A Hundred Million Horrible Kazoos

26 July 2025… It’s past noon when I pull off some small Nevada highway into Redstone picnic area. It’s got a parking lot, an outhouse, and a single shaded picnic table. This may be a picnic area in the winter months, but this time of year it is a kiln. The sky slowburns broad and blue, roasting the rusty red rocks rising over dazzled desert dirt. I need to stretch. And use the outhouse. The parking area is empty, save a Boomer couple on a Harley and six 20-somethings on sport bikes — stereotypes come to life.

Yo quiero Taco Bell.

Nobody over age 35 rides sport bikes. This is because it hurts us just to watch and listen to somebody ride them. Seats that shove you forward into the handlebars. Footpegs that jam your knees up into your elbows. Engines like a hundred million horrible kazoos screaming with the shame of being born kazoos when they could’ve been born something better, like grasshopper carcasses. Conversely, nobody under 35 rides a Harley, because people in that age range have a 45% likelihood of being named Harley, and riding a bike with your name on it can get you cancelled for narcissism by morally superior narcissists.

Ten minutes later I’ve used the outhouse, reapplied sunblock to my face, and put some music in my earbuds (the afternoon is calling for Rush for reasons only instinct understands). I follow the half dozen sport bikes back out onto Highway 167. They’re six young banshees shrieking away down that dark ribbon of asphalt. Nuclear youth, bright as the sun. They think they’re fast enough to outrun the hands of time. They’re fast enough to outrun me, in any case. I’m happy on my big cruiser, holding hands with time on its winding way, to easily lean the bike in and out of careless curves. Today’s sun sees it all, hits high noon, then starts to fall like a flamed out firework.

Hoover Dam Lodge sounds like a homey, rustic place for a late lunch, but it is not. Hoover Dam Lodge is in reality a casino. Google Maps told me there’s a Mexican restaurant inside the lodge called La Villita. There is literally nobody at La Villita on this Saturday afternoon, just gambling games flashing and cheap Day of the Dead decorations fluttering in the recycled air. They’re playing Phil Collins. I find this agreeable. I’ve been standing at the counter for the better part of a minute, humming along to “Sussudio,” when a kind-faced woman in a casino uniform wanders in from the sea of slot machines.

“Hi,” I say. “May I order?” The woman frowns a little. “This isn’t a restaurant, hun,” she says. “Oh.” I’m confused. “But do you have food?” She produces a menu. “We only have four or five options.” I’m generally not a tool, so I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is, “That would make you a restaurant, then, wouldn’t it?” Instead I politely order a Mexican burrito and watch the pleasant woman walk into the kitchen, remove a frozen burrito from a freezer and put it in a microwave. This does not really surprise me, nor upset me. I feel like I can’t in good conscience ask for much more — I’m paying $3 for this burrito and I’m not even gambling to subsidize the price.

Now they’re playing “In the Air Tonight.” The house music is clearly just a Phil Collins greatest hits album. I continue to find this agreeable. The pleasant woman leans against the counter back in the kitchen, swiping through her phone. A sad little slot game called Unwooly Riches flashes its cartoony logo of a moody devil goat and a happy angel sheep. It offers a bounty of $10,500. I figure after taxes and fees you'd probably only see three or four thousand. I just talked myself out of playing. Phil Collins is still singing, I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life. I nurse a Dr. Pepper and use a plastic fork to stir the detrius of my Walmart burrito.

Tu quieres Taco Bell.

There’s only one gas station between Hoover Dam and Kingman, Arizona. Here is a sample of its inventory: gasoline of various octanes, anorexic hot dogs, melty candy bars, colorful gum, obligatory beer, canned tea, soda pop, salt with a light dusting of nuts sprinkled in, energy drinks, jerky, processed cheese, coffee, Krispy Creme donuts, lesser donuts that lack a reason to exist in the shadow of Krispy Creme, an entire section of delicious Hostess products, pickles that could be either real or plastic I’m not sure, pouches of air that also contain 11 potato chips per package, premade sandwiches that I can charitably say look like bird poop, and the fortune telling game Zoltar, which in the 1988 movie Big granted a young boy his wish to be a grown up.

Zoltar charges a full dollar these days to tell you your future. It used to be a quarter. Zoltar has gone corporate. I will not be extorted. Anyway, I already know my future, and it’s full of Hostess Ho-Ho’s, donuts, pepperjack cheese sticks, and Vitamin Water (for my health).

The desert is wide open out here, laid out like a cracked and parched old open wound. It’s 35 miles to Kingman. Wind blows belligerent out of the east into my face and my motorcycle shimmies a little as it hugs the highway. Freedom can get pretty barren sometimes. And barren can get downright pretty sometimes.

A parade of dust devils lines itself up on the dry plains to the south. Wispy brown, swaying their dirty hips in the heat. I don’t know how many there are out there. A dozen, maybe more. Spiralling up and up and up into the sky. I see the beaten down desert and the burning sky, dust rising until it disappears into heaven, redeemed. Those devils have been waiting for this moment all their lives.