Death Valley, piece by piece

Puzzles come in. Puzzles go out. Some puzzles stay.

I buy new puzzles, used puzzles and collectible puzzles. I have a couple of very expensive puzzles. I choose them based on a host of criteria. Sometimes I am compelled by the image. Sometimes I like the shapes of the pieces or the quality of the puzzle. I love fine art puzzles and vintage puzzles. Despite my advanced age, I love puzzles with candy images. No thanks to heartwarmers or fantasy themes. I don't care much for touristy/landmark puzzles unless I am compelled to them for some quirky reason or if they have a quiet emotional tether.

Which brings me to the Death Valley puzzle.

I've had it for the longest time. Ten years? At least. Maybe longer. I'm not sure where I bought it; probably at a thrift store or garage sale. It no doubt originally came from the sole gift shop in Death Valley, which still carries it.

Johnny, 1972

Death Valley is a strange, mystical place. My brother John wanted his ashes strewn about this low dry land, although they only made it as far as the Mohave Desert--I think (it's a long and sad story with many missing pieces). Nonetheless, Death Valley was important to John and he conjured it in his novel The Assault on Tony's by way of a single word. From page 57:

Langston nodded, gulping. Such was McTeague.

I had no idea what McTeague meant when I first saw that short paragraph. Being so strangely phrased and precisely placed, I knew it had to be important. I investigated. It didn't long take to discover Frank Norris's 1899 novel of the same name.

Although far from John's best work, for me Tony's remains the most definitive and maddening entry in his portfolio. Profoundly personal, it is all commentary and metaphor. John's mention of McTeague is the most economic literary reference I have ever encountered. The dramatic arc of McTeague, which is a bizarre tale of greed and hoarding, concludes in a devastating scene in Death Valley. Hence with one word, John culminates those themes as well as booze, addiction, life and death--ideologically and geographically.

Death Valley.

When I reshuffled my puzzle collection a few weeks ago, I came upon the Death Valley puzzle and couldn't remember if it was complete. Souvenir puzzles are often poor quality, but this one has it's merits. The pieces are diverse and oddly shaped. The cardboard is sturdy. The image adherence is good. The pieces of this puzzle, however, do not have a snug fit. Some are warped and do not lay flat. I constructed the puzzle nonetheless, thinking about John and Tony's and Death Valley and McTeague.

The loose fitting pieces were frustrating. They wouldn't stay put, even after they were correctly placed. The on-deck pieces kept sticking to my forearms. Once completed (no pieces were missing), the puzzle was tenuous at best.

The two least enjoyable stages of jigsaw puzzling are at the beginning (laying out all the pieces) and at the end (taking the puzzle apart). Some puzzles fit together so tightly, you can pick the constructed puzzle up as a single unit. Such puzzles often have to be taken apart piece by piece. I am notoriously bad at deconstructing puzzles, often leaving big chunks of stubborn puzzles intact.

But when the time came to take apart the Death Valley puzzle, no deconstruction was necessary. Not one piece seemed committed to the pieces around it, as if they had no conviction to maintain the whole from whence they came. The puzzle just crumbled apart in my hands.

I fumbled with the indifferent pieces as John's ghost chortled.  I sighed and put them into their box. John folded back into his papery grave.

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Death Valley trip, vol. two: The Big Texan

Authoress and vehicle somewhere outside of the Painted Desert

As previously noted in these pages, an associate and I took a glorious road trip to Death Valley in 1996. On our way out, we drove down to Memphis and picked up Interstate 40. I'm not sure where the signs started, maybe somewhere around Oklahoma City.

Can you do it?

This was almost 17 years ago. I do not remember exactly what the signs said, but there was a slew of them. The started out completely cryptic and became more and more revealing the further we drove.

Take the challenge!

Mandatory majestic rock formation photo

"What the hell are these signs?" I said to my associate. "What's the challenge?"

"How the hell should I know?" she replied.

As soon as we'd forget about the last mysterious sign, another would loom on the horizon.

TAKE THE BIG TEXAS CHALLENGE! Amarillo 1 1/2 hours

By the time we hit the state line, we were crazy to know what the hell was so big in Amarillo. Eventually, the signs told us.

Free 72-ounce STEAK!

As we peeled off the miles, we learned that this free monster could be ours at the one and only Big Texan Steak Ranch. And they were open for breakfast.

"Hey!" I said, "should we go to the Big Texan?" with an inflection that indicated there was really only one answer.

"Yeah!" said my associate. "Let's go to the Big Texan!"

