I am still near the town of Lake Village, Arkansas.  I took an eight mile trip out to see the nearby state park that is located on the banks of Lake Chicot.  It is a very pretty little park, with perhaps 60 camp sites, most of which are set up for RV’s with water, power and sewer hookups – and free showers in the bath houses scattered around the camp site.  It is so attractive that I decided to stay for a couple of days, living outside instead of in those cramped, isolated cells they call hotel rooms.  The hotel rooms are convenient, but it sure feels better being outside with the trees, grass, lake, birds and raccoons.  The weather is near perfect except for the feeling that it might rain.  I decided to give it a try.

This was my first experiment with my new “bed invention” for the back of my Subaru Forester.  I prepared for this possibility by making a wooden bed frame that folds up flat(ish) when traveling so that the seats are in their normal configuration.  When the back seats of the back seats are folded down my bed unfolds to create a flat sleeping surface extending from the cargo hatch to the back of the front seat. The head end has no support from the car, so it is cantilevered about 18 inches. This creates a 24 inch wide, 79 inch long bed. Since I am only 77 inches long, I fit!  I purchased a self-inflating mattress that just fits this platform.  Perfect.  Getting in and out of bed in the tight space was a bit of a worry, but it turns out to be easy.  The cargo hatch operates from the key fob, so once inside I can push a button to close it, and another to open it in the morning.  In the morning it feels a bit like being in a space ship or something, with the motor whirring as the hatch slowly opens the “air lock” to the outside. I can open the moon roof to get a nice view of the sky while lying on my back in bed.  Nice.  

In addition to trying out the bed, this was the first trial of my new Biolite_tm stove that uses a handful of twigs as fuel.  The heat unit is vertical cylinder about 10 inches high five inches in diameter.  It is a crazily high tech device considering it just burns sticks to boil water or cook a meal. It has a lithium battery that runs a fan for the fire and can be used to charge a cell phone.  I charged my cell phone on it this morning.  You fill the burner compartment with small pencil sized sticks, light a fire in the burn basket and turn on the fan.  The fan has multiple settings so you can adjust the burning rate of the fire.  A pot sits on top, or a large grate can be used as a grill.  There is a thermocouple in the burn pot that creates electricity to charge the battery, run the fan, and change a cell phone or other device.  It comes with a light that plugs into the battery, providing lighting if desired. The battery runs the light, the fire doesn’t have to be burning.  It works, and is kind of fun to play with.  The only down side so far is that it takes more than one load of sticks to boil a pot of water, meaning I have to add sticks from time to time.  This is not a problem when just heating the pot because I can just lift the pot off of the stove, but I think it might be very difficult when using the grill attachment. 

I made a bit of a mistake on my second night. I thought I put all the food out of reach of critters, but about an hour after turning in I heard noises in camp. Peering out of my car with my flashlight there were lots of glowing eyes! Four raccoons were exploring the things I left out on the table, checking them out and then throwing them off onto the ground. In the morning I discovered that I hadn’t been so careful, they found my box of crackers. My dumb fault, of course something would come by to get them. I was lucky it was just a band of inquisitive raccoons.

Having driven across about 2/3 of the USA and finding many towns in economic collapse, I am really wondering what is going on.  A persistent question is; “Why are these towns no longer needed?” It appears that perhaps fifty years ago they were vibrant, thriving communities.  That would have been around the time of the Viet Nam war, the time when my generation thinks about when we consider “how things were.”  Yesterday I was talking to an old friend, even older than me, who was telling me about a trip that he took into America when he was a young sprout of 21 or so.  He talked about all of the fun towns, the fun bars filled with music, the wonderful restaurants with amazing local dishes, and the pretty girls.  He expressed surprise that I wasn’t reporting on those things.  Instead, I am describing towns that were like that when he took his trip, but now are derelict buildings with the roofs caved in and the walls falling down.  It was, but it no longer is.

The cause of the decline seems pretty clear in the town of Lake Village.  Lake Village is in the middle of a huge agricultural area created by silt deposited by periodic flooding of the Mississippi river. A hundred and fifty years ago the land was worked by slaves.  That changed after the Civil War, but the labor needs didn’t.  Share cropping became the new form of cheap labor because while the share croppers received part of the profits, they did so with little or no outlay of money for the landowners.  It was all income and very little outgo, perhaps less expensive than slaves in many ways. 

