A Lap Around America

by Shawn Inmon

  I glanced at a clock and noted that we had already spent two hours in the studio. It had passed in a blink. I knew I could happily stay there for many more hours, but I was aware that Kenneth and Jay had a music festival coming up that they needed to prepare for. I never felt they were hurrying me along, but I wanted to respect their time, so we got ready to leave.

  Before we did, Jay took one last picture of Dawn and me, standing in the middle of the recording studio. I was wearing a smile that would need to be surgically removed.

  I want to take a moment and thank Jay, Kenneth, and David for sharing the history of the place and music they love with fans. It filled my heart and spirit to overflowing. By the way, the tour of the studio is completely free. However, there is a discreet box that sits in the room you first enter that accepts donations for the upkeep of the studio. I happily contributed.

  I walked out of the Norman Petty Studios in a happy daze, wonderful music ringing in my ears.

  We climbed into the Silver Bullet and got on Highway 70, heading south. We’d been traveling and sightseeing for almost two weeks, and we were ready for a little break. A small vacation from our vacation. We had spent a dozen nights in crappy little roadside motels, so I found a nice hotel in Roswell that we could stay in for a couple of nights. It would be a nice break to not have to carry the bags in and out for a day.

  On the way to Roswell, we drove through Portales, which had the best “Welcome to …” sign we saw on the entire trip. It said, Welcome to Portales, Home of 17,000 Friendly People (And three or four old grouches.) Of course, I’ve never been very bright, so I turned to Dawn and said, “If we moved here, they’d have to change the sign.” The look she gave me told me I didn’t need to explain further. Grouch.

  I think that spending almost two consecutive weeks cooped up in the car might be taking a toll on us. Time for a little break!

  Day Thirteen

  If the name “Roswell” is burned into your consciousness, it’s probably because of the Unidentified Flying Object that ostensibly crashed here. On June 8, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record ran a headline that read, “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.” If that’s not an attention-grabbing headline, I don’t know what is.

  Shortly after that, the government stepped in, displayed portions of a downed weather balloon, and a million conspiracy theories were born.

  Did a UFO actually crash on a Roswell ranch? Were there little green men, or tall gray men found? I have no way of knowing, but by nature I remain a skeptic.

  However, our first stop in Roswell was the International UFO Museum and Research Center. That’s a pretty serious name for a place that was a lot of fun. Yes, there are a few cheesy exhibits, (the alien autopsy springs first to mind) but there’s also a lot of straightforward information—newspaper clippings, signed affidavits from the principals of the 1947 crash, etc. If you wander through with an open mind, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that there was at least some kind of a cover up.

  There was some kind of a UFOlogist convention going on while we were there, so there were quite a few people wandering around who had forgotten more about the whole event than I will ever know. And, they are willing to tell you their theories, if you give them a chance. Sometimes, even if you don’t give them a chance—simple eye contact can be enough encouragement.

  It was nice spending as much time as we wanted walking through the exhibits. One thing we’ve found is that even though we were taking two months for this trip, we still felt pressure to keep moving. We wanted to make it all the way to Key West, Florida, then up to Maine before heading toward home, so we knew we couldn’t dawdle too much.

  The rest of the day, while Americans everywhere were enjoying the third day of their weekend with barbecues and road trips, we retired to our little hotel room, which had a kitchenette, good cable television, and a swimming pool. It even had laundry facilities, so by Monday night, we were refreshed and ready to hit the road again.

  Day Fourteen

  On many days, we try to cram two, three, or four stops into our itinerary. This day, we had just one: Carslbad Caverns. One of my favorite writers is Kurt Vonnegut, and in his book Player Piano, he wrote that Carlsbad Caverns was sacrificed to build EPICAC XIV, the supercomputer that ran the world. Ever since I read that as a teenager, I wanted to investigate the caverns for myself, looking for some trace of Vonnegut’s computer.

