For days I had heard about that wonderful guitar of Tony’s and now finally, carefully, I did get a first glimpse of it. Ok, so I know perfectly well that I have no clue about guitars whatsoever. But seeing this worn-out, old, dusty Gibson, that was literally leaving a trail of gold behind it, together with the shiny eyes of Mr. Anthony R. Hunt, I had to realize, that I knew even less about guitars than I thought possible.
(Although the sound was admittedly quite amazing!)
We still had a day of driving ahead of us – diving south, we were longing for sand, stone, dust and cactuses … but it was still too green out there, too moist, too much vegetation … We had to pass a lot of ranches before we reached the Interstate 10 and with it a slightly dryer climate. I was really beginning to wonder if I could do the project I had prepared in my mind for Lobo. It would not work if I had to mow a lawn first.
Then finally we entered Van Horn, where we would be staying, a living town about 15 miles north of our ghost town Lobo.
The town seemed to consist out of a long main road, lying parallel between the railway and the highway with, not one, not two, but THREE highway exits. This is quite amazing for such a small place. The buildings in the narrow but long stretch between the railways and the highway were mostly for commercial use, while the inhabitants of Van Horn seemed to live and expand on the other side of the railroad track. The impression was that about 80% of the buildings on the main road were motels and hotels, unbelievably many, and – like in a supermarket, when the abundant choices of yoghurt overwhelm you – we drove up and down the road for a while before settling for the Knight’s Inn, which did not look too expensive, nor too cheap and was offering free Internet access and mini-golf. Well … it was just some parameter we took for decision making. Actually the Internet was only cable and we merely had a telephone with wireless with us, and mini-golf was not on our agenda – to be true I am not even sure if they had mini-golf at all: I saw a covered swimming pool but that was it … So maybe they converted one into the other at some point in time.
Time actually did not appear to matter that much in Van Horn: everybody seemed to have plenty of it. No one was in a hurry … and there was not much to do for recreation. No DVD store, no theatre, no movies … There was one tiny supermarket in the town – the huge one had closed down and was left to rot at the roadside – there was a closed Diary Queen, an open General store, some auto mechanics, the town newspaper (!), a couple of Mexican restaurants … maybe a bar we did not see … And one artist was collecting old scrap metal to make all kind of strange pieces of it – including something that looked vaguely like a yellow submarine.
… to be continued
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