This form of labor-intensive farming, coupled with limited transportation, resulted in the need for small local communities.  As mechanization took hold in the fields, the need for a large labor force went away, with the concurrent abandonment of the towns. That might account for much of the decrease. However, it clearly is much more than merely the decreased need for agricultural labor – there was a decreased need for all types of local labor as the economy shifted to “off shoring” jobs by moving production of all types of goods to less expensive countries.  We became a service economy. Things that were made here were first moved to Japan, then to China and many other low income countries.  As an example, when I was in Viet Nam in 2006 I visited some garment factories making many of the name brand clothes sold throughout America.  They were being made by hand because labor was so inexpensive; a high-paid garment worker received $1 a day for 16 hour days, many of them standing at their looms the entire time.  They worked seven days a week, for $365 a year!  I won’t mention the brands that were being made, but they were all well-known brands what you wouldn’t think to associate with what I considered labor exploitation.  There was no possibility for workers in the USA to compete with these wages, therefore they get nothing instead of almost nothing.

The vast tree plantations tell a similar story of reduced need for labor.  It the old dayss, trees were cut, brushed and bucked by lumberjacks. Now the trees are all the same size and are harvested with huge machines that grab onto a tree, clip it off at the base, slide a delimber up the tree, buck it into lengths and load it all on a log truck. There is almost no labor involved.  A few specialized machines and trained operators can log these vast man-made forests – very little labor is required.

In addition to noticing what is not here, I have been noticing two interesting situations.  One is the ubiquitous Dollar General stores.  They seem to be everywhere.  If a town has any kind of store, at least one of them will be a Dollar General located in a parking lot near the cluster of hotels, but not in a mall – they are almost all identical looking stand-alone stores.  I see very few of those high priced, fancy stores such as Walmart, but I do see a lot of Dollar General stores. I am only seeing what is on my thin path across the nation, but if what I see is any indication I would have to say that America is on a race to the bottom.

The other thing that is interesting is huge number of utility trucks and workers every place I go.  They fill the hotels and there trucks are just about everywhere there is a “where.”  I have spoken to a few of them and the story is always the same, they are “stringing wires.”  It looks like perhaps America is in the process of being rewired. Our electrical and telecommunications networks are being changed in big ways.  I don’t know what this means, or what the consequences might be for the future, but it is clear that something BIG is up.

I am curious what I find as I work my way further south-east and then up the eastern seaboard, or whatever path I end up taking. Wherever it leads, it is time to do the laundry again. 

My couple of days in the park have been quite nice.  Just a peaceful time to read a little, write a little, watch the birds and take short hikes.  I chat with other campers now and then, but most of the time I am just being by myself.   I hope to get out my sketch book this afternoon to practice sketching.  There are not many interesting buildings here. Therefore I am going to have to move from mostly rectangular shapes to more natural, rounded ones.  I am a bit nervous about that.  However, I can always throw my failed sketched away – nobody needs to know.

The states are getting smaller out here, I drove all the way across Arkansas to a little town of Lake Village in about five hours. It has happened once again, the “business district” consisting of the usual hotels and service stations cluster around the off-ramp to the interstate highway. The historical town of Lake Village is located on the banks of Lake Chicot, a 22 miles (35 km) oxbow lake that was formerly the main channel of the Mississippi River.

Lake Chicot is a very beautiful lake with many opportunities for boating, fishing and just enjoying the great outdoors – except that it is almost completely cut-off from the public by hundreds of high-end houses facing, each having their own private dock and beach. There are no fences out here, but it is very clear that the actual beach frontage is private property. There is a small fishing spot immediately next to town, but the next biblically accessible beach is in the State Park located about ten miles north of town.

The town of Lake Village appears to have been almost entirely abandoned fifty or more years ago. The stores are crumbling, with roofs fallen in and walls collapsing. A few businesses remain open. I open ones included the telephone company, a medical appliance store, a fancy dress store, and a bait shop. The best kept up building in town is a large catholic church. There is no place to eat, no grocery store, no pharmacy, no service station – basically no town. By this time I was getting hungry, and having been told by the hotel that the restaurant next door was acceptable I went there looking for dinner. Unfortunately, it was closed as were all of the other eating opportunities except for a McDonalds. I went to the grocery store across the street and got a couple of things from their deli. Not good, but at least I got something to eat.