  We got to the parking lot a little before noon and thought we might want to have our picnic lunch before we descended into the caverns. There was a single picnic table at the end of the parking lot, but as soon as we stepped out of the car, we were blasted by the 90-plus degree heat. We looked at the picnic table, baking in the direct sun, with no shade available anywhere, and got right back into the Silver Bullet and turned the AC on high. We sat perched on the edge of the parking lot, looking down at the open vista that graces the area surrounding the national park.

  While we had lunch, we watched two brown hawks riding the wind currents. I had no idea if they were hunting or just enjoying the freedom of flight, but they rode the wind currents with unmatched skill. In fact, in the 30 minutes we watched them, they didn’t flap their wings a single time. It was like watching a master class in piloting.

  When it comes to the caverns, there are choices. You can hike down through the natural entrance, then turn around hike and back up, or you can ride an elevator both ways, or walk one way and ride the other.

  We elected to compromise and walk down through the natural entrance, then ride the elevator back to the top. A few things to keep in mind if you plan to visit Carlsbad: It is 56 degrees inside, year-round. We read that in advance, and so we took our jackets. Even though that sounds cool, bordering on chilly, we found that because of the humidity and working up a sweat by hiking, we didn’t need them. So, we carried our jackets with us the whole way for nothing.

  You should also be aware there is a strong odor that most people find unpleasant, or worse. I saw a few people with weaker stomachs gagging a bit when they hit the entrance. Others, I saw, had sprayed something on a handkerchief and covered their mouths and noses with that. Me? I just breathed through my mouth after that first pungent inhale. That solved the problem for me.

  We assumed that the smell is produced by piles of bat guano, but a park ranger later told us that’s not correct—that the cave swallows that live in abundant numbers at the front of the cave cause the smell. Whatever it is, it’s potent.

  The path to the bottom is steep, dark, and in some spots, a little slippery. The hike is about a mile and a quarter from the natural entrance down to the Big Room. (By the way, every time I refer to the Big Room, I first call it the Great Room, then have to go back and fix it. Must be too many years as a Realtor.)

  As I mentioned earlier, Dawn has a few minor phobias. Darkness, enclosed spaces, heights and spiders are on her Mount Rushmore of fears. It was too dark to see if there were spiders there, but otherwise, the inside of Carlsbad was three for three. She was a trouper, though, and did great. The trails were pretty wide in most places, and the lookouts all had railings you could hold onto.

  You’d think walking down would be easy, and it is at first. Eventually, though, your thighs and calves tighten up from trying not to go too fast. From then on, it’s a bit of a battle with gravity. By the time we got to the bottom, we were fairly well worn out.

  At the bottom, a sign offers two choices: get on the elevator back to the surface, or take another mile-and-a-quarter hike around the Big Room. The interior is dank. The epic size of the caverns had been cool to see, but we weren’t sure we would get that much more out of walking around the Big Room.

  Finally, after we stood there contemplating our sore feet for a minute, Dawn said, “C’mon, let’s go. When are we ever going to get back to the bottom of Carlsbad Caverns?”

  Good point. Off we went. I’m so glad we did. The best parts of the tour were there within the Big Room. One was seeing the remnant of a rick
ety old ladder nailed to the side of a cliff that early explorers used to descend parts of the cavern. We both agreed that if we had needed that ladder to see what was there, Carlsbad Caverns would remain unexplored to this day.

  We would have never been caught on this ladder

  Just how big is the Big Room? A little more than eight acres, the largest single cave chamber in North America by volume. There are incredible displays of stalagmites and stalactites all around, forming into a million different shapes and sizes. I constantly told myself: Stalactites come from the ceiling, because the name has a “c”. Stalagmites grow from the ground, because the name has a “g”. The things we learn in childhood that somehow stick with us.

  The parks service has the elevators well organized. They are slightly cramped, though, because as many people as possible are put on each trip. You make a smooth trip up through solid rock. Not that Dawn would know; her eyes were closed the entire time.

