Blythe
If we don’t get stabbed to death tonight we will meet you at Kofa tomorrow.
I texted this to my friend Jerry as we arrived at our Motel 6 in Blythe California after sunset. (The problem with winter travel is the days are so damn short.)
For those who are concerned about these things and my god who wouldn’t be? There are two Motel 6’s in Blythe, one newer and nearer the interstate and the other on the dusty forgotten main-street whose heyday was over when the barricades were lifted when the interstate opened.
The second Motel 6 is lit up with bright LED lighting like a federal penitentiary without the razor wire (yet?). This is somehow both reassuring and also not. Actually it isn’t really. Behind the motel is a neighborhood that well… was also not reassuring. Being an older motel the parking lot is really small and with no room for a small trailer so we parked on the street sufficiently in the glare of the prison search lights to again be reassured and not.
This Motel 6 is cheaper which is why we are here… no wait why are we here? Ah yes, a night with a shower before we head out to the desert for a few days with friends.
As I unpack a man parked nearby asked if we were looking for a room. Confused I said yes at first then revised my answer that we already had one. “Rooms are as scarce as hens teeth tonight.” replied the midwestern refugee, “I wanted to know if you needed help.” A nice gesture I suppose and I guess he was suggesting double bunking? Weird though, he must have noticed my wife. Anyway we wished each other a nice evening. Good to know that, if there is a stabbing, there will be helpful people sleeping nearby.
Also I forgot to mention the other Motel 6 has a pool. This one did too until someone filled it with concrete. Oh well the weather isn’t that warm here in the winter.
My wife checked us into our room, emerging from the curry infused front-desk like she had just had a nice Tikka Masala. We settled into the room and refreshed ourselves on the current horrors happening with the American experiment with nice fast WiFi. Why do we do this to ourselves? So much nicer to be deep in the desert where electromagnetic energy has dissipated beyond what even Claude Shannon could recover in his most hysterical nightmares. (There is a man, like Descartes, who we can blame for much our current ills, but don’t get me started…)
Walking the dog before bedtime I wander past a very rough shopping mall with equally rough people begging on the sidewalk. A very bright and well-stocked Smart and Final grocery store (4.4 stars on Google) was doing brisk business. The area seemed to be less smart and more final.
With her business done, I picked up after Mollie and we hurried back to the room. Mollie enjoys walks on leash or off and in the country or towns equally. She is naturally nosy and towns are where she can indulge this. She was particularly curious about a woman who emerged from under a pile of blankets and cardboard with a cat.
The encounter was horrifying when I realized what caught Mollie’s attention, and pulled her away as the woman tried to protect her cat. I mumbled ‘sorry!’ as we scurried away. Everyone deserves safety, privacy, and dignity no matter their fortune.
Was that the third time the shiny new sheriff’s cruiser has come by? Reassuring, or again not?
The night was as expected. Who knew that the only benefit of the motel being this distance from the interstate was that it would be somewhat quieter and that it would still not entertain any tangible expectation of such quiet. Los Angeles is a very big and hungry place and the virtual train of trucks to supply it rumble on all night. All that shit we need so desperately from China must act as ballast on the return sailings.
The morning revealed we had not been stabbed, and a glance through the curtain revealed my truck and trailer were intact and that at least the wheels on this side were still present. I dressed quickly and took the dog out for the morning walk.
We ventured into the sketchy neighborhood that now looked better under the light of day. The brown lawns were cut and most houses were old but looked after. We walked the road or alley between the commercial strip and the residences. Mollie swears the smells in alleys are most compelling.
Most of the businesses on the main drag were closed down. Evidence of attempted resurrection on some. An old motel with new plumbing supplied by irrigation pipe. No sign the subject had ever been revived however.
An automated car wash was still doing business as evidenced by the trail of wet concrete on the driveway. We returned along the main drag with the ubiquitous Dollar General store, an old filling station converted to a mini-mart. The Rodeway Inn seemed to have nobody in the parking lot, perhaps lots of early risers. Past the laundromat and we turned back at the giant weed-studded gravel lot where whatever commerce had been there had been bulldozed away, perhaps as a hazard after it had been set fire to.
The other side had a Joe’s auto repair and tires storefront hiding a WW II era Quonset hut building like its neighbor Blythe marine (the Colorado river is just a mile or so away), with boats that all looked at least 20 years old out front. Both still in business!
The nail in the depression coffin was the Blue Line Motel and Trailer Park. Boarded-over windows and weedy courtyard. The sign a perfect faded mid-century neon sign. Mollie and I watched two small dogs cross the street unattended, looked in wonder as cars slowed and halted to let them pass. They seemed perfect little friends returning from a night on the town, rough looking, but happy with each other’s company.
Next Mollie was pulling on the leash sniffing in the motel courtyard grass until I jerked her back from a dog skull. Bleached and lying in the open. Had a dog been struck by a car and died and decomposed unnoticed? Had a coyote brought it here? Hard to say but it spoke strongly of despair.
Finally closing on home, the shuttered China Garden restaurant and nearby smoke shop with welded steel screened doors and windows like a crack dealer’s house.
In my childhood memory of driving to Palm Springs to visit my dad’s college roommate, then a urologist to Bob Hope and other celebrities, Blythe was always derided by my parents as we drove past. It was oddly and probably hopefully named as are other new towns in the West. It was also probably in much better shape then but a small farming town on the edge of the Colorado and Mohave deserts will never appear as some great residential or commercial mecca. Unbearably hot in the summer it is drive-past country unless you happen to live there.
No doubt some farmers doing very well. Irrigated desert is some very productive farmland. Cheap labor is just across the border.
To be sure there are many here who pass their lives where this place is home with families and memories even if the environment does not seem the place to foster such things to some of us. But there is an unmistakable sense of despair, of an economic trap and the sense that things may never improve. At least that is a my impression, well-informed by twelve hours of experience…
Off to Quartzite and a new vision of hell on earth… or perfect freedom... or the most American place on the continent…
Blythe is a woman’s name that means joyous or happy.
Blithe can mean: lacking due thought or consideration: casual, heedless or it can mean: of a happy lighthearted character or disposition.
The Blythe process is the process of injecting dried wood with carbolic acid or petrochemicals.
Blythe California gets its name from Thomas Henry Blythe (not his original name) a Welsh immigrant who bankrolled the development of the land around Blythe as a farming empire.
