Roadrunner

My new book, Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America should be out in a matter of weeks.

It's been my preoccupation for nearly four years now. Among other things, I made three long road trips around the US gathering material for it. Check the labels "'merican road", "'merican road #2" and "'merican road #3" on the list to the left for my blogging efforts from those journeys.

I'm pleased with the way it looks as it heads for the printing press finally. It will even have an insert with some of my photographs.

Hey, I like the book, I hope you do! More about it in this space in the days to come.

Knobs up there

Driving out of Needles in California some weeks ago, we spied an old trailer parked by the side of the road. One of those things that you tow along to RV sites, but not a vehicle by itself. If you know what I mean. Door open. We would have sped past, except that on a couple of signs there, there was a magic word that nearly always makes me stop in my tracks.

"Honey".

"Mystic Maze Honey, Self Serve" and "Pure Local Honey" were the signs. So we screeched to a stop right in front of the trailer. Walked in the door and found honey in bushels, or really in bottles of all sizes possible. Nobody present. This was selling on the honour system: pick up the amount you want, note the price, put the money into an envelope (provided) and seal it, then stick the envelope into a slot (provided).

I got myself some, plus two postcards with a pretty hand-drawn picture of the scene and a short writeup. Put one postcard in the mail later that day, brought the other home. Thick, flavourful honey, if a little sweeter than I like.

Anyway, last night my mother came over, and I showed her the card and we were talking about the honey. She read out the writeup on the card, which starts with these two sentences:

The Mystic Maze is a Native American intaglio east of Needles at the foot of Needles Peaks. It is a series of rocks lined in a maze, and both the Mystic Maze and the Needles Peaks are sacred to the local Mojaves.

That word "intaglio" intriged us. I didn't know what it meant. We looked it up in several dictionaries. One told us that it is a "design incised or engraved into a material"; another had similar definitions.

Digging through dictionaries, I even learned that the word "cameo" is a near-antonym. Which naturally made me wonder about the use of "cameo" in cricket. What would an "intaglio" innings in cricket mean?

Anyway again. Dictionary search done, my mother sat down to read while the rest of us chatted a while. Suddenly, ma called my name excitedly. When I went over, she was pointing to a line on page 2 of the book she was reading, Alexander Frater's Chasing the Monsoon, and this was that line:

This masterpiece, identified in a flowing intaglio caption as 'Cherrapunji, Assam: The Wettest Place on Earth', had been a wedding present to my parents.

We were struck, all over again, by the way an odd word or experience repeats itself. Chuckling over that, we all said our goodnights and tucked in for the night.

This morning, I mentioned the Frater coincidence to the wife. Or tried to. "You know that word we were discussing last night, 'intaglio' ... ?" I began.

And she interrupted. "Yeah, and you know what happened last night? I was reading to the kids in bed from King Ottokar's Sceptre, and what do you know?" She ran off and brought us the Tintin classic. At the bottom of page 2, she pointed to what the sigillography expert Professor Alembick says to Tintin:

And here's another fine specimen: an intaglio ring from the Saxon period.

Needles, honey, intaglio, Cherrapunji, intaglio, Tintin, sigillography, intaglio. I swear, I might even be getting receptive to the idea, as someone suggested last night in an entirely different context, that someone up there is tweaking some knobs.

Slowin' Down to Take a Look

Mint carries this essay I wrote, about travelling along Route 66 in the southwestern USA.

Comments welcome.

(While it lasts, check out the lead picture for the article here.)

Water for the dog

Rest area on the Texas/New Mexico border, I'm tempted because after several hours on the road, I need to stretch limbs and mind, clear the cobwebs. I pull in, park and walk about aimlessly for a while. Notice in passing that the vending machine that will sell you M&M chocolates or a bag of chips can also dispense toothpaste and shaving gear.

Makes some cosmic sense, actually.

Inside the building, they have wi-fi. Who's the idiot, I ask myself, who would pull off the highway at this particular spot and check email?

An idiot, I answer myself, like me.

I also check the tennis scores. Federer marching along, just the usual.

Half an hour and I'm ready to drive on. Before moving off, I pull out my map and chalk out my route for the next few hours. As I'm doing so, there's a knock on my window. It's a slender man about 30, backpack and a sleeveless jacket.

"I need to get to LA," he says. "Don't know how. Can you help me?"

Well, what do you need, I ask, though I suspect I know the answer.

"Just a map," he says. "D'you have a map I can use?"

Actually, I do have a map of the southwestern US, and that should meet his needs. I dig it out from my bag and give it to him.

"Thanks," he says. "Gotta take a bus, but I don't got no money. And they don't let me in the motels, account of my dog." He points down, to a small dog on a leash.

I look at him. I knew this was coming. I feel just slightly annoyed. Then I think, what the hell. Here's five bucks, I say, yanking a note from my shirt pocket. I hope it helps.

"It sure will, pal. Thanks and god bless. Where you from?"

Bombay, I say. India.

"Drive safe, OK?"

I put the car in reverse and pull out. As I drive off, I catch a last glimpse of the man. He's walked over to the water fountain. He's holding his dog so it can drink from the stream.

Chess moves

In the shared kitchen at the hot springs resort near the Texas/Mexico border, I'm pottering around fixing my soup. Campbell's Chunky Chicken Vegetable and some very spicy Thai noodle stuff: mixed together that's going to be my dinner.

Also in the kitchen are a young couple eating already, but mostly leaning over a book in which they are both drawing things. I catch a quick glimpse and it looks like a bird, so I ask them, are you drawing pictures of the birds you've seen here? A little embarrassed, he holds up his book and shakes his head. "No, it's just a drawing," he says. It's an elaborate and actually very beautifully drawn fantasy creature -- one of those ugly but not really frightening monster thingies.