The plan was set. We had a destination and a purpose. As we neared Amarillo, the signs got bigger and bigger. Giant fonts screamed at us about that FREE 72-OUNCER while a smaller font quietly added if eaten in an hour. A friendly Cowboy invited us to sink our teeth into that FREE 72 ounce monster anytime. Free limo rides. World Famous. Live Rattler.

The signs counted down the time and distance between us and salvation.

One hour. Twenty five miles. Just ten more miles.

"The Big Texan?" I said with glee.

"HELL YEAH!" replied my associate.

EXIT NOW FREE 72 ounce STEAK!

Finally the moment was upon us. Exit we did, giddy with anticipation. We followed the signs. We pulled beneath a waving, ten-gallon hat wearing wonder--presumably the Big Texan himself--and into the lot. We parked the Prelude and ambled on in.

The joint was dead.

We stepped up to the hostess stand, where a sexless middle aged woman stood scribbling in a reservation book.

"Two please," I said.

Mystery photo

She set down her pencil and looked us over. "We're closed," she said. She was wearing a long sleeved calico dress that went from just beneath her chin clear down to the floor.

"But ... what about the signs?" I said, nonplussed. "On Interstate 40? Breakfast? Twenty-four hours?"

"We won't be open for at least another hour," she said. "Maybe an hour and a half."

My associate and I looked at each other in disbelief. It was about 10 in the morning, give or take.

"Is the gift shop open?" asked my associate.

"It is not," said Mrs. Big Texan.

She didn't apologize for the inconvenience. Or smile. Or offer an explanation. She simply regarded us with disdain one more time and buried her nose back in her book as we turned to leave.

Even though all we wanted was a cuppa and some toast and eggs, we stopped to linger for a moment by the display case that housed the mammoth 72-ouncer just the same, then stumbled back out into the glaring sunlight and did the only thing there was left to do.

We took the obligatory big cow picture.

Associate and Big Cow, photo by humble hostess

We piled back into the Honda. I slammed it into first and tore out of the lot. Goodbye mean hostess lady. Goodbye 72-ounce steak. Goodbye Big Cow.

Humble hostess and Big Cow, photo by associate

Goodbye Big Texan.

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Death Valley trip, vol. one

A slightly edited excerpt from The Irish Hungarian Guide to the Domestic Arts, with photos to prove it's veracity.

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Erin O'Brien and Associate, summer 1996.

It will not surprise the readership to learn that, inclement weather notwithstanding, I almost always drive with all the windows open, the A. C. turned off and of course, music blaring. Although not the most comfortable way to drive, it imparts a certain credibility to transforming I just drove through to, Yeah, I've been there.

These practices are never more important than when a drive becomes a road trip. 

The idea of traveling in a polite temperature controlled box at high speed represents the zenith of affable mediocrity. What's the point? Any good road trip is metaphysical as well as physical, but an Erin O'Brien road trip is a violent tumble through time, space, and life.

Associate on the open range.

In my early thirties, I took such a trip with a friend. It was an extended and beautifully pointless jaunt from Cleveland, Ohio to Death Valley, California.

Humble hostess enjoying prelude to the Purple Mountain Majesty.

When we arrived at our destination, I took a swig from a fresh bottle of Wild Turkey, poured the rest out in order to memorialize my brother who had committed suicide a few years before, and got back in the car to head home. We were as such, en route back to Cleveland on Interstate 80, when we crossed Nebraska and discovered that the Erin O'Brien-style roadtrip, by its very nature, sometimes imparts more than "a certain credibility."

Erin O'Brien in Death Valley.

"Do you smell that?" I yelled over the whirring noise of the road. The speedometer was hovering around 80.

My associate yelled back, "I wasn't going to say anything until you said something." She was smoking, no small task with all that hot humid road air whipping around us.

"Hot balls, that stinks!" I screamed.

"Must be some sort of factory around here," she said. We were Cleveland girls. What else could create a stench such as this?

Associate, who is also shown wearing a leather jacket in this post.

I eyed the flatness of Nebraska that stretched all around us. "No factory out here," I said. "Must be some sort of livestock."

"Cows?" she said.

"This smells different from the cows," I said. We'd had plenty of experience with them through Amarillo on the trip out (we had opted for Interstate 40 westbound).

"Wait!" I yelled. "What about pigs?"

"Like one of those gargantuan pig farm factories," she said.

"Holy shit!" I said after several minutes. "It still stinks."

 "It's like … toxic," she said.

"Keep smoking," I said.

"I will."

On and on we drove as the vile odor lingered, thick and strong enough to nearly qualify as a taste.

Continue reading ...

Authoress and Associate in Las Vegas.

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