Nevada bills its segment of Route 50 as The Loneliest Road in America. A fairly bold statement, but Nevada may be right. Route 50 through the state is certainly lonely and a part of me wonders why, in this day and age, more Americans aren’t crowding into the state and onto Route 50 to experience the novelty of the loneliness, only to be left sitting in the bogged down barely moving traffic wondering where the lonely road is or was.
But for whatever reason they don’t and I’m left alone hurtling down the road at 60 or 70 miles an hour watching as the faraway mountains slowly, oh sooooo verrrry slooooowwwly, creep towards me when a second thought crowds out the first and I wonder what it must of been like for the first pioneers to WALK across this immense flatness.
And I think I would have lost my mind.
I’ve booked a room at The Cozy Mountain Motel in Austin Nevada for the night because it’s gonna be too cold to camp again and after driving down a steep, scary, guardrail-less mountain road (yes, I finally got to the damn distant mountains) I come into the little town of Austin. It’s early afternoon and I’m hungry. All I’ve eaten all day are some cashews and tangerine slices and as I drive I see only a couple possibilities for food- on the right is a bar/restaurant, at the west end of Austin is a gas station, and The Owl Club.
I need gas and ice so I check out the gas station first. Nothing. Just the normal junk food crap you find in any gas station anywhere in America. I gas up, get ice, and go to The Cozy Mountain Motel to check in and then I walk up the street to the bar/restaurant I saw coming in and when I get there I see that it’s been closed by order of the fire marshal.
That leaves The Owl Club.
When I walk in the guy behind the bar looks a little surprised that anyone came in, especially a stranger. There’s no one else in the place and as I sit, I ask for a beer and maybe a menu? Now, he really looks uncomfortable. He hands me a can of beer and tells me that if I want something to eat it’ll take about twenty minutes for the fryer to heat up and I say, well what if I don’t want anything fried, and he says that the only things on the menu are pizza and french fries. And I would have to buy a whole pizza so I tell him not to bother, I’ll just drink my beer and he looks relieved.
And that’s the beginning to one of the most interesting afternoons of my trip.
During the course of the next few hours I’ll learn that-
-Dan (I never did ask his name so let’s call him Dan) has only been the bartender for about a week. He’d been picked up on Route 50 by the The Owl Club owner as he was walking to Austin from the next town down the road (about 30 miles away) and during the ride he and The Owl Club owner strike a deal whereby Dan will work for tips and keep the door open while the owner is working his day job and in return Dan gets a room over the bar
-that everything, and I mean everything, in the bar is for sale- clothes, pictures, books, typewriters, bikes, shoes-it’s like a bar inside a yard sale
-that Dan is patiently tracing a picture of a church
-that the first “Nickel with a Pickle back” is free to new customers. When a second patron comes in, a very big, very jiggly woman and orders a Mountain Dew and a shot of Tequila, Dan remembers the free drink offer and since he and the very big, very jiggly woman are going to have one, he pours three
-that a “Nickel with a Pickle back” is a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of pickle juice and that it must be an acquired taste
-that there are only about 80 people still living in Austin. Unless you count the 20 or so ranchers who come into town to pick up their mail- this from the third patron to come in, a much smaller woman clutching her four dollars for her beer
-that aren’t any jobs really and that the closest grocery store is over a hundred miles away
-that even with all of this these people are happy
oceandoggy.com 