It is interesting to see how many towns seem to have been wiped out of existence by the introduction of high speed highways. The towns lose their economic value and just dry up and blow away – along with the community that they supported. I find them to be very sad, but wonder if my sadness is misplaced – if they are no longer economically and socially necessary perhaps it is just time for them to revert to nature. Whatever services they provide much be available elsewhere at a better price, and that is just the way it goes. Perhaps my sadness is just some sort of misplaced nostalgia for a time that never was. For example, the Wikipedia description of Lake Chicot says that it used to be highly polluted with mud from the runoff from the agricultural fields around the lake. That has been fixed and now the lake is better, but the towns are gone. Maybe the issue is that the slaves are no longer in the fields because of modern machinery and there just isn’t a need for a town.

I am finally getting really tired of living in motel rooms. I feel like a rat that is placed back in my cage at the of the day. The rooms are all nearly identical, all of them smelling like cleaning products, all with lovely views of parking lots and garbage cans. My plan this morning is to go to the State Park and see if I can get a camp site for a couple of nights. That means I will need to test out my new in-car bed and perhaps my little wood burning stove that makes electricity to charge my phone. It will undoubtedly be an adventure. It also means that it will be a couple of days before I can get back to writing these little stories. I will be forced to use a pencil and paper for a bit.

I am attracted to the name “Arkadelphia,” it makes me chuckle because it seems to be a take off on Philadelphia, which means brotherly love. Delphia means brother, I wonder what Arkadelphia is supposed to mean? Perhaps it was just a playful name.

I found the location of the hotel in Arkadelphia to be yet another boring cluster of hotels, fast food joints and service stations near a freeway off-ramp. However, a quick trip around the vicinity revealed a much different picture. I took a short loop into the country and found the area had many upper-middle class homes nestled in the woods. It is within a few miles of a nice lake with a State Park offering camping and fishing experiences. Arkadelphia is the home of a state university. In this case, while the traveler encounters more of the same “industrial” conditions of crowded cookie-cutter services, the residents likely experience beautiful and enriching environment not far from the big city of Little Rock.

The trip east across Arkansas surprised me because of how open and unpopulated the country side is. The first 120 miles were through vast conifer plantations, interspersed with what appeared to be woodlands of hardware trees. Logging trucks were common on the highway, carrying loads of logs all about twelve inches in diameter. Apparently they harvest the plantations when the trees reach a foot or so in diameter. I also encountered truckloads of 2×4 lumber. I suppose there must be stud mills (lumber mills turning logs into 2×4 studs for housing) in the area, but I didn’t encounter any. I also expect to have found pulp mills, or possibly electrical plants using the wood from the plantations for fuel. However, I didn’t see any signs of any of these types of processing plants on the road that I took.

The road across Arkansas traveled over a series of “hills,” that seemed more like undulations that hills. It was basically flat county with a bit of ripple to the surface. I encountered very few towns, it was mostly unpopulated country with small clearings in the forest for a few homes along the way. If the route I took was at all representative of the rest of the state, it looks to me like it is almost all forest land with a few small towns and a couple of large cities. I hadn’t envisioned Arkansas as a massive forest, but that is what I encountered.

The eastern sixty miles or so of my trip across Arkansas was through very large farms growing some hay, a lot of corn, and crops that were unfamiliar to me. It reminded me a lot of the farmland in the Sacramento Valley north of Sacramento because of the size of the fields, I guess that they are about a section (square mile) each.

The drive across Arkansas was singularly monotonous with very little of interest. It was all trees, farm land, house every few miles, interspersed with a tiny town every twenty or thirty miles. I settled down an drove just to get to something, anything, more interesting.

