Can You Desert a Road Trip?

We are on a road trip. For many, many days, spanning many, many miles.

Many.

I don't want you to be jealous, but our first leg was over five hours and we ended up in Taft, California. What's that? You haven't heard of Taft, California? That's not really much of a surprise.

You don’t go through Taft unless you are going there on purpose, so no one ever goes there. It's the kind of town where you stay at THE hotel and eat at THE restaurant.

We stopped at the Taft hardware store to buy some duct tape and when the woman at the register asked me how I was doing, I said, "Living the dream."

She laughed out loud and said, "Yeah, right. In Taft?"

Why Taft, you might be asking, like the lady at the hardware store apparently asks herself every day? Taft exists solely because of oil. When you drive into and out of Taft, you drive past forests of oil derricks on both sides of the road. Some are pumping. Some are still. All of them are stained dark brown. The whole town is the same hue – crude oil brown.

My wife's grandfather worked the oil fields in Taft as a young married man, and my mother-in-law lived there when she was little. She wanted to see the town again.

Oh, did I not mention that my mother-in-law is with us on this long, long, long road trip? Like I said, I don't want you to be jealous.

We stopped in Taft for an overnight and went to the West Kern Oil Museum. Again, please attempt to curb your jealousy. Does the West Kern Oil Museum have an exact life size rebuilt replica of the Old Jameson #17 wooden derrick, you ask? You can bet your sweet ass it does! What color is that derrick, you ask? Crude oil brown, of course. It is located in Taft, California, after all.

I was kidding about the only one restaurant thing, though. There are actually two. We ate dinner at the other one – the Black Gold Brewing Company. They serve their own brewed beers, cook burgers, steaks, and Thai food, and sell guns and ammo. I am not making that up.

Speaking of places that are both crazy and all brown, after we’d had so much fun in Taft we couldn’t stand it anymore, we drove another five hours through the God-forsaken Mojave desert to the depression in the Nevada desert where they keep Las Vegas, for some reason.

Las Vegas happens to be on the way to all the Southwestern national parks that are the actual reason for this road trip, and when my wife was planning the route, she thought it would be cool if we took the boys to see Matt Franco, a magician that they all liked from America’s Got Talent, season 217.

So, she booked us for two nights in Vegas, but when it later came time to get the Matt Franco tickets, it turned out that we would have to choose financially between having two and a half of us go see the show and then live out the rest of our lives in Taft, or do the whole road trip and see all the parks.

So, instead of a magic show, we saw an acrobatic gymnast act and two juggling plate spinners for free at the Circus Circus midway. Both acts were really solid, but just to make sure our boys got the full flavor of Vegas, we spent an entire morning walking the length of the strip to show them why staying in school and not doing drugs is important.

I’m not sure if it was the two fights on the sidewalk, or the homeless woman bathing in a fountain at the Venetian that did it, but they all promised to stay clean and get a good education. I’ll bet Franco doesn’t offer that kind of impact from his little magic show!

We escaped Vegas with our lives and most of our dignity and drove through – you guessed it – more God-forsaken desert. But we made it to Zion National Park yesterday, and as you enter the park the landscape changes almost instantly from hellish desert to red rock canyons and rivers, like nothing you’ve ever seen. The scenery is so breathtaking it can almost make you forget you ever stayed in Taft or saw a homeless fountain bather on the strip.

Almost.

The next two weeks promise to be a whirlwind of long car rides and more amazing sites, and I’ll give you another update or two if I live through it all.

Until then, stay in school and stay off the drugs, kids.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2021 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Trade Show

To: Richard Weeden

Vice President of Sales

Standard Pharmaceutical Corporation

From: Sylvia Gardner

Human Resources Manager

Consolidated Global

Dear Richard,

Judging by the large amount of recent emails that have arrived at our Human Resources department from yourself and your employees, it appears that you and Standard Pharmaceutical Corporation may have been the victims of fraud. The man you are attempting to reach, John Smith, is no longer an employee of Consolidated Global. I’m not sure if you are currently communicating with John via phone, but if you are, be advised that he is not acting as an authorized agent or employee of our company.

