Austin, NV
All day the rain has fallen, in this place where rain never falls. Down and back and sideways all along U.S. Route 50 in Nevada, from Reno on eastward, the loneliest road in America according to a sign along the way, and now it is dark and the only sounds are the occasional splash of a passing truck, headed west to Reno, or at least Fallon, 114 miles across the salt flats and scrub with nothing in between. There’s little reason to go east, to Austin, or further still to Eureka or Ely.
“I’ve never seen this before,” says Kim, who has owned the Pony Canyon Motel in Austin, Nevada for 26 years. She totes an umbrella with ducks on it to cover her as she goes about her duties alone. Her daughter helps her out in the summer, but in the winter, it’s just her, clerk and housekeeping in one body for 12 rooms next to a four-pump Chevron station.
The rain turns to snow during the night, and that is less of a rarity, up here in the mountains. The light dusting hasn’t brought out wide-eyed, bemittened children to play, because there aren’t any, at least not on this side of the hill.
You won’t find much here in Austin, population 192 as of the 2010 census but more like 150 at this point, say the locals. The town was established after Pony Express riders found silver back in 1862, and there was the usual boom-bust of your average precious mineral mining town. During the boom, a rich East Coast mining overlord built a castle-style tower to himself on the side of the mountain that overlooks the Great Basin. After two months, the family abandoned the tower, and today, Stokes Castle is surrounded by a barbed wire-topped fence and juniper and broken beer bottles. There’s still a little turquoise and gold and silver mining in the area, but the land around town is mostly ranches, now.
In some ways Austin isn’t so different from any of the myriad municipalities that spring up on either side of a two-lane highway, two-story wood frames giving your eyes a brief respite from a hundred miles of nothing. But there’s a reason people around here call their home a living ghost town.
There used to be enough traffic for multiple bars to coexist, but not even the summer travelers were enough to keep them all going after the latest recession. The Pub, which shares a building with the Austin Library, only seems to be open one or two nights a week; the Silver State Saloon and the Golden Club, both of which look straight off the set of Deadwood, are permanently shut. The only one left standing on a daily basis is the Austin Owl Club, with no one at the counter on a Saturday night. Turquoise shops manage to keep their heads above water, thanks to tourists thirsty for gems. “Winter is almost a relief for us,” says the female proprietor of the Little Blue Bird. “Summer’s just too busy. We like the quiet.”
Self-sufficiency is a must out here, or at least a vehicle with decent gas mileage. Once a month, the turquoise saleswoman and her husband drive the 114 miles to Fallon and stock up on groceries. They freeze what they won’t be using in the next week — milk, bread, meat — then thaw it out when they need it.
A trip to the International Bar & Café yields no customers and three people who work the place: an old man whose purpose is not readily discernable, a waitress who can’t seem to get her shirt to cover her full torso, revealing stretch marks, and an older woman who does all the cooking. The old man emigrated — legally, he points out proudly — to America from Serbia in 1961. He was in Florida for a long time, started nightclubs in Fort Lauderdale and Merritt Island and Cocoa Beach. Then he ended up in prison, and after he got out, he headed here to Nevada. Was it for something serious? “When you’re in jail, it’s always serious,” he says, harrumphing, then departs suddenly to replace a part in his truck.
The Serb follows the tradition of immigrants who view people who come into this country without the express permission of the U.S. government as worse than just about any other crime. When he was set to immigrate, he says, he had to get all the vaccines American kids get, and wait three months. The illegals coming in these days aren’t getting any vaccines. They’re committing all these crimes, too. And yet, if we follow this man’s own logic, as an immigrant who ended up in jail, shouldn’t he also be deported? The vibe in the Café is such that your correspondent doesn’t deem it prudent to voice this thought aloud.
If you didn’t get the idea from the massive Trump 2016 and Make America Great Again signs festooning the restaurant’s exterior, this is “Trumps Diner,” a white board inside [sic]s.
The menu isn’t particularly Trumpian. There are no taco bowls or facsimiles of Big Macs; instead, the items are mostly sandwiches and, presumably to satisfy the “International” claim in the name, pizzas. They went from serving breakfast and burgers and dinner to just lunch items, because the business wasn’t worth the expanded menu, but they added a fresh juice option over the summer — $7 for 12 ounces.
(For all their antipathy for coastal elites, your correspondent has noticed that people in small towns don’t shy away from following urban trends, whether that’s fresh-pressed ginger-cucumber juice or chocolate cake frappes.)
Connie, an older waitress at the Toiyabe Café right down the street, is a little warmer. She affectionately admonishes your correspondent for coming in with wet hair when it’s freezing out. “You’ll catch sick, and then that means I’ll catch sick,” she scolds, pouring a third cup of coffee. Connie moved here five years ago with some friends from Oregon. “I didn’t have anything else going on, so I figured why not,” she says, bustling around with take-out cartons and plates of hash browns. She wears black latex gloves to protect her hands — there’s something in the cleaning solution that cracks them wide open within a couple hours.
“I’ll probably die here,” she says, and while she’s on the older side, she doesn’t exactly seem near death. “Hopefully not anytime soon,” your correspondent rejoins.
“Oh no, hopefully soon,” Connie says. “I’m ready. It’s been too long, I’ve lived out the season. We don’t get to choose when we go, do we? But I’m ready.” She hands two new patrons menus. “Sorry y’all, it’s after 11, so we’re only serving lunch.”
