All Gone to Look for America

by Peter Millar

  That experience, however, was not to be repeated, Barry tells me: the rodeo season finished in September. At least he can promise better beer though. We’re due at the Phantom Canyon Brewpub about 5:30; it seems in the wild west, everybody chows down at teatime. In the meantime, we’ve got shopping to fetch. I need new ear buds for my iPod and I’m still in search of a remedy for my parched sinuses. The air in Colorado is as pure as the blue skies it boasts in summer; there just isn’t enough of it. It’s not as bad as Salt Lake City but we’re still pretty high and dry here.

  More at home on the ‘Springs’ grid than he was in Denver, Barry’s telling me what a small town boy he’s become even as we’re driving through miles of affluent low-rise suburbia to a Wal-Mart five miles across town. I’m not wholly sure why we’re heading to one Wal-Mart in particular given that the landscape we’re driving through is littered with things that if they’re not Wal-Mart are only marginally smaller and often specialised in slightly smaller product ranges (hardly difficult since Wal-Mart stocks most things known to man, and some known only to Americans). I suggest that ‘the Springs’ isn’t exactly a small town. Barry thinks for a minute or two before conceding that actually it has 400,000 inhabitants.

  It seems that each of these inhabitants personally has several miles of urban expressway to themselves and lives at least half a dozen miles from wherever they routinely need to get to. Despite there being a compact ‘downtown’ area with a not wholly contrived ‘old west’ feel to it, everybody who lives outside it – which is more or less everybody – spends most of their time driving somewhere else.

  Sprawling modern western cities such as Colorado Springs have not just adapted to the motor car, they have been designed around it. There are not only drive-through McDonald’s (and other fast-food chains) of the type we have come to know in our own American-cloned out-of-town retail parks, but also drive-through banks, drive-through DVD rental outlets and post boxes that you have to drive up to in order to post a letter. In fact, if you want to do something as quirky as post a letter and happen – even more quirkily – to be on foot, then the only way to do so is to venture out into the road and risk being run over just to get access to the post box. A substantial number of the sprawling retail outlets are tyre suppliers: the good people of Colorado Springs probably keep Goodyear and Firestone in business.

  The Phantom Canyon Brewpub is a relief. They do not just an excellent range of beers but a decent menu. Ever more proof what a thriving institution the gastro-brewpub has become in modern America. The real Phantom Canyon, a roadless remnant of pioneering days, is actually way to the north of Denver but the brewery named after it produces excellent beers: from Zebulon’s Peated Porter, a rich dark drink, to aromatic Bavarian-style effervescent Hefeweizen and Coulter’s Kölsch, a pale golden beer in the style of Cologne in Germany.

  It goes down a treat, though I’m not sure whether it’s the beer or the conversation that is making my head swim. Barry is big on alternative explanations, for life, the universe and everything, ranging from the pyramids of Giza in Egypt and Chichen Itza in Mexico, crop circles and the Pleiades, before getting on to Area 51, who shot JFK and whether or not the moon landings were faked – actually Barry is pretty sure they weren’t, he remembers them too well – before settling down to 9/11.

  Barry has just come back from Oahu, Hawaii, where his son is based. ‘Everywhere on that island they have these stickers that say “9/11 was an inside job” – and y’know I dunno, have you heard this guy who says the other buildings that collapsed were obviously taken down with controlled explosions? You know, like they didn’t fall over but just sort of folded down into their own footprint? Like there was some command post in one of them, for the spooks, who orchestrated the whole thing so Bush could get his war on terror? Huh? You know, would you put it past him?’

