Type your home address in the “Fly To” line at the top, see your neighborhood in detail. The controls at the upper right rotate the view to a bird’s eye 3D perspective. You can helicopter tour anywhere on the planet.
That’s how I discovered the road north of Jenner at the mouth of the Russian River. The Shoreline Highway, a section of world famous Route 1, clings 500 feet above the ocean on eroded scarps barely covered with brush and seasonal grasses. In 2008 it was old, narrow, haphazardly maintained, with lumpy patchings and crumbled shoulders. You don’t speed on such a goat path. The Google image in 2012 looks like the sketchy parts are transformed by fresh black asphalt.
I pulled out at an observation point to photo the wild coast. Minutes later an old fellow rolled in with his handsome 1960s Ford pickup. He lived in the area. He showed me photos of his restored 1943 Willys Jeep. We talked local history and politics, divorces and kids. Like old friends, though we didn’t even exchange names. My Yellow Taxi guise got friendly welcome wherever I stopped.
Farther north, past Fort Bragg, Branscomb Road climbs inland from Route 1 to join Highway 101 at Laytonville. In 2005 with Mom and Sister we took that road downhill at night in the van. I recall a narrow track walled by crowding pines and redwoods, heavy trunks edging the pavement. Curve after tight curve. I was looking out the side window to see where we were going. My poor sister in the back seat almost got car-sick.
For three years I imagined driving my nimble hot rod up that asphalt snake. I even searched for locals’ websites and emailed them to ask if indeed I had the right road named. They replied there is no other, only unpaved jeep trails. Finally I was at the coastal end of Branscomb Road on a brilliant summer day. At Westport they told me, “You probably won’t meet any logging trucks.” Criminy. I hadn’t thought of that.
Memory and expectation were both foiled. Perhaps black forest shadows and headlights foreshortened perception that first time. Or the Nova’s agility straightened out a road that challenged the bumbling van. Nevertheless, tossing a quick car through serried curves up forested ridges is a pleasure. But the real fun started after I broke an exhaust hanger.
Branscomb village is a huge bare scrape of timber yard, a score of mobile homes, and an ancient redwood general store/Post Office with sagging pine floors and a boardwalk. Two hard-bitten types, long braids and missing teeth, sat in the boardwalk shade like lazy cowboys.