So I’ll try to keep this short, because it’s quite the crazy story by itself and I don’t think it needs much of an introduction. I’m from Greece and for the past month I’ve been vacationing to the American Midwest, a dream come true for me and my girlfriend after many years of planning it. Now yeah, I know what you’re thinking, who tf dreams of traveling to the Midwest, well, we did. All those cute little cities and the emptyness, the sheer nature of all of it…we loved it! And all the stories you could find there.
Anyway, for the last week of our trip we decided to take Route 306 in Nevada, going through the Crescent Valley and disappearing inside the smallest roads we could find in search of the tiniest possible community of the most remote rednecks ever. We’d evidently gone a bit mad after a month of Midwest craziness, because I still can’t rationalize why exactly we wanted to do that; point is we wanted to and we did anyway.
We took 306 from the junction with the Eisenhower highway shortly after Primeuax and after driving for what seemed like forever we eventually took a much smaller road leading further North. I’m not sure where that road was but I remember a huge ranch-like community with lots of beautiful houses on the side of the street just before the turn, and driving by a beautiful river for a while before we left it behind us to head North. It was a beautiful morning so we just kept driving for hours and hours, until by our calculations we should’ve hit Eisenhower again; we never did. At some point by noon we realized that we were probably lost. The road itself was very badly kept, the asphalt cracked in multiple points and seeming like it hadn’t been used in forever. That couldn’t have been the case though because we could see a continuous line of old wooden electricity poles running the entire length of the road, without fault.
Anyway, I’m trailing. Point is we eventually arrived at a tiny community, exactly the thing we were looking for in first place. Arrived is a bad word; we actually literally popped inside the place. One moment we were driving in an empty desert and another we were by the houses, locals eyeing us with what seemed like curiosity. We were both excited to have finally discovered an untouched piece of American weirdness, and quickly parked the car somewhere behind a warehouse and went outside to find a DINNER!
In hindsight we should’ve probably payed more attention to the people’s expressions, because they were not curious; they were afraid. Immediately after we entered the beautiful dinner the waitress approached us and asked us, verbatim, to leave. We were very surprised because we’d heard so much about the fabled American welcoming and were so eager to get it directly from its untapped source, but she was so insistent that we get out that we eventually did. We never learned what the fuss was about; same thing happened in a tiny cafe where a bunch of elders were drinking their tea or whatever as well as in the lobby of the small two story hotel where we entered to inquire for another establishment. Everyone seemed so passionate in their pleads and orders to get us to leave, that we couldn’t even protest. Wtf could we have said? And wtf where these people thinking?
Anyway, after we got over the xenophobia, which, we agreed among ourselves was to be expected in such a place, we decided to grab some beers from the car and explore the town. Bad idea, because people kept appearing wherever we went and persistently eyeing us to the point where they were literally standing in the middle of the street to stare at us like they’d never seen outsiders before. I mean who tf installed the electricity poles then?
Eventually we made our way to a more modern looking place in the outskirts of the town, a mix between a bar, a convenience store and a community center. The people inside were mostly young, student-aged, and didn’t stare as persistently as their elders. A couple came to our table to sell us some paintings or whatever, but we quickly brushed them away. Some kept coming back, and we tried to give them some money but they refused it; instead they shoved the paintings in our laps insisting we look at them and took off running. The paintings were weirdly detailed, depicting some sort of mummy-zombie hybrid roaming the streets of their city, but one thing you learn in Greece is that anyone who gives something away for free doesn’t do this for a good reason, so we politely left them on the next table.
As we were relaxing, finally feeling refreshed after our walk in the sun’s scorching heat we got our first example of fabled American police brutality. The city sheriff, or someone cosplaying as such came over to our table and loudly proclaimed that we were disturbing the peace. When my girlfriend dared to ask why he thought so, the guy -a middle aged fatso- pulled out a moderate sized handgun and held it by his hip; we decided not to push it any further and after paying for our beverages we left the shop, the sheriff in tail. He still seemed to be bothered by our presence, as did a number of townsfolk who had gathered around the cafe looking displeased. By this point we understood that this was more than being unnerved with some strangers. These people actively hated us.
