war of relocation

Let's go back out into the wasteland, eh? If you've been reading this blog for a while you've seen (and no doubt enjoyed) some of my "Adventure Days," little road trips I, along with various crew members, like to take to weird, interesting, historic, abandoned, etc. places within relatively close driving distance of the home office in Salt Lake. A region I've spent a lot of time in is the West Desert and Great Basin area to the Southwest of where I am right now. When I say "spent a lot of time" I mean, "have been out there three or four times." Nevertheless, I feel like if you needed a guide for an adventure of your own there's no one better than me.

On a recent Saturday I sure as heck needed to get away, and though I can't speak for my traveling companion Elin, I would have to assume she needed to get away as well. I was feeling antsy, the air in the valley had been unbreathable, I needed a reason to update this blog again, and some dudes were looking to wail on me so a road trip seemed prudent. We decided to go the Eureka-Delta route and see what we could see.

Eureka has been blogged about here before. We breezed right through it this time but I turned around and went to gasoline because I would have been really embarrassed if we ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. This gas station is also a motel, but I kept poking around inside and couldn't figure out where the motel part of it would be.


The road from Santaquin (which is just off the main stretch) to Delta (nowhere near any sort of stretch) is a long one dotted with small loosely organized communities, tipped over sheds, and swampy woodland areas with dead twisted trees, beautiful in their astounding ugliness. Delta is an oasis, such as it is, floating out there in the desert. It exists mostly for it's noteworthy Alfalfa and concentrated Berilium.

We got into town and just bumped around a bit. We were on our way down one road when a barking dog chasing after two barking dogs in a truck changed our course.

When you're in small town and you see a goofy little dog chasing after two goofy big dogs, and those big dogs are in a slow moving pick-up, it's best to stop whatever you're doing and follow that scene. Because maybe that little dog is leading you to something interesting? Like this!

The ooooold schoolhouse.

The front door was locked but it seemed like something we should go inside. Luckily the back door was open. In fact the back door was missing.

It's normal for a school to have a toilet, but there was also a bathtub in their. It was filled with dirt.

Check out this awesome revolutionary wallpaper. Everything you need to know, right there.

The floorboards were creaky and covered in tetanus bearing nails, and there were dead birds everywhere. Not the most inviting of environments.

A ways out of town, down a lonely dirt road is an interesting site. It's guarded by this message on a rock, maybe a thousand years old. They think the message is from one tribe giving another tribe permission to hunt (on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other Wednesday)

Hiking! We headed up a mountain to get a look at a weird rock. The vastness of the scenery below was hard to comprehend. Aside from that poor excuse for a road there were no signs of human life, literally as far as the eye could see.


This here, is a big pile of rocks.

I'm just trying to give you a sense of atmosphere.

So get a load of this rock. It's called, appropriately, the Great Stone Face.

Whaaa! It looks exactly like Joseph Smith, the inventor of Utah!

The face was found by Mormon pioneers exploring the area in the 1800s. You can imagine their surprise. Got to admit, the resemblance is striking. I'd imagine that the Native cultures of centuries ago held a certain reverence for the rock as well.

So! Let's shift gears a little bit. Imagine you're just chillin' in the country you call home. You were born there and you've carved out a little niche for yourself and in your free time maybe you just like riding your bike around and playing baseball. Then the country your parents were born in go and bomb your new country, and you're like "Not cool, dudes!" but no one cares for your not-cool sentiments and they figure, well, despite your Schwinn and your baseball glove you're probably no different from the guys that bombed us. Why don't you come with us, they say. And then they put you on a truck and put you on a train and put you on a truck and drop you off in the Topaz Internment Camp.

Where the scenery is flat, the summers are hot and the winters are cold, and you're behind tall barbed wire fences watched by guards with machine guns. Kind of a bum deal yeah?

Topaz War Relocation Center covered 31 square miles and housed about 9000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans during WWII. An interesting tidbit from Wikipedia about the name:

Topaz was originally known as the Central Utah Relocation Center, but this name was abandoned when administrators realized that the acronym was naturally pronounced "Curse." The camp was then briefly named for the closest settlement, until nearby Mormon residents (with their own heritage of forced relocation) demanded that their town name not be associated with a "prison for the innocent." The final name, Topaz, came from a mountain which overlooks the camp from 9 miles (14.5 km) away.