I seem to have stalled out in Magill, spending two nights here and considering a third. It is not that there is anything special about this town, it is just that I need a break from driving. It is time to do my laundry, catch up on some email traffic, attend a System Safety Meeting, practice drawing and just plain kicking back for a bit.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the trip for the past couple of days has been the changes to the environment. Shortly after leaving Hereford a couple of days ago I noticed that the colors had changed, grass became green instead of brown, and the ground was no longer visible through the foliage. It quickly changed from slightly greener grass to large green lawns being mowed by big riding lawnmowers and forests with trees that formed a wall next to the road with their leaves reaching to the ground, preventing a view into the forest. I was suddenly past the desert and the plains, I was now in a land of summer rain and high humidity.

I now see squashed armadillos on the road and turtles making their way across the highways – apparently drivers avoid turtles but not armadillos. The double yellow “no passing” markings are no longer taken as the law, or even sound advice> Cars pass me regardless of the road markings, or the obvious blind corners – I guess there usually aren’t head-on crashes so it is safe to do so. The radio stations have also changed with the airwaves being dominated by extremely conservative political commentary or fundamentalist religious instructions. There are no longer any sources of moderate opinion – it seems to be all about the government being corrupted by the liberals and the impending end-time as described in Revelations. I set my radio on “scan” in the hopes of finding some relief, but without much success – it is all extremely conservative talk shows except for an occasional music station that either plays western music or light rock.

My first night in Magill was at an upscale Best Western where I got one of the last rooms, a big suite. It was quite nice, cheery and relaxing. That was not available for my second night due to a wedding and graduation. I moved down the street to an American Inn that was slightly less expensive, but much less attractive. I find this hotel to be quite drab and depressing but am not sure why. Perhaps it is partly to do with being an “enclosed” hotel with doors that open to long dark hallways instead of motels that open to the parking lot. Perhaps it is the lack of an elevator, forcing me to lug my bags up the stairs. The rooms are alright – kind of small but not unusually so. I think it has to do with the color scheme of green walls, dark carpets and bare walls. It feels like every step possible to reduce cost while meeting some minimum acceptable standard has been taken. No artwork, no open spaces, no bright colors, chipped furniture and stained carpets set the tone. Not really bad, but not very good either. The $20 a night saving is not worth the feeling of depression that comes with it. My variations in hotel accommodations reminds me of the tour that Mary Jo and I took in China in 2006. Our tour included a range of accommodations that might be described as varying from 1 star or less up to an occasional 5 star. I think they added in the 5 star ones to give a little relief. That is a bit like what I am doing. I can tolerate some pretty basic situations as long as I once in awhile get something a little better.

There are few dining opportunities in Magill. There are a couple of fast food places along the main highway, a home town cafe on 1st street and a pizza place. The home town cafe has low ceilings, dull lighting, large black and white photographs of people taken a hundred years ago, and a couple of huge stuffed bass fish. The menu tends toward catfish, grits, and other things that are not in my normal diet – obviously the local food is changing character as I travel into the south. The pizza parlor has more “normal” food. I ordered an 8″ pizza and a beer but got a 14 inch pizza at the same price, complements of the waitress I think. I could see that the six waitresses were noticing me as an outsider, they sort of huddled and glanced my way as they rather obviously talked about me. Every one of them found a reason to help me at my table, offering a little flirt as they departed. I asked one of them where I might find a bar. She responded with “Darlin’, you are now in the Bible Belt and bars don’t exist here due to local ordinances. They are an important part of a town.” I guess restaurants can serve alcohol, but there are no bars or saloons in this part of the world.

I am torn between staying here another day, perhaps going to see where those giant fish came from, or getting back on the road to see what adventures might come my way. I don’t expect many adventures in Magill but it seems that adventures come when least expected.

My daily activities have settled into a bit of a delayed writing schedule. For example, I arrived in Hereford on the afternoon of May 16, got signed in to a motel, took a little nap to rest after several hours of driving, went out to explore the town and have dinner, then read a bit about aliens (the book I purchased at the UFO store in Roswell), and sleep. There was no time to write. In the morning I got up, meditated, worked on my email traffic, wrote about what happened two days before at Boswell. This all took took so long that I missed the complementary breakfast, and I was back on the road arriving at Altus Oklahoma on the afternoon of the 17th. It is now the morning of the 18th and I am writing about Hereford on the 16th.