  Once we made it to the surface, we hit the gift shop—I probably haven’t mentioned Dawn’s magnet habit, but it’s akin to any addiction—then wandered down for the day’s last highlight, to wait for dusk, when the Brazilian free-tailed bats come pouring out of the bat cave. After the long hike, we were more than happy to sit in the shade of the comfortable amphitheater and wait. About half an hour before the bats appeared, a park ranger gave us another highly informative talk about the flying rodents. I am thankful for all that I have learned from park rangers.

  I didn’t take any pictures as the bats emerged, for a very good reason. The rangers insist that all electronics – GoPros, cellphones, video cameras—be turned completely off, as they bother the bats. It was an unusual experience to sit with a large group of people, all of them living in the moment, none of them videoing or Facebook Live–broadcasting the event. It was really nice.

  The bats were the stars of the show. The caverns house several hundred thousand bats that are waiting to migrate to Mexico at the end of October, and they come out at dusk every night. They emerge in a silent school, swirl together in a counterclockwise double helix to gain altitude, and take off on their nightly hunt. In the air, they are not nearly as graceful as the hawks we watched earlier in the day. In fact, to my eye, they looked to be laboring a bit, but they will travel 30 miles or more to feed and drink before returning to the cave to sleep and care for their offspring. And in a black cave with hundreds of thousands of other occupants, how do they locate their own offspring? The ranger said it was through memory of where they left them, and recognizing the smell of their own. Nature is a beautiful thing.

  Walking up the trail back to our parking spot, where we had watched the hawks soar, it felt like we had been gone a very long time. We were bone-tired. Although we had entertained the idea of driving into Texas after the caverns, we realized we wanted nothing so much as a bed for the night. So, we made the short drive back to Carlsbad, found a pretty awful little roadside motel, and crashed.

  Day Fifteen

  New Mexico had been a pleasant surprise for us. When we daydreamed about the trip, we thought of seeing Texas, Florida, and Maine, but New Mexico never crossed our minds. Having spent a few days there, though, it made our list of places we’d like to visit again.

  However, the southeastern corner of the state doesn’t have a lot to recommend it: flat, sandy scrub and muddy rivers are the only features as far as the eye can see. We’d been on Highway 128 east toward Texas about half an hour before we noticed that the only vehicles sharing the road with us were semis and company pickups. The entire length of that highway, we never saw another car. We soon understood why. Anyone driving Highway 128 risks having their fillings jarred out of their head at several points. The joys of driving back roads! There is so little non-commercial traffic heading into Texas on that road, there wasn’t even a sign welcoming us to the state.

  Once in Texas, we turned north toward Lubbock. Since our number one destination in the state was San Antonio, this was a bit out of the way. This trip has never been about the strategically optimal route, though, so why start now?

  The impetus was the Lubbock Flash himself, Buddy Holly. After our great visit to the Clovis studios where he recorded his greatest music, we wanted to wrap up the Buddy part of our tour with a visit to his hometown.

  Lubbock honors its favorite son with The Buddy Holly Center. Relatively new, it has a permanent Buddy Holly wing and other parts that offer rotating exhibits on other artists and topics. The day we visited, the center was paying tribute to women in rock. A worthy subject, and one I am interested in, but honestly, it didn’t do much for me. It was basically just pictures of Patty Smythe, Chrissy Hynde, Stevie Nicks, and Deborah Harry. Cool enough as far as it went, but not a lot of interesting facts or stories about them.

  Likewise, the eighteen-minute movie about Buddy Holly that is constantly playing was well done, but if you’re a Buddy fan, there’s not much new to discover.

  The museum part was something else again, though. Being in Buddy’s hometown and having access to the Holley family obviously had its advantages. Please note that the spelling in the previous sentence is not a typo. Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley but changed his name when he went into music.