Nearer me is another young woman, also pottering around getting stuff together to cook. That is, she's working on something a little more ambitious than just making soup, which is my horizon for tonight.

Suddenly she turns and approaches me. Holds out a bottle and says, "Could you open this please? It's too hard for me." It's an innocent enough request, and that's all she says. But the way she says those few words, the way she stands there, her body language, I could swear she's flirting.

But anyway, I take the bottle, brace myself to battle to unscrew a stubborn lid, grit my teeth and ... it opens easy as pie. In a flash.

It was already open.

I'm puzzled, but what's to say? I hand the bottle back to her. With a too-cute smile and a swing of her hips, but without a word, she turns and sashays off.

Later, her boyfriend enters and seats himself almost regally at one of the tables. Watches her finish cooking, watches as she ladles food onto two plates, watches as she brings them over to the table, watches as she returns for two glasses of water.

Watching all this, he also talks to me, mainly about chess and the new world champion in the sport, Vishwanathan Anand. "How do you pronounce that?" he asks, "An-AAnd?"

Nope, I reply. It's "AA-nand."

"Gotcha." And every time he mentions the name after that, he says "An-AAnd". He doesn't ask about "Vishwanathan", which he pronounces "Wish-VAN-a-ton".

"I'm kinda glad," he says, "that there's finally a world champion who isn't from Russia."

There was Bobby Fischer, I offer.

"Oh sure, but that was 35 years ago!" he exclaims.

They eat. They hardly talk to each other. She, I notice, has changed considerably from her sashaying self of half an hour ago. Now, I could swear there's a sad air about her. There's some unhappiness between the two, some distress that floats across the room like a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.

Soup finished, I get up and wash my dishes, then say goodnight and walk over to my tent. They sit in silence, eating.

A week later, Bobby Fischer is dead.

Daddy took the Malibu away

Mike is his name. When I enter PT's bar in Winslow, there are only six or seven people there, and the lone empty barstool is between him and a young woman. So I take it. Mike pays no attention through the subsequent exchange, which goes like this.

The bartender sidles over (I always feel bartenders sidle, is that true?). Asks me what I want. I think, then say I'd like a minute to decide. "A Miller Lite? OK!" says the bartender. I say, no, not a Miller Lite, I want a minute to decide. A MINUTE TO DECIDE! No effect on him. He sidles off to the bar, saying almost to himself, "One Miller Lite coming right up!", yanking out a glass and starting to pull down on a lever for draft ... I'm trying to stop him, but he is not listening. Then the girl next to me calls to the bartender: "Sam, Sam, he doesn't want a Miller Lite! He wants to think about it!"

That stops Sam the bartender. I turn to her to say thanks, but she has her back to me and is looking at something off in the distance there.

Mike on my left has been silent through all this. Next time the bartender sidles by, I tell him, give me a beer and a Sprite, I want to make myself a shandy. I forget to specify that I want just Sprite. So when he delivers it to me, it is a huge glass filled as full as possible with cubes of ice, and Sprite sprayed into it. So what I really have is a glass of Sprite flavoured ice-cubes.

When I mix it with the beer, two things happen. The first is that I produce something that can by no means be called shandy. Anyway, at least it takes the edge off the beer taste, which is what I want. The second is that Mike is looking on incredulously. "I've never seen anyone drink beer like that," he says finally.

It's the only way I can consume beer, I tell him. Straight up, I can't stand the taste.

That's our ice-breaker. From there, he and I have a long conversation about everything from religion to religion in politics to cars to the brutality in the Bible to elections to his move here from Seattle.

"You've heard of the Old Testament?" he asks. Somebody went into the Temple of Jericho and killed everybody there, women and kids too. Fire and brimstone, vengeance, that sort of thing. "We don't live like that now. But people who do those things today," he says, leaning closer, "they scare me. When people take their religion that seriously, they scare me."

Me too, I say. Me too.

The chit chat moves on to guns and old cars. Mike says he once took away some guy's girlfriend. Didn't want to confront the guy because he was "way bigger'n me, y'know?" But at the time, he had a '66 Chevy Malibu and a gun in the glovebox. Had he used the gun, he says, the guy would be dead and he would be in jail. Instead, he just outran the guy in that '66 Chevy. (Boyfriend had a Dodge). When Mike's dad found out, he took away the gun and the car.

Silence. So I had to ask: "And what happened to the girlfriend?"

"Think she went back to him," he said, laughing uproariously.

So let me get this straight, Mike, I say. All you got from this little exchange was the satisfaction of your Chevy outrunning the man's Dodge?

Mike laughs some more. "Sure! But it felt good!"

Mention of a Malibu has perked up the ears of Tony, a big shambling guy with a belly and a straggly beard, sitting on the other side of Mike. He asks about the car, and then a conversation ensues, largely between them, about the glory days of the American muscle car. "You remember the Pontiac something-or-the-other?" asks Tony. "Shee-it, that baby could move! You could take a curve and accelerate out of it, shoooom, she's gone!" (He claps his hands and extends the right, indicating the bat out of hell he has in mind). (I think of Jan and Dean's harmony-laden classic, "Dead Man's Curve").

When I get a chance, I ask Tony, so what car do you drive today?

He looks at me sheepishly. "You won't believe it," he says. "It's a Nissan pickup with a hardtop." He has the apologetic air of a man admitting to a serious let-down after all this talk of muscle cars.

Which, come to think of it, a Nissan pickup probably is.