I made a point of explaining we didn’t want to disturb anyone and we were merely visiting, and some elders made some weird remarks about the street and how we shouldn’t have been able to cross it; in response I congratulated them on the quality of the local network and said it wasn’t such a big deal, I’ve seen worse. This seemed to somehow offend him, and for some reason scared to sheriff who seemed to be very unhappy with the thought of his city being more connected to the outside world. The small gathering eventually turned into a community forum, where younger people kept asking the elders for change; pocket or political we couldn’t determine, so we excused ourselves and slowly made our way out.
By the time we had reached the car, it was already half dark, and the city looked much less inviting than in the morning. A local creep had slashed our tire and drawn crude graffiti around our car; thankfully I had a spare tire in the locked trunk and could replace the slashed tire fairly quickly. By that time though it was fully dark and I decided that driving back right now would be a bad idea. Thankfully, my gf remembered the hotel we had encountered earlier and we went to spend the night there, to the clerk’s horror.
Now is where things got actually weird. The clerk said he didn’t want us to pay for the room, but we had to let him lock us inside for the whole night. He offered to give us spare keys in case we felt threatened by the idea, but insisted we stay inside at all costs. This was obviously not going to happen, but we decided against bothering the sheriff again. Instead we hard pressed the clerk to either accept our money or at least tell us why we had to stay inside. Eventually the hotel owner came from the back office and reluctantly explained that the hotel experienced technical difficulties with its gas heater system; the whole town was falling apart, he said, and they didn’t really want people to find out since it would mean an intervention from the government and the hotel being either forcefully renovated at his expense or, worse, closed. The heater leaked gas every night when the temperature dropped, but they had insulated the room doors against it so we would be safe; even he had to stay in a hotel room instead of his private suite at night, he joked. This explanation made sense, so we agreed to not leave our room at all during the night and went upstairs to check it out.
No complaints here, it was actually pretty beautiful. The next weird thing happened during the night, when something woke me and my gf up while we were sleeping. It was 3:23am, not a very good time for visits, but the goddamn clerk kept banging at our door. And I’m talking BANGING, like full on pounding that wood like he wanted to break it down. Ngl I was kinda scared, but more pissed since he could’ve messed up the hermetic seal and let the gas inside the room. I asked him to stop, but he kept mumbling and groaning, so eventually I assumed he must’ve been sleepwalking. If he was outside, it meant that the gas leak was probably contained for the moment, so with that thought I opened the door to ask him to stop again.
Well it seems like the clerk was even weirder than I thought because he had dressed up like the thing from the kids’ paintings. He looked like he was rotting from the inside out, his skin was greyish and “growing mold” and his eyes were bloodshot and lacking pupils; the thought of him applying so much makeup just to fool two tourists was hilarious and I started laughing. Obviously he didn’t appreciate the joke and he lunged forward, trying to enter the room to fight me. I just shut the door on his face and returned to bed. We just wore our trip rated earmuffs and slept through his pounding.
The next day when we went back downstairs to pay the hotel lobby was heavily damaged and the owner and clerk were nowhere to be found. Not willing to just comb through the city to find two dudes, we left the money with the surprisingly upbeat sheriff and went back to our car. The return trip was uneventful and we returned to Vegas, from where we grabbed our flight back to Athens, concluding our trip.
So yeah, this is my weird American midwest story, I guess it makes sense that yall trapped in the middle of nowhere would be so unused to strangers that you either prank or fear them; no in between. To the clerk on the unnamed city: I still owe you for the best costume I’ve ever seen, I just wish you hadn’t bitten me, man.
Edit: uh, I think this is the wrong subreddit.