Email this article
Rolling Down the Mother Road
The Preacher fills my duct-taped water bottle at the kitchen sink and points out the window toward the empty two-lane broiling in the high-desert sun. "You might think that what you're looking for is out there," he says. "But it's all right here in the Book."
I nod politely, hoping against hope that the old man won't work too hard at saving me. Right now, the only salvation I'm looking for is gushing out of that faucet. It's July 1995 and I am bicycling across Arizona on what's left of Old Route 66. The last water was in Seligman, 25 miles east of the Calvary Baptist Church Doctrinal Institute.
The Preacher - the Rev. Warren Smith - puts down his New Testament and goes to the refrigerator. He comes back with big, sweating plastic glasses decorated with pink flamingos. Lemonade. The clink of ice cubes is celestial music. Heaven can wait.
The Preacher tells his story. For 12 years he and his wife have lived in this lonely white house, watered the lawn, and kept the faith. They minister to the Hualapai tribe and whoever else might show up. Right now that's me - a hairy middle-aged guy on a cheap, overloaded bicycle, headed west toward the furnace of the Mojave Desert. An obvious prospect.
After a bit more small talk, the Preacher gets down to business.
"Tell me again, friend, where is it you're going?"
I'm from Flagstaff, I say. The plan is to ride Old Route 66 to the California line, then peddle north and west across Nevada on U.S. Route 50, a.k.a. "the Loneliest Road in America."
The Preacher suggests that this could be dangerous in mid-summer. I shrug and tell him I'm just another tourist. But I know - and suspect the Preacher knows, too - that the chambers of commerce in Kingman and Barstow aren't thinking of people like me when they advocate the getting-of-kicks out on the Mother Road.
Their Route 66 is a place to buy refrigerator magnets. Mine is something else - ten or twelve hours peddling in the sun every day, waiting out the afternoon heat under bridge culverts, and sleeping on the side of the road. It's the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad grinding up a long grade in the middle of the night, metal screeching.
I don't say much about my Route 66. I don't mention that this morning I inspected an abandoned blue house trailer with busted-out windows and the kids' homework yellowing on the cracked linoleum floor. I don't reveal that this sight caused me to weep, or that I seek out such scenes like oases. Instead I tell the old man that I like to ride my bicycle.
He nods and smiles. "Are you a Believer, son?"
"Not in the way you mean. I think there are many paths to the truth."
The Preacher lets this bit of heresy slide by without comment. He reaches again for the worn, leather-bound bible and reads something out of Paul's letter to the Corinthians about the hazards of travel. He tells me I'm a seeker.
"You're looking for the truth, son. I can tell."
His evangelism is not bullying, so I'm happy to sit in the cool house while he preaches about the One True Road. I break in now and again, but the Preacher's rock-solid certainty does not allow for many questions. Still, I listen politely.
I always listen to true believers. I cannot shake this habit. Maybe it's because they are so honest: the true missionary has no guile. Or maybe I listen to religious zealots who live on the margins because their fervent, oddball ways remind me of my own.
After all, I have just quit my job to trundle across the Great American Desert on a bicycle. Yesterday I exhausted myself with a 90-mile ride, pitched camp in the dark next to the railroad tracks, and endured dreams of roaring dragons with iron teeth. Two days from now, when I cross the Colorado River, it will be 117 degrees in the shade.
My mission, such as it is, makes no more sense than anyone else's.
And right now, this journey has landed me at an old man's kitchen table, discussing the state of my soul. He is a perfect stranger, and a perfect host. I am traveling alone, except for the usual personal demons. So maybe this all makes sense. It could be that this is indeed the Mother Road, and we are all on it.
Post a comment
insideoutsidemag.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post.
Read our full policy.