Pay to type

The woman I'm at this cafe to meet is certainly popular. As we speak, several people wave, or say hi, or interrupt to say a few words. One slender man in a straggly beard taps her on the shoulder, waits for her to turn around, and wraps his arms around her in an impressive hug. Later, he comes over again and asks if he can sit and listen to our conversation. She says no, we're in a meeting, but he sits down next to us anyway.

She's an attractive woman. Tall and rangy, shoulder-length wavy brown hair, clear frameless glasses, a checked plaid jacket, black sweater, pink striped T, black skirt, orange striped leggings, tall silver boots: and somehow it all fits together. Eclectic is the word, attractive too. He's clearly much younger than her. He's clearly also nursing an enormous crush on her. Looking like a disconsolate puppy, he keeps stealing glances at her.

She pays no attention. I feel slightly sorry for him.

***
Driving through the southern stretches of Arizona, I notice several vehicles that are used to advertise things. A truck trailer calls attention to "VERMALAND", mentioning vermaland.com which produces very little on my screen. Another calls attention to SAHARA, mentioning sahara1.com. Clearly sahara.com was taken.

And there's a London double-decker bus, wrapped in dull red something but identifiable as one of those buses anyway, that advertises Sierrita Restaurant.

Later on the same drive, I pass under Three Slashes Road. Later still, Sore Finger Road. Later still more, the Kashmiri friend at whose house I will spend the coming night calls, to ask where I am and give me directions. I pull off the road to talk. When we are done, I look up. I am stopped under a sign that says "Kashmir Road". I am not making this up.

***
Young man in rural Texas tried to persuade me to go stay at a fancy old hotel nearby. Two of his reasons were:

"You're a writer? You hafta check this out. They have a real typewriter, you know those old things with those keys you press and a lever flies up and all? And you can pay and use it."

"They have one of those old record players and some records too! Just great! You can check out the player and pick out some records, and you can sit in your room and play it."

I see his point. And this was friendly advice. So I didn't let on that I have a record player and a few hundred records, so the novelty factor would be kind of wasted on me there. And let's be frank, typing on a typewriter? Not something I want to pay to do.

Not Mumbai Beach

At over two hundred feet below sea level, without any diving apparatus, not even wearing a swimsuit, what's a man to do?

Me, I stopped and watched the birds -- seagulls, lapwings, some kind of swifts. Wrote two postcards to people in Bombay, which I simply had to do. Spoke to a woman who runs a store and a man who is the Secretary/Treasurer of the Community Center. Took a photograph of a young couple and their pitbull, she leaning her head against his shoulder. Wandered amid a Dali-like scene of long-abandoned structures.

All of which you can do too, in Bombay Beach. (Now you know why I had to write those postcards). Sunbaked town on the shore of the Salton Sea, a large inland lake in southern California, 200-something feet below sea level. I mean, I saw this name on the map and I knew I had to visit.

And while there, I asked person after person, why the name? Only the girl with the pitbull offered an answer: "It was bombed in the war."

Really? Which war?

"You know, the World War. Air Force used to bomb this place."

I look around incredulously. Bombed? The town looks like it has seen better days and probably will never see them again, but bombed? And why? I turn back to her, but with a toss of her long blond hair, she, boyfriend and dog have resumed their stroll.

Frank at the community center, 81 years old and a stud in his left ear, is happy to talk about the town. It was developed by a real estate man just after the war, as a fishing resort. Had a marina too. He laid out the street grid, built the first few houses, and sold them. It was a "nice community", says Frank wistfully, for years. "I learned to waterski out there!"

Then the Salton Sea rose, flooding an entire section of the town. Those residents had to leave, and later a dike was built. Now the Sea level has fallen, and the town is trying to recover -- "but it's too late for us", says Frank, still wistful. Apparently the lake is polluted and so does not attract the watersport enthusiasts any more. Though the town is considering various measures to clean it up, a population of a few hundred seems like no kind of base to raise the funds to do something as massive as that.

The community center has a poster for the movie "The Salton Sea". Also four boards with names listed on small brown plaques, all titled "In Memory of our Friends."

Outside and beyond the dike, it gets surreal. Beams and tyres and assorted other junk stuck in seriously salt-encrusted mud, some still identifiable as once-houses. There's an abandoned trailer, I think, and inside a rusting, crumbling oven. Hanging from the beam of another structure is the shell of some rectangular electronic device, wires and chips dangling in the breeze.

And with this as a backdrop, a young couple and their pitbull.

Bombay Beach. Yes, I had to visit.

Meanwhile in Marfa

Over by the courthouse, they're starting to unwind ...

Actually what I see near the Marfa courthouse is a huge bus with a small car tethered behind. The back of the bus has the US, UK and EU flags painted on, with "Chris and Karen's Mystery Tour" also there. Two people I presume are Chris and Karen are in earnest conversation with two smart Texas police officers, the police cruisers parked nearby. It doesn't look like a serious conversation, no arrests or anything, just a relaxed chat. Which is why the line pops into my head.

I roll down my window and ask one of the officers the way to my B&B, which I was told was near the courthouse. He doesn't know, but directs me to the other side of the wedding cake-like building. "Must be over there," he says.

And indeed it is, just a block from the opposite corner of the courthouse. I pile all my stuff into the room and leave quickly, to manage a walk around Marfa while the light is still good. Only ten minutes after I first saw it, the bus is now parked behind the courthouse, neither of its occupants nor the police officers anywhere in evidence. Nor do I see Chris and Karen in my wandering through Marfa over the next couple of hours. I wanted to find out what the Mystery in their Tour was. Too bad.

Maybe the mystery is that they disappear so quickly.

