Trip Diary - Five: Journey To The Valley Of The Dirt People

“We can’t stop here, this is bat country.”

I’m awake early on Wednesday morning, though perhaps not as early as Jenn, who’d definitely been staggering around and drinking water in the early hours. Following our drunken tour of the strip, we’d returned to the Stratosphere for a hearty midnight snack at Lucky’s Café (which comes highly recommended, by the way) followed by yet another excursion to the bar. Just as we’d begun to win big on those darned Blackjack machines, though, my partner in crime had taken on a decidedly greenish tint. Despite her protests, staying in the casino by myself while she took her inebriated self off to bed didn’t sound like a huge amount of fun. Besides that, she was looking like she might need assistance in getting back to our room.

I don’t remember much of the previous evening. I can recall exactly what we did, but it seems vague and distant, like a movie I might once have seen. Thankfully, I have sidestepped any potential hangover by virtue of the fact that I was up for some hours after Jenn had passed out, channel surfing and drinking water. The girl in question isn’t so fortunate, and on being roused from her slumber, weakly suggests both a hearty brunch and possibly a shot of something strong before we hit the road.

We check out and return to Lucky’s. The service isn’t quite as fast as I’d remembered it being last night, but the food is gorgeous. Again, if you ever find yourself in the Stratosphere and hungry, seek this place out. You’ll thank me.

Feeling somewhat more alive, Jenn happily acquiesces to my desire to shop for presents before we leave. We exit the Stratosphere into blinding sunshine, dodge some worryingly enthusiastic people selling tours to some kind of canyon, and duck into an enormous souvenier shop, where I purchase a fat pile of cheesy junk that includes a fluffy pink die large enough to be an embarrassment.

“I feel like such a tourist,” I tell Jenn, as we leave.

She glances down at the transparent bag they’ve packed my purchases in and laughs.

By day, Vegas looks shabby and tired, as though the city itself were recovering from a hangover, hunched and sickly and waiting for another night on the hard stuff. The glittering signs that seemed so glamorous when we were high on excitement and several shots into our evening out look dull and dusty beneath harsh sunlight. In darkness, this is a haven of promise, possibility, and lust. Dawn brings reality crashing in, and Las Vegas on a comedown is not a pretty sight.

We make yet another trip to the bar, this time for a quick hit of whatever it is the barmaid fixes up when I ask her to recommend a shot. I’ve got the hang of buying things in the USA now, and with the fluffy pink monstrosity hidden safely beneath my stool, I feel a little more like somebody who belongs.

Then it’s back to the car and back out onto Interstate 15, racing the clock in an attempt to make it back to Fullerton before our four o’clock deadline for returning the Chevy.

“Jenn?” I say, this around an hour and a half after we leave Vegas behind.

“Yeah?”

“I need the bathroom.”

We both know what the next town is, and I think we both had at least a slight inclination towards stopping there. There’s something about Baker, even if you’re just passing through at eighty miles an hour, that looks utterly horrific. It’s a small town in the middle of nowhere, famed, according to the signs we’ve seen, for being the home of both the world’s tallest thermometer and something called Alien Beef Jerky. We couldn’t help but notice the thermometer on the way to Vegas, but the alien jerky signs were new.

“Okay,” I’d said, a short while before. “What the fuck is Alien Beef Jerky?”

Jenn had shaken her head, looking both amused and slightly afraid. Now, as we pulled off I-15 at the Baker exit, I understood how she felt. There’s something almost Lynchian about Baker. It’s not small town middle America, nothing so clichéd, but when I think of the circumstances that must have conspired to create a little place like this one, I think about writing some crazy short story about inbreeding and disappearing tourists.

Of course, the corporate cause raises its ugly head even here, in the form of a large Burger King. But if the signs are to be believed, Baker is a little more proud of something called Bun Boy. But then this is the self-proclaimed ‘gateway to Death Valley’ and as such is a little like lurking on the fringes of a black hole; expect anything and believe nothing.

“Pull over and I’ll run into this restaurant and take a piss,” I say. “Leave the engine running.”

“But what about Alien Beef Jerky?” Jenn protests.

Strange as it sounds, the lure of jerky is powerful, though not because I have any particular lust for dried meat products. It’s more the pull of something unique, a chance to have a story about ‘that time we found the weird alien shop in the little town in the desert’.

“Bathroom first,” I say.

We make our toilet stop and drive a little further along Baker’s main road. I’m freak-spotting out of the passenger side window, but all I can see are tourists.

“There it is,” Jenn says.

She pulls into the dusty car park of the Alien Fresh Jerky store. Just as I’m taking off my seatbelt, she jerks back against me, exclaiming, “Holy shit!”

“What?” I say, mildly panicked, glancing over her shoulder.

“In that car.”

Squinting against the sunlight, I open my door and stand to look at the car beside us. In the glare of such a bright day, its interior is full of shadows. From here, there appear to be a family of four sitting motionless inside. On closer inspection, the ‘people’ reveal themselves to be four life-sized dummies. Of aliens. I start laughing.

