Full at http://blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org/2010/04/17/las-vegas/ We left Yuma and drove due north on lonely Interstate 95, through desert mountains, and stopped a few miles past the farm-worker town of Blythe to see the Blythe Intaglios (more formally, "geoglyphs"). These are large-scale designs on the land surface created by removing the rocks and pebbles on top of the soil—called "desert pavement"—to reveal the whitish earth underneath. They are estimated to be anywhere from 200 to 2,000 years old. There are many geoglyphs around the world, but these are the most famous in the United States. They were discovered by a pilot in 1931. The largest, a human figure, is 171 feet long. Some Indian groups say that this represents the creator of the Earth. Karen stood on the fence that surrounds this intaglio and took a picture. We love to find and look at ancient rock art, although we learned in an exhibit at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City that some Indians do not like the term "rock art," since, as they point out, there is a very good chance that those who made petroglyphs, pictographs, and geoglyphs had practical an not artistic motivations. The striking nature of many of the images, however, might suggest otherwise. Interstate 95 parallels the Colorado River north of Blythe, and the river creates the only green you see, close to its banks. Otherwise, the terrain is stark and unforgiving. Every few miles, we saw signs advertising RV "resorts." Given what we say in Yuma and Quartzite, however, I think the word "resort’ should be taken with a grain of salt. We were on our way to Las Vegas, and we entered Nevada after driving down the long steep road into Needles, California, turning west on Interstate 40 and then north again on 95. Needles is another hot—and not very attractive—spot, with the Colorado River giving the only relief for the summer’s extreme heat.. I have a friend who was born in Needles. He never would tell me what he did all day long when he was a boy there. It’s not much of a town now, but it had better days when it was the first California stop on Route 66. In the Grapes of Wrath, the Joads travel along the "mother road," and they stop at Needles to admire, and bathe in, the river and wonder about their new life in the land of plenty. Tom Joad’s older brother, Noah, who has always been "different," maybe because his father had to help deliver him and had pulled the infant out of Ma Joad’s womb roughly, decides to leave the family after bathing in the river. Tom tries to talk him out of it, but Noah says, "'It ain't no use. I was in that there water. An' I ain't a-gonna leave her. I'm a-gonna go now, Tom down the river. I'll catch fish an' stuff, but I can't leave her. I can't." I thought about that in 1977 when I first drove through Needles, on my way to work for Cesar Chavez. Interstate 95 becomes a four-lane road in Nevada, no doubt because it takes drivers to Las Vegas. Maybe Harry Reid, the leader of the U.S. Senate, had something to do with this. His hometown, Searchlight, is smack up against the highway. It’s not really a town, just a miserable beaten down former mining outpost. Reid likes to wax poetic about Searchlight, but I’ll bet he’s glad he got the hell out of there. We saw a billboard near town that read, "Will Rogers Never Met Harry Reid," a nasty reference to Rogers’ famous remark: "I never met a man I didn’t like." The right wing crackpots have been after Reid, and the queen of the Tea Party ship of fools, Sarah Palin, recently preached to the faithful at Searchlight. Old, white, born-again types, whose ignorance they are proud to display to anyone who will listen, sat in lawn chairs eating up Palin’s words of wisdom. Ain’t that America something to see. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
