Barstow, 2006: The Steak Dinner We Talked About For Years

Note from Brandon: I drove through Barstow today. I've driven through Barstow dozens of times since moving to California in 2017, but today I made a significant point to stop and reflect on a special dinner I had here in 2006 with my grandparents. It seemed like an important ritual to do so the first day of a big three-month road trip that I'm doing as part of my job responsibilities at BroBible.

Below, a personal reflection about road trips that I wrote a while ago. It's part of something bigger that I'll hopefully get to someday. But right now, it feels like the right time to share it with the world. A symbolic gesture to the universe, pondering how journeys past led to journeys present.

I wanted to share with the world on my own blog, where there's no commercial intent.

Thanks for reading.

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If you've clocked enough miles on the highway over the years, chances are there's an Interstate off-ramp or two that triggers a whole heap of memories.

One of mine is in Barstow, California.

The city of Barstow is just a dusty afterthought for the millions of people who pass through it every year. It’s a freight train yard and old Route 66 town. The historic highway runs straight down Mai n Street, past a strip dotted with fast food joints, desolate motels, and truck stops. It's a place that seems to exist just for passing through.

From the west, you approach Barstow by driving up the Cajon Pass between the San Bernardino Mountains to the east and the San Gabriel Mountains to the west. It's a complicated ascent to the Mojave high desert, often slow and thick with traffic no matter the time of day. First, you pass through Victorville. Then 30 miles down the I-15 to Barstow.

Californians know Barstow for its outlet mall and as the junction where travelers pray for a smooth journey on the I-15 to Las Vegas. The treacherous 157-mile stretch from Barstow to Vegas is a notorious deadly leg of Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System. Far too many motorists on this stretch of highway have a death wish, cruising 100+ mph on the desert straightaways, hopped up on energy drinks or amphetamines in a mad dash to Sin City in Nissan Altimas with dented up front fenders. All too often, they lose control at breakneck speeds and end up spinning into a ditch or into the highway median. The watchful eyes of the California Highway Patrol have a strong presence along the corridor, for a good reason considering the sheer volume of traffic between the two metropolitan areas. 

I've always found it impossible to drive this section of Interstate without white knuckling for most of the drive.

When driving east from Southern California on the I-40 towards Needles and the Arizona stateline, Barstow is a pit stop for fuel, Del Taco, and a bathroom break before you plunge into the heat and vast nothingness of the Mojave desert. Beyond Barstow, that winding stretch of highway is like a Wild West wagon trail, crossing the Colorado River, snaking through the desert, past red rock mesas with sagebrush and pinyon pines, eventually ascending into Arizona's rugged mountain lands and the city of Flagstaff. It's more than just asphalt; it's a main artery of Interstate commerce. An endless caravan of big rigs refuel in Barstow then roar down this route as part of their function in the supply chain. Their cargo bays are stuffed with trinkets and treasures manufactured in distant Asian lands, all offloaded at the Port of Los Angeles. They’re headed to distribution centers, America’s magnificent temples of global trade, in Dallas, Oklahoma City, Tennessee, and the Carolinas, eventually making their way to store shelves.

Driving the other direction, from east to west, after hundreds of miles of desert, Barstow is the sign you’ve reached the perimeter of the California Dream. Millions of westward settlers have thought this here. You’ve made it. Your traverse across the desert is complete. You’ve reached civilization again, densely sprawling from here at the edge of the Mojave to the waves of the Pacific. You’re oh-so-much-closer to your final destination, and, if California is home, a good night’s sleep in your own bed. 

Barstow was the first place I spent the night in California as an adult. I was 20 at the time. For that reason, it’s forever a special place to me. 

In April 2006, my grandparents drove from Pennsylvania to San Diego in their forest green Buick minivan. They picked me up at the Port of San Diego, where I just finished Semester at Sea, a 100 day study-abroad voyage around the world on a cruise ship with a few hundred other college students from all over the United States. The trip started in the Bahamas, then sailed to Puerto Rico, Brazil, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Myanmar, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, and Japan. 

When I was in Hong Kong, I called home for a quick check-in with the family. I joked to my grandparents that they should pick me up in San Diego, and then we’d do a road trip back to the east coast. I wasn’t really expecting them to take it seriously after months of adventure, but, loving adventures themselves, they loved the idea. They were retired and had nothing but time, they said. Gas was about $2.60 a gallon or so, making a road trip easy to justify. A couple days later, they told me they’d pick me up in a month or so.

That first day we got off the ship, I hugged them, got in their minivan, and drove from San Diego to Barstow. They laughed about the speeding ticket they got in a New Mexico speed trap town a couple days before. I told them about the two week stint crossing the Pacific, which included heavy seas after leaving port in Japan. We got caught on the fringes of a typhoon and half the boat got violently sea sick from the ship’s rolling. They made fun of a djembe that I was toting along, a souvenir from my week in South Africa. 