Your company is apparently not the only company that Mr. Smith defrauded, and we are still trying to piece the details together on this end, but it appears that Mr. Smith attended a pharmaceutical trade show in Las Vegas a week after he was let go from Consolidated Global. It seems that Mr. Smith had registered for the trade show and pre-paid his travel arrangements and lodging with a company credit card without his supervisor’s approval or knowledge. It also appears that Mr. Smith misrepresented himself as a current employee of Consolidated Global at the trade show, and apparently placed fraudulent purchase orders with at least a dozen companies, including yours.

We have been in contact with quite a few salesmen from other companies that John apparently defrauded at the recent Las Vegas trade show, and all of them tell a similar tale. John arrived at their booth, was immediately interested in their most expensive product lines, claimed to have immediate needs for large numbers of products, and then set up a series of meetings over the course of the week-long trade show, all involving either a meal, cocktails, or various forms of entertainment. Based on the information that we have already gathered, it would seem that John ate over $5,600 worth of food in less than five days, drank over $9,000 worth of alcohol, and racked up over $4,500 in room service and mini-bar charges to the tower suite that we unknowingly paid for.

He also managed to cause $23,000 worth of damage to the hotel’s rooftop pool complex. One anonymous sales representative told us that John insisted on testing some sort of proprietary water gelling agent he was “planning to buy a butt-load of”  in the hotel’s 20-person hot tub. This “test” apparently took place at 4:00 am after the sales rep and his team ran up an $800 bar tab at the Fandango Lounge attempting to close the sale with Mr. Smith. The general manager of the hotel described the scene as “an enormous bowl full of clear JELL-O.” It apparently took the Las Vegas fire department over an hour to free the nice couple from Kansas who were unfortunate enough to be sitting in the hot tub when John applied the gelling agent.

As we have stressed to the hotel manager, the other defrauded companies, and Jim and Jill Meyers from Topeka, our legal department is quite certain that we have no liability with regard to Mr. Smith’s actions at the Las Vegas trade show. We had no knowledge of where Mr. Smith was or what he was doing, he was not an employee of Consolidated Global at the time, and he was certainly not acting on our behalf. Any damages that your company wishes to seek in this matter must be taken up with Mr. Smith directly.

Obviously, we cannot honor any of the fraudulent purchase orders that John signed in Las Vegas, including the ones that he apparently gave to Standard Pharmaceutical. We’re not really sure why Mr. Smith even chose a pharmaceutical trade show. We are a worldwide manufacturer of toilets, and as such, we have absolutely no need for thirty-six “Omegatron centrifuges” or seventeen $280,000 autoclaves. We actually don’t even know what those things are.

Again, if you have been defrauded in any way by Mr. Smith, or incurred any costs associated with this incident (and judging from some of the pictures your salesman Steve Wonowski has sent via email, you have), please take it up with Mr. Smith himself. He may be difficult to track down, however. We have reports that he was last seen early Saturday morning boarding a plane at McCarran International Airport bound for Cabo San Lucas with three sales reps from Pfizer and the entire Friday night shift of waitresses from the Fandango Lounge.

As we have asked the other companies, please let us know if you do learn of Mr. Smith’s whereabouts. His landlord has reported that he vacated his apartment here in Tennessee without notice just prior to the trade show, so we really don’t have any idea where he might end up. After reviewing the company credit card account Mr. Smith used to book his trip to Las Vegas, we also learned that he pre-paid for a week-long limousine rental, and bought over $25,000 in Las Vegas area Groupons. We have reports from some hostesses on the strip that Mr. Smith was selling these discount coupons out of the back of his limo at even further discounted prices, presumably as a way to turn them into cash for himself. It appears that Consolidated Global has unknowingly paid for some great deals on laser lipo, botox, permanent makeup, orthodontics, gym memberships, and cellulite reduction treatments for quite a few Las Vegas area women.

We apologize for any inconvenience while, again, reminding you that Consolidated Global is in no way liable for any losses incurred by Standard Pharmaceutical as a result of these unfortunate circumstances.

Best regards,

Sylvia Gardner

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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