“Now that is fucking creepy,” I say.

“I thought they were people,” Jenn mutters.

“Somebody has a strange sense of humour.”

But not the lady behind the counter of the alien jerky store, as it turns out. No, she appears to have no sense of humour at all, only the beady eyes of one who knows that ninety percent of the people who come through the door aren’t actually going to buy anything. This is one of the unfortunate side-effects of running a novelty business. You’ll get a lot of folk passing through, sure, but most of them will whisper among themselves and laugh a little before heading back to their cars. Having seen the hideous prices of the jerky on sale, Jenn and I conform to this particular type and make a swift exit.

Really, that’s the last part of the Vegas trip. We’re a little late back to the Avis office, and I set off the alarms at the supermarket in La Mancha shopping centre. But nobody gets arrested and nobody gets hurt. We’re home by six and in bed at a sensible hour. Vegas in a day and a half is a lot of fun, but with so much to do and a four hour journey to either side, it leaves both of us exhausted.

Some 15 hours later, we once again find ourselves stuck in a traffic jam, this time on our way to what Jennifer refers to as ‘The 909’, where we’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner at her brother’s fiancee’s parents’ house. I later learn that this is a reference to an Inland Empire area code much denigrated by those who inhabit the choicer climes of Orange County and Los Angeles. Indeed, popular KROQ morning DJs Kevin and Bean have been all over the radio since I arrived here, referring to the ‘909’ as ‘The Valley Of The Dirt People’ and taking much joy in references to white trash with mullets.

When we finally emerge from yet another chrome and carbon monoxide nightmare, I find that it isn’t quite that bad. While there are more than a few trailers around, along with a charming odour that’s somewhere between horseshit and rancid cheese, I don’t see a single mullet. Yes, it’s a little different from the urban California I’ve become accustomed to, but I’ve been to worse places. Fuck, I’ve lived in worse places.

We find the house we’re looking for and Jenn phones her brother to come out and meet us as she knows roughly three more people than I do at a gathering that sounds as though it might run to fifteen guests or more. Jared is slightly less punk than I’d been expecting, given that my experience of him to this point is a song by his band All Or Nothing HC which was pretty fucking hardcore. When we shake hands, I go for the manly pleased-to-meet-you-your-approval-would-be-nice grip, and he sells me a dummy with an incredibly limp I-don’t-know-you response, leaving me feeling like someone’s dad. He seems friendly enough, though.

Jenn’s mum, however, doesn’t. Jennifer later assures me that she’s “always like that.” Nonetheless, I’m slightly stunned at the look of what appears to be utter disdain on her face when she offers me a curt “Pleased to meet you,” and a handshake devoid of any feeling whatsoever.

Renae (Jenn’s brother’s fiancee) introduces us to her mother, who then introduces us to a room full of people called things like Wendy and Bob. I don’t actually remember anybody beyond those I end up sitting with, and seeing as that means Jared, Renae, Jenn, and Jenn’s mother, it isn’t too difficult. There’s definitely a sense that we’re on the outcast table, though, and over dinner, this seems to weave a subtle sense of togetherness that I’m just starting to feel a part of when it’s time to go.

It doesn’t start so well, though. Jenn didn’t seem too sure about what she had and hadn’t told her mother about me, and I’m flying blind. When said mother fires the first shot in my direction, I’m totally unprepared.

“So, how did you two meet?” she asks.

Jenn mutters something about mutual friends at the same time as I mumble about it being a long story.

“I’ll bet,” mother says, and looks away.

Shit.

Renae turns out to be my saviour, suddenly assaulting me with questions and stereotypes about people from England. Though I’m off-guard and way out of my element, I think I manage to be at least reasonably entertaining, even when one of the scruffy, slightly frightening poodles wandering about the place runs face-first into my shin. I look down at it, smile encouragingly, and send a psychic message: Fuck off or you’re going to be eating my foot, you freaky little bastard.

Between Renae’s enthusiasm for sending my countrymen up and offering self-deprecating comments regarding her own strange prejudices, Jared’s curiosity as to my knowledge of late seventies, early eighties British punk acts, and mastering the art of filling my mouth with food while staring into the middle-distance so that I don’t actually have to say anything, I make it through. The Wendys and Bobs leave, and after a long consultation with Renae and Jared regarding the best route home, so do we. Before we get out of the house, however, Renae’s mother insists on hugging everybody goodbye, including me.

“Where are you from?” she asks.

“England,” I say.

“A Limey!” she exclaims. “I could tell you weren’t from around here. Oh, I don’t mean to be rude. I’d have called you a bloody Limey if I had!”

“And I’d have expressed my desire to get out of The Valley Of The Dirt People forever,” I think, but most certainly don’t say.

And then we’re out of there, into Jenn’s car and back out onto the freeway, heading for home and one last night of TV, alcohol, and good conversation. Though it’s unspoken, the fact that I’m going home tomorrow hangs heavily between us. It’s almost over.