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Though my grandparents were born in central Pennsylvania and called it home for their entire life, they’ve been to the west coast many times over the years, including a much-remembered cross-country summer road trip where they took my grandma’s parents, my great grandparents, to California in the 1960s, to visit my grandma’s Uncle Clarke, a World War II fighter pilot who put down roots in San Diego after the war. 

They also took my brother, sister, and I “out to the coast” when I entered seventh grade. We made a point to pay Uncle Clarke a visit, who was in his 80s at the time. Our trip started with a guided tour from Uncle Clarke of the San Diego Air and Space Museum in Balboa Park the afternoon after we landed. His knowledge of aviation history, to someone about to enter the eighth grade, was exhaustive, to the point where Grandaddy would joke he was glad he was in the Army and didn’t have to commit all that technical engineering history to memory.

After the visit with Uncle Clarke ended, we did all the Golden State’s tourism greatest hits: The San Diego Zoo, a trip over the border to Tijuana for an afternoon, Seal Cove in La Jolla to see the sea lions, Knotts Berry Farm, a Hollywood house tour in an open air bus, a tour of the Hollywood Bowl when it was empty to take in a view of the Hollywood Sign, Universal Studios, the Santa Monica Pier, and then the iconic drive north up to the coast to Big Sur, with its craggy cliffs and coastal redwoods. We spent the night in Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world, on the drive to San Francisco because hotels were cheaper. We were mesmerized by the town’s smell for the rest of the trip. Then we arrived in San Francisco and did what all naive tourists do when they expect endless sunshine on their August California vacation: Head to Fisherman’s Warf and buy tourist fleeces, because we only packed shorts and t-shirts, completely unprepared for cloudy 50 degree weather.

The only things we missed were Disneyland and Yosemite National Park. There wasn’t enough time. It's tough to fit it all in.

After that trip, California marinated itself into my mind like a half-remembered dream. Too young to grasp the full weight of the so-called California Dream, this region in the southwestern corner pocket of the country captivated me. It was so different from rural Pennsylvania. The endless freeways stretching over suburban sprawl into the horizon. The beaches that actually confronted the sunset. The glow of neon over strip malls at dusk. The vacant donut shops. The silhouettes of palm trees against fast food drive-thrus.

When the Red Hot Chili Peppers released the landmark album 'Californication' the summer following our visit, it was as if they handed me the soundtrack to the memories of those two weeks with our grandparents in the California Republic. I was in middle school and deeply impressionable by these sort of pop culture forces. Suddenly, with music and a little MTV, I could revisit those moments with Nana and Grandaddy, each scene unfolding in my mind like a personal music video. I wanted to go back.

The California Dream had a hook in me that I couldn’t explain until decades later. 

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When Nana and Grandaddy drove to San Diego to pick me up after Semester at Sea, they had no plan for the trip. They took the “southern route” along the I-40 to visit Nana’s old college roommate in Albuquerque. 

After that? Well… Who cares? They had an attitude that all they had was time. A Kerouacian adventure with their oldest grandson was more the purpose than any particular destination. 

We had no agenda, just a seat pocket full of AAA maps and guidebooks and the direction of the sun - the only way to travel before the smartphone era. We checked into a Quality Inn in Barstow, about as classic of a cheap motor lodge as it gets, then plotted the next couple days of driving: On to Las Vegas where we’d pick up a dirty, dirt cheap room at the low-rise Circus Circus motel block behind the casino tower, by the even dirtier pool that looked like it hasn’t been cleaned since the 1980s, and then head south to the Grand Canyon and red rock country around Sedona, Arizona. 

By the time we settled into our High Desert motel for the night, we were starving. It was my first true meal back in the States after 100 days, so we thought we should go all-out. At the recommendation of the person working the front desk, we headed to the best mom and pop restaurant in Barstow: a spot called Idle Spurs Steakhouse. 

It wasn’t far away from the Quality Inn, but we didn’t know where we were. We didn’t have maps on our cell phones back then, so we had to find it the old-fashioned way, out on Old Highway 58 like a scavenger hunt. At one point, my grandfather popped his head in a windowless dive bar by the Barstow freight train yard and asked for directions. The bartender pointed him in the right direction, but first was eyed-up with cautious “you ain’t from around here?” vibes. He laughed about that scene inside that dark barroom for the rest of the trip and years to come.  

Idle Spurs Steakhouse was a Barstow institution. Opened in 1974, it was decorated like an authentic roadhouse, with wood paneling, wagon wheel lights hanging from the ceiling, and old-time Wild Western regalia in every direction. I vaguely recall a jackalope mounted on the wall above our table. 

It seemed like the interior decor inspiration for Texas Roadhouse or another chain trying to commoditized the steakhouse saloon of yesteryear in suburban America. Pics of Jay Leno, Johnny Carson, and other Hollywood-types on the wall, all stopping in for a T-Bone on the trip to Vegas. 

The steak was melt-in-your-mouth good. Juicy, perfectly medium rare. Heavenly seasoned with garlic, salt, and pepper. The flavor was sublime. I don’t even remember what cut I ordered, but as a red-blooded carnivore eating bland ship food for two weeks crossing the Pacific, that steak was like an out of body experience.

