Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

camper, that are spread out over a square mile of dust and
heat. At least, that’s what we assume, because we don’t see
anything or anybody. Not even a sleeping dog or a rattling
screen door that we could head for and ask where around
here we can find a place to sleep.
At a gas station a bit further down the road, where the
crew of a nearby army base is staring petrified into the
heat, they tell us that it’s not going to work in this area.
To find a place to sleep we have to make a detour of fifty
miles to Ludlow. If we’re lucky. If not another hundred
and thirty five miles to Barstow or from there another
hundred miles to Los Angeles. That’s completely out of
our way, so we head for Ludlow.
Ludlow turns out not to be a town and not even a village.
Ludlow is a gas station with a mini mart on Route 66
(‘open 24 - 7’), with a cafe-snack bar facing it (‘breakfast
– lunch – dinner’) and a low, worn down building with a
neon light blinking ‘Motel’ next to it. Next to the light sits
a rusty Chevrolet pick up in front of a wooden shed with
a sign ‘office’ on the door. The door is locked. There is no
one at the doors of the motel rooms either. I walk around
the wooden shed, looking for a possible second entrance,
and see only when I’m back in front a note pinned to the
doorpost with a crooked thumbtack. ‘For vacancies see
mini mart’.
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