  The Holly exhibit is worth the price of admission. I was mesmerized by several exhibits, including the glasses Buddy was wearing on February 3, 1959, when his plane went down in an Iowa cornfield. The lenses were thought to be destroyed in the crash, and the frames themselves were lost for many years. About twenty years after the crash, a Cerro Gordo County sheriff in Iowa was cleaning out an evidence locker, found the tagged glasses and returned them to the Holley family. It was a tangible connection to rock ‘n’ roll’s first great tragedy.

  There were also photos I’d never seen before, some of Buddy’s guitars, and one item that was special to me. In my book Rock ‘n Roll Heaven, I had described a specific guitar strap Buddy had made and hand-tooled himself. I knew it existed because I’d seen a picture of it, but now it was right there in front of me.

  I could have spent hours in the museum staring at all the Buddy memorabilia, but we had one more stop to make in Lubbock, and it was already getting late. When we’d entered Texas earlier in the day, we had joined the Central time zone and lost an hour on our clock.

  Before leaving Lubbock, I wanted to visit Buddy’s grave and pay my respects. He had fired my imagination and given me so many happy hours of music, I couldn’t leave without doing that.

  We found the cemetery with no trouble, but had a heck of a time finding Buddy’s grave. I think I had expected something big and grand, but there is just a tiny headstone that reads: In loving memory of our son, Buddy Holley. His family name was restored in death, as I believe he would have wanted it. He is buried right next to his parents, who have similar headstones. On this trip, we would see some grand and awe-inspiring headstones, but Buddy’s impressed me with its modesty.

  Buddy’s grave, lovely in its simplicity

  I was feeling somber when we left the cemetery and drove through the outskirts of Lubbock, so I looked for something more cheerful before we left town.

  I found it in the form of Prairie Dog Town. Prairie Dog Town was the brainchild of a gentleman named K.N. Clapp, in 1935. Clapp was concerned that the black-tailed prairie dog was in danger of extinction. So, he trapped two pairs, built an enclosure, and oversaw the growth of the operation until his death 34 years later. Forty-seven years after his death, his dream of Prairie Dog Town is still thriving.

  Those original four prairie dogs have bloomed into hundreds of the cute little buggers. They have tunnels and holes over several acres where they pop up and down like a real-life game of whack-a-mole. We were walking along the fence line to get a better look when the skies opened up and a Texas gully washer dropped on our heads. Where we come from, you usually get a little warning before it rains, but this was like someone turned on a shower overhead.

  We ran to a roofed picnic area, but the wind was bringing the rain in si
deways, so we sprinted to the car and waited the storm out. We were already learning that these downpours don’t last long, and five minutes later, it was done. We spent another half hour watching the prairie dogs, then got in the car to leave.

  On the way out of the park, though, we discovered that several of the little critters had managed to tunnel their way out of their enclosures and were sitting up alongside the road, looking at us hungrily. I’m sure there are rules against feeding them, but I’d like to see someone explain that to Dawn when she has a chance to feed a prairie dog. I am not the right man for that job, I can tell you.

  She grabbed a box of raisins and within a minute had one particularly hardy fellow, whom I named Fred, literally eating out of her hand. We’d been on the road for fifteen days and had covered thousands of miles and much of the western portion of the United States, but Dawn said that was her favorite part of the trip so far.

  That’s one of the lessons I’m taking from this trip. The big, planned events are cool, but it’s the unexpected little moments that sneak up on you out of nowhere that stick with you.

  We got on Highway 87 South and made it about a third of the way to San Antonio before we gave up and found another in what had started to feel like an endless series of roadside motels, in Big Springs, Texas. Everything is big in Texas, but we never saw any springs as we passed through.

  Day Sixteen

  It had been hot the entire trip. We got a little break driving down the Oregon coast, but as soon as we turned inland, the temps climbed back into the 90s and we’d hit at least that mark every day since. It hadn’t been that bad, though, because we’d been in desert in Utah and New Mexico. Now, we were in Texas, and a different kind of heat: Oppressive. Wet. Blech. I suppose that if you were born here, it would feel normal. For me, as a native Pacific Northwesterner, it was pretty awful.