Wild Side Walk: Pt 20.

(Unexpurgated) 1982: Report from the astronaut

Billboard, Wyoming (1982)
image from found postcard

Nevada soon became Utah, and almost as quickly the hills under the Interstate became perfectly flat, the road now elevated like a railway line atop a raised bank of metal chips, straight as a laser beam for as far as you could see. The colours around us changed from sandy grey into white as we drove through the Great Salt Lake Desert, a brilliant white dried ocean stretching either side of us for a hundred miles. Now more than ever before I experienced a feeling of intense self-insignificance, and had many thoughts about the greatness of the Universe: I was merely a grain of sand rolling along this infinity of salt-flat. As the day heated up, the solid ocean floor started to melt and become water complete with waves that actually reflected the distant mountains, huge expanses of mirage turning approaching vehicles into melting amphibians sailing through a throbbing ocean of heat and silence, exquisite stillness and serenity. Again I felt like a space explorer, bathing in the unscreened energy of the great sun, sailing through the Sea of Tranquillity. The only other inhabitants were an endless parade of Mack and Kenworth space trucks, their captains invisible behind mirror lenses and tinted windscreens. Great Salt Lake soon came into view, a huge sea in the desert, as if the oceans had been trapped when America returned from the depths of Atlantis. I started to wonder if perhaps America (L'Amerique) came from La Mer, (The Sea). While in California, someone had expressed some anxiety regarding the significance of water on the west coast. If there was to be another large earthquake, a strip of California from Eureka in the north, down to Los Angeles could conceivably slip into the Pacific Ocean. And Los Angeles is nothing but a chunk of desert that is watered from canals that stretch south 500 miles from Sacramento River above San Francisco. In fact Los Angeles is full of water storage, sprinkler systems and swimming pools; it really makes you wonder!

Beside the lake is a gold-capped Mormon structure, it reminded me of a building I saw in Santa Monica, also a Mormon structure with a gold plated roof that had been converted into the Santa Monica Police Station. The walls had either copper or bronze sheets wrapped around them, and the most beautiful turquoises and emerald oxide patinas contrasting with the glaring warm glow of the gold caps. Later in Salt Lake City, I became more aware of the majesty of the Mormon Church. Dead centre of Salt Lake City is Temple Square, a whole block enclosed by high walls and containing a huge temple and other equally impressive buildings and statues of Joseph Smith and his cohorts. Carved into the walls in huge Eric Gill designed masonry fonts are the Constitution of the United States of America, and Mormon creeds of equally patriotic flavour. At night, I walked the empty streets of the city; there was no litter, and hardly any people about. I remembered that someone told me the Mormons are pretty racist, and so was surprised when a black guy came up to me outside Howard Johnson's, and offered to sell me something to smoke. I was also surprised to see groups of vagabonds huddling around bonfires by the Amtrak station, under the Interstate flyover. They called me over and I noticed they were all men in their mid 30's, some dressed in Vietnam uniforms, and sleeping in the long grass in blankets and cardboard cartons. I was still hungry, having refused to eat my steak at Diamond Lil's Steak House, it tasted bloody awful, and I wondered whether it was horse or kangaroo? I eventually found the legendary Jean's Cafe, the only place open south of Salt Lake at that time of night, (according to Gary Gilmore). Out of Salt Lake after a night's sleep, and by this time I was getting pretty damn good at sneaking into motels unseen, to avoid paying double room rates.

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