Searchlight and The Toilet in the Desert

Searchlight and The Toilet in the Desert

My parents finally managed to settle for a while when I was 4 years old.  Their travels ultimately landed them in the small Nevada town of Searchlight. My father had agreed to mange one of the community’s only restaurants and to provide their music as well. By this time our family had acquired a tour bus or rather a REVCON R.V. It served as our home and felt like a sanctuary to me.

I attended a local preschool and my parents would dutifully run the hospitality side of the establishment that our home on wheels was parked behind. These were happy times. I was the smartest at my school. I knew my alphabet and was starting to do simple math calculations. I had friends, as did my brother who was becoming increasingly more socially awkward. My best little girlfriend whose name I cannot recall, had a mat of blond hair on her head that matched her persistently dirty face. We would play for hours on end. When she had had enough she would express her desire to return to her trailer by biting me as hard as she could on my arm eliciting at least one trip to the clinic for a tetanus shot.

My father was a gifted musician and salesman. He would often times be more focused on “making it big” than actually worrying about his children’s safety or anything else for that matter. He placed a coffee urn poorly by the edge of a counter and strung its power cord across a walkway. He warned me repeatedly to stay away from his strategically placed booby trap. Inevitably, the day came when my lack of wisdom became very evident. I ran my 4-year-old self right through the precarious site; the container with 5 gallons of hot coffee came tumbling down on me. A shriek. Next, my father’s fed up voice filled with anger and disappointment, “What the hell did you do? I told you to stay away from here! Carol (my mother)! God damn it! Carol!” My mother, being concerned for my wellbeing (at least that point in my life) came running. I remember cold water and a heated argument about whether to seek professional medical help. The decision was made to not pursue treatment but rather to slather vitamin-E on the burned tissue that encompassed most of my left arm. Lack of appropriate medical care (barring vaccinations) was a theme in my house growing up. This was presented to us as a financial decision with heavy overtones of paranoia. The home remedy worked with amazingly little scarring. I was back to playing with my friends and brother in no time.

The REVCON was not my only shelter during that period. A fort was artfully crafted in the back of the tavern. My brother and I would share this primitive cave with our friends. When we were not engrossed in imaginary play, or dodging rattlesnakes we would hike unsupervised in the desert adjacent to town. One day, after a seemingly endless walk, my brother and I came up over a parched embankment to discover a large ninety degree slab of marble, that reached vertically into the air about 12 feet. . At the base of the partial structure was a toilet. A single white commode embedded into the greyish block that appeared to have once been attached to a hotel was the strangest sight in the middle of a truly ugly, vacant desert.  We mused as to how it got there. Was it from an abandoned ghost town? Did a helicopter drop it there by accident on its way to Vegas? Whatever it might have been, the sight of the toilet in the desert has lingered with me all of these years.

Our sojourn in Nevada ended dramatically one evening when our R.V. burnt up on a Las Vegas street. My family stood on the curb, helplessly watching it perish in flames. Shortly there after, we dragged ourselves to Phoenix in that gold Olds Cutlass Supreme.  Still, the image of that toilet in the desert has stuck with me. As I reflect upon this as an adult, I view the toilet as a foreshadowing metaphor of my young life in Phoenix. Toilets are undoubtedly useful, as was my 13 formidable years in Phoenix as a child. Toilets can also leak, crack, get clogged up and overflow with shit and might need to be upended and replaced all together. Now, I realize that I had spent 20 years of my life denying that the toilet needed an overhaul. Others might have noticed the smell or tried to unsuccessfully plunge but it was ultimately my responsibility alone to fix the plumbing. Here I am almost 2 years into my renovation. The plumber, carpenter and interior designer are on staff but I realize that I must make the final decisions about how my new toilet is going to look. So far the new fixture is pretty incredible, I might even add a bidet.