In a truly bizarre twist of fate, Via, AAA’s travel magazine, just published an article touting Highway 50 from tiny Baker Nevada to the teeming metropolis of Ely, as a “Great Drive” and no, I did not pay them to do so.  You see, this drive takes you past Steptoe Valley, the spot where Fi Butters, the reluctant heroine of FLIPKA, stops for Cheetos, Pepsi and directions from a cigarette puffing cat taxidermist.

Imagine Clark Griswold, the hero of the National Lampoon Vacation series, reading this article and then announcing to his family. “This is it! The next great Griswold family road trip!”

As they huddle on the couch groaning Ellen, Clark’s sensible wife, opens her laptop and googles Baker Nevada. “Oh Lord, Clark. It’s out in the middle of nowhere!  Four hours from Salt Lake City!”  She takes another look at the directions and gasps, “Oh my God.  Look at this route! There’s nothing between Delta Utah and Baker.  Nothing but dry lake beds – not one town. Where would we stop to…you know?”

Clark ignores her as he googles sites of interest in Delta Utah.  “Hum,” he points out, “we could visit the Gunnison Memorial. That’d be fun.”

“What’s great about that?” asks Rusty.

“Well, son, It’s the site of an Indian ambush quite possibly orchestrated by Brigham Young, himself.  You know the…”

“Big deal.”

Clark rubs his chin. “I guess you’re right, Rusty my man.  It looks like just a plaque by the site of the road. No museum, no nothing. Hey, how about this one?  The Topaz War Relocation Camp?”

“A concentration camp?” Audrey gasps.”Where the government put all those poor people in WWII just cause they were Japanese!  Eww.”

Clark realizes a mutiny is afoot. “We could drive to Baker from Vegas.  You like Vegas, right kids?”

“Couldn’t we just stay in Vegas?”  Rusty pleads.

“At the Excalibur,” Audrey chimes in.

“No!  Treasure Island!”  Rusty counters, punching his sister in the arm.

“Where’s your sense of adventure, kids? Highway 50 is the loneliest highway in the world!  We could rent an RV and stay at this place. Major’s Station Bar and RV Park!”

Groans all around.

Ellen goggles the route from Vegas.  “Clark,” she sighs in exasperation.  “That route’s not any better.  It’s four and a half hours from Vegas to Baker and the only places to stop are two itty-bitty towns: Caliente and Pioche.  Read what it says about Pioche, “… one of the roughest towns in the old West!”

“Let’s go to Desperation Nevada!” Rusty blurts out, looking up from his Stephen King novel.  “That would be sick!”

“Desperation?” * Clark asks, examining the map.

“Yeah, could we, Dad?  Please!”

*Stephen King wrote Desperation after a harrowing trip through Nevada. There really is no such town.

My father built the three houses I lived in growing up but it’s the first one that flashes through my mind when I hear the word “tornado.”  I return to the small concrete bunker smelling of sawdust. I hear the cackling radio and see my mother’s tears in the dim light as the baby cries and my brother feigns bravery.

I was six when it happened; running barefoot through nearby farms, stealing pea pods and prying them open for the sweet goodies inside. When I was a child I only went inside when called.  Or when hungry or scared.

It came on a sweaty afternoon in late spring, a time when black-eyed Susans, with their cheery faces and lop-eared petals, grew thick and wild everywhere in central Michigan  and you could pick as many as you wanted which is what I was doing when I heard my neighbor’s rabbits squealing and ran over to to see why. They had all sorts of animals trapped in small, wire cages just outside their barn.

“What’s wrong?”  I asked, freeing the rabbits.  They had black and white spots and were so fat they could barely hop. The neighbor spied me from her window seat and ran outside screaming. “Your mother’s going to whip you good!”

I started to run but stopped to let her dog off his heavy chain.  He was my friend and something wicked was coming.  An ogre perhaps, or maybe a cyclops.  A massive, one-eyed, child-eating cyclops with blood-stained teeth and a laugh that turned blood to ice.  I had to free as many animals as I could so they could run away.

Our house was built into a hill, not a particularly steep hill but one with enough slope to ski down in the winter when there was snow. Beyond our yard was Thorny Woods, a swath of birches filled with blackberry vines so bewitched they towered over me.

I arrived home to find my mother standing at the back door with the baby in her arms screaming my name. Overhead grey clouds drooped like the udders of deranged milk cows. “Get down to the bunker,” she ordered.  The radio was on full blast, filling the house with the frantic cackling of a thousand crazy witches.

“I can’t!”  I pleaded.

“Take your brother and get down there.  Now!”

To get to the bunker you had to go across the garage, through a hole in the floor and down a ladder in the dark.  I couldn’t go through the garage because of the horror.  She shoved me towards the stairs as she grabbed the portable radio with her one free hand.  “For crying out loud! They’re only animals!”

I grabbed my brother’s chubby hand and started to cry, each step down the stairs worse than the one before until I reached the bottom.  The lights flickered. I tried not to look but blood was everywhere, pooling in lakes all over the concrete  from my father’s latest kills, the rabbits, the deer, the pheasants, now hanging on meathooks, their sad eyes watching me.

Mother ran through the blood to open the trap door, disappearing into the hole as my brother broke free of my grasp and ran after her. He slipped and fell into the stain, then rose and with a sob followed her into the hole.

