More Tales From the Island Nurse

by Mary J. Macleod

  Then, suddenly, everything changed. Far, far away in sunny California, plans were being hatched, visas arranged, contracts drawn up and our lives were about to change yet again.

  32

  Californian Sunshine!

  GEORGE, ANDY AND I woke at four am.

  We were jet-lagged after the thirteen-hour flight so we were really awake with no hope of further sleep at all.

  George blinked across the motel room, which we were all sharing.

  ‘Let’s go and have some breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘It’s four in the morning,’ offered an astonished Andy.

  ‘That’s OK. This is California.’ George seemed in high spirits in spite of the lack of sleep.

  We dressed. I had a problem remembering to put on just a tee shirt and jeans although it was only four am. Where were the emergency calls on Papavray when I was woken at four am by the phone and bundled myself into layers of clothes before braving a sub-zero world and lashing rain?

  Two bleary-eyed dogs, Pip and Squeak, peered at us from their makeshift bed in the door way of the en-suite. They seemed to be very reluctant to wake. It was likely to be the after effects of the sedative that they had been given before being caged and loaded into the live animal hold in the plane on which we had all travelled. This hold was pressurised and heated, so they had been comfortable. They seemed to take the whole thing in their stride but had been very pleased to see us at the airport in LA.

  I took them round to a scrubby patch of grass at the rear of the motel, gave them a drink and they seemed only too happy to go back to sleep. No problem for them, apparently.

  The enormous ‘Ford Country Squire’ which George had bought on his previous visit to see his new employer, was standing outside the door of the motel room.

  It was huge! And it was an automatic! Such cars were still rare in the UK and I was intrigued by its sophistication. It seemed to think for itself.

  In we got and set off on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. I could tell that George was having to concentrate very hard to remember this at road junctions. I too would have to be careful and I felt apprehensive. As it turned out, it all seemed quite logical and there was so much space on the city roads that one had time to think. Not so the Interstate Highways, encountered later, which were crowded and an altogether frightening experience with sixteen-year-olds racing each other in ‘Ford Firebirds’ and the California Highway Patrol (a formidable lot, bristling with firearms) chasing them as they weaved in and out of the traffic.

  Near the motel there was a ‘diner’ – a restaurant to us – called ‘Big Bob’s’.

  ‘Big Bob?’ Andy hooted when he saw the name. ‘Who is Bob and why is he so big?’

  We were unused to the rather brash names that we were now encountering. We were accustomed to ‘Ye Olde Tea Shoppe’ in England and the something ‘Arms’ or ‘Hotel’ in Scotland where they spurned fancy names.

  Breakfast was another surprise. The diner was at least half full (four am?) as we found a seat by the window.

  Why was I asked if I wanted my eggs ‘over easy’? And what was the alternative? And how come we ate pancakes with syrup at four am? And where was the longed-for cup of tea? I asked the trim waitress for a pot of tea and George and Andy requested coffee with which Americans are so familiar and which seems to be drunk incessantly and in vast quantities.

  My tea arrived, weak, without milk, iced, sugarless and in a glass with an umbrella balanced in it! Oh dear! That was the last time I asked for tea in a diner. The food, however, was good: filling and tasty.

  George had to meet his new boss and some colleagues at eight am (the Americans start early) so Andy and I were free to wander. At first we seemed to be the only people walking as cars whizzed by and the ‘trash collectors’ emptied bins. There was so much space: space beside the roads, space between diners, space between office blocks and shops. Conditioned as we were to the use of every bit of land in British towns, leaving no gaps between buildings, we found this very refreshing. We had a sense of airiness. Later we realised that this ‘air’ was heavily polluted and hung over Los Angeles like a pall for much of the time.

  The road signs seemed unintelligible even to us as pedestrians. What was a ‘PEDXING’? Why were there two red lights in the same place at junctions but restraining different lanes? And when I came to drive, how would I know which to obey? And where were the roundabouts with which the UK keeps it traffic moving? California and most of the States move their traffic by means of batteries of traffic lights swinging in the wind on wires above one’s head. I could see that we had a lot to learn but a good breakfast had helped us to be positive and excited at being in a new country.

