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Sixty days on the road.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

To Get Acrost


Needles Today











From my front door at the Budget Inn in Needles, a freight train heads west from the Needles Station.  Five diesel engines pull about fifty flatcars, loaded with containers, headed for Barstow, then Los Angeles.  Another engine pushes from the back.  Six engines are needed for the two thousand feet trains must to climb to South Pass in the next fourteen miles.  It’s the same grade I coasted down to this sleepy town along the Colorado River. 




When I had reached South Pass, elevation 2,600, yesterday’s day’s work was finally over.  I could see the green valley and Needles in the distance.








On a day of rest here, I rode just a mile to the Colorado River to see what it’s like for the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s novel, Grapes of Wrath, when they camped along its bank.  It was here that they pondered the last and most treacherous section of Route 66 from their Dust Bowl ruined farms in Oklahoma.

The camp was quiet in the blinding heat, but the noises of hot grass—of crickets, the hum of flies—were a tone that was close to silence.”

“The sun hung low in the afternoon, but the heat did not seem to decrease.  It sank toward the baked and broken hills to the west.”

“[The cop] ‘called us Okies.  We don’t want you Okies settin’ down,’ he said.”




The shore of the Colorado River doesn’t look like that today.  It’s all private and commercial, designed for tourists.  





“Near 300 miles to where we’re goin’,”  and he meant the desert I crossed in the past few days, going the other direction.  They didn’t know if the old jalopy truck would make it up the hills in the summer heat, so they started in the evening..

“'We got to get acrost,' Ma said."

“’It don’t take no nerve to do sumpin when there ain’t nothing else you can do,’ said Al.”

“Up the long hill, through dead country, burned white and gray, and no hint of life in it. . . They topped the pass while the sun was still up, and looked down on the desert—black cinder mountains in the distance . . .little starved bushes, sage and greasewood.”

”’What a places.  How’d you like to walk acrost her.’ Al said.”

“’Lot’s a people done it; an’ if they could, we could.’”

“’Lots must a died.’”

“Dusk passed into dark; sharp stars came out in the soft sky, stabbing and sharp.”

“’I don’t think they’s luck or bad luck.  . . .only one thing I’m sure of, an’ that’s nobody got a right to mess with a fella’s life.  He got to do it all hisself.’”

“The truck moved over the hot earth and the hours passed. . . "It was near midnight when they neared Daggett, where the inspection station is." 



Of course, the inspection station is not there anymore.











I hope you see likenesses in these three crossings of the great Mojave Desert, and how a lone bicyclist might relate the them.  




14 comments:

  1. Dearest Sharon,
    You will get acrost, swifter than Ma Joad. More like the determined athlete-lady you are, complete with an eagle's eye for detail and a historians view of connection, of history to this an old, weary road.

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    1. A very nice sentiment, Kathy99, but who are you?

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  2. That park looks familiar. If it was the same, the last time we camped there, there was an owl's nest in the crotch of a tree. Your poet laureate friend put me on to your blog. Never rode as much as you but always enjoy the stories of others. Never wanted to ride solo so hats off to you there as well. Now get ready to climb again

    Bill

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    1. Yes, Bill, Pam told me a little about you. Thanks for reading the blog and for your kind comments.

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  3. Clever account Sharon. Then, of course, that's what we can count on from you.

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    1. Thanks Junnie, I'm a peddler with accounts to pedal. Hope I can mke it up all these hills.

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  4. I'd rather be
    at South Pass
    than in South Pas
    free to wander
    any road I choose

    Pass me the bowl
    of dust. Let's skip
    the cherries.

    This is not a poem... This is me trudging through my first weeks of work...looking for a path to poetry. Carry on young en.

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    1. I know your standards for poetry are high, Lois, higher than South Pass (or Pas) May your trudge find its downhill coast, as mine finally did.

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  5. Oh, this blog ride is gonna be fun. Populated by poets, punsters and pedalers

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    1. Yes it is is fun, and I'm Glad Pam sent you to join me.

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  6. Love reading your journeys...so well written almost feels as if I were there..be safe

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    1. Thank you "Unknown" I'm pretty unknown myself along the road and in the cafes where every one is a stranger.

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  7. Hi Sharon,

    This is a copy-paste of the email I sent to you explaining the loss of a post originally placed in this comment box. If this currrent post is successful it means that I have resolved issues with my Google accounts. If this post does not show up, well, I guess you will never know.

    Just wrote you a fairly long and almost clever post on your blog about Oatman. Unfortunately it didn't post and was lost. It's main point concernwd my disappointment that you didn't mention that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent there wedding night at the Oatman Hotel after being marriied in Kingman in 1939. Aparently their ghosts still manafest themselves there.

    the post was much more detailed and involved, maybe clever and humorous, but since it was the third irretrievable bit of writting lost today, I'm done! Keep the wind at your back and air in your tires. -dalton

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  8. Sharon, your persistence and patience is similar to those olden day ways I think, --you make it with your strong will, determination, even in the most trying of circumstances. And you see the small details and beauties as well as insights that give more strength...

    across the sometimes desert
    from past to future
    oasis
    what we are for one another
    near or far

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