I suppose this is more information than you want, but I have gotten some comments questioning the difference between the dates in the title versus the posted dates. The reason is that I want to be out of a location before I write about my experiences there to make sure that nothing noteworthy is missed. My next opportunity to write about a location is two days after my arrival. And then of course there are those days that I just don’t get around to writing at all. By the way, it has been pointed out to me that there is no way to write to me, or make comments on the postings. Apparently that is correct, those options used to be available but I see that they disappeared – I have no idea when or how. I also don’t know how to fix the web site to allow for that, I created the site but have long ago forgotten how to fix it. You can always drop me a line at my email address of charles_hoes@hoes-eng.com if you have something to say or a question.

Today, May 18, is my birthday. I think I have now officially tipped into “old” at 76. I have close friends that are many years older than me that don’t act “old” – so I realize that for some lucky souls being “old” is a matter of opinion, I seem to be one of those lucky ones and don’t believe it. I do recognize however that for another groups of people their bodies might be starting to force a different opinion upon them, and they have to act old- or perhaps they actually die like my wife did so unexpectedly. Life’s a bitch as they say. In any case, at 76 I don’t think I can continue the fantasy that I have unlimited time to do things, and put off important tasks until later. Later just might not ever come. Of course that was always the case, and I knew it, but acted in many ways as if I am immortal. I find I am now spending some time trying to to figure out those things that seem most important to accomplish so I can put my time and attention there, rather than just twiddle away the days thinking that there will be plenty of time in the future. Of course, that doesn’t imply that there is anything wrong with twiddling away the days as long as that is an intentional activity – inaction, leisure, having fun and just doing nothing are all fine options. I just don’t want to accidentally use up my allotted time because of not paying attention.

The drive from Boswell to Hereford was an uneventful, 75 miles and hour trip across the high plains of northern Texas. Hour after hour of more of the same, until it changed. As I neared Hereford I began to notice large black blotches on the otherwise uniform light brown of the grasses and low bushes. The blotches were big BIG, apparently miles across. As I approached they stated to gain some definition and I could tell that they were cattle, my guess is that they were black angus – packed into the giant pens of several big feed lots. As I was driving next to the feed lots I could see some extra details. The cattle appeared to be able to have five or six feet of space between each other, standing on dark (almost black) ground covered in manure – not a green thing in sight. The large feed lot enclosures were crossed fenced, forming many smaller pens holding perhaps 500 animals each (I didn’t count, so that is just a wild guess). I couldn’t help but think about the plight of these animals confined for their entire life. Here and there were piles of manure with one or two steers standing on top getting a better view of their world. The smell was surprisingly mild, even when I finally got down wind of the enclosures. Not pleasant, but certainly tolerable.

I took a little time to drive around town (Hereford has a population of approximately 30,000 people) to see if I could find “the town.” I found that the two intersecting freeways turned into four lane, 30 mph roads with a scattering of businesses on each side. There was an old, dilapidated mall on one of the roads, and businesses similar to that found at my motel on the other. Most of the businesses were open and still doing business, it was clearly not a ghost town in the making. My impression was that it is a busy place that is treated more like a factory than a home. I had the uncomfortable feeling of being inside of some sort of giant, inhuman machine rather than being in a community. The spaces outside of the “business” areas were largely filled with nice, neat homes, schools and churches.

After getting settled into my small, but functional, motel room I went searching for a place to have a drink with locals, and a place for dinner. The big sign in the parking lot for the “Great Wall Buffet” gave a pretty good clue about that option – it was closed, boarded up, and falling apart. Just down the street I noticed a sign for a BBQ place. Being in Texas I thought I should at least try BBQ once on my trip. The door was open, but once inside it was clearly not operating. However, there was a lady sitting in a glassed in booth in the middle of the entrance to the restaurant – she was running a small business of cashing payroll checks inside of the larger business of the restaurant. Weird! She said that the restaurant was closed for a few days, but was still in business. When I asked her for a place with local food she suggested two steak houses, one that served alcohol and one that didn’t. I picked the one that did.