The 442nd RCT of the 100th Battalion was a military unit made up entirely of Japanese-Americans and became the most highly decorated combat unit in the history of the U.S. Army. Many of the boys in the unit returned from the war and were sent straight back to Topaz. WTF?

There's not much of anything left out there, but the stillness of the air and the disinterested landscape gives off a real eerie feeling.

Don't try to step on those holes, you'll fall.

Shot and killed by the guards for standing too close to a fence.

Topaz.


Further reading: Topaz Museum.

Topaz was a long way from the town of Delta, through a gridwork of roads playing home to cluttered farms and fields of sagebrush. There's a post-apocalyptic feel to the place. Everything is feels recently abandoned, and even though there is evidence of mankind everywhere you can't help but feel isolated. To see what I mean, look at this house.

It just tipped right over! Why did it tip over? Why was it there in the first place? Why did the owner leave a perfectly good case of tampons and plastic cups sitting inside?


It feels like something out of Cormac McCarthy's the Road. Everything out there does. I wonder how long that tipped over house will be there. In fifty, a hundred years, will it have been cleared to make way for bright new houses and man-made lakes? Or will it's decay continue unchecked, a forgotten relic of a forgotten person, reclaimed by nature, as it will reclaim us all? Ah I'm freaking myself out.

Shortly after examining the house, we discover the fate of its owner. Quicksand.


It was time to go home, but one perilous obstacle stood between us and the highway. Desert Pirates!

These people were very clear about us keeping out of their stuff. They do not suffer trespassers lightly! And they fly the Jolly Roger so who knows what they're up to? Again, the questions plague me: why are those people out there? What are they hiding? Why are they so suspicious of me and my doubloons?

Well the good news we made it through sans incident.

When we got back to civilization Elin and I celebrated with some snacks. I had a Charleston Chew. I'm not sure what she had.

The Past

I wake up in a bed that's not mine.

I don't know where I am. This is all too fancy. This is not my baroque brass lion!

The view from the window. Judging by the growth pattern on those leaves, I'm in pre-Dutch Manhattan.


Oh hello! So as the year wound down (you remember that, it was last week) I felt compelled to compile a few Best of the Year and Best of the Decade lists. I always get nervous about those things. What if I screw up? What if I list my eleventh favorite movie as my eighth favorite movie? I battled anxiety for a while and finally made some lists. I don't know why. It's like if I don't document things like that I'm not really alive.

When making those lists I joked (quietly, to myself) that I should make a list of Best Days of the Decade. Then it occurred to me that my own stupid life is well documented enough via pictures, blogs, twitters, e-mails, texts, and internet message boardings, that I probably could make a list of my best days. I didn't actually go that far, but I did quickly conclude that January 4, 2004 was my official Best Day of the Decade.

Now, was that really my Best Day? Probably not. I've oft contended (and I stand by that contention) that the best times are the ones you can never describe. Crazy adventures out of '80s movies rarely happen in real life and when they do they're usually disappointing. The best times can't be captured and put into a jar.

That said! January 4, 2004 was a really good day. It was a good time in my life, generally. I was as carefree as a boy with a falcon.

Yes, it was perhaps the last time I was truly carefree for an extended period of time. No one in my family had taken ill yet, I wasn't involved in any sort of relationship (or attempted relationship), which... you know, relationships are great but come with their own variety of stressors, I really liked my job, I thought I was some sort of big-shot award winning film student, I really thought I had it all figured out. Looking back, I was really just a know-nothing kid. But to a know-nothing kid marching around New York City with no regard for anything outside of your immediate sphere is pretty great.

So this was the real view from my window that morning. Back then I worked for a luxury hotel chain. This occasionally allowed me to stay at five star hotels for cheap (free). It was a pretty sweet gig. This was a work trip, where a group of us went to learn all about the hotels in Manhattan, in theory to allow us to sell them better.

The first three nights were a lot of fun. Big-deal dinners and fancy-pants hotel suites. Treated like royalty we were! After that the party of co-workers went home but my friend SeanE and I stayed behind for three more days.

