The 4½ hour drive north from Los Angeles to Mammoth Lakes along Highway 395 is an excellent form of automotive meditation, not too long to exhaust the mind and body, and with an absurdly spectacular reward at the end. A 7am departure gives you the last three hours of the afternoon to ski, the perfect warm up to a 4-day weekend. The drive features a panorama of changing terrains: a desert landscape of anatomically perverse Joshua trees twisting into flamboyant poses that resemble strange family members with their intestines spiraling around them eventually gives way to cottonwoods, aspens, and pine. There’s minimal signage on the highway that crawls along the eastern edge of the Sierras Nevada Mountains, which begin like molehills on the left hand side of the street and gradually rise to gargantuan massiveness (14,505 feet).
Mojave is the first traffic light you’ll see on the 300-mile drive. It’s an interesting-sad town with most buildings and businesses on the east side of the street (numerous boarded up establishments) and the always-present train on the west side. The Army Surplus store is Smithsonian quality. But it’s hard to not think methlab hamlet when driving through the mile long town, especially when a rusty Hazel Motes type vehicle sputters out of a side street coughing black exhaust, briefly lurking, zigzagging, and then abruptly turning off and away, screeching down the next non-descript alley. Mojave is hurting. It’s also home to old junked jet liners, chunks of which festoon various blighted backyards.
Time in the car with hours of good music and a destination of snow settles the mind and helps me work out problems with stories I’m struggling to write. While driving and staring at road I hear new verbal exchanges of characters arguing back and forth—lively private cerebral moments—it’s almost like my characters wanted me to go on a trip so they could develop who they are, since I wasn’t willing to facilitate their development during writing time at my desk. My big dog Teddy likes the drive, too. He knows the kind of quality walks that are in store.
I used to stop and eat at The Still Life Café when it was in Olancha (a tiny town with no traffic lights), which is a hundred miles north of Mojave. Over a decade ago it was run by two French Algerian sisters: being their hungry customer was blissful—a simple specialty was burgers with Stilton cheese and a large chili pepper, French fries made in peanut oil. There was some pretty slick cooking going on. The menu was actually fancy, pricey, extremely French, unheard of in the desolate desert. When it first opened 18 or 19 years ago it was hard to believe it existed—the first good meal on 395. The sisters were so nice and even put my first book of stories on a bookshelf behind the bar by the cash register. Then the cook’s husband showed up and things changed. The hot non-cooking sister moved away. Happiness plummeted. Everyone’s buzz was harshed. The husband didn’t show a particle of the affection and joy that the sisters poured on us. He had a blank five o’clock shadow face. The service got slower, grimmer, but the food remained super good, you just had to not fall asleep waiting for it. Then they moved 20 miles north to Independence, a town whose main hotel has a boarded up windows, a big porch, and a lot of haunted history. And of course the erstwhile roadside llama farm was a main Independence attraction where I once took a double barrel nose load from a protective mother llama who didn’t like the way I was baby talking her offspring. There are huge mountains in view and the town will find itself with a couple feet of snow every so often, but it melts away quickly because of the not so high altitude.
Departing from Independence means Big Pine is next, i.e., the excellent burrito made in the kitchen of the Chevron station. Their food is so popular among local farm people that they’ve got bricks of tamales stacked in the freezer to buy in bulk. I have the number programmed in my phone. It’s 21 miles away from Independence so I wait 6 or 7 minutes after passing through, then call in the order. There’s usually a rancher cow poke or forest service dude getting some to-go food (and in the summer all the rock climbing dirt baggers in sandals—the bouldering in nearby Bishop is world class). During an election season there will be posted signs of scary local men running for public office posing in antique triangular patriotic hats with muskets at their sides. In Big Pine and Bishop you see boxes of shotgun shells on the dashboards of trucks and ordinary cars.
I could drink the green and red salsas from the Chevron Station without a taco or burrito present. The green salsa of course is the best because the tangy tomatillos and the cilantro are righteous brilliant together, but the red sauce has little tomatoes chunks and might be spicier and possibly even more exciting via a jalapeño or Serrano pepper presence. The Salsa Queen of the Sierras owns a very small tan and white Chihuahua named Chiquita who sleeps on the counter on a yellow blanket while her mistress rings up.
“How is Chiquita?”
“She is spoiled,” the lady says, turning her head halfway toward Chiquita.
“Oh that’s good,” I say.
Chiquita opens her eyes and barks.
“She say, that’s right, it’s good,” the burrito genius murmurs.
