Crowded Diner on the Loneliest Road in America
Isolated Café Fills Empty Spaces with Life
April Orcutt
Bleak mountains, empty valleys, sage dust, nary a creature in sight — the isolated, lonely landscape gnawed at our psyches and cooked our brains in 100-plus-degree August heat in our non-air-conditioned VW Vanagon camper, rolling along Highway 50, the “Loneliest Road in America.”
Brown desert and barren ranges of Nevada had replaced the red canyons of Utah two-thirds of the way through the 600 miles my husband and I had driven since early morning when we departed Telluride, Colorado, on our way home to San Francisco. We considered driving the desolate stretches of Nevada as the price we paid for our road trips to Utah’s National Parks and Colorado’s Rockies.
By eight o’clock when we approached the tiny community of Eureka, we were beyond hungry. “Do you want to cook in the van or stop in a restaurant?” I asked.
“I’m too tired to cook,” Michael said. “Even though my expectations for something yummy are nil, if a café’s open, let’s stop for a quick bite.”
An “open” sign hung on the Owl Club, one of a dozen brick-and-stone buildings lining Main St. We parked, shook the dust off our clothes and opened the Owl’s door.
Inside the brightly lit café, people crowded around a dozen wooden-topped tables, scooting close together on vinyl-and-metal kitchen chairs. As we walked in, the customers turned their heads and looked up.
Conversations stopped. Eyes opened wide. Faces filled with expectation and started to break into smiles. Some folks sat up tall in their chairs, the better to see . . . us. Dusty us. Travel-weary us.
I don’t recall another time when I felt so many people’s hopes and expectations landing on me. But a second later, their faces fell. They turned back to their conversations.
The waitress showed us to a table along the side wall near an oval frame holding an antique photograph of an owl. I ordered grilled halibut, a silly choice 500 miles from an ocean, and Michael ordered a hamburger.
Most of the women in the café wore simple print dresses, and the men had on long-sleeve shirts, blue jeans and “feed caps” — baseball hats sporting the names of farm- or ranching-equipment companies. The young guys all were thin but muscular.
On the opposite side of the room sat an older, heavier man with a handlebar mustache, coveralls and a Boss-of-the-Plains rounded cowboy hat with the front brim turned up. We imagined him just back from panning for gold in a local stream.
The door to the café opened again. Everyone stopped talking and turned expectantly toward the door. A middle-aged couple stepped inside, and the place erupted as everyone shouted things like, “Great to see you!” and “Sit with us!”
When the waitress brought our food, I asked, “What’s going on?”
“The rodeo’s in town,” she said, “so people who’ve moved away are coming back.”
It was a reunion — a homecoming — a chance to see long-lost friends.
Two young men came in and met the same warm greetings.
At the table next to us a stylish 40-something couple speaking French ate with heads down. They finished their meal, paid, walked through the wide doorway into the dark, empty bar and played slot machines.
The other people at the tables slowly finished their meals but didn’t leave. Michael’s burger and my halibut tasted unexpectedly yummy.
The door opened again, and a young couple paused dramatically on the threshold. He was tall, lanky, looked to be about 20 years old and wore jeans, a long-sleeve shirt and white feed cap. She wore a pink dotted-Swiss puffy-sleeve blouse and looked about 19. And she carried a baby.
She didn’t just carry the baby, though. She presented it. She held the baby facing forward in the crook of her left elbow with her right hand holding it upright so everyone could see its face. The baby was the star, and everybody cheered. The young family came in, and all the patrons and staff cooed and goo-gooed as the baby was passed from table to table.
We finished our meal but wanted to continue watching the local-color so we ordered dessert. The waitress brought us a huge slice of coconut cream pie mounded high with whipped cream.
A couple hours after we came in, when the action had finally slowed down, we paid and headed out to find a place to camp. We drove to the top of the next pass and got out of the van.
The sweet scent of sage permeated the breeze. In the distance a lone coyote howled. We hugged under moonlight. From a different direction another coyote howled. Then others chimed in. The arid wilderness no longer seemed empty. Here in the supposedly isolated desert landscape, the environment seemed warm, rich and full of surprises.
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Find more of April Orcutt’s stories at Medium.com/BATW-Travel-Stories, Medium.com/Travel-Insights-And-Outtakes, AprilOrcutt.Medium.com, and AprilOrcutt.com.