  No, I wouldn’t. But then you only have to google ’9/11 conspiracy’ these days to get, on average, 7,740,000 hits. Which is a lot of hits. You can either take the ‘eat shit: a hundred million flies can’t be wrong’ attitude, or you can apply Ockham’s Razor and say the real answer is likely to be the simplest. And however far-fetched the idea of a gang of terrorists learning to fly airliners, then hijacking a couple and flying them into the World Trade Center may seem – and it did seem pretty far-fetched even as they did it – the idea of Bush and the CIA planning the whole thing in collusion with Mossad just so they could invade Afghanistan and Iraq and clamp down on personal liberty all over the so-called free world is even crazier. Isn’t it?

  I’m starting to get the feeling that what people perceive to be reality – other than what they can see, hear and feel immediately around them – has a slightly tenuous hold on existence for some of them. Including my cousin. Everybody watches television almost constantly – even in bars and restaurants – but what they’re mostly watching is just whatever’s on. First-class drama series like the Sopranos or Sex and the City draw huge audiences, as do chat shows like Oprah, but news is another matter. With no real national daily newspapers – you can hardly count the lightweight USA Today – and the sprawling diversification of TV news, most of it heavily opinionated, means any semblance of unbiased reporting on air is rare.

  The only constant is the adverts, so frequent and so interlaced with other programming that the two are often hard to separate. Fox News, the Rupert Murdoch-owned, madly jingoistic, out-on-a-limb tabloid television news channel has even signed a product placement agreement with McDonald’s for its regional news shows. For that’s what the news mostly comes down to: a show. The closest most people get to watching informed current affairs programmes is the chat shows, which is why people like David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart wield such influence: the people believe their jokes more than they believe the newscasters. The problem is a collapse in faith in the old ‘anchor’ system as it has moved towards flashy teeth and shiny smiles rather than any semblance of investigative authority, while there was virtually never any concept of informed neutrality other than in the sober organs of the major newspapers in the big cities which in any case only a tiny, already well-informed section of the population reads.

  Barry, to be fair, gets most of his serious news either online or from BBC World or his favourite, the English-language service of Germany’s equivalent, Deutsche Welle: ‘You feel at least they’re aware there are other countries out there as well as their own.’ Inevitably one beer flowed into another and with the chauffeuring services of Barry’s girlfriend, Pat, for us soaks to rely on we ventured out finally as far as Manitou Springs. Virtually a suburb of Colorado Springs these days, Manitou has been surprisingly successful in maintaining the atmosphere of a small western town, without succumbing to too much tourist tat.

  Manitou is an old Native American word for ‘spirit’ and at the low point of Barry’s life it had served to maintain his. The bar we have come to find is The Ancient Mariner – I can only suppose with very loose apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, because of his fondness for hallucinogenic substances, Colorado Springs being about as far as you can get from anything imaginably marine. But it has been a favourite place for Barry and his son to hang out for a spot of father-and-son mutual solace while the boy’s mother was seriously ill. They had played pool there to escape for an hour or two from the strains of living with daily evidence of mortality – the lad was under age but in the circumstances everyone turned a blind eye.

  Subsequently it turned into a lesbian bar, but, as Barry adds with his trademark mischievous wink, ‘not aggressively so, if you know what I mean, and is still full of some nice women who didn’t mind you looking, up to a point’. He has no idea what it’s like now, as it’s been a few years since he’s been here. As it happens, the lesbians have gone and ‘The Mariner’ has expanded, taking over the small shop next door to become a music bar, with a fine band playing interesting experimental jazz-flavoured rock, including an outstanding female electric violinist. But most importantly for Barry, it still had the po
ol table. We shot a few games, then gamely lost to some locals. And then it was time to hit the hay: we had an early start the next morning if I was to make Raton in time to catch the Southwest Chief. And there was a mountain pass to cross on the way.

  As Barry’s girlfriend said before we turned in: ‘Fall’s a comin’ in. There could be snow, sweeties. Oh yeah. And black ice.’

