KELSO

Trains don’t stop at Kelso anymore. The freight trains still roll by the old Kelso Depot everyday, but the railroad stopped using the Depot over twenty years ago.

A red tile roof leans out from the second floor, with gentle Moorish arches framing the dusty oasis and palm trees standing in the green grass and sand and hardscrabble. The Depot is the visitor’s center for the Mojave National Preserve now, the sprawling desert outpost north of Interstate 40 and Amboy, and east of Baker, stretching out to Nevada. The Preserve is big and lonesome, the town of Kelso almost dried up in the sun, like most things in the desert without purpose. The Kelso Depot is open everyday for visitors.

I ran over a snake wiggling across the road south of the Kelso Dunes. It was the only living thing I’d seen up close in a half hour. There was no avoiding him. Swerve and maybe roll the Jeep, at fifty miles per hour. So with a little blip, he was done, and I was speeding on towards the Dunes, six hundred foot high wind-blown hills of sand that look like big piles of gold dust in afternoon sun. A few miles back I’d passed the cinder cones, and down further below I-40, the Amboy Crater. These are big, black, volcanic cones that poke up out of the ground from eruptions that started between 7 and 8 million years ago and continued as recently as 10,000 years ago when the Ice Age came to a close.

Inside the Kelso Depot the park ranger greets you.
‘Hello. Passing through?’

‘Yeah, stretching my legs,’ I say. She nods. She’s used to visitors plodding around, not really seeing anything, stopping in, halfway between nowhere and someplace. I was no different.

It’s cool inside the Depot. The old lunch counter forms three sides of a square in the middle of the tall main room, maps and brochures spread out on the dark wood. The hard plastic laminated maps start with a small one of the Mojave Preserve, detailing the roads and trails and open space of the immediate area.

In the lower forty-eight, the Mojave Preserve is the third largest piece of land that the National Park Service manages. A larger map shows Southern California. The Mojave and Colorado (Sonora) and the Great Basin deserts join up southeast of the Mojave, down in Joshua Tree National Park. In Joshua, the three desert climactic zones are all on display, the high desert, the lower desert and the Basin that runs all the way out to Utah. Another map shows the entire United States.

Deserts cover much of the Southwest. They get rain and even some snow. But by definition, deserts give up more moisture from evaporation than they take in through precipitation.

The counter has chairs, bolted down, wooden ones that swivel on a base. They surround the counter in simple formation, with plenty of room in between. It would have been nice to stop in during a train ride, while the steam engine or the coal engine gets fired up with fuel, watered down. Take a seat at the counter and order a tall chocolate milk shake, talk with the waitress about the temperatures that get up over a hundred degrees four months out of the year.

In the West, historic structures stand alone, abandoned by time and money, no longer useful except as memories. The old buildings are allowed to hang around, no threat to modern development. In this new century, we look to the recent past, declare styles to be post-modern, mid-century, left-over structures that take on nostalgia with a bow. The lucky ones live on, guide books and preservation societies reciting pedigree, recalling their history.

A train rolls by today, not stopping. Oh, once it did, though, taking on water and fuel and food, people getting off, getting on. Mailing a postcard, a letter. 'The West,' they'd say, 'It’s vast."

They did once. They did.

LOOKING TO LAND

I opened the sun roof and watched a helicopter hovering over the Strip, looking for a landing zone in a battle of light. It veered, slowed, floated down onto the top of the Mirage. Somebody in the jungle had said that choppers were The Angels of Death, but I said it was too close to call. More like schizophrenia, the mechanical equivalent of a decidedly split personality. Inside one, you were either having a great time, flying the Grand Canyon or Denali or some great wonder of the world, or you were seriously fucked up, plucked out of some hell hole, broken and split up and desperate. Dropping into the gambling Mecca for the time of your life, or the jaws of life were popping your car like a can and packing you off to trauma care. Somewhere nearby, your soul was making decisions. Live or die, win or lose, hold or stay. I drove on, the sunroof open, neon reflecting on the metal top framing my head.

FOUR WHEEL DRIVE

Shit, gimme a new passport. I might be needing it. Got me a Four Wheel Drive.

