Nowadays I pay my annual respects not only to departed loved ones, but to all who have gone before. Each year I visit a different cemetery, and this week it was the old military graveyard at Camp Floyd, where each and every epitaph reads “Unknown.”
In all, there are 33 graves, recently located by ground-penetrating radar, and although the specific remains remain unidentified, Army records reveal the names of the soldiers who perished during the three short years between 1858 land 1861, when Camp Floyd was the largest military encampment in the United States. I gather from the informative plaque posted at the gate that it wasn’t the happiest place, being plagued not only by typhoid fever, pneumonia and consumption, but also by self-inflicted gunshots, alcohol poisoning, and at least two murders. One soldier even drowned, which is quite a feat considering the absence of rivers and lakes in this part of the world.
As long as I was in the area, and because thunderheads were billowing above the Oquirrh Mountains to the north, I decided to proceed along the old Pony Express Trail in a southwesterly direction until I hit pavement at State Route 36—one of the least traveled byways in all of Utah. At Vernon, I pulled up in front of the town’s only commercial establishment—the Silver Sage Café. Immediately I was asked by the proprietor to move my motorbike away from the gas pumps because—in his words—“this is the busiest time of the entire year.”
Brian Baldwin isn’t the sort of person you’d expect to find running a café and filling station in the middle of nowhere. He’s young, energetic, and brimming with enthusiasm. An avid reader, he’d been engrossed in WHY WE BUY: THE SCIENCE OF SHOPPING before I came along to distract him. My first question: What possesses anyone to ever stop and shop at the Silver Sage?
Well, it turns out that Vernon is the last chance to stock up on beer, beef jerky and marshmallows before continuing on to Little Sahara Sand Dunes, which each Memorial Day weekend attracts hordes of off-road enthusiasts. Also, there is rumored to be a lake in the vicinity, stocked with fish that have a craving for marshmallows. And if the fish aren’t biting, you can always make S’mores.
My second question: Whatever happened to all the Burt Munro memorabilia? See, it so happens that Vernon is where Sir Anthony Hopkins stopped for gas on his way to Bonneville in the 2005 film “The World’s Fastest Indian.” Afterwards, the Silver Sage became sort of a holy site, same as Eugene DiGrazia’s Shell station in Valmy, Nevada, became a holy site after Bruce Springsteen paid a visit.
My inquiry draws a blank. Brian explains that he himself has never seen the movie, and that all the motorcycle stuff was hauled away after he bought the place four years ago—replaced now by the standard antlers, stuffed fish, barn wood-framed nature photos and souvenir baseball caps that sell like hotcakes.
This information makes me a bit sad, because among the missing memorabilia was a poster of Burt Munro at Bonneville that I traded to the proprietor in exchange for a hamburger. It was the first of thousands I’d eventually sell, but now the hands of time have moved on and it’s back to cold beer, beef jerky, marshmallows, and souvenir caps.
On the plus side, the hamburger is still excellent, the coffee’s free, and you have a choice between French fries and tater tots. I opted for the tots and was not disappointed.
Presently I remounted my trusted BMW GS12000—the “bike that Burt bought”—and continued on my slightly less than merry way. It sometimes occurs to me that I’m probably much too old to be still riding a motorcycle, and lately I’ve begun to wonder just why I persist. Perhaps it’s a case of whistling past graveyards?
While at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot drawing near
How I WISH I had another gear…