  There wasn’t. The only problem was another of Barry’s incurable attacks of the munchies. We were by no means certain of the situation on the pass as we drove south. Big heavy-looking clouds were indeed marching in from that direction – ‘could be full of moisture if they’ve blown in off the Gulf’ – the only snow we saw was on the tops of a stunning camel-backed double peak mountain group to our right. Barry didn’t know what they were called which once again had me lamenting how annoying it is that most American maps show little more than road: spidery thin lines on a blank background.

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe Homeland Security just doesn’t want you to know,’ says Barry with that smile of his that always leaves me uncertain whether or not he’s serious. In this case I reckon he’s not too sure himself. Google Maps’ hybrid photographs from military satellites offer spectacular resolution in this part of the world. What they lack, however, by and large, is that old-fashioned British ordnance survey-style meticulousness for naming peaks, giving elevations and pointing out the whereabouts of churches and pubs. Particularly the latter.

  There is another reason why Barry might well be right. Pikes Peak isn’t the only nationally significant mountain in the Colorado Springs area: there’s also Mount Cheyenne. This is less of a lofty peak than a great bulk of a mountain looming over the US Air Force base outside the town. I say ‘looming’ because Mount Cheyenne is one of those mountains that would loom no matter what shape it was. That is because deep inside, and probably very far beneath it, Mount Cheyenne houses a hub of the American strategic nuclear missile control system. As Barry has told me on several occasions before: ‘We don’t worry about the risks of a nuclear war. If anyone ever launches a first strike against the United States, the war’ll be over for us before anyone else even knows it’s started.’

  But it’s not nuclear war that’s worrying Barry as we head for the high mountain pass. And it’s not the threat of black ice either. It’s the rumbling in his stomach. I’m looking at my watch worrying that we’re not going to make it over the mountains into Raton, New Mexico, before my train. He’s worrying about making sure we have time to stop at McDonald’s on the way.

  I’m not terribly impressed by this. Not least because having dreaded being forced to live off McMeals and the like for a month or more and ballooning as a result, I’ve actually managed to totally avoid them: the microbrew pub phenomenon has largely gone along with a good food ethos. It hasn’t all been gourmet standard, but it’s really only on Amtrak that I can say in best American fashion that ‘the food sucks’. And now my cousin, my own cousin, is dragging me to a McDo. And for what: ‘This little place in Trinidad do just the greatest sausage biscuit.’

  Excuse me? This little place in Trinidad? It’s a McDo for Christ’s sake, Barry, not some quaint little Caribbean restaurant. And it is, as it turns out, everything I expect. And less: a smaller than usual, but much more crowded little McDonald’s roadside stop, tucked in just next to the I25 freeway, with just one obvious blessing: it is also right next to the railway track so if the train comes through I should see it. Barry meanwhile has queued up at the counter and comes back with the object of his lust: a fairly unrecognisable bun thing with an even less recognisable might-once-have-been-related-to-an-egg thing and some meaty goo next to it. I settle for a large coffee and orange juice. The morning after the night before has different effects on different people. I need rehydration. Barry clearly needs starch. And stuff. And that’s what he gets. The sausage biscuit with egg (regular size biscuit) and hash browns on the side provides a not necessarily vast 660 calories, but more disconcertingly 65 per cent of your daily recommended intake of fat, 77 per cent saturated fat, 83 per cent of recommended cholesterol and 62 per cent of your salt recommendation. And that’s from McDonald’s own website.2

  I’m not sure Barry could care less: ‘Man, I was dreaming about that sausage biscuit and hash browns for the last 70 miles,’ he purrs as we roll out of McDo’s and back onto the highway only to see the train pulling out ahead of us. This induces a moment of blind panic on my part – the next train is same time tomorrow – and also a sheer Homer Simpson ‘D’oh’ moment as I pull out my timetable to check how long we’ve got to get to Raton and find out the train made its previous stop just 10 minutes ago. In Trinidad. The simple fact is I hadn’t looked at a map, just thought the only option was to take the same route as Amtrak’s ‘Thruway’ coach link. So if we miss the connection now, I can’t even blame McDo and Mister Munchie next to me, who’s still licking his lips as we coast up the winding road that for the next 20 miles over the mountains and down into Raton is part of the historic Santa Fe Trail that ran from Missouri through the ‘disorganised territory’ as they then called the Native Americans’ lands, down to the genuinely ancient city of Santa Fe which had been a collection of Pueblo Indian villages since at least the end of the first millennium.

