Riding the Outlaw Highway

To those who lament that California has been ruined by civilization, its frontier heritage buried beneath a canopy of strip malls and three-bedroom ranchos, I recommend a run up the San Joaquin Valley on Interstate 5. Desolate landscapes, outlaw behavior, so many cattle they are smelled even before they’re seen--it’s got it all, pardner.

For one thing, this stretch of freeway from Bakersfield to the San Francisco turnoff lets motorists experience a facet of Old West travel that television shows like “Wagon Train” never did capture: boredom.

“The biggest problem we have with this road,” Highway Patrolman Bob Butler said, pointing out skid marks that hook off the freeway every dozen feet or so, “is that there isn’t much to look at. People become bored and fall asleep at the wheel.”

This was last Saturday. I had driven here to reacquaint myself with the peculiarities of I-5, and was immediately reminded of its two visual high points: a big feedlot near Coalinga and, hours north, a golf course.

Now, I happen to savor the smell of thousands of cattle standing captive in the muck. It takes me back to summers spent on a feedlot near Kerman. I’ve accepted, though, that this is an unusual taste, and I try not to complain when passengers start cranking up windows at first whiff.

The golf course, near Patterson, is a riddle. At first, years ago, I figured it was intended to be the centerpiece of a subdivision. There are a few houses around it now, but the course still stands pretty much alone, like a phantom. My only guess is that it was inspired by a Voice, as in “Field of Dreams,” but the builder somehow garbled the message.

The rest is all tumbleweeds, orchards, barren foothills, the occasional Denny’s and, mostly, empty brownscape. It can be quite pretty, on the right day, for a few miles.

This has been a notorious winter for the freeway. Over Thanksgiving, there were deadly pileups in dust near Kettleman City. Last week, a good Samaritan was shotgunned to death a few miles south of here, starting a chase that ended with bloodshed in Orange County. The tragedies, no question, paint an extreme picture of life on I-5.

“It’s not supposed to happen that way,” Butler said of the shooting. “You are not supposed to stop and try to help someone on the road and then get blown away.” Yes, and people aren’t supposed to drive 60 m.p.h. through blinding dust, but they do.

Sadly, the pileup and shooting weren’t altogether surprising. There has always been a hint of outlaw anarchy on this drive. Everyone speeds. Everyone is grumpy. Drivers push it too hard and blow engines. The center divider is littered with tire scraps from blowouts. Crumpled cars are parked behind gas stations. It’s the stuff of Mad Max movies, a suggestion of what the flight from the Big One might look like.

Holidays are the worst. Half of California heads south on I-5, the other half north. It’s bumper to bumper, but at full speed. There’s nothing like it, a mutant of Freeway Culture, and it quickly cures the boredom. One wrong move by anyone in the pack, everyone bites it. Seeking an edge, many drivers focus through windshields of the cars ahead of them. I prefer to tail big trucks, on the theory that they’d clear a path in a chain-reaction accident.

When the freeway opened in 1972, there weren’t enough service stations. Motorists by the hundreds were stranded in the first week, and long afterward many simply avoided the route. Today, there are more stations, but never enough to handle the holiday crush. It’s another Thunder Dome scene: The credit card computers are always jammed, the bathroom key lost. People fume and relieve themselves on back walls. Lines to the pumps stretch to OPEC-ian length. You wait for what seems like hours, fiddling with the radio, hoping to pick up something other than country, or Jesus, or country Jesus. You never can.

There are, of course, other ways to go. A lot of people I know have learned to take cutoffs, side roads. Others fly, and sometimes pilots will call attention to the parallel strings of red taillights below, stretching hundreds of miles, the length of the valley. Everyone laughs and orders a second cocktail.

But the drive on I-5 can be difficult to resist. Airports are no holiday bargain, side roads add hours and, on the map anyway, the freeway clearly offers the shortest, most direct route between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Just remember what the map can’t show: blowing dust, fog, traffic conditions that require Indy skills, swollen bladders and the unmistakable bouquet of beef on the hoof.