Just about sunset, I drive out to the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Platform, where I'm one of four or five people already waiting to see these famous lights. Immediately, I can see a red light blinking steadily, stuck at the base of a distant low hill. It blinks just like that, steadily, for the two-and-a-half hours I spend there getting slowly frozen. Must be a warning light on a pole. Above it, along the crest of the hill and the adjoining ridge, there's an occasional white light that appears, and spends about ten minutes moving to the right and gradually lower, until it disappears. Clearly, those are car headlights along the highway there, that I myself drove earlier today, to get to Marfa.

And that's it. Apart from the fingernail moon and the emerging stars, there are no unexplained lights.

More people show up, through the 2.5 hours. It is now completely dark, so you can't see the hill outlined against a lighter sky. A troop of completely drunk men stagger onto the platform, and ask me through fumes of beer, "Where's the lights? Huh?" When I say I haven't seen them yet, that's clearly not good enough an answer. "What about those, dude?" they ask, pointing in turn at the blinking red light, a slowly moving car headlight, a house way to the left and a bright star. I say again, those are not the lights. They shake their heads in mock disgust and shuffle off.

They stop beside a couple to my left, and ask them the same questions. In a distinct English accent, the man says: "See that blinking red light? It's been moving up, down, left, right, every which way. And those white lights above it? I don't know what they are, but they move pretty strangely too!" The woman backs him up. "Yes, and look them now. That red one is drifting upward, look!"

I realize what's happening. Because the skyline is no longer visible, you look at these lights in relation to each other, and it's easy to be fooled by the motion of the white ones into believing that the stationary red one is moving. I try feebly to explain this, but quickly give up. All these people are sure they're looking at the Marfa lights, and who am I to try to sway that belief?

More lines pop into my head: "Over on the corner, there's a happy noise/People come from all around to watch the magic boy."

But that English accent. I ask the woman, are you the guys in that big bus? She looks oddly at me. You know, I say, there's this big bus parked near the courthouse, I was just wondering whose it was. She says, "We came in a bus, yes." In a firm stop to our conversation, she turns back to pointing out the moving red light to the others around.

The accent registers with one of the drunk men, eventually. He asks the man, "So which part of Texas are you guys from? Australia?"

The man from England shoots back: "Devon, England."

Half an hour later, I leave for my B&B, disappointed that I haven't seen these mysterious lights. Still watching are several others, exultant that they have.

Maybe that's the Mystery of Marfa.

Grey and white

The area before us is covered with plump bodies. Grey, white. Oddly, there's very little overlap. What's white is white, what's grey is grey, and the twain meet only in the occasional grey that picks its way through the whites. Stalking through on long legs.

Early morning, well below freezing and despite gloves and cap and thick socks and shoes and many layers of clothing, my fingers and toes are beginning to hurt, it's that cold. But before us, it's time for a chorus of chattering and muttering as the bodies wake, louder and louder. The stray grey takes off, or a few at a time, legs down till they get up speed, then straight behind as they skim the currents. The occasional one wheels and flies directly overhead, a sleek and swift vision as it passes.

The whites are still asleep, though again, an occasional one takes off. Much more flapping than their grey sleep partners, showing off black wingtips. From elsewhere where alarm clocks must be set earlier, skeins of their colleagues sail overhead, quickly into the middle distance where they look like so many threads flung carelessly into the air.

The exodus grows: now there are regular departures by seven or eight at a time. Then suddenly, with a great chorus of frantic chattering, all the remaining greys lift off and disappear. Suddenly, it's only white left before us.

Until they, too, lift off in a fluttering cloud of white and black and sound. They wheel about and then many just as suddenly return.

Sandhill cranes and snow geese at Bosque National Wildlife Refuge.

I had never seen, or heard, a flock lift off like that. That I did, this time, is something I owe to Vandana and her husband Krishnan. Don't miss her photographs.

West suggests

Done with my enormous meal, I waddle up to the counter to pay. A young man with freckles, sitting to one side of the counter and eating his own meal, spins off his seat and appears at my side.

"Farscape?" he asks. Just like that. One word, a question by itself.

There must be a deal of bewilderment on my face, because he quickly asks another question.

"Firefly, then?"

And, just as rapidfire, a third.

"Maybe stargate?

When I manage to splutter that I have no idea what he's talking about, he says: "You don't watch much TV, do you?"

I confess that I don't, that I don't even possess a TV.

"Ah. Those are all TV shows, you know. I saw you and thought, 'He's a Farscaper!'"

The woman behind the counter, listening to us, asks: "But why?

"Well, it's always worth asking," says the young man. "Besides, it's those glasses!" (Mine). "I saw them and thought, 'Geek!' Geeks love those shows."

Then he turns to me.

"But you're not a geek. And I mean that as a compliment."

That cheerful young man was Monty West, all of 14. And as I turned to gather my things, he had this:

"But Stargate, that show really rocks! You have to see it."

OK, I say, I'll check it out.

"Yeah. You do that," says Monty. Then a pause, a chuckle, and: "Monty West suggests!"

Before I left, I fired one back.

Are you a secondlifer, I ask.

"What's that?" Monty looks as bewildered as I must have.

Got you, I say. But anyway, secondlife.com? Not that I'm on there, but you've not heard of it?

"Oh right," says Monty. "But my mother doesn't let me use the internet much."

***
And that incident reminded me of a wedding I went to, many years ago.

At dinner, one of the bride's friends, a pretty young woman with long curly hair, was across the table from me. We had been introduced, but had not said much to each other since.

Out of the blue, she leaned across and said: "February, right?"

I must have looked bewildered, much like with Monty. She went on: "Or late January?"

Still bewildered. So she said: "Just say yes or no, that's all."

Yes, I said. (I have a birthday in either late January or February).