Mother re-emerged seconds later, picked me up savagely and carried me across the pools of blood.  I can still see her bloody footprints.

Once in the bunker she tried to read a book in the dim light from the camp stove but we couldn’t hear the words over the sound of the monster raging above.  Her lips moved that was it.  The baby cried, my brother cried and finally my mother cried.

Finally it was quiet. We all stopped crying for a second.  Maybe it was over I thought, but I was wrong.  Soon the winds began again, this time preceded by a terrible sucking sound.

The toilet exploded, water shooting up to the ceiling, followed by a rumbling in the earth as it threatened to rip apart beneath us. We were all screaming.  The banshees, the baby, my brother, mother and me.

Then, again, quiet. Anyone who’s been through a disaster knows that in the aftermath a strange calm fills the air. We moved like zombies into the daylight.  Slowly other zombies emerged. With the exception of broken windows, my father’s first house was spared.  However, the house next door looked like a pile of pick-up sticks.   I heard they rebuilt but by then father had tired of the corporate world and we were gone.

I wish I wrote about cheese.  Life would be so much simpler.  I don’t know about other writers, but I have a hard time describing my work without babbling on and on and there can be nothing worse in the whole wide world than an artist who babbles on and on and on about their work.

For example, yesterday I attended a baby shower held in (believe it or not) a trophy room.  Picture a cavernous, two-story room crammed with the bodies of lions, antelopes, sheep, goats, tigers and bears, all mounted as they would appear in the wild by the best taxidermists money can buy; on the walls the heads of other beasts, as well as sport fish on plagues and exotic birds perched as though about to take flight.  The challenge of how to cheer up the room for a baby shower was solved by placing teddy bears – hundreds of teddy bears – all around the room and even on the backs of some of the beasts.  In addition, the big game hunter responsible for all the trophies put a bonnet on the head of the howling baboon and a pink cowboy hat on the charging lioness.  The mounted beasts were not spared.

The water buffalo got a pirate hat, the moose, a beret.  And so on.  The elephant head was the only trophy spared the indignity.

During the shower I chatted with a fellow guest, someone I rarely see, who I will call Wendy because that’s her name.  Here’s how it went:

Wendy:  What have you been up?

Me:  I wrote a book.

Wendy:  What’s it about?

Me:  Well, it’s about blah blah blah blah blah and then more blah, blah, blah… blah, blah, blah…blah blah blah blah blah and then more blah, blah, blah… blah, blah, blah…

Wendy’s eyes begin to gloss over. Not so subtly, she glances around the room, hoping to spot someone who had not written a book. 

Me: It looks like I’ve done an outstanding job of boring you to death.

Wendy: (who is too intelligence to lie): I have a client who writes about cheese.

Me:  Cheese?  I love cheese.

You can guess the moral of this tale. Don’t blab on about your book or you’ll end up as popular as a howling baboon in an Easter bonnet.

No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog, just badly drawn.

Yesterday I made a 21st Century Tuna Noodle Casserole  (Cooks Illustrated’s Pasta Revolution) for no other reason than I felt like doing something besides write.  I also fertilized the camellias, went to a neighborhood open house, and watched a dumb movie on TV.  Exciting life, hey?

Growing up, dinner had to be fast, simple, and cheap.  My mother’s tuna noodle casserole had only five ingredients and thus was a stable in our house.

Tuna Noodle Casserole circa 1960

1. Two cans of tuna packed in oil
2. Two cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup
3. One package of Lipton’s onion soup
4. One package egg noodles, usually cooked to mush
5. Canned fried onions over the top

As you can see – no fresh ingredients.  In fact, the only ingredients not out of a can were the egg noodles which unfortunately had to be boiled.  I’m sure if cooked egg noodles came in a can, she would have used them as well.  To jazz this casserole up for a potluck, she’d crinkle stale Lay’s potato chips over the top.  Yum.

When I moved out, I vowed tuna noodle casserole would never dull my taste buds again.  Nor would canned Spaghetti Os, frozen chicken pot pies, pot roast filled with grizzle and, liver smothered with onions.  All the stables of my childhood. Thus, it took the hubby a long, long time to convince me to try what was one of his favorite dishes.

 Tuna Noodle Casserole circa 1990

1. 12 ounces egg noodles
2. 2 cans Albacore Tuna packed in water
3. 1 pound mushrooms
4. 7 ounce bottle Spanish Olives with Pimentos
5. 1 cup grated parmesan cheese
6. 1 tsp dill weed
7. 1 pint sour cream
8. 2 cans Campbell’s mushroom soup
9. 2 cups milk
10. 2 bundles green onions chopped fine.

As you can see, there are twice the number of ingredients in his recipe.  It also costs three times Mother’s and takes three times longer to prepare. Should you care to add extra calories, top with garlic, butter breadcrumbs.  The result is tasty, albeit a bit salty (especially when he goes overboard with the parmesan cheese).

Recently he came across this recipe.  It incorporates cherry tomatoes, garlic, feta cheese and kalamata olives in the mix – genuinely healthy foods and not just artery cloggers.

21st Century Tuna Noodle Casserole

Fifteen ingredients!!  And the cost has now skyrocketed which makes me wonder, in another ten years will tuna noodle casserole be considered haute cuisine?

I guess as our lives get more complicated, so do the recipes.