I found a nice steakhouse about a 1/2 mile down the main drag from my motel. It was pretty much like steak houses anywhere, a large room full of tables and a separate lounge area with a bar, some tables and a couple of booths. The bar had three people sitting at it and a couple of tables were filled with men talking and obviously enjoying some time at the end of their working day. I sat at the bar, between a young (20’s something) girl and a middle aged man (named “Frank” for the purposes of this story). One of the men at a nearby table caught my attention because he was wearing sparkling clean, ironed, worn, western wear. A crisply pressed shirt, ironed Levi’s, a clean (expensive) cowboy hat – and big spurs. The clean, pressed clothes and big hat marked him as “management” to me, but the spurs confused me. “Management” usually works in offices and rides around in pickups, and walks around – neither of which demand spurs.

Losing all control of my mind, I leaned over to the young lady and asked her what the deal with the spurs was (I should have known better)- I was curious about what sort of job the guy does that requires spurs, why does he wear them in the restaurant or are they just for show? Her response was to loudly holler to the guy with the spurs, saying something along the lines of, “Hey Jim, this fella wants to know why you are wearing spurs.” Holy cow, that was subtle! So now I was thrown into another really uncomfortable situation. Jim just looked at me quizzically, but didn’t say a word. Everyone in the bar heard that question and it became silent for a bit until Frank, sitting a couple of stools down from me said, “He is a cowboy.” That took the heat out of the moment and everyone went back to whatever they were doing.

I then said that I knew he was a cowboy, I could tell by his clothes, his hat, and his spurs – but my question was “why do they need cowboys here?”. I told him I saw the stock yards, but it didn’t look like they would need horses for that sort of operation. Frank then told me that it is still necessary to use horses to move the cattle around in the yard, it is still a very important job. That got us onto a very interesting conversation.

I quizzed Frank about whether or not he grew up there, which he didn’t. He grew up in California, went to school there and decided to move to Texas, landing in Hereford a few years ago. He said it was the best move of his life – Hereford is a very good place for business. It turned out that Frank is the owner of the restaurant, and of a very large, expensive hotel just behind the restaurant. The restaurant had been built by a well-to-do cattleman as a gift to his wife who just wanted to own such a place. She didn’t have a clue about how to manage it, so it quickly went broke and they had a bit of a “fire sale” to get out of it – which is where Frank came into the picture. He found it was an amazing deal, bought it and turned it into a success, soon taking over the hotel in similar fashion.

Frank explained that the county is very rich, with amazingly profitable businesses everywhere. He said there are something like 40,000 people in the county (30,000 in town and the rest scattered around),but did an annual business of 14 billion dollars! That is about $300,000 for each man, woman and child in the county. He said that almost everyone that was doing anything were multimillionaires, and some billionaires.

On hearing that I scrunched up my face, saying it sure didn’t look like that. He laughed and told me it is their little secret. They purposefully keep it like that. Their houses are nice, but not pretentious (which I had already observed) and all of wealth of the area in terms of agricultural production (with the exception of the feed lots) was far from the roads where it is not visible to the casual observer, such as myself. I asked about the crops, suggesting that perhaps it was for growing feed for the lots. He laughed and agreed, but then said they grow just about everything. He listed off a long list of crops (which I promptly forgot), and said that a big part of their business is growing seeds because they are so isolated that there are no other varieties to cross breed with the ones they are growing. The market for the seeds is global, my guess is that many of the seed companies near Davis California use this area to produce the seeds that they develop in the many greenhouses located near the University of California, Davis which is known worldwide for its expertise in crop development.

It turned out that my initial impression of it being a dull, dirty, kind of nasty place to live was totally wrong – in fact, perhaps that was a ruse to ensure that they are left alone, left to making their fortunes in their own way without much intervention. Franks said that as long as they have water and ground it is a gold mine. It reminded me a little bit of Coober Pedy in Australia. The main source of income in Coober Pedy is opal mining, highly prized valuable opals. All of the opal business is transacted with cash, with suitcases full of cash from Asian customers. Because of the high risk of getting robbed when carrying millions of dollars around in a suitcase, they hide in plain sight. They purchase expensive, fancy cars and strip the bodies off, replacing the bodies with beat up old ones – so they look just like “desert rat” vehicles, but run like new. All of the housing, their clothes, the way of life centers around being rich but looking poor. All except for their underground houses (literally underground) that few outsiders get to see. Hereford seems to be taking a similar approach.

