Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
omelette, whether you want it to be a plain, cheese, vegetable, hot-spicy, or chocolate-nut-
'n'-fudge omelette; and then you have to decide whether you want your toast on white,
rye, whole wheat, sourdough, or pumpernickel bread and whether you want whipped but-
ter, pat butter, or low-cholesterol butter substitute; and then there's a complicated period of
negotiation in which you ask if you can have cornflakes instead of the cinnamon roll and
link sausages instead of patties. So the waitress, who is only sixteen years old and not real
smart, has to go off to the manager and ask him whether that's possible, and she comes
back and tells you that you can't have cornflakes instead of the cinnamon roll, but you can
have Idaho fries instead of the short stack of pancakes, or you can have an English muffin
and bacon instead of whole wheat toast, but only if you order a side of hashed browns and
alargeorangejuice. Thisisunacceptable toyou,andyoudecide thatyouwillhavewaffles
instead, so the waitress has to rub everything out with her nubby eraser and start all over
again. And across the room the line on the other side of the “Please Wait to Be Seated”
board grows longer and longer, but the people don't mind because the food smells so good
and, anyway, all this waiting is, as I say, kinda neat.
IdrovealongHighway24throughalandscapeoflowhills,inastateoftinglyanticipation.
There were three little towns over the next twenty miles and I felt certain that one of them
would have a roadside restaurant. I was nearly to the South Dakota state line. I was leav-
ing the ranching country and entering more conventional farmland. Farmers cannot exist
without a roadside restaurant every couple of miles, so I had no doubt that I would find
one just around the next bend. One by one I passed through the little towns-Hulett, Alva,
Aladdin-buttherewasnothingtothem,justsleepinghouses.Noonewasawake.Whatkind
of place was this? Even on Sundays farmers are up at dawn. Beyond Beulah I passed the
larger community of Belle Fourche and then St. Onge and Sturgis, but still there was noth-
ing. I couldn't even get a cup of coffee.
At last I came to Deadwood, a town that, if nothing else, lived up to its first syllable. For a
fewyearsinthe1870s,after goldwasdiscovered intheBlack Hills, Deadwood wasoneof
the liveliest and most famous towns in the West. It was the home of Calamity Jane. Wild
Bill Hickock was shot dead while playing cards in a local saloon. Today the town makes
a living by taking large sums of money off tourists and giving them in return some crappy
littletrinkettotakehomeandputontheirmantlepiece.Almostallthestoresalongthemain
street were souvenir emporia, and several of them were open even though it was a Sunday
morning. There were even a couple of coffee shops, but they were closed.
I went in the Gold Nugget Trading Post and had a look around. It was a large room where
nothing but souvenirs were sold-moccasins, beaded Indian bags, arrowheads, nuggets of
fool's gold, Indian dolls. I was the only customer. I didn't see anything to buy, so I left and