The Jeep runs great, it ran great, I’m hoping it will always run great. A few weeks ago the little idiot light came on and now they don’t just blink red at you, they spell out more specifically what might be wrong. ‘Service 4WD System’ sounded ominous. It was. The first Jeep shop I went to spent almost a full day to figure out what it needed. Took a couple of phone calls from me to the service writer who’s voice mail promised that he returns all voice messages promptly. He doesn’t. Turns out the next day when I finally had him paged after getting his VM three or four times, he doesn’t exactly return messages that quickly. Didn’t even pick up voice messages, on this day. Turns out he didn’t know what was wrong with my car, on this day, because the mechanic was on lunch and there was no way he’d find out until the mechanic got back, now was there? So he doesn’t return voice messages and has no way to get the mechanic to tell him what’s wrong with my 4WD system. When he does find out, it’s almost two thousand dollars of work. A new transfer case.

When I picked up the car he says, oh, I got your voice message. It was almost three o’clock. I said what do I owe you? Nothing he said. Didn’t think so. I’ll get a second opinion.

Back at the dealer where I bought the Cherokee Laredo, used, with a 75K mile warranty, it took them about twelve hours to tell me the same thing. Transfer case. But they knocked six hundred off the price when I whined. See, I bought this 75K mile warranty, I reminded them. And then just a week after I started getting those so friendly phone reminders from the peppy automated male voice that I COULD renew the warranty, and now of course was the perfect time to do so, the IDIOT light comes on for me, the IDIOT. Because I didn’t renew the warranty? Maybe? Maybe the light going on coincides with a big database that begins calling customers who don’t renew warranties. Is it possible the whole thing is connected in some auto-manufacturer conglomerate Daimler-Benz-Chrysler-Jeep software, programmed to punch up idiot lights, make reminder calls and zap you with fifteen hundred dollar repairs if you don’t ante up?

So how much 4WD’ing do I do, to justify this kind of maintenance headache? Not that much. But it’s a cool ride, a stripped down, silver painted, charcoal interior urban cruiser, and I can ride out any earthquakes, floods, fires and other catastrophes in comfort and safety thanks to that ‘Trail Rated’ badge on the side. Says I can pretty much go anywhere I damn well want to.

Meanwhile I get the 4WD Hardware parts catalog I emailed for, a four color thirty page goody list of Dick Cepek and Mickey Thompson custom wheels, huge Goodrich tires and Super Swampers with tread the size of beer cans. Maybe I’ll just order some new floor mats. And that camo travel mug. That roof rack looks good, the one where I can stuff a mattress, a small television and a surfboard for those extended beach excursions. Gonna need a winch too, when I’m stuck down in the Grand Canyon and that bull elk is charging and I have to pull it all up along the wall and bivouac the whole damn thing from a tree. Some extra strength tensile steel cable, make sure we don’t plunge down into the whitewater, submerge some poor raft trip floaters and get all that grey hair wet and rinse away the hair coloring. Hey, do those Super Swamper tires double as float pontoons? No? Just carry spares, on top of the mattress stuffed into the custom roof rack and the whole thing will float down the Colorado, come out into Mexico somewhere under the border bridge? Got it. I’m there. One more thing? That steering column extension thing, the one that takes the steering wheel right up onto that roof-rack mattress with the television and the Super Swampers stacked up into a nice seat, can I get some pedal extensions too? Ride up there on the Super Swampers, steering and yee-hawwing up there high enough to ward off the critters and banditos and border patrol agents?

Shit, I better get my passport replaced. Lost it in a whorehouse in Tijuana a couple of years ago. Lost it with enough cash in my pockets to start a damn shrine down there.

Probably some maid found it the next morning, or that whore, saying Holy Mother Mary, it’s a miracle, it's a sign. Something like that.

FINAL DAY

Jared Incinelli stood alone in the bullpen, taking his last look at the Quakes who would go on to beat Lancaster 3-2 on Sunday. Late afternoon sun was slanting in over blue and black and gold flags flapping above the left field stands. Incinelli’s arms were folded.

He never threw a pitch today. He walked off the field and into the dugout for the last time, his final day this year. He would go home to tend to family affairs, retiring from baseball, for a while anyway.

I stuck my hand out, said good luck, touching fists. Thanks, he said, I appreciate it.

