Personal Essays

NEVADA

I studied Westerns when I was at University, sat in a lecture theatre and watched the finest films from Ford to Peckinpah, while outside the English drizzle battered against cement walls. The affair had begun years before, when I was a child and with my Datcu, my Welsh grandfather, who never once set foot in America, would sit and watch the "Cooboy" films.Together we would escape into the Wild West; gunfights, sheriffs and bad guys, riding off into the sunset. Nevada was where I first saw tumbling tumble weed, I shrieked with excitement, (but I didn't get a shot of it) so Nevada will always make me think of Westerns even if the all the rest of the world thinks of Vegas.


Outside Reno it starts to appear a lot like the first freeway on the surface of the moon might look. We saw a cyclist with a trailer and a sign saying "TULSA OR BUST", I didn't get a picture of him either. The salt flats were mesmerizingly empty. Now and then there would be a message formed in black rocks against the white earth: a woman's name, a date, or a heart. You can't help but wonder who the hell does that, drives all the way to nowhere, on a desert highway, gets out and gathers up rocks, then writes a message with them. I imagined lovelorn teenagers, or maybe the heartbroken middle aged man, whose sweetie has dedicated her desires to slot machines. I guess maybe there's not a lot in the way of entertainment outside of Vegas.
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