The Long Drive Home - Part 2

Welcome back to part 2 of 2 of my son Tyler’s story for your entertainment.




The Long Drive Home
By Tyler Wagner


Travel 130 miles out of Reno and you will come to the town of Hawthorne, which is known as Nevada’s best kept secret. I’m still trying to figure out how a town so well known to Nevadans could be considered a secret, but that’s another question for another time. Hawthorne is also known as the seat of Mineral County on US 95, and serves as Nevada’s gateway to Yosemite and the High Sierra. Of all the places in Nevada that are retirement friendly, Hawthorne is considered the most. To me, retiring in a place like that would be more like being in prison and less like being retired. Now I’m sure it is a pleasant place to call home for many people, but for me, I just don’t know if it would be enough. Sure they have some nifty shops and all the fast food you could ever need, but a town with a population of about 3400 people seems like it might get real old, real quick.


As I drive through the town, I can’t help but think that everyone who lives there are like little brainwashed mice who have been kidnapped and forced to live in a cage. All I want to do is let them out of their cage and watch them escape to new and better surroundings. Never mind the fact that that new surrounding might be the next stop on the drive, the almost invisible town of Mina; which as of 2005, had a grand total of 276 residents. I don’t know what surprises me more, the fact that 276 people actually live there, or the fact that a place that small could actually hold 276 people. Mina is known as a ghost town, and it certainly does everything in its power to live up to that name. You enter the town and are out of the town before you even realize that you’re in the town! I swear I felt like a leaf that was just blown off the branch of a tree and quickly falling to the ground while I drove through there. It was quick, easy, and painless, yet the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing what lay in front of me was enough to make me go a little crazy.

Drive a bit further and you will come to the midway mark between Reno and Las Vegas; the town of Tonopah, which is the only place that stirs up any emotion in me during the drive. Not because of the McDonald’s that sits in the middle of the town, just
waiting for hungry road-trippers to drive by and become entranced by the smell of the fries. Not because it is the place where I fill up my gas every trip and take a stretch to refuel my energy. Not even because it is home to the one and only Clown Motel on the drive; a motel so creepily fantastic, I have to stop and admire the painted faces on the walls every time I pass through. No, Tonopah stirs up emotions in me because it was in that town that I fell asleep at the wheel almost three years ago. It was the winter break of 2003, and I was driving home alone for the holidays. I came so close to making it to the gas station; a place where I would have done my ritual of splashing my face with cold water and washing the crisp air down with some delicious mountain dew, before continuing on the second half of my journey. Instead, I fell asleep to the sound of Brenda Lee telling me to rock around a Christmas tree, as my car slid off the road and flipped through the air like a dolphin flying in the night, looking for a pool of water to splash down onto for safety. The sound of Brenda’s voice was then replaced by the sound of windows shattering all around me, and dirt grinding into the open cracks, and it leaves me feeling ill. I look down at my hands holding the steering wheel and remember the way my hands felt while holding that wheel for dear life while I flipped over and over through the pitch black desert night. So for a moment, as I breathe in the scent of Tonopah, I forget about the drive and remember what happened before.

That moment comes and goes, and before I know it I am headed into Goldfield, which at its peak in 1907, was the largest city in Nevada. Located 26 miles out of Tonopah, Goldfield is home to another haunted hotel, the Goldfield Hotel. There were plans to renovate and reopen the hotel back in 2003, but those plans are still on hold to this very day. Could it be that people really do believe it’s haunted? We may never know. What I do know is that the hotel is a welcoming sight for me because it lets me know that I am so very close to being home.

The last stop on the trip is through the town of Beatty. Beatty is known as the gateway to Death Valley National Park; and is so close to it that I sometimes wonder if Beatty isn’t dead itself. Sometimes while driving through this town, I get a little too excited at the thought of almost being home and I just sort of space out. Luckily, there aren’t any landmarks to miss because Beatty is so damn desolate. Passing through the town is the time of the trip when I reflect on the drive I just made, the happiness that awaits me when I get into Las Vegas, and how comfortable my nice, warm bed is going to feel when I am sleeping in it that night. So Beatty might not be a town with much to see, but it’s always a town that gives me much to think about, and for that I am happy it’s a part of the trip.

From there, the drive brings sight to long roads leading to nowhere until the bright lights of Las Vegas finally come into view. I see the Stratosphere burst into sight with its giant light shining from the top of its deck and I am home! The Stratosphere tower is 1,149 feet tall, and since 1996, it has been the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. So needless to say, it is always the first thing someone sees when they begin to enter the non-stop party town that is Las Vegas. Every time I see the Vegas glow, the sound of Viva Las Vegas rings in my ears, and it is the most pleasant sound I’ve ever heard. I see the strip all lit up, with its many different and unique casinos all in a row, and I begin to hear the slot machines gobbling up quarters as I make my way home.




Thanks to Tyler for allowing me to share. Come back tomorrow for something, I’m not sure what can follow this!!!!