She gave a whoop of delight and turned to the groom, pumping her fist. Turned out that she prided herself on her ability to guess people's zodiac signs. So she had made a bet with the groom that she would divine mine before dinner was done.

I had no snappy comeback.

Third cartridge, and knives

My collection of used cartridge cases from guns is now up to three. Found one on the side of a road in Texas. I mean, a lonely road with nobody in sight and no other cars passing for long minutes on end. I have stopped to stretch my legs, and I have stopped right next to this crumpled brass case, lying there on the tarmac. I pick it up and look around cautiously. Anyone about to fire at me? Anything at all that looks like the source of this thing? Anything at all that looks like it may have caused it to be fired?

No. All around me are giant yucca cacti common in this area, body and big prickly green ball for a head with a pale-flowering stalk erupting from the top, some 15 or 20 feet tall. It's like being in the midst of a gathering of Dr Seuss characters. It's unlikely, though far from impossible, that one of them fired the bullet that's left behind this casing.

***
Prada Marfa is a ... what? A roadside glass-fronted boutique with handbags and high-heeled shoes on display: gold, black, red, brown, white, black with silver lining, etc. But if a boutique is what it looks like, a boutique is not what it is. In fact, a plaque next to it says it "will never function as a place of commerce, the door cannot be opened."

Nope, this is a (still quoting from the plaque) "site specific, permanent land art project by artists Elmgreen and Dragset modeled after a Prada boutique." The site it is specific to is on the southern verge of highway 90, west of the dusty one-road town of Valentine. I stand in front of it with my camera ready for a full 20 minutes, waiting for a car to pass on the highway so I can get a photograph of the whole affair with that car reflected in the glass. No luck. That's how busy this highway is. That's where this land art project has landed.

One of the large plates of glass has a palm-sized circle of damage, as if someone flung a stone at it.

Or maybe shot a bullet, leaving casings. I suppose somebody, I mean somebody, wanted those shoes badly enough.

There's commentary too. I nearly miss it, because it is spray-painted graffiti on the edge of the road and I drive past almost without noticing. Put the car into reverse -- still no other car for miles behind -- and back up till I can read the large letters: "Please Redeem A Dying America".

***
I browse through a gift shop that has prominently displayed yellow printed signs. They say: "Please Do Not Bounce, Kick or Throw the Merchandise."

The signs are not for sale.

On a fridge in a community kitchen at a spot where I camp, someone has arranged little word magnets in a line, to form a sentence. At least, I think it is a sentence. It says: "gorgeous blue blood above the smooth wind when winter rose from purple rain like sordid mist said worship elaborate sun vision."

It was all going pretty intriguingly, till that "worship."

***
At a rest stop near Pyote, I get out to stretch. Immediately behind me is a tall Indian man bending over his car's engine, fiddling with something inside. He straightens and turns, and sees me. I immediately start in recognition, because he looks like a cross between the actor Om Puri and a friendly motel owner I met in Montgomery, Alabama. He looks questioningly at me, so I explain: "You look like someone I met in Montgomery, Alabama."

"No," he says, reaching out to shake hands. "I'm John. From LA. We don't know each other, but we can get to know each other here!"

With that, he turns back to his engine with renewed vigour. A couple of minutes later, he shuts the hood, leaps into the car and vanishes.

From the bathroom emerges another Indian, this one unshaven and tiny. Almost petite. He walks lightly over to his vehicle, climbs in, starts it up and rumbles off.

An enormous 18-wheeler truck.

***
On the outskirts of Amarillo, a large sign says:

Bates Motel. Each Room With a Shower. Taxidermy Ahead.

I brake to a stop to marvel. Then I notice the other side, and this is what it says:

Bates Motel. Each Room With a Shower. Knives Sharpened.

Have to stop in this town.

Wine and copper

All I've ever known Marfa for is the lights. Never seen them, but always wanted to see for myself what it's all about. So since I was going to be in this part of the world, I put it on the itinerary -- and in fact I hope to go make an attempt to see the lights tonight.

But as I drive into Marfa, there's an irresistible sight. From a bridge on the highway, I see to my right a young couple sitting at a table in an open lot next to a building, drinking wine in the brilliant mid-afternoon sun. What on earth?

Irresistible. So I turn in past the building -- it has a huge blue sign outside saying, simply, "Cu" -- and around the back to where the couple is looking questioningly at me as I drive up. I open my window and say, I was passing and I saw you guys sitting like this and I had to come ask what this is about. Mind if I take a picture?

Big smiles. Her name is Rebecca, and his is Kent. After the picture, she says, well come in and take a look at the building, and have a glass of wine! It's from a local winery I had passed a few miles out of town. Not bad, as far as this not-quite-wine-expert can judge. Just inside the doorway, rock music blares from an extremely stylish portable CD player -- why do I never find ones like this?

Rebecca walks me through the building. It's a property that's been in her family for a while, and her uncle used to run some kind of restaurant here that closed down. Now she has moved here from Key West, Florida -- quite a commute, that -- to remodel this place and try to set up an eatery of sorts here. Coffee, tea, soups, sandwiches.

Really? Here in Marfa? Will she get enough of a clientele?

Kent, who's actually from nearby Alpine, answers that one. Oh yeah, he says. This has become a sort of art destination now. There's the Chinati Foundation Museum that's quite well known, but also lots of other galleries and studios. Why Marfa? One of those imponderables, I suppose. Warmth, desert climate, blue skies, maybe those are reasons enough.

So now Rebecca wants to cater to those arty visitors, and to people like me.

