Aside from the massive railroad hump-yard, the raison d'etre for the town of Barstow, California is simple: most American cars cannot hold enough fuel to traverse the distance between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Their gas tanks just aren't big enough.
In the middle of the Mojave Desert, the town of Barstow accommodates this and a similar design fault in humans, the bladder. Barstow is there so that when one container is being filled, the other can be drained. For the traveler who ventures beyond the lavatory and the forecourt of the gas station, there is much to discover.
For some reason, the culture and civilization bearing radio waves of National Public Radio do not penetrate the skies of this region. It is a dead zone from which a twenty-four hour a day, unrelenting info-commercial for Las Vegas and Laughlin Nevada is broadcast. It is little wonder that distant alien civilizations decline to respond to human beacons. The deep space listening array at Goldstone is situated next door to Barstow.
The region does have its novelties and attractions. There is, of course, Calico Ghost Town, and Peggy Sue's How-do-you-do Nifty-Fifties Diner, The Best Little Hair House in Town Barbershop, the Chateau Barstow trailer park, the Big Bun Restaurant, and the Hooz-On-First sports-bar. Main Street Barstow is also Old Route 66 which is now littered with derelict gas stations and abandoned drive-in restaurants in both directions out of town, East and West.
A Russian friend once recounted a tale of stopping one evening to wash some of her clothes in a Laundromat on Main Street in Barstow. She told how a toothless lady about her own age approached her asking where she was from. My friend replied factually: "I come from the ancient city of Samarkand on the Old Silk Route through Uzbekistan." The woman stared at her blankly. My friend tried something less specific: "I am from Moscow… Russia." Still no glimmer of recognition. Finally the toothless woman replied: "That's not from around here is it?"
At that moment, my friend said she was more afraid than she had ever been in her entire life. More afraid than facing the on-slough of the Russian Winter, or the collapse of the Ruble and the endless food lines. More afraid than when she carried supplies to the soldiers defending the Duma against the forces trying to overthrow democracy. She went on and on. She said that Barstow was scarier than her finals at the Conservatory in Moscow, scarier even than American immigration. She revealed that what she feared the most was that her car wouldn't start and that the night would descend before she could get out of town when more of these nocturnal people would rouse from wherever they spent the daylight hours. She said she feared the night life of the cultural dead.
People who sojourn in Barstow know at the core of their being something ancient and primordial, something carried deep within those genes which handle the instinct for survival: never get stranded in a place you can't walk away from. Barstow is one such place. You can see it in the eyes of people as they fill their gas tanks to overflowing. They instinctively know that if their car breaks down, if they run out of money, if the vehicle somehow leaves without them, if anything goes wrong, they are going to die here. They have taken a long hard look at the map. In any direction you go, you will very likely not going to make it on foot. The 123 degree weather will kill you before you get to the Roy Rogers' Museum in Victorville, the truckers' cafe at Kramer Junction, the world's tallest thermometer in Baker or the military post at the end of the longest cul-de-sac on the planet out to Fort Irwin.
When The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy surveyed the planet Earth to update their travel entry, they certainly didn't land in Barstow. For if they had, the text would read 'Mostly Useless' instead.