  There is one consolation: the train, still in view, is obviously having more difficulties than we are with the gradient, huffing and puffing its way up an admittedly steep incline before plunging down the other side: all in all, according to Amtrak’s timetable, another hour, while we should need, according to McDonald’s man next to me, 30 minutes at most. Even with the rain settling in, and cold grey clouds scudding overhead. My brief foray onto road transport has left me hankering for the comfort zone of the steel rails – yes, all those stories about Lake Donner and the Rockies snowdrifts notwithstanding – our little truck seems suddenly less reliable than the iron horse.

  I need not have worried. Weather in the Rockies is like weather in Iceland, where the favourite local saying is: ‘You don’t like our climate? Hang around an hour or so.’ By the time we reached Raton station, it felt like a particularly pleasant British June, the temperature in the upper twenties, warm sunshine on my face and just a few small white clouds drifting by above the mountains.

  Raton itself is something else: a one-horse town where the horse packed up and left some years ago in search of excitement. Atop a limestone cliff there’s a white giant-lettered sign clearly modelled on the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, except that this one says ‘RATON’. Because it’s in Raton. And because it’s in Raton, it dominates not Beverly Hills but Marchiondo’s ‘Golden Rule and New York Stores’, which according to the painted signs sells ‘Dry Goods’ and Levis, or must do when it’s open, whenever that is, and certainly not today. In fact there’s no sign of much at all open in Raton. Well, actually nothing. Not even the station. I mean, I suppose trains stop here, once every morning as it says on the timetable, but there’s nothing much to reassure the uncertain traveller that they really do. Just an old, adobe, pinky-cream painted station with no sign of human habitation, and just a few quietly rusting freight cars on the second track, while occasionally-humming telegraph poles march off like the totems of long-vanished tribes towards a desert horizon beneath a high cirrus-flecked azure sky.

  ‘Like, are you sure this train’s gonna come?’ asks Barry, gazing up at the sky, then down at his watch, and shuffling his feet, almost certainly wondering how long it’ll be before he’s due his next McMuffin. But in Amtrak we trust. Especially having seen the train snaking up the mountain behind us and I persuade Barry that his ‘cuz’ can cope and wave goodbye as he heads the Econoliner back towards the state line.

  Within minutes my residual fear that the Southwest Chief might have done a downhill spring and I’ve missed it subsides as, five minutes after it’s due to depart, a van pulls up with a screech of breaks and a bloke the size of a not-very-small grizzly bear in wraparound sunshades jumps out and rolls – he is that sort of shape – up to the trac
k.

  ‘Not here then yet,’ he says. When I mutter a few words of well-meant reciprocal doubt-cum-optimism, he decides I need a few instant stranger-in-a-station bonding lessons. I though I was just waiting for a train, but no, I realise with a weary inward sigh: it’s time to make friends again.

  ‘So you’re from England, heh? What’s that country like? Compared to this country round here?’

  It’s sort of hard to know where to start. That’s the trouble with the questions some Americans ask: they can be disconcertingly direct, and not as easy to answer as they expect.

  ‘Well, it’s smaller,’ I try. ‘And more crowded, and wetter.’

  ‘That so. Yeah, it’s pretty quiet round here these days. But this town used to be hoppin’,’ he says, his interest in faraway parts instantly assuaged. As if England were Wyoming. Although he might have found that easier to relate to. ‘They used to mine coal and stuff and then they stopped. Dunno why and it went real dead for 10 or 15 years, and then they found natural gas up the road and now they’re workin’ on that.’