Quartz Hill, California
Quartz Hill, California didn’t seem to want to draw attention to itself. You’d ask somebody where Quartz Hill was and chances are they’d swear it was up by Sacramento or outside San Jose. Rarely would anyone know. The snowboarder in the shotgun seat of the 1963...
Glasgow, Montana
Glasgow, Montana needed a name back then. In 1887 a railroad clerk, presumably a man of wisdom and whimsy, spun a globe, closed his eyes and put his finger on Glasgow, Scotland. This intrigued her to the point she could no longer stay away. So she made the trip north...
Lancaster, California
Lancaster, California appeared more quickly than she anticipated. Time turned into something fibrous. Hours tumbled into freewheeling freeway rhythms, mysterious and impossible for her to measure. She knew she needed to calm down. To ignore the whine and whoosh of...
Culver City, California
Culver City, California turns out to be unavoidable once you get wind she’s in town. You saw her last night on a Hollywood show and right now all you want is for her to take you riding in her Cadillac. You know she is dangerous. Not as dangerous as some,...
Harvey’s Lake Tahoe
Harvey's Lake Tahoe may have been his final tormented thought. John Birges slipped away. He was sleeping just about nonstop. Stomach pain sliced him up. Jaundice set in. All the hallmarks of the final stage of liver cancer, all the paybacks. Then it was over, a...
Pioche, Nevada
Pioche, Nevada tethered him to solid ground. Solitude had been hard to find anyplace else. He shed the usual longing to be elsewhere. The contentment the town provided took some getting used to. This was no Reno. No more wondering where to drift off to next or...
Kellogg, Idaho
Kellogg, Idaho groaned in the night. Whatever it was sounded close but could have been far away. They all heard it. In the middle of the night there was nothing else to hear in the tinny hallway except the shudders and heaves of labored air conditioning. In a...
Duvall, Washington
Duvall, Washington would always be the center of the world for her. She wore a sweater of unknown odors, all from the past, woven in a comforting blur. Only the three redtail hawks had an inkling of how she felt. On one hand her feelings made no sense, but she was...
Clovis, California
Clovis, California echoed with a clatter of castanets. In a malevolent roadhouse on the edge of town, their rhythm rose and fell like the price of a pump and dump penny stock. At first the rattling was slow and full of foreboding. Then the tempo quickened. When the...
Goodyear, Arizona
Goodyear, Arizona no longer had cotton fields. They were gone. Not long ago Pima cotton stretched out to the flaming edge of the hot white sky. They’d been scraped bare for tract homes, no more high yield high quality crops trucked out of town. Farmers made long...
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Carlsbad Caverns National Park has been a World Heritage Site since 1995. Since 1986, when explorers found more to the Lechuguilla Cave than previously thought, the mystique of the park has taken on new length and depth. The Lechuguilla Cave actually runs longer and...
Coaldale, Nevada
Coaldale, Nevada cheered him up. When the moon bathed his soiled skin and stardust fell, the town reminded him things weren’t so bad after all. Not that he hadn’t been troubled when he first hit town. But now his nerves were no longer bent. They weren’t mangled into...
Oak Harbor, Washington
Oak Harbor, Washington shivered in bristly fog. The town was fine and the online marketing workshop was lame. A waste of time, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself by up and leaving. The presenter had been with a global marketing agency. Probably got laid...
Springerville, Arizona
Springerville, Arizona sat back waiting for election results. Nobody was calling for any upsets. Nobody could imagine what might happen to keep Eisenhower from taking the state. At least none of the guys at the Cattleguard Café possessed such an imagination....
Newport Beach, California
Newport Beach, California turned out to be the right town at the wrong time. That’s how he sized it up. A fetching place but for now, not for him. Maybe a bit too crowded. That was his problem, not the town’s. Dodging crowds was simply a matter of getting up...
Bishop, California
Bishop, California rattled like a dustbin in a hot, dry wind. Stiff breezes roared down from the dry throat of a thin blue canyon. A snowboarder came into the café, told the bartender the hellhound was on his trail and he could only stay for three or four beers. Then...
Stateline, Nevada
Stateline, Nevada was where she stopped for breakfast. She hadn’t hit a buffet in ages. Not a bad hour and a half drive down from Fernley, Nevada where the desk clerk in the motel had kept her waiting. The ashen man behind the cluttered front desk couldn’t pull...
Stanfield, Oregon
Stanfield, Oregon just up and vanished. Seven storms crashed through and turned the place into a ghost town. Then another seven storms hit. After that, the town decided to come back to life. But not much of a life. Only a ramshackle work camp where everybody kept...