Not that he wasn’t good enough. He wasn't released. But the grind and the time away from family can pull a ballplayer away too soon, before there’s time to reap the rewards of rich salaries, bonus’ and endorsements.

Incinelli watched his team, storing up memories, feeling the breeze in his face for the final time. It’s not easy letting go of a dream.

He was standing by himself, yesterday. Today, he’s with people who need him too. Another team, the one he’ll always be a part of. They need him now. He’ll throw and he’ll catch and keep the glove soft and oiled, keep the ball near the television set to finger and flip and roll around in his hand as he watches, remembers, keeps the dream alive. To teach his new child what it was like.

In the sun, under the lights, with a shot at the show.

It’s okay, Jared, it’s good to have dreams. They never die.

RUBY

Ruby was struttin’ down the left field line, waving at the stands, the empty stands, chin up, pigtails bouncing. Ruby, in her royal blue jersey, number 4, big white letters, RUBY, walking down the line with her team and the dozens of other Little League and T-ball squads.

Ruby, seven or eight years old, beaming, smiling, hands up to the stands where she was seeing fans cheering for her and her team, the stands that were empty this afternoon.

No matter to Ruby, who was waving anyway, getting ready for that home run she’s going to hit. Land on the plate with both feet, hands out, looking up at that crowd cheering for her.

Ruby, tiny Ruby, looking for somebody.

I saw her. I waved. Her eyes were way above mine, searching the stands. I held my hand out. Then she saw me, pointed at me with two fingers, like Barry Bonds coming down the line to the plate after number six hundred. Ruby, pointing at me like she knew how to do it all along. Nobody else around, just me and her. Ruby’s eyes bright and brown and the jersey crisp and smooth and deep blue. Ruby, moving on down the left field line waving at a crowd only she could see. It was all hers this afternoon.

And the home run she hit is going, still going, still going, way, way up there. It'll never come down.

DANCING

In one week, the last two days, stories in the LA Times of all places, where you’d expect them to hold out on this kind of junk. There they were.

Floyd Mayweather defeating ‘Big Show’ at WWE’s Wrestlemania 24. The next day, Jason Taylor and his debut on Dancing With The Stars. What’s next? Danica Patrick, Mel Gibson and Charlie Sheen in a midnight road race into Malibu Canyon on ABC?

Yeah, I could see it coming, a little faster than I’d expected, like watching a Roger Clemens fastball zinging at you with that buzz of spinning laces, thumping into the catcher’s mitt. But it still shocks me, jocks and sports pages selling out.

Mayweather must be heartbroken, 27 years old and nobody to fight him. Just another best pound-for-pound that nobody loves. Twenty million dollars to fight a seven foot monster in the wrestling arena probably looked good to young Floyd. Can’t say I wouldn’t do it.

Jason Taylor, at 33 and near the end of his pro football career, has every right to try and extend his popularity. The ever expanding market for celebrity based television can probably make room for another good looking ex-jock. Tiki Barber, Ahmad Rashad, Dan Marino, Boomer Esiason all have passable talent, enough to survive on television networks that deliver drivel. No harm there.

But keep the circus acts off the sports pages. Mayweather, Taylor, these stories don’t belong up there next to opening day baseball coverage and the final four. I’m all for creating a special section at the back of the sports pages, just covering strip club arrests, drug and steroid abuse, track stars racing horses and cars, and college football spring practice in the SEC.

Maybe I should be happy that Taylor wasn’t caught in a lap dance and instead caught a national audience with his own dance moves, I don’t know.

Sports Pages were designed, I’m sure I learned this in high school journalism, for the specific purpose of delineating the distinction between legitimate news, the kind that sends countries off to wars and elects presidents, and the sporting kind. Entertainment sections cover movies and music and gossip. Never the twain shall meet, someone said who’s advice I respect.

Yeah, I’m old school, old period, call me what you want. The new school is saying if it pops up on a screen somewhere, a video screen, a computer screen, an Ipod or a cell phone it’s already legitimate and who cares. If it entertains us and holds our attention for more than five seconds, let it be. It used to be fifteen minutes, but that was twentieth century. The Medium, IS, The Message, oh shut up…that’s so analog.

