The Lost Prince of Death Valley
It happened in Death Valley, although I can’t swear that every detail is true. Time has a way of draping old memories in a thin veil of haze, softening the sharp edges until fact and imagination begin to overlap. As the years pass, forgotten details are quietly replaced by the inventions of an overactive mind. Memory becomes less a faithful record of events than a chain of fractured fairy tales linked together by moments that actually happened. So I’ll tell this story exactly as I remember it. The reader can decide for themselves where memory ends and imagination begins.
Death Valley, Nevada
It was late summer 1984. We had just crossed into Death Valley, about two hours outside Las Vegas. I was eleven years old. My older brother, Christian, was twelve; my sister, Shannah, was nine; and Aaron, the youngest of us, was a mischievous six. We had spent the summer with our dad in Anaheim, California, and were now making the long drive back to Iowa in one of those wood-paneled Chevrolet Malibu Classic station wagons that seemed to define the era.
The Malibu Classic is the ideal automobile for traveling with kids through Death Valley, Nevada.
Nobody was wearing a seat-belt on this trip. I don’t believe anyone ever did back then. Dad had removed the rear seats from the station wagon and replaced them with a thin innerspring mattress, turning the back into our own rolling bedroom. We sprawled across it with our bare feet propped against the windows, eating bologna sandwiches and passing a single can of orange soda back and forth between the four of us.
My dad seemed a bit moody on the drive. He had just gambled away half of his gas money on the slot machines at Circus Circus while we kids sat upstairs watching a little person in oversized boxing gloves getting pummeled by a kangaroo.
Circus Circus, Las Vegas, Nevada is only a two hour drive from Death Valley
Despite it all, the trip seemed to be going rather smoothly. I had just gotten comfortable and was ready to doze off to sleep when Aaron decided he had too much orange soda.
“I have to pee!” Aaron proclaimed from under a pile of blankets.
“Well you’re going to have to wait five minutes!”, my dad yelled back. “There’s a service station just up the road.”
“Hey dad! Do you think we can get Slim-Jims when we stop?,” I inquired, leaning over the front seat.
“Hey John”, my dad replied, “Do you think you can stop screaming in my ear? What happened to all those Slim Jims I bought earlier?”
“Aaron ate them all except for one”, I told. “He’s hiding that one in his pocket”
“Then make yourself another bologna sandwich if you’re still hungry! Money don’t just grow on trees you know!”
There was this long-standing tradition with my dad for any road trips extending more than a few hours. We always had bologna sandwiches. It was a real simple thing. He would purchase a loaf of white bread, a pack of Oscar Mayer bologna, and processed cheese slices. Then when anyone became hungry, he or she would be handed the plastic grocery bag of the various food items and they would be expected to slap themselves together a road sandwich. We never carried any coolers on our trips. I don’t know if anybody used them back then.
A sign reads “Last Gas Before Death Valley”
Dad pulled into a dilapidated service station that looked nearly as old as the Mojave Desert itself. The setting sun cast long, ominous shadows across its weathered white stucco walls, giving the place the unsettling feeling that time had simply forgotten it. It was just before six in the evening.
As Dad stepped out to refuel the thirsty station wagon, Aaron crawled out from beneath his fortress of blankets and headed inside to use the restroom. Christian and Shannah never stirred. They were fast asleep.
My days makes his last stop for gas as my little brother takes a much-needed potty break.
Thirty minutes later, we were once again cruising along an endless ribbon of dusty highway. The deep red sun was sinking toward the horizon, casting a warm glow across the valley floor. I watched cacti and scattered desert shrubs drift past the windows like lonely sentinels in an endless sea of sand. There was something unsettling about the desert—vast, silent, and almost lifeless. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t have wanted to be stranded there after dark.
Without warning, Shannah, who had been asleep in the front passenger seat, suddenly bolted upright.
“The Name Game!” Shannah suddenly screamed.