And while she's showing me around, she says she has these copper paintings by her uncle that she will mount on the wall, and this room will be the Copper Kitchen, and that one the Copper Something Else ... I interrupt to tell her of Bombay's well-known "Copper Chimney". She smiles, and points to her own chimney. We got that one, she says.

And then the (copper) penny drops. The blue sign outside. Yes.

Maybe when they get this place off the ground, Rebecca and Kent should spend a judicious couple of hours every day sitting in the sun and drinking wine at a table, in convenient view of the highway.

Hot spring evening

The drive, if rugged and beautiful, began to seem interminable. 15 miles on pretty much rubble, up and down through canyons and valleys and across hills. I watched the sun with trepidation, desperate to get to where I was going before dark so I could set up my tent. The previous 35 miles were smooth and quick, but the road suddenly turned into this boulder-strewn path. So long along it that I began to wonder if I had missed a turning, and if so what would I do? Or if I had a puncture here, what would I do? No cellphone signal in this far-off part of south Texas, unless there was something from across the Mexican border, and that wasn't likely either. No reasonable town anywhere for miles.

Then I passed, first, a roadrunner on a big stone next to the road. Just sat there watching me, arm's length from my passenger window. Second, a donkey munching placidly by the side of the road. Somehow, the two animals lifted my spirits, and in fact I got here only ten minutes past the donkey.

And I had enough light to put up the tent, then to go soak in a tub fed by one of the hot springs. 110 degrees, the man warned me. Just like I like it.

And now I sit here on a swing under the darkening sky, a clear sky that holds the promise of many stars. A fingernail moon is in the west, just above the shadowy hills.

A guest who has arrived after me stumbles past in the darkness, but then sees me and asks "Hey, that wireless?" I say yes, and he turns to his girlfriend stumbling behind him and says "Hey, they have wireless here!" And she says "Yayyyyy!" and dances a little jig. I tell her that was my reaction. Minus the jig. There's no cellphone signal, but I can use the wireless signal to call anywhere in the world from this back of beyond spot.

I think Fiji is first on the list. Why not?

Oil well blues

Driving in west Texas, I come over a gentle rise in the long straight road I'm on, and what do I see before me? Oil wells. This peculiar apparatus that moves partly round and round, partly up and down, row after row of it, and I drive past them for easily the next 100 miles.

Many are motionless. But many are working. On top, a big arm with an oval "head" moves up and down, like that famous toy with the two long-necked birds that alternate trying to dip into a glass of water. Nearer ground level, two separate smaller arms, also with oval heads, go in circles. That circular motion is translated, piston-like, into the up-down motion of the arm above.

The ones that are moving are strangely, well, moving, though perhaps its my frame of mind. There's a gentle deliberateness to the motion, I imagine almost hypnotic were I not driving past. The lower arms, from one angle and at the point in their motion where their heads are at the top of the circle they describe, look startlingly like a young kid wearing a stetson, or a sombrero. And with the upper arm rising and falling, the whole effect is very like a fond father, bending low to pick up and swing his small child, again and again, using both his arms, never fully straightening up.

I've seen fathers like that. I remember a father like that.

I'm just sittin' here watching the cranes

"The birds are best viewed at dawn or dusk". A little truth I've always known, and that was reinforced in whatever I read about Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge. I made fanciful plans to wake well before dawn and race across the vast Texas plains to make it there by about the time the sun chose to rise.

As these things seem to go with me, the plans remained fanciful. I couldn't get going in the morning, partly because of a late night, and by the time I got on the road, the sun shone bright. Resigned to seeing just a few birds, or none, I drove the two hours to the refuge on ruled-straight roads, keeping pace with a long freight train much of the way.

Muleshoe? In the winter, these 5000+ acres offer a home to migratory sandhill cranes, thigh-high grey creatures on long legs. They come in their tens of thousands, wintering here between October and April, and the best time to see them is in January and February. (Unusually for me, I'm actually in the vicinity of one of these places at the right time of year). February of 1981 was particularly memorable: 250,000 of these cranes turned up then.

But: during the day they fly off to nearby fields to forage for food.

Driving on one of the refuge roads, I find a coyote running along on the verge beside me, not fifteen feet away. Wary of the car, but not enough to flee far. I slow to a stop, and he does too, standing there in the sunlight looking around bemusedly. Then he takes off half-heartedly after something that scurries for cover, amid a little flutter of yipping in the distance. That's when I notice: prairie dogs. Furry rodents, actually, standing atop their burrows all over the area around me. Dozens: some watching me, some watching the fox, some just sunning. Three run to the same mound and settle behind some kind of lip there to watch me, only their snouts visible.

The lady at the office says they counted 55,000 cranes this morning, but they have probably all gone foraging by now. Still, she says, you might want to go watch for a while. Sometimes some of them come back in the middle of the day.

So that's what I do. When I reach the spot beside a small lake, there's a small flock of the birds out in the middle, perhaps 200 metres away. Through my binoculars, I can see them bunched up, I would guess a few hundred at most. But they are calling loud enough for me to hear, a sort of musical throaty croaking sound that seems to reverberate all around me.

Then I notice a few more dropping out of the sky. With the binocs, it's clear: they circle around, getting lower and lower in the sky. Perhaps 20-30 feet up, they stick their legs out and sink more rapidly before going into a stall, and with much flapping of their wings, they land and join their already landed colleagues. Like odd little stick figures with outspread wings, coming in to land. The performance reminds me of the "stacking" of planes at a busy airport, how each one circles around waiting for the lower ones to land before sinking lower themselves. Two land across the lake from the rest, stalk across the water to get home.

