All Things Considered - 848 Sirens on I-80

848 Sirens on I-80

At last I was barrelling along through Nevada on a dryer I-80 from Lake Tahoe to Salt Lake City, the winter storms of Donner Pass well behind . I had the radar detectors up full and the CB on loud - Nevada cops seem to be as hungry for fines as a one-armed bandit for quarters, and as trigger-happy with their radar guns as a cowboy full of cheap booze.

I have to acknowledge that I am geographically challenged and not too brilliant in the close up vision department, so I pulled off the freeway at Carlin to calculate my remaining journey on a small print map with the aid of the magnifying glass in my Swiss Army knife.

The radar detectors twittered anxiously at a power cable, and the CB burbled on, and in between the truckers' grumbles about the snow back west, I noticed a woman's voice telling blonde jokes very badly, and issuing enticements - come by for free coffee, a free shower, and steamyconversation with a truckload of pretty girls, with no obligation and all night truck parking.

Curiosity, acute boredom and the lack of a coffee shop in the immediate locality tempted me, and on receiving assurances that the free coffee was decaffeinated, I followed this siren's radioed directions to find the rocks on which I might dash my Buick - a double-width mobile home done out as a bar and house of ill repute, properly licensed by the State of Nevada.

I pulled up outside, and a woman rushed out demanding to know what was going on. This was a promising start for a visit to a sub-culture, but it turned out that she was the barmaid, had been expecting a truck rather than a Buick, and thought I was the private eye her husband had hired to follow her.

I showed her my spectacles lenses and assured her I couldn't follow a map successfully, let alone a woman, and she calmed down and asked me in.

The head siren and radio operator emerged from the back with my coffee. She was a stocky woman in her mid fifties, and reminded me of my father's sister, my auntie Ivy. I had an urge to apologise for not writing a post Christmas thank-you letter for a gift some thirty years ago, a particularly tasteless maroon matching tie and handkerchief set. The handkerchief bit wasn't even real, just three folds of material stitched onto a piece of cardwhich was inserted into the jacket's top pocket.

Auntie Ivy's doppelganger produced a menu, which listed, without prices, the various delights on offer in this establishment. There was an assistant siren on duty today, one Dee-Dee (presumably a nom-de-chambre), a Rubens-esque brunette in a little black Lycra number several sizes too small, and according to auntie Ivy, this lady was equally eager to entertain me. I guessed she was the truckload of girl, and she didn't look very eager. I opened the menu. I couldn't see anything in there that I couldn't have more fun with at home, except perhaps the whipped cream (we don't have an aerosol), and auntie Ivy still stirred nothing in me beyond pre-adolescent guilt over the tie.

However, she pressed on in the face of my obvious lack of enthusiasm, and offered me a tour of the establishment. I met the dog, a depressed and gentle bitch who had apparently been a famous show dog, and who now sniffed sadly at my empty hand, making me feel even more guilty. I saw the radio, a dusty old hand-me-down with an excess of controls, and I saw the bubble bath, a retired prop from a low budget porn movie.

The tour culminated in Auntie Ivy's bedroom, where she sat on the bed and patted for me to sit beside her. She discussed service and price, the latter dropping rapidly from one hundred dollars to sixty, and her hand on my knee, rather than producing any interested twitches in my loins, intensifiedmy childish guilt - I felt sure that any moment she was going to ask solicitously if I was ok at school and still attending bible class.

This was clearly the denouement, so I explained as politely as I could, that really I'd only needed a coffee and some help with reading the map, and retreated to the bar.

The barmaid was a friendly soul, and we figured out between us that I was about half way. She'd been to Paris and South Africa, and liked this area, and told me she went to cowboy poetry readings in Elko, just down the road.

She said, there was a street there where you could do a trick in every house if you had the energy. And then presumably go for an ode or two to the lonesome prairie and Trigger.

I finished my coffee, made my adieu, and left.

Back on the freeway, the clouds blackened overhead, but left the mountains a clear white, stark and beautiful in the hard, late afternoon light.