This discussion really made me start to wonder just how much of what I having been seeing is real, and how much is a cover – a ruse to be allowed to do what they want because nobody really knows what that is. I wonder how deeply this ruse goes, if it exists at all.

I realize that I need to put dates on these posts because I don’t always get to them in a timely manner, but also because I am starting to lose track of the calendar as the days move along. They are all starting to turn into a bit of a blur. If I don’t date them I will get my posts even more mixed up than they are now. It seems like I should have all of the time in the world to write these little notes, but amazingly that doesn’t seem to be the case. For example, it is now the morning of the 15th and it is the first opportunity I have had to post something about the 13th, I was “busy” all day yesterday.

Saturday the 13th found me heading almost due east toward Carrizozo. Having left Quemado rather late in the morning, I was hoping for a late breakfast/early lunch somewhere along the way. The next town on the route sounded promising for it was called Pie Town. Luckily, Pie Town lives up to its name – it has two restaurants (and nothing much else) that both claim to make the best pies in Pie Town. I chose the one that seemed to be more confident about their claim.

Unfortunately I didn’t write the name of the restaurant down and I forgot it. However, it is an Indian term meaning “The Family.” That sounded good to me. It was a nice, homey little place with four or five tables and a little outdoors seating if desired. Local art and trinkets displayed on the walls and a case were for sale. Funny signs on the walls gave a little humorous advice and it felt good. It was packed (meaning there were eight customers) and only one open table. A nice waitress immediately approached me. I asked for a cup of coffee and a menu – which she promptly delivered. I noticed that she had a large leather belt with a big sheathed knife on her side. Nice knife, pretty pearl handle. And then I waited, and waited … and waited. Eventually the real waiter (the first lady was apparently a customer who helped me out as she was leaving) came by and was surprised that I hadn’t ordered yet. (He also had a big sheathed Buck knife on his side – as did all of the others that seemed to be associated with the business). He took my order with the comment, “Wouldn’t have mattered, your order wouldn’t have come up on the list by now in any case.”

Having plenty of time to observe, it became clear that the cook did one order at a time. One table had six people at it. They all ordered at the same time, but the first to order got his food before the meal for the second was started, and so on. The result was that about half way through the table had one person finished eating, two working on their meal, and three still waiting to be served. It was quite awhile before the last had been served, and the cook could go on to the next table with two gentlemen waiting for theirs – and mine later in line. The waiter was pointing out that there was still a table ahead of me so my ordering late had no impact upon when my food might be delivered.

While I was waiting another couple came in and asked if they could share my table, which was of course fine with me. I got to talking to the gentleman with the normal lead-in of, “Are you from around here?” Turns out that they moved to Pie Town three years ago. They lived in North Carolina. Wanting to get away from it all for a trip the purchased a large travel vehicle (I am not sure if it was a motor-home or a trailer), and headed out just as Covid locked down the nation.

Rather than go back to their home, they found a piece of property in Pie Town that had a working well, a septic system, electricity and several acres of land. For $60,000 they had a place to park their rig and wait out the pandemic. While waiting they converted a little shed that was on the property to a Tiny House, sold their travel rig, and set up home. They are now planning on buying a used shipping container to turn into a guest house. They seem to be having a ball, enjoying the isolation (they can just see the neighbors house on the horizon), and new way of life. He said that the biggest down side is that it is 100 miles to the grocery store – I guess they are careful to buy what they need when there. I eventually got my breakfast, and it was “fair.” I didn’t get any pie because they only sold full, large sized, pies – and I had no way to deal with that.

I found out that the real claim to fame of Pie Town is that it is on the Mexico to Canada hiking trail that follows the ridge of Continental Divide – located about a half mile east of Pie Town. This is a place to get something to eat, it has a little hostel outside of town with beds and showers, and perhaps there are a few provisions to be had, and a point of contact with “the outside.” It is a place not to be missed and enjoyed by those on the trail – apparently a nice pie just about hits the spot after enough time on the trail. The six folks eating at the table when I came in were hikers.

The road went right through the middle of the array, giving me a good view of them. Of course I had to take the side trip to the visitor center located a few miles off of the highway. The visitor center had a nice display in the building and a walking path around the administration buildings. I found nothing that I didn’t already know, and looking at the outside of two story brick buildings wasn’t all that exciting. However, there was a walking path that got very close to one of the dishes, so I did that and got a nice photo (shown above).