So this is the digitization of American media. Twenty four hours a day and nothing to program. So we take whatever celebrity we can, mix and match with some catchy location background, put the pieces back together like a digital puzzle and everyone comes out with a television career, with no attachment to previous achievement or history. Take a celeb and paste them up on the screen on a digitized background; Barry Bonds climbs Everest! Roger Clemens throwing poison darts at charging rhinos on the savannah…Jose Canseco cliff diving in Acapulco (we wish).

Remember when Jesse Owens raced against horses?

I still consider him one of America’s greatest heroes, sports or otherwise. He sold out. He had to. Had no choice. Today’s heroes? They have no excuse. And the sports pages have no excuse for covering it. Throw those bones to the entertainment editors, the gossip columnists. Do they even have those anymore? Oh, they’re entire twenty-four networks themselves?

There you go.

No Boycott Here

Let’s get this part straight, right up front. I dig the Dalai Lama. His brand of Buddhism is straight up, pure, as far as I can tell. I even heard him speak, or one of his top guys once in Denver. I wore the red string around my neck or wrist or wherever it was. Even lost my girlfriend at the time to our spiritual advisor who’d turned us on to the Dalai’s appearance, then ran around holding on to ‘her’ hand before the last little spiritual retreat we had up in Keystone. Greg, his name, he smoked cigarettes, I remember, the only spiritually impure activity that he admitted to. Besides probably boinking my girlfriend, a lovely spiritual seeker who was seeking enlightenment from the big huge male totem, it appeared.

Anyway, now that Tibet is blowing again, in trouble with the big Feds from Beijing, we hear from the usual Hollywood suspects prescribing all kinds of solutions for the trouble. I love it when the Hollywood crowd gives us a conscience. An easy checklist we can follow to ease our worldwide political pain.

It usually involves asking someone else to make the sacrifice.

This time they’re calling on athletes. Right. They’re the ones who train and compete just about their entire lives for the opportunity to represent their countries, themselves and their sports on the world’s biggest stage. Just give it up for old Tibet, ‘cause Hollywood says so.

No, Mia Farrow, Quincy Jones, Steven Speilberg, Ang Lee. Why don’t you give up your career, the proceeds from your next movie? Call on America to boycott your next project instead of asking athletes worldwide to give up their quest.

Athletes can’t just pick up the phone and get a studio deal or a movie script to shoot with a major star packaged up from CAA. Ever been to an Olympic Trial, say, in Track and Field? Ever seen what athletes go through, four or five days of races, heats, competitions, to get on the team that wears the colors of the USA, to march in the opening ceremony among thousands of beautiful athletes in native garb from every corner of the world?

Give it up for Tibet, Mia? This is their one shot, lady, their one chance to compete at this level. They don’t get a lifetime pass from a couple of movies that lets you cash it in at the bank for the rest of your days, make a phone call and get a part, a script for ‘older women’ that the old Hollywood gals all say is so missing in today’s film industry. These athletes get their one time ‘part’ the old fashioned way. They win it.

So you want peace in Tibet? Free the monks? Then boycott your own projects, Hollywood. Give up yours, and stop asking the athletes to give up theirs.

Like I said, I dig the Dalai. But I’m not giving up mine, and I’m sure not hoping athletes give up theirs.

Hollywood, it’s time to look in the mirror. Send a film crew over there, do a documentary. Cover the games in that grand style we used to see in the older games, from Rome and Tokyo. Do it in great detail, use the industry to show us. But don’t ask us to give up what is meaningful to us, to close a door on athletic achievement. Close the door on your own projects, if you want to boycott. Or use the industry to focus our attention. Just don’t send Al Gore or Michael Moore. Send someone who isn’t trying so hard to impress us. Someone who won’t try and cash in a trip to Tibet or Beijing for an Academy Award. Send a film student crew, an AFI project team. Make us feel good about what you’re doing, and try and not turn it into a celeb-fest with Angelina or Brad or Mia or Richard Gere grabbing headlines instead of carefully showing us the way.

Me? I’m digging into Olympic preliminaries, getting ready for the trials and the competitions and the games.

Maybe I’ll take a movie DVD and light it on fire and dump it over the back deck. My own protest against Hollywood.

Let the Games begin.