Part Two: On the Road to Salton Sea
By Pam Postema
Mailed from Brawley, CA on September 1, 2015
Received in Yuma on October 10, 2015

Okay, I admit it: I got lost.

Maybe it was the kid’s toothy smile, lingering in my memory during the long drive south on the desert roads towards the Salton Sea, where I planned to catch the season’s final series of the Kilmers. Or maybe it was that bizarre name for a baseball team. What are Kilmers anyway?

Before I could google the name of the Bulldozers’ Single-A ball club, I got a text message on my cell phone.

… Gunner injured.
… GM locked himself in office.
… Chaos. Please return posthaste.

Injured? But I’d just spoken with him. His toothy smile still stuck in my brain. Poor kid. And the Old Fart back in Yuma must be in an absolute blue funk. Probably blames himself. First question he asked me after his yearlong absence was, “Is Gunner hurt?” Never tempt the gods, particularly the fickle gods of baseball injuries.

I’d pulled into a sandy pullout on this dusty desert road shortly after I heard the cell phone buzz. It’s illegal to text and drive in California – a law mostly observed in the breach, but one I believe in. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked over at the car in the next lane to find a driver staring at their cell phone. Scares the holy Jujubes out of me.

What to do? Turn this buggy around, return to Vegas and catch the next flight south to Yuma? That’s what the employees in the front office want me to do. Prop up the Old Fart. Well, flatulate him! He just fired me a couple weeks ago. I didn’t feel like pulling his dimpled derriere out of the fire again.

So I just kept driving. Figured I’d sort it out at Salton Sea. But I got lost.

Well, it wasn’t so much that I got lost as that I never found Salton Sea – the town, that is. The sea, or the lake, or the Great Goof, as some of the locals call it, is so big and so smelly you can’t miss it. Saltier than the ocean! As unnatural a body of water as you can find anywhere in the world. Formed in 1905 when a headgate on one of the canals that provide L.A. and the rest of Southern California with water was accidentally left open, or so the story goes. The pseudo-sea is a testament to the fallibility of human engineering.

Although there’s a large trailer park community on the east side of the Big Puddle and a dying resort town on the south end where the sea irrigates the famous fields of Imperial Valley (the largest alfalfa growing region in the world!), there is no community with the name Salton Sea. Believe me: I asked. Drove into the first gas station I found after descending below sea level. (The entire Imperial Valley is below sea level. That’s why the flood waters from that open sluice gate didn’t just drain back into the Colorado River or down into the Gulf of California.) The gas station attendant looked askance at me when I asked, “Where’s the town of Salton Sea?”

“Sea’s right there, ma’am,” he said, pointing over his shoulder toward the gray body of mud and water a mile or so beyond the gas station. “Ain’t no town.”

“No town?” I asked, incredulous.

“Well, there’s towns, a’ course. You got your Mecca and Calipatria and Niland and Mundo. Then there’s Frink and Wister and Fondo. Westmoreland and Brawley, but they’s a bit further south. But there ain’t no town named Salton Sea.”

Gotta be here somewhere, I thought. “Ever heard of a ballclub by the name of Salton Sea Kilmers?”

His pimpled face lit up. “Go, Kilmers!” He pumped his right hand in the air.

“You a fan?” I asked.

He reached behind the register and pulled out a large gold and silver trumpet, blew a couple very loud notes on it, and yelled, “Charge!” He repeated the horn blowing and yelling a second time.

“So,” I said when his repertoire was exhausted, “you must know where the stadium is, right?”

“Of course,” he said, indignantly. Then he just looked at me. I looked back, in expectation, but not another word was forthcoming.

“Okay,” I said, breaking off the staring contest, “where?”

He grinned like he’d won an arm wrestling match.

“Where?” I repeated.

“Oh, you mean, like, directions?” he said innocently. “Well, I guess your best route would be to follow this road, Highway 111, south. It follows the shoreline for 30 or so miles, then heads inland to Niland and Calipatria.” He looked at me like the rest was obvious.

“And then?” I prompted him.

“Then,” he said ominously, “it can git kinda tricky. Ya see, 111 runs into 115, which runs into 78, which becomes 86 – only goin’ north, mind ya – and they all sorta moosh together right there in Brawley.”

“Brawley?”

“Next town after Calipatria,” he said, then added, “Ya sure ya wanna go to the Kilmers’ ballpark?”

“I haven’t been driving for two days just to have this pleasant conversation with you,” I said as politely as I could. Irony was wasted on this kid. “When I get to Brawley, what do I do?”

“Find a room fer a couple a days; that’s what I’d do. Ain’t no motels nor nothin‘ ‘tween Brawley and the ballpark. And you don’t wanna git to the park before Saturday.”

“Why not?”

“Kilmers don’t play at home until then. Last games of the season. If yer lucky, you can catch ‘em.”

“Lucky?” I asked.

“Them tricky roads, like I was tellin’ ya. Lotsa tourist types gotten lost down that end of The Goof.”

When I asked him what The Goof was, he pointed out the window at the muddy water of the Salton Sea. Then he proceeded, as best he could, to explain to my why old timers called it The Great Goof. The kid had a way with words.

By the time I got back to my car, I’d forgotten what few directions he’d provided, but I followed Route 111 south along the sea until the signs told me I was approaching Brawley. At that point, I recalled his warning, to no avail. It was worse than he described.

Highway road signs stacked up like pancakes, one atop the other, with arrows pointing in every direction or completely missing, leaving me to guess which turn to take next. I drove around in circles until I bumped, quite by accident, into a sign that read State Highway 78. That rang a bell, so I followed it out of Brawley and up a slow, steady incline. When I passed the sign marking sea level, I realized I had been going in the wrong direction for 20 minutes.

I pulled off and stepped out of the car. In the distance, back down the hill I’d just climbed, I could see the lights of a small town and the big dark emptiness that must be the Salton Sea. The stars were brighter than I remember. In fact, there was more light above me than below. I’d forgotten how dark and lonely a desert highway could be at night.

I turned around and headed back toward Brawley. Maybe the kid was right. Maybe I should just get a room and wait for the Kilmers to return home to finish their short season.

The car sputtered, the headlights blinked, then faded, and within a couple seconds I was puttering downhill with no electric current to keep the lights on. This had happened to me once before, when I was a whole lot younger and closer to civilization. As long as I didn’t stop, the engine kept running. But once I stopped, there was no starting again. Back then, I thought it was the battery that had died. I hitched a mile or so to a phone and called AAA. When the truck arrived a half hour later, the guy checked the battery and told me it was fine. “Probably the alternator,” he said. He towed me to a station and a few hours later, I was back on the road with a new alternator.

But that wasn’t going to happen out here, so I kept the engine running and putt-putted my way down the hill with no lights, hoping I wouldn’t run into any other traffic. One car passed me going the other way, but I don’t think they even saw my dark colored car with no lights. I coasted past the sign marking sea level. Not five minutes later, just when the road seemed to be leveling off, the engine seized and the car shuttered to a stop.

I couldn’t believe my luck. Checked my cell phone, but no signal. No surprise there. I sat there in the desert dark and listened to coyotes howling across the night to find each other. I felt like howling too. I wished I could call out to someone, hear their comforting bark in return, and know which way was home.

Instead, I hoofed it toward Brawley, wondering if I’d ever find the well-hidden home of the Salton Sea Kilmers. And I still had no idea what a damn Kilmer was!