  We ambled along the ‘sidewalk’ (not the pavement-that was the road surface it seemed) crossed at the PEDXING and entered a large shopping mall.

  There might have been one or two such malls in the UK at that time but, coming from the wild north, we had not seen such a thing so the vast, shiny expanse of marble floor, the glass roof and the brilliant lighting were yet another startling contrast.

  ‘Whatever would Fergie think of this? Or Archie?’ wondered Andy as he gazed around. Goods offered for sale were another source of amusement to him.

  ‘Who on earth would wear those?’ He laughed as we passed a sort of open shop selling Bermuda shorts of every gaudy hue. Andy was beginning to be a little more particular about clothes. He was older and the island wear had been very much designed for the weather rather than the appearance. Later, he was surprised to find that the American school clothes were of man-made fibres. The UK had tried these and, apart from the very cheapest of wear, had reverted to using natural fibres which we felt were superior in quality and appearance. But now we had to conform, of course, or go without.

  We pottered about for some time and then decided to have coffee – not tea – and a burger. Such things were unknown on the islands but Andy had seen them in London. He thought the enormous American version was much better and began to feel that this strange place was going to be fine after all.

  Feeling sleepy at the wrong time of the day, Andy and I returned to the motel. I had hoped to take the dogs for a walk but there seemed to be a conspiracy against dogs and their owners. ‘No Canines Here’. ‘Owners are warned against exercising their canines here’. ‘Fouling by canines is liable to prosecution’. Why could they not say ‘dogs’?

  We eventually found a scrubby area beside a dried up ‘drain’ – perhaps ‘brook’ or ‘gully’ to us. It was many feet deep and about forty feet wide. Here we ‘exercised our canines’ undisturbed. On our return to the motel, we were severely admonished for having our canines in the motel at all. No-one had told us that this was not allowed. Apparently, they ‘constituted a health risk’.

  I thought of the collies on Papavray, who wandered in and out of the croft kitchens at will, shared the warmth of the fireside or Rayburn and, in the case of our two, often slept in the bedrooms. And what about Louis the Lamb, who walked on the coffee table and the new-born lambs, housed and fed in cardboard boxes beside the Agas or Rayburns in the croft house kitchens?

  George returned from his meeting to tell us that the first few months of his new contract would be spent not in California but in Nevada.

  Andy was hazy about American geography. ‘Where is Nevada?’

  ‘Oh, it’s the next state to the north and east,’ said George nonchalantly, as though we were talking about the next street.

  ‘I will be working near a little town called ‘Hawthorne’. It is by Lake Walker, in the desert. It is to do with defusing and exploding old bombs.’

  ‘Wow!’ said Andy, impressed. ‘Which war are they from?’

  ‘World War Two, Korean War and Vietnam. Some are very old and unstable so it is all done by robots controlled by computers. That is what I will be doing.’

  Robots were still quite new, except in science fiction, and George was looking forward to the challenge. I was not so sure!

  It w
as only May so Andy would have the summer vacation (holidays) in Nevada before returning to California to begin school in Mission Viejo at the start of the fall (autumn) semester (term). If George’s job in Nevada overran the summer, Andy and I would return, with George joining us later as his next assignment was in San Clemente.

  ‘So when do we go to Nevada?’ I wondered, trying to absorb all this information through a sort of fog of tiredness and confusion.

  ‘Now.’

  I looked at him. ‘And how far is it to Hawthorne?’

  ‘About seven or eight hundred miles, I think.’ He paused and at last seemed to be taking in the difficulties. ‘We will find somewhere for the night.’

  ‘Do you know the way?’

  ‘Um… No.’