And as I watch these few doing this little routine, more come in. And then I raise my binocs and follow the trail of birds, skeins of them trailing higher and higher in the sky, I tilt my head further and further back until I'm looking straight up: birds all the way! Sometimes there are just two in the field of view, sometimes hundreds. And all of them doing that lilting croaking sound, it's no wonder it seems to come from all around.

Then another sound overhead. I tilt my head back again and search for it. Bah! Just a jet far overhead, heading for distant places at 37000 feet.

I sit for 45 minutes, and all through that time there are birds sinking out of the sky to join the flock on the ground. I can't see where they come from: they just seem to appear at a point high above, and circle and drop, circle and drop, till they land. The croaking getting louder and louder. I try some quick sample counting to estimate how many there are, but it's hard, because wherever I look to select a sample, there are more dropping in. Still, at the end of 45 minutes I am willing to bet there are 20,000 birds there on the ground.

And suddenly, no more in the sky. Just as suddenly, utter silence.

And the planes all went down

Check this picture. Go ahead, I'll wait ...

... Done?

Those are hundreds of obsolete US military aircraft, laid out in rows at the David-Monthan AFB in Tucson. This is one of several aircraft "graveyards" across the desert southwest. Earlier we saw one in mojave, home to some 40 or so civilian planes. That place, we could not get close to. But in Tucson, the road we take drives alongside the base's fence, and a short stone's throw away are the planes. (Not that we tried to throw stones, you do understand).

I mean, big transport craft. Bombers. What I think are F16s, or Phantoms (are they the same?). An odd little trainer jet, with a bulbous nose and a short body and a periscope-looking thingie jutting out from the nose. Laid out in nice, precise rows that cover the space from here to what seems like forever. All in the low late evening sun, tinged with gold.

I mean, they could outfit some serious air forces with just the hardware that's mothballed here. "Here you go", I imagine some official saying, "A couple hundred planes for you, another couple hundred for you over there."

Why not do it? Maybe it's cheaper to let them sit here. For me, that's good, because I've never seen anything like this.

Though what happens to India's old military aircraft?

On foot in car-land

Woke up this morning and took a walk. (Needed the exercise). (Probably need much more). Down the road from where I am is a car museum, and I decided to walk there. Some random observations follow.

On the back of the big traffic signs ("JCT 40", for example) are tiny printed notices that I had never noticed before. Among other things, they warn the reader that: "Defacing or theft of this sign is a crime".

For some reason I don't fully fathom, I spent a few minutes speculating on what would happen if the font sizes of the two sides were reversed. "JCT 40" in tiny black font you have to get up close and personal with; the warning in huge luminous letters.

There are two abandoned gas stations, next to each other. Fading paint, peeling plywood on the doors, rusting beams and pipes, these are the signs of abandonment. But there's also a fading wooden sign painted with "Mastercharge" and "BankAmericard"; as far as I know, both names vanished years ago. There are also the pumps. The display says "Cents per Gallon", with three tiny windows showing "6", "9" and "9/10", respectively. Like those clocks that stop at the precise moment of an earthquake, here's a time marker in its own right. Of a time when gas was 69.9 cents to the gallon (I don't have any idea when that was); a time when it was not even conceivable that gas might need a fourth tiny window to tell you its price. When "Dollars per Gallon" was still a fantasy. (These Americans had it good).

Oil prices touched $100 a barrel this past week, an event that has been commented on by everyone from news jockeys to radio talk show hosts to Hillary Clinton. It seems somehow fitting that I should run across these time-warped pumps right now.

A large yard has several cars for sale. Vehicles, I should say. An old US Mail jeep, two fire trucks, a crumbling Cadillac Fleetwood wagon from the glory days of car excess, a Buick Special Dynaflow with a magnificently curved body and a forest of chrome in front, a tractor, an ancient tow truck without an engine ... who's going to buy these?

Answer lies across the street, the car museum.

30+ "classic" cars, beautifully restored, some for sale. A 1970 Plymouth Road Runner ($38,000). 1931 Auburn ($45,000, "purrs!"). Dazzling red 1963 Chevy Corvette, 4 speed, license plate says "2FAST4U". Barge-like 1950s Cadillac Coupe de Ville. 1956 Chevy Hydramatic pickup truck, two trophies in the back (both for the 2006 Run to the Pines Show, 1st place in the pre-1949 Street Rod Trucks sponsored by Bob's Bang Room, and Mayor's Trophy sponsored by Town of Pinetop-Lakeside. I'm still trying to figure how a 1956 model won the pre-1949 segment of the show). 1978 Nissan 280Z, 5 speed ($7,500). 1956 Lincoln Mark II, V8 ($45,000). '57 Chevy, lime-green, license plate says "1FINE57". T10 Chevy 4 speed, among other things it has "Hose of Koler Tangelo Pearl Paint", which is clearly a synonym for "bilious orange paint". A 1940s Chevy Special Deluxe with a copy of Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower on the front seat (I highly recommend his earlier In the Heart of the Sea).

And several editions of the car I once lusted after, the Ford Mustang -- two 1965s, a 1967, a 1972. None for sale.

Walking back, the wind has picked up to gusts of 30-40 mph, and it's uphill a lot of the way, so I'm straining against the wind. I certainly get my exercise. What I'm puzzled about is the clanking sound inside each of the lamp-posts as I pass.

One more point: there and back, over a mile each way, I'm the only person on foot. The owner of the museum even remarks on this -- "I noticed you walking," she says in wonder. "You walked all that way to get here? And you'll walk back? Wow!"

And that reminds me of the remark by a police officer that I quoted here: "Ideally nobody should have ventured out of the hotel on foot in that way but these people come from a different culture due to which they did and the incident occurred."

To the best

In March of '07, I listened to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton speak in Selma, Alabama (here and here).