Continuing along I came upon a sign pointing out that I was very close to the site of the Trinity experiment. Trinity was code for the first detonation of “The Gadget.” a nuclear device conceptually similar to its devastating cousin, “Fat Man.” This was the first full sized demonstration that the idea of a nuclear bomb would work. I kind of wanted to turn and visit the site, but put it off. Later on I found that tours are infrequent, and that even when they are it requires driving about 20 miles through the desert and a lot of time. Besides, what do you find when you get there? Nothing but more desert and a small stone obelisk. As much of a nerd as I am, I elected to skip that tour.

I soon saw an odd river off in the distance. I wondered what it might be because I hadn’t noticed any rivers in this part of the world, and it seemed oddly dark. It turned out to be a huge lava flow that the highway crossed in getting to my destination for the night of Carrizozo, located immediately east of the White Sands Missile Range. I had been driving along the northern edge of the missile range since a little after Pie Town. All of the accessible parts of the missile range were located many miles to the south so I elected to skip whatever that might offer.

Carrizozo is yet another city on the verge of turning into a ghost town. Not so long ago it was obviously a large, bustling metropolis with a wide variety of businesses, many nice homes, and all that could be wanted in a pretty city in the desert. Now almost all of the businesses are shuttered, with broken windows, collapsed roofs and broken walls. Dust and debris inhabit the town these days. About the only businesses that appeared to be open were art galleries scattered around among the shuttered buildings. Unfortunately, my timing was very poor and all of the galleries were closed. Just about the only businesses still operating besides the art galleries were two motels, two gas stations and a run-down restaurant at the intersection of major highways running north-south and east-west near the edge of town. I was told that the two restaurant choices were the one at the intersection and a pizza place not far away. I first went to the restaurant, but it was so dismal that I just couldn’t bring myself to sit down – better to snack out of my “emergency” supplies for dinner than eat there. I then went to the pizza place located in what had once been a nice big home. Much to my surprise the pizza was excellent, perhaps the best I have ever had. What a treat. The place was sparse, rather uncomfortable, and not what you might call “homey” – but clean and ok, with great pizza!

I was given an amazing tour of the Mirror Laboratory at the University of Arizona today. What a place!!! It totally amazed me, and I don’t amaze all that easy with technology.

It is a bit to get an idea of scale in these photos. You can see the guy working in the photo to the right. The photo on the right shows them preparing the mold getting ready for casting. This step should be done sometime around September. The mirror on the left is a “small” mirror being tested for shape. You can’t quite see them, but there are three more much larger ones in storage in the background. The one on the right is for the Giant Magellan Telescope. That telescope will have 7 of these gigantic mirrors mounted on a single mount, just like a “regular” telescope. The mirror shown is the last of the set. The others have been cast and are in storage. The glass takes five years to get, so you kind of have to plan ahead a bit.

I don’t have the time or space to go into the details here, you can Google it if you are interested in the future telescope, or this mirror lab. This is the one place in the world where this sized mirror can be made. The mirrors are mostly hollow so aren’t nearly as heavy as would be the case without the process used here. It casting process is a bit complex, but basically the white structures being placed in the right hand photo are the places that DON’T get glass, there is a small space between these that get filled with the glass, resulting in a honey comb once they wash the white stuff out. There is also a layer of glass on the bottom and another on the top. The top pieces forms the parabolic shape of the mirror. To cast it, fist sized chunks of glass are arranged on top of the white things, which are different lengths to approximate the final shape of the surface. The glass is melted while the whole thing spins. Some of the glass runs down between the white forms, and some stays on top to create the mirror surface. The spinning makes the glass form the desired bowl shape. Once it has finished melting and filling in the spaces, it is slowly (weeks) cooled. Then it has to be polished and finished.

The process for making these relatively light weight, huge, mirrors started around 1980 when the inventor took a couple of wife’s pyrex dishes, broke them into pieces, and melted them to see if they would form a single, optically pure piece of glass. It worked, and over the period of more than a decade or so they came up with this process of spin forming hollow mirrors.