  ‘Map?’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  After a brief snooze we set off with a map, two dogs and just the few clothes that we had been able to bring within our baggage allowance on the flight. Our furniture and possessions were in a container on a ship in mid Atlantic. We had only the vaguest of ideas of what might await us in Hawthorne. Our accommodation was provided by the company. What was it like? Were we near this Lake Walker? Was the place really a desert? And so on. I decided to stop thinking about it and just drive. It was unbearably hot and the air-conditioning was either not working or we had failed to understand its controls.

  We headed north, hugging the Pacific coast of California and passing through many of the towns, familiar by name as a result of films made on location. Then we turned inland and started up the steep side of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains which form the backdrop to LA and the coastal strip. These are not high but they trap the smog created by the millions of car exhausts and hold it in a brown, foul-smelling and eye-watering blanket over LA and surroundings.

  This is the State where the car is undoubtedly king. You need a car to live in the coastal area of California. The whole way of life is built around the car – the distance from residential areas to shops, schools, medical and leisure facilities and work means that everyone needs a car: families often had several.

  Driving up the six-lane highway into these mountains, I reflected that many crofters in the islands could not afford even one old banger and walked for miles if they were physically able.

  It was already getting dark as we left San Bernadino behind and far below us. The lights were already coming on in the streets, outlining the strict grid system of roads and avenues. Almost all Californian cities were laid out in this way and it was probably very convenient and logical but I did not find it attractive at all. To me, it looked boring and too far removed from the familiar random and picturesque assortment of streets, alleys, and buildings in Britain. I also found myself uncomfortable, perhaps embarrassed by the uninhibited use of vast quantities of electricity. A strange feeling for one who was, after all, just a visitor but we had been hearing so much about the fact that the world’s resources were under strain that this scene seemed reckless. I stopped worrying. At least it was cooler now.

  We drove on to the high, flat Mojave Desert where we bowled along for miles seeing nothing but the occasional tall cactus which loomed, human-like, out of the gloom as tumble-weed rolled across the road in the draught of every passing vehicle. There were few cars but huge articulated trucks, towing at least two trailers roared out of the night, blaring their horns. In case we had not seen them? How could we miss them? Their every outline was lit with multi-coloured lights and their metalwork gleamed in our headlights. They were magnificent! Truckers in the USA take great pride in the appearance of their trucks, washing, polishing and generally maintaining their splendid appearance. Do they have some sort of federal competition, I wondered?

  Not for these men (and women) the small, grubby lorries of the UK. In fact, the Americans are inclined to laugh at the very word ‘lorry’. I don’t know why it is so funny but I soon stopped calling these monsters of the highway ‘lorries’.

  At the aptly named ‘Four Corners’, where four roads and a railway met, we found a motel. We smuggled the dogs in very quietly, praying that they would not bark. We were so tired that in spite of the rattling of the long, long freight trains that moved so slowly through the junction and the swish of the trucks, we slept.

  Next morning, we set off very early, travelling along the eastern side of the mighty Sierra Nevada mountains. For some miles the road ran beside the LA aqueduct. Southern California is so short of water that several such aqueducts were built to carry the precious resource from lakes and reservoirs in North California to the orange groves, vineyards and the thousands and thousands of swimming pools of the south. This one was as wide as a road, the water in it about eight feet deep and flowing at quite a rate. I was full of admiration for the brilliance of the concept and the precision of the construction.

  ‘Imagine not having enough rain,’ murmured Andy, obviously thinking of the Hebrides.

  On we went, passing a small scattered community with the iconic name of ‘Lone Pine’.

  ‘It’s like living in the Wild West,’ said Andy and was happy to see a Stetson or two among the baseball caps of the residents of Lone Pine.

  After some lunch and the purchase of some dark sun glasses, we came to Mono Lake: a salt lake formed about a million years ago. There is no outlet from the lake, so the water gradually becomes more and more salty. When we passed it that day, the water level was very low and we heard later that this was the subject of a bitter dispute between the locals and LA which had taken water from it into the aqueducts. In the 1990s, this practice was stopped and the lake is filling again.

