room in a place like Wyoming and watch TV early on a Sunday morning.
I can remember when we didn't even have TV on Sunday mornings; that's how old I am. You would turn on WOI and all you would get was a test pattern and you would sit there and watch that because there was nothing else. Then after a while they would take off the test pattern and show
'Sky King,' which was an interesting and exciting program, at least compared to a test pattern.
Nowadays they don't show test patterns at all on American TV, which is a shame because given a choice between test patterns and TV evangelists, I would unhesitatingly choose the test patterns.
They were soothing in an odd way and, of course, they didn't ask you for money or make you listen to their son-in-law sing.
It was just after eight when I left the motel. I drove through the drizzle to Devils Tower, about twenty-five miles away. Devils Tower was the mountain used by Steven Spielberg in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the one on which the aliens landed. It is so singular and extraordinary that you cannot imagine what Spielberg would have used as an alternative if it hadn't been available.
You can see it long before you get to it, but as you draw nearer the scale of it becomes really quite awesome. It is a flat-topped cone of rock 865 feet high, soaring out of an otherwise flat and featureless plain. The scientific explanation is that it was a volcanic fluke-an outsized lump of warm rock that shot out of the earth and then cooled into its present arresting shape. In the moonlight it is said to glow, though even now on a wet Sunday morning with smoky clouds brushing across its summit it looked decidedly supernatural, as if it were placed there eons ago for the eventual use of aliens. I only hope that when they do come they don't expect to eat out.
I stopped at a lay-by near the tower and got out to look at it, squinting through the drizzle. A wooden sign beside the road said that the tower was considered sacred by the Indians and that in 1g06 it became the first designated national monument in America. I stared at the tower for a long time, hypnotized both by its majesty and by a dull need for coffee, and then realized that I was getting very wet, so I returned to the car and drove on.
Having gone without dinner the night before, I intended to indulge myself in that greatest of all American gustatory pleasures-going out for Sunday breakfast.
Everybody in America goes out for Sunday breakfast. It is such a popular pastime that you generally have to line up for a table, but it's always worth the wait. Indeed, the inability to achieve instant oral gratification is such an unusual experience in America that lining up actually intensifies the pleasure. You wouldn't want to do it all the time, of course, you wouldn't want to get British about it or anything, but once a week for twenty minutes is 'kinda neat,' as they say. One reason you have to line up is that it takes the waitress about thirty minutes just to take each order. First you have to tell her whether you want your eggs sunny-side up, over easy, scrambled, poached, parboiled, or in an omelette, and in an omelette, whether you want it to be a plain, cheese, vegetable, hot-spicy, or chocolate-nut-'n'-fudge omelette; and then you have to decide whether you want your toast on white, rye, whole wheat, sourdough, or pumpernickel bread and whether you want whipped butter, pat butter, or low-cholesterol butter substitute; and then there's a complicated period of negotiation in which you ask if you can have cornflakes instead of the cinnamon roll and link sausages instead of patties. So the waitress, who is only sixteen years old and not real smart, has to go off to the manager and ask him whether that's possible, and she comes back and tells you that you can't have cornflakes instead of the cinnamon roll, but you can have Idaho fries instead of the short stack of pancakes, or you can have an English muffin and bacon instead of whole wheat toast, but only if you order a side of hashed browns and a large orange juice. This is unacceptable to you, and you decide that you will have waffles instead, so the waitress has to rub everything out with her nubby eraser and start all over again. And across the room the line on the other side of the 'Please Wait to Be Seated' board grows longer and longer, but the people don't mind because the food smells so good and, anyway, all this waiting is, as I say, kinda neat.
I drove along Highway 24 through a landscape of low hills, in a state of tingly anticipation. There were three little towns over the next twenty miles and I felt certain that one of them would have a roadside restaurant. I was nearly to the South Dakota state line. I was leaving the ranching country and entering more conventional farmland. Farmers cannot exist without a roadside restaurant every couple of miles, so I had no doubt that I would find one just around the next bend. One by one I passed through the little towns-Hulett, Alva, Aladdin-but there was nothing to them, just sleeping houses. No one was awake. What kind of place was this? Even on Sundays farmers are up at dawn.
Beyond Beulah I passed the larger community of Belle Fourche and then St. Onge and Sturgis, but still there was nothing. I couldn't even get a cup of coffee.
At last I came to Deadwood, a town that, if nothing else, lived up to its first syllable. For a few years in the 1870s, after gold was discovered in the Black Hills, Deadwood was one of the liveliest and most famous towns in the West. It was the home of Calamity Jane. Wild Bill Hickock was shot dead while playing cards in a local saloon. Today the town makes a living by taking large sums of money off tourists and giving them in return some crappy little trinket to take home and put on their mantlepiece. Almost all the stores along the main street were souvenir emporia, and several of them were open even though it was a Sunday morning. There were even a couple of coffee shops, but they were closed.
I went in the Gold Nugget Trading Post and had a look around. It was a large room where nothing but souvenirs were sold-moccasins, beaded Indian bags, arrowheads, nuggets of fool's gold, Indian dolls. I was the only customer. I didn't see anything to buy, so I left and went in another store a couple of doors away-The World Famous Prospectors Gift Shop-and found exactly the same stuff at identical prices and again I was the only customer. At neither place did the people running things say hello or ask me how I was doing. They would have in the Midwest. I went back out into the miserable drizzle and walked around the town looking for a place to eat, but there was nothing. So I got back in the car and drove on to Mount Rushmore, forty miles down the road.
Mount Rushmore is just outside the little town of Keystone, which is even more touristy than Deadwood, but at least there were some restaurants open. I went into one and was seated immediately, which rather threw me. The waitress gave me a menu and went off. The menu had about forty breakfasts on it. I had only read to number seventeen ('Pigs in a Blanket') when the waitress returned with a pencil ready, but I was so hungry that I just decided, more or less arbitrarily, that I would have breakfast number three. 'But can I have link sausages instead of hashed browns?' I added. She tapped her pencil against a notice on the menu. It said NO
SUBSTITUTIONS. What a drag. That was the most fun part. No wonder the place was half empty. I started to make a protest, but I fancied I could see her forming a bolus of saliva at the back of her mouth and I broke off. I just smiled and said 'Okay, never mind, thank you!' in a bright tone. 'And please don't spit in my food!' I wanted to add as she went off, but somehow I felt this would only encourage her.
Afterwards I drove to Mount Rushmore, a couple of miles outside town up a steep road. I had always wanted to see Mount Rushmore, especially after watching Cary Grant clamber over Thomas Jefferson's nose in North by Northwest (a film that also left me with a strange urge to strafe someone in a cornfield from a low-flying airplane). I was delighted to discover that Mount Rushmore was free. There was a huge terraced parking lot, though hardly any cars were in it. I parked and walked up to the visitors' center. One whole wall was glass, so that you could gaze out at the monument, high up on the neighboring mountainside. It was shrouded in fog. I couldn't believe my bad luck. It was like peering into a steam bath. I thought I could just make out Washington, but I wasn't sure. I waited
