-
States to Avoid
- University of Minnesota Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
States to Avoid Avoid Utah. Laura and I were living in Yuba City, and I told her I was willing to stay, that Yuba City was dull but in a nice, ordinary way, and staying wouldn’t be a disaster like Vacaville or Modesto. But Laura said, “No, let’s do what you want to do. You can’t be afraid of change,” she told me. “You’ve got to follow your dream.” And, I could see her point, you know, I could see that things would be better this time. So I said, “All right, let’s go.” We packed our apartment, sold the stereo and the hide-a-bed, and said goodbye to our friends and the big valley oak in the backyard. “You know what I’ll miss most?” Laura asked me. “The tree?” “No.” “The apartment?” “No.” It was Laura’s plan to move. Well, not move out of Yuba City. That was both of us. But how to move to 148 Utah, that was Laura. She got a piece of cardboard and drew a diagram of the trip with coloured pens. I would drive the moving truck, and, since it was slower, I would have to leave earlier. Laura would follow in the car. The truck was a purple line. The car was a yellow line. The mileage from town to town was in green, and the rest stops—gas, lunch, coffee—were indicated in red. The motel where we were to stay in Elko the first night was a big blue dot. “David and Sheila?” “No.” “Helen and Tom?” “No.” The night before we left, Helen and Tom and David and Sheila and Brad Glick, who worked with me at the office, came by to help us pack. Brad was in a jolly good mood. “Damn, I envy you guys,” he said. “What an adventure . Just pulling up stakes and starting over again. Wish I could do that.” Helen and Tom and David and Sheila weren’t as happy and said that they would miss us, and they hoped things would work out. “You guys will look back on this,” Brad said, as we walked a table out to the truck, “and wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.” States to Avoid 149 [18.234.165.107] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:43 GMT) The next morning, I left at six o’clock, and I have to say this for Laura’s schedule: it was accurate. I was ten minutes early getting into Auburn, twenty minutes late getting out of Reno, and only five minutes late getting into Elko. The Desert Flamingo was not as luxurious as the advertisement in the travel guide, but it had easy access to the highway and a wonderful pool that was teal blue and shaped like a pork chop with vinyl fish—sharks, catfish, swordfish, dolphins and whales—stuck to the side. One of the sharks was beginning to peel. That first evening of our move to Utah, while I waited for Laura, I floated in the pool until the fog began to drift in off the desert. By eight o’clock, I was hungry. The man at the desk told me about a good restaurant, and I told him about the vinyl shark. He thanked me and said he’d tell Laura where I was when she arrived. “The stereo?” “No.” “The hide-a-bed?” “No.” I had the meatloaf. The waitress recommended it. Her name was Fay, and she was Paiute from the Reno area, and you could see she wasn’t lying. All the white guys like the meatloaf, she told me. It was the chef’s special, 150 A Short History of Indians in Canada made with chopped red peppers, garbanzo beans, pine nuts, and raisins, not the kind of thing you find in a cookbook. “The raisins keep it from going dry.” Fay had been married four times and was currently going through a divorce. She said most men were pigs, and she was always surprised to see a couple who had stayed married. “Sometimes I think it’s unnatural for two people to live together for more than five years,” she said. “Laura and I have been married eleven years.” “You got kids?” “No.” “I got six. That’s why I work here.” “For the kids?” “For the money.” Fay was an interesting person. I enjoyed talking to her, and she was right about the raisins. When...