Those were still early days in the interminable American political process, a time when the knives were hardly sharp as they are now, as the real business -- getting votes -- gets under way.

But even then, Obama struck me as a strong, serious candidate. This is the line I used at the time: At first blush -- and that's all this was, I would certainly not base a decision to vote on this one speech -- at first blush, this is an impressive candidate for President of the US.

Ten months later, Obama has won the Iowa caucus, and on TV yesterday he appeared with the three other Democratic candidates -- Clinton, Richardson and Edwards -- in a sometimes testy debate. This, as the candidates head into the New Hampshire primary. (Please don't ask about caucus vs primary: I have only the vaguest idea and it hardly seems to matter anyway: Obama won Iowa, that's all). Through the debate, Obama seemed uninterested in flinging barbs at the others, genuinely interested in recognizing their contributions and worth, while also acknowledging differences. Sometimes what seemed shades to me, but acknowledging them anyway.

I think it is this quality that has struck a chord in so many. In a time when every politician -- and not just in the USA -- seems only to want to throw mud at opponents, here's a man who seems genuinely to want to steer clear of that. In a time when there are so many divides, and vile rhetoric flung across those divides, here's a man who seems genuinely to want to heal. Not just to make political capital, but because he seems genuinely to believe that this is what he must do.

No doubt it's still early days in the Presidential selection process, and there's still a lot to learn about this man. Even so, he is already drawing support for his message.

"This was the moment," he said after the Iowa victory, "when we finally beat back the politics of fear, and doubt, and cynicism; the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up. This was the moment."

It's that kind of message I heard ten months ago in Selma, and it's the message Obama is taking to the other states in this union. It's a message that has even cynical political commentators wonderstruck. David Brooks writes that the Iowa victory is "one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance"; Obama, he thinks, is "more preoccupied with changing thinking than changing legislation." Bob Herbert writes that Obama "appeal[s] openly and consistently to the best, rather than the worst, in us."

And as always, that makes me think about my own country, and the myriad divisions we have. Most times I can't for the life of me see how we'll bridge them, and especially so when I consider the abuse and vicious rhetoric on every side. (I've flung my share). How do you reconcile people who've called each other "credulous cretin", or "terrorist-lover", or "fascist thug"? How do you reconcile people who bring out the worst in each other?

Where is our leader who will appeal "openly and consistently to the best in us"?

A earplug, please, and that house

Odds and ends from some days on the road:

Found a copy of the China Post lying around somewhere. It had one of those features that newspapers run once a week, a "News Quiz" designed to test how closely you have read the news.

One question was:

Why should we eat oysters for Christmas, according to the article?

Of the four possible answers to choose from, this was one:

Oysters are vermin of the sea.

Another question was:

Why not stuff our stockings with high-tech gadgets?

And of the four possible answers here, this was one:

Such behaviour is religiously unrighteous.

Don't care what the other answers were. These would have been my choices.

***
On the highway somewhere south of Santa Cruz, California, signs warn drivers: "Speed enforced by aircraft". Soon after I see one of those, I also see a small plane taking off from a local airport, climbing sharply. Is it on speed-enforcement duty?

But then there's the sign saying "Seat Belt Law Enforced." Is the plane on seat belt-enforcement duty? If I unbuckle my belt, am I likely to see it suddenly flying alongside my speeding Kia, pilot gesturing sternly at me?

***
Seventeen Mile Drive, north of Carmel, is a spectacular ride along the coast, and past some obviously very pricey real estate. Just for fun, I note down the realtor's number at one of the for-sale houses. I really want to call him, ask the price, and say: "Cool. I'll take it. Would you prefer cash or a credit card?"

One of these days.

Then again, it may be one of those things: if you want to know the price, it ain't for you.

I did this Drive twice in the '80s, with friends. I remember that each time we stopped at a vista point, we were the only Indians. This time, there are at least three or four other cars with Indians at each stop. One has a young couple. At one scenic spot, she grabs the camera and he poses for a picture. Not, as I might have imagined, with his back to the sea, or the scenery. He stands next to the large cans that say "Litter".

Say cheese, somebody.

***
A morning walk in cold but lovely Ojai ends with a descent through thick bushes. We've been warned about poison oak in these parts, so I hold my hands -- apart from my face, my only patches of bare skin -- high as I push through the vegetation. Right at the bottom of the slope, stuck in the bushes, there lies ... of all things, a large headless dog made out of yellow foam. His head is on the ground a few feet away. (That's why he's headless).

When we realize what the flat, partly tarred space in front is, that's when we understand. It's a trap-shooting range. Belongs to a local school. The dog was a target, I suppose until it lost its head.

On the bulletin board are some fading photographs of proud teenagers holding rifles, or aiming them at targets. One sheet of paper lists scores: Sondra Oxley got 10, Hector Villanueva 19, Sarah Boneysteele 3, Sarina Patel 4, Emmo Gates 21. In trap shooting, is a higher score better, or a lower one?

I don't know, but I'm delighted to read the adjacent sheet, titled "Personal Ear Plugs". "Sign up for personally fitted earplugs," it says. "Ms Linda Louder, of Ear Plugs USA, will visit ... and provide this valuable service."

I'm delighted because it's good the notice is up there on the board. If it had been read out to the students, they may not have heard.

***
The space behind the platform where the targets are placed is also overrun with bushes. And unidentifiable litter on the ground. Then I look at it more closely. It's the debris from shooting: bits of clay, bits of plastic, and several large cylindrical cartridge cases.

Days later, I find another discarded cartridge case on the ground, this one a small copper-coloured thing. It's lying on the ground outside a gas station where I stop to fill up. I don't want to know what it's doing there.