From West Texas

Good evening. It’s your favorite American boy, writing to you from scenic Van Horn, Texas.

That’s what the billboard I saw somewhere between Las Cruces and El Paso said, anyway, and who am I to argue with branding like that? I’m writing to you from the Village Inn Motel, which allows dogs and had availability. I spent the past fourteen hours driving from Los Angeles, except I crossed two time zones to get here, so it’s also sixteen hours later than it was when I left. Either way, after fourteen hours deftly manuevering a Hyundai Sonata through the desert, traveling with just a very patient dog for company, I need to take a few moments before launching into bed, or my dreams will all be about driving, and I will awaken with a start, briefly convinced I’ve fallen asleep at the wheel.

So I’m here in the Village Inn Motel in Van Horn, which is not particularly scenic at this time of night, but what small town is? I’ve been here in the day, too, though not in a long time, and I remember seeing mountains. I’ve had my fill of mountains over the past fourteen hours, but if you haven’t been traveling through California, Arizona, and New Mexico all day, I can see why Van Horn’s might be scenic enough.

The last time I was here for any length of time, I was reporting a story for the Texas Observer. Two, actually, but only one of them came together—a piece about the Border Patrol checkpoint in nearby Sierra Blanca, which has become infamous over the years for its tendency to catch celebrities with some amount of weed on them while they are doing the same drive I was doing today. To report it, I spent time with the sheriff of Hudspeth County, a very large geographic area (larger than two U.S. states) with a very small population (just under 4,500), which amounts to less than one person per square mile, and his volunteer public information officer, who was, as they say, a character. Because there are no hotels in Sierra Blanca, I stayed out in Van Horn, where I spent several hours in the restaurant of the Hotel El Capitan, an historic hotel a few feet from where I’m sitting now. I watched basketball with three contractors for Blue Origin, the space program owned and run by Jeff Bezos, and then chatted with locals about what it’s like having to prove that you belong here every time you drive to El Paso to visit a supermarket.

The Blue Origin people were the other reason I was there. I’d had friends who had stayed at the El Capitan before, who had spent time in that same restaurant, who had related stories they’d been told about Jeff Bezos aggressively buying up ranch land so he could launch rockets from the property. He had sent someone to the door of the last holdouts, according to the stories I’d been told, and offered them a blank check. Even the people who didn’t want to sell did eventually, the legend went. I asked people in town if they’d heard about that, too, but no one could confirm it—it was all something they’d heard from a friend of a friend, and that friend wasn’t around to come by the El Capitan that night.

And so I let that go, the way you have to let some stories go sometimes, and now I’m at the Village Inn. Every other hotel in town was booked—apparently word about how scenic Van Horn is has gotten out, thanks billboard—and the proprietor of the Red Roof Inn I had visited took pity on me, called the owner of this place. We had to negotiate around the dog—she would only let me rent a smoking room, which I declined, figuring I could press on to Fort Stockton if I had to—and she agreed to rent me a seldom-used non-smoking room around the back in exchange for an extra ten dollars, a fee to which I eagerly agreed.

It’s one AM now, somehow, which is what happens when you spend the day driving and fast-forwarding time zones. I’ve been in Los Angeles for the past month, and it will take some time for me to adjust back to Central Standard Time—but tonight, I’ll do it from the Village Inn Motel, grateful for the bed and eager to get back on the road.