Both my grandmother and grandfather agreed, there was something special about this steakhouse. Maybe it was the setting on the edge of the desert? Or the sense that this place puts all its love and energy into feeding hungry travelers like ourselves and blowing their minds with a USDA Prime cut of beef exactly when they need it. We sat there for a couple of hours, laughing and talking about my trip and catching up on family news.

It was a special moment. We’ve shared hundreds of meals over our lifetime, but we talked about that particular dinner for years afterwards. There was something magical about that first night off the ship in Barstow, reunited with family, after a grand adventure around the world.

The next day, we packed up and headed to Vegas. They said I was old enough to go with them to a classic Vegas showgirls review. Even though I was only 20, they asked me if I wanted a drink with them. This was a first, and all I could think was a watered-down Singapore Sling, following grandaddy’s lead. 

My grandma, after a strong rum punch in the lounge that came with the ticket, couldn’t stop raving about how pretty the dancers were in their colorful thongs, boas, and peacock feathers. A spectacle of classic Las Vegas showgirl regalia and pageantry, with lots of Elvis and Wayne Newton songs. 

“Did you see their butts, Bill?” She loudly asked him later on the way out the theater. I’m pretty sure my grandfather just grunted, maybe giving me a glance to chime up and save him from an awkward remark. I snickered at the exchange. 

We spent the next two weeks crisscrossing the American West. Since they drove out on the southern route, we veered northward after Arizona, to Utah and Bryce Canyon, then cutting up through Salt Lake City to Wyoming and Yellowstone, then South Dakota, and finally, finished in Branson, Missouri before the two-day drive back to Pennsylvania.  

The trip is a core memory for me. I was wild-eyed the whole time, glued to the landscape of the American West out the window and absorbing every pit stop and landmark.

On the last day before we bee-lined back to Pennsylvania, we saw Glen Campbell perform in Branson.

“This is going to be a little different from Vegas,” Grandaddy joked.

“No showgirls!” Nana laughed. 

Indeed, no showgirls. Campbell was up there in years, however, and joined by his daughter for the performance. It made me tear up when he launched into his song “Gentle on My Mind”, a melancholy psalm about traveling, a-rambling, and being curious about the world. It’s one of my favorite songs, and I’ll never forget the contentment I felt when he launched into its refrain, sitting there next to my grandparents, the ones that showed me how meaningful life on the road can be.

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Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines

And the junkyards and the highways come between us

And some other woman's cryin' to her mother

'Cause she turned and I was gone

I still might run in silence, tears of joy might stain my face

And the summer sun might burn me 'til I'm blind

But not to where I cannot see you

Walkin' on the back roads, by the rivers flowing gentle on my mind

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We covered a lot of ground in those two weeks: the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Bryce Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, the Tetons, Jackson Hole, Mt. Rushmore.

Yet the memory that sticks out all these years later is that first night in Barstow. I kept a postcard from the restaurant and pinned it above my desk in college to remember it, a souvenir of the perfect steak dinner.

Over a decade later, after moving from New York to California, I texted my grandma when I passed through Barstow on the I-15, reminding her I still remember that supper. She texted me back that she did too, then correctly assumed I must be going to Las Vegas.

"Stay out of trouble," she texted back.

I probably went to a concert or conference or took a desert toy off-roading, under the loose guise of “work” mixed with fun, all in an attempt to cash-in on this blogging life I chose many roads ago. Maybe a little blackjack. The typical Sin City vices.

I’ll try not to, Nana.

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Idle Spur Steakhouse closed for good in January 2020. It’s dead now, though it remains an institution in my memories, even after just that one dinner in its hallowed walls. It was about as authentic of a roadside Americana experience as one can have, a last hold-out of a bygone era. It’s closing, a reminder that everything and everyone, even the most beloved institutions, have an expiration date.

I never went back there to eat again. I thought about it in passing a few times. But why bother reliving a perfect memory out of nostalgia? I cherished that perfect moment with my grandparents too much. 

I love Barstow because I think about my grandparents every time I drive through it.

Everyone has a place where they press the start button to manifest the lives they want to live. In my personal history, that place is Aspen, where I ran off to after college to chase becoming a professional writer in 2009. But everyone also has a Barstow. A dusty outpost on the edge of civilization that’s a junction in their lives. A symbolic crossroads on a map that connects their past self with their current self and the trajectory they’re on for the future self. 

Sometimes you don’t know it’s your Barstow until years later, when life beats the brakes off you and tries to demolish you. Maybe it’s a place where you start to self-actualize your own California Dream. It's where I did, sitting at that steakhouse dinner table with my grandparents, back in April 2006. Or maybe it's where you are when the Zodiacs align and everything starts to pick up some inexplicable inertia that you can’t really understand at the time, so you look back in comfort at the scrapbook in your mind. 

It took me 11 years for Barstow to become my Barstow. 

A lot of figuring myself out happened in between.