Pointed east and just through an open gate in a fence line I met a white pickup truck. Or parts of it were white showing through a gray-brown coat of dust. It was a Pinto looking truck - not like the Ford model but like the spotted horse model. All the dents, and there were many, had half-moons of dust and rust traced the upper boundary. The drivers'-side window cranked down and two eyes under the bill of a 400-year-old ball cap looked me over."You lost?"
And that's how I met the vagrant of Texas Spring. I will call him Larry here, although that isn't the name he gave after we talked for some time back at his camp. Larry was living off the grid and I had to respect that effort. He wasn't totally off the grid as he worked for the county from time to time, grading the rock/dirt roads that meandered through the borderlands and plowing snow off the public routes that eventually ended at somebody's ranch. He had a '58 trailer home - 1958, not 58 foot - squatting at the other end of the ruts by a spring. There was no power or phone line "and no god damn celler phone, either" I learned. No, Larry lived unconnected, thank you. He did have a diesel generator, which he used sparingly to recharge the batteries in his shortwave radio or for other unnamed emergencies.
He drove into Wells "at regular intervals" to pick up any mail sent his way care of General Delivery. The short wave and experience told him when to report for road patrol duty at the county. Scattered ranchers, Sheriffs Deputies and BLM folks turned a blind eye to his minor poaching. "I get along pretty good," he said.
Bank account, credit cards?
"Cash."
What about paychecks?
"Anybody will cash mine out."
TV, internet, Email?
"Not interested."
Jail?
"Some."
Sex? (Now I admit I did not asked Larry directly about his sexual habits. It came up in conversation more gradually and in pieces.)
"I've got some friends. Girl friends. Otherwise, I can get by."
Larry was not the Nevada edition of the Unabomber . He wasn't, it turned out, a great reader, not a great writer. He read some Louis Lamour and liked Max Evans. Larry had even read Evans', The Mountain of Gold, and remembered it. But he also read local history and auto mechanics, stuff he said he needed to know about. He had some political opinions but he was not the radical you might expect for a loner of his quality.
"I'm not particularly obsessive about any one thing. I smoke a little, watch the sky if it's good weather. I've got chores. Things tend to fall apart rather than the other way around so I keep busy."
Larry gave me what turned out to be very good directions and I headed out of his camp still intent on finding the corner I was looking for. When I was about 200 yards away I turned around and looked back. Larry was leaning against the side of his trailer with his arms crossed. He waved.