Pouring rain that morning, my favorite kind of weather. I decided to go for a walk through Central Park. The doorman was asleep at the wheel so I had to push the door open by myself (like common gutter trash). As I did that a damp and scowling Natalie Portman pushed her way passed me, pausing only long enough to give me a real dirty look. Here's an accurate recreation.

Central Park was great.

I wanted to try to find out where the ducks go in winter but it turns out the ducks were still there. Stumbled my way into Bethesda Terrace and it's lovely angel fountain.


She stood under an umbrella. Her expression betrayed nothing.

"Bryton-" she said, choking on the N. Struggling to say it, to say the words she found so hard. "I'm... I'm sorry."

Her face, her impossible face, twisted into a wince, a dam holding back tears. I wrapped my hand around hers and lowered the umbrella.

"Just this once Natalie, just this once let yourself feel. Let it rain my darling, just let it rain."

I don't know how long we stood there, embraced. No matter how long, it wasn't enough.

"It's time." I said, releasing her from my arms.

"Don't." She said.

"I have to." I turned my back to her, to make it easier for both of us. When I turned around, she was gone.

I looked up to the heavens, where the clouds seemed darker than before.

"You take good care of her Zach Braff. You take good care of her!"

Then a bunch of hippies came along and ruined my moment, as usual.





The rainy day gave way to night, which made the bright lights of the city that much brighter, the colors that much deeper.

The city had the romance and mystery to it that it's supposed to have, if the endless pools of ink and miles of film devoted to New York are to be believed.

It also had Beeker.
I love this neon sign. I think this is the third time I've bl'gged it.

I'd heard tell of a bar called Pravda in NoHo.

It's underground, and to get to the room you pass through a steel door and a velvet curtain. I was like, "oooooh!" I guess at the time it was a real hotspot with the local douches. When me and SeanE were there it wasn't very crowded at all, which was really nice. Maybe it wasn't a hot spot at all. Maybe some New York scenester is reading this and thinking me a hayseed. Well whatever. They have a great martini there called the Nolita. And I fell in love with the bartendress (I got over Natalie pretty quickly I guess). Look, I know you don't believe me but we had a special connection, me and that barkeep. A special connection!

Fine.

Pouring rain and, several drinks into it, we decided to walk the empty streets to McSorley's Old Ale House, the oldest continuously operating bar in the U.S. (1854) and one of my favorite spots on earth.

Hey look it's in comic books!


Soaking wet, we warmed by the coal stove.

The place smells like beer, sawdust, and mustard. Just like any Irishman. It's covered with the ephemera of bygone days (auld lang synes) and nothing has been removed from the walls since 1910.

That's John, he's a great server. He knows me, tell him hello.

These dust-covered wishbones were hung up by doughboys on there way to fight the Huns in the green fields of France in the Great War. Legend has it the returning soldiers would come back to claim them, so the remaining bones belong to the fellas cut down in the trenches.

In the '60s "Honest" Abe Lincoln gave a speech at the nearby Cooper Union (a speech that established him as a legitimate candidate for President) and afterward celebrated with an ale at McSorley's. Woody Guthrie staged a few union rallies there, Theodore "Ted" Roosevelt was known to pop in from time to time. John Lennon liked it there and Elvis once drunkenly sang on top of a table. Also I've been there.

In the entire history of the bar there has always been a set of two cats living there, always a red one and a grey one, and always named Red and Minnie. Also, they're camouflaged!


The cheese platter. Best meal I had that entire trip.

They only serve two drinks there: house-brand dark and house-brand light. At the time it was two glasses for $2.50 but I hear it's now up to $4.50. I think we can blame George W. Bush for that one.

So we um, had a lot to drink and were on the verge of going under when some regular named Jerry came in and threw a rolled up newspaper at one of the cats. Turns out that Jerry guy is the night watchman. He'd had a rough day. The commotion gave us a second wind and we ended up staying another few hours. Eventually we ended up in Times Square. Somehow.

The first thing I remember is giving a couple bucks to a homeless because I thought he was Aragorn. Then we asked a cop for directions to the liquor store.

Gay.

It wasn't even that late but Times Square was totally abandoned and eerily quiet. So I took pictures like Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky.




Good day.