  When we saw it, the lake was an eerie-looking, dead place with tall pillars of salt standing in the remaining water like the stumps of submerged trees and no sign of wildlife. Now that the levels are normal again, the wildlife is back. A happy end to a very long dispute.

  We skirted the lake and set off east along an unbelievable twenty-seven miles of dead straight road into Nevada. No notice proclaimed the boundary with California, no fence or frontier post – only a sudden change in the road surface told us that we had passed from one great state to another. A line in the road with a perfect tarmac surface on the Californian side: well-kept and smooth and a rough, broken surface with ill-defined edges on the Nevada side. And that was all. I almost felt at home. Bad roads were a very real feature of Papavray.

  We had passed through several ugly towns of scarcely more than one long street festooned with advertising hoardings on every building. Coca Cola signs, burger signs, beer, tyres, truck rentals and more! ‘Flags’ waved in the breeze in a horrid attempt to lure folk into the rather seedy looking premises lining the road. We were very aware that we were now in Nevada when we saw arrows pointing the way to numerous casinos.

  Now we drove into Hawthorne and it was exactly the same with even taller hoardings and a few side streets. My heart fell. Among it all a tiny notice told us that we were at four thousand six hundred feet. It was so warm that I had not noticed the gradual rise.

  We had to meet a colleague of George’s at ‘El Capitan’ – the largest and gaudiest casino in Hawthorne. Over an impressive lunch (casinos do not expect to make a profit on food, I was told) we were shown the way to a little cluster of homes about four miles away at Walker Lake.

  We turned off where we could see a block of about eight apartments, a few houses, a restaurant, a boating centre and several wooden jetties. Andy was ecstatic! He had always loved water and boats and this looked just ‘great’.

  Our apartment was on the second floor, approached up an outside metal staircase to a balcony overlooking the lake. We were home!

  Unpacked, dogs walked, everyone fed, I stood at peace on the balcony and gazed in wonder and delight. The lake, about twelve miles long and five wide, lay sleeping below, shining palely in the bright moonlight. Surrounding all sides were dry, barren but beautiful mountains, outlined against a deep blue sky alive with stars. Turning slightly I could see, behind the apartments and so n
ear that it seemed to rise from the roadway was Mount Grant standing proudly at eleven thousand feet. It had a dusting of snow on its peak.

  Now I felt at home. Mountains, the lake and snow!

  33

  Nevada

  I WOKE IN the night. I was cold. Thinking that the night would be warm like the day, I had only a sheet over me. Hastily, I located the duvet and snuggled down, remembering belatedly that we were in a desert, high maybe, but far from the ocean and therefore subject to extremes of temperature with hot dry days and bitterly cold nights and hot, dry summers and icy winters.

  By seven in the morning, the sun was up and the apartment was uncomfortably warm. There was a cooling system called a ‘Swamp Cooler’, a large, ugly affair on the roof. This seemed to be the poor relation of the air-conditioning that we would enjoy later in California.

  George went off to explode his bombs. Andy appeared in bathing trunks and not much else and we took the dogs down the wide, gravel approach to the lake. Our two ‘canines’ plunged into the green water with glee and Andy followed more gingerly: the water was still cool from the cold night but he was soon striking out between the boats moored near the jetties.

  I sat nearby and could now see that the mountains across the water were higher than I had supposed in the darkness and were part of a red-brown range stretching east and south of the lake. I believe them to be part of the Monte Christo Range.

  Andy came back. ‘There were some boys here last night,’ he observed. ‘Perhaps at the weekend…?’ He was missing his island companions but he was a gregarious boy and would soon make friends, crossing whatever barriers might arise. And I felt instinctively that there would be barriers.

  There was another man living nearby who worked at the Hawthorne Army Munitions Plant and who had given George a lift so I had the car to get supplies. We go shopping, the Americans generally, and certainly the Nevadans, get supplies.

  Andy and I went into Hawthorne. Although very ugly, the town had some good shops with a smattering of Native American craft work and paintings. I was told that there was an Indian reservation at the north end of Walker Lake but, disappointingly, we rarely saw any Native Americans.