Before I go any further, I should probably explain this peculiar form of childhood torture.
The Name Game wasn’t really a game at all—at least not for anyone over the age of twelve. It was inspired by Shirley Ellis’ 1964 hit song of the same name. One child would begin by singing his or her own name:
Katie, Katie, bo Batie
Banana-fana fo Fatie
Fee-fi-mo Matie
Katie!
The singer would then shout another person’s name, passing the spotlight to the next victim. Around and around the station wagon it went, each child inventing increasingly ridiculous rhymes until someone inevitably grew brave enough to call out Dad’s name.
That usually marked the end of the game.
Now, back to Death Valley.
Shannah took a deep breath.
“Shannah, Shannah, bo Bannah
Banana-fana fo Fannah
Fee-fi-mo Mannah
Shannah!
Christian!”
Christian picked up the tune without missing a beat.
“Christian, Christian, bo Bishian
Banana-fana fo Fishian
Fee-fi-mo Mishian
Christian!
Aaron!… Aaron?… Aaron?… John, wake up Aaron!”
I pulled back the blankets that formed Aaron’s little fort.
He wasn’t there.
“Dad!” I shouted. “Where’s Aaron?”
Traveling nearly sixty miles an hour, Dad slammed on the brakes.
The station wagon skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust before he threw it into reverse and sped back toward the service station.
For the next thirty miles, almost no one spoke.
I could barely breathe.
None of us could.
My mind raced with questions that demanded answers.
Would Aaron still be there?
Had someone picked him up?
Was he frightened?
Had he eaten that last Slim Jim he’d been hiding in his pocket?
My little brother was last seen leaving in a blue Volkswagen van full of hippies.
When Dad walked back out of the service station alone, we all started crying.
“Where is he, Dad?” Shannah whimpered. “Where’s Aaron?”
Dad stood there for a moment, his face drained of color.
“The clerk said a group of hippies pulled in about forty-five minutes ago,” he finally managed. “They were driving an old blue Volkswagen van…”
He swallowed hard.
“Aaron left with them.”
“No!” Christian screamed.
“Quiet!” Dad barked, his voice cracking as much from fear as anger. “Just listen to me!”
With trembling hands, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of notebook paper.
“The clerk knows them,” he said, unfolding it before us. “The driver is his cousin. He says they stop here all the time. They don’t have a telephone…” He pointed to the paper. “But he drew us a map.”
I don’t remember much about that map, except that it was astonishingly detailed. Considering it had been sketched in pencil on a sheet of notebook paper by a lonely gas station attendant, it was nothing short of remarkable.
Our search for Aaron became a slow, agonizing journey into the desert.
We followed little more than faint wagon tracks, roads so old they had nearly been swallowed by drifting sand. Mile after mile, the station wagon crept deeper into the Mojave, farther from anything that resembled civilization.
Then, after what felt like an eternity, Dad eased to a stop.
Standing before us was a weather-beaten guard shack surrounded by sagging strands of rusted razor wire.
The front gate at an abandoned military installation in Death Valley
We had reached the entrance to an abandoned military airfield that had sat deserted since the end of the Second World War. By the time we arrived, darkness had settled over the desert. The sky was moonless, devoid of a single star. The only light came from a lone red lamp glowing above the massive steel doors of an aircraft hangar. Spray-painted across the weathered doors was a giant black peace symbol, marking the entrance to the hippies’ makeshift commune. Their faded blue Volkswagen van was parked behind the sprawling structure.
“Stay inside the car and lock the doors,” Dad whispered. “I’ll go get him.”
He left the station wagon idling with the keys in the ignition before disappearing into the darkness.
The three of us who hadn’t been kidnapped huddled together beneath a blanket in the back of the station wagon while our father walked toward the hangar to rescue the one who had. Peering through a small opening in the blanket, I watched him pound his fist against the enormous metal doors.
A moment later, a smaller personnel door opened off to one side. The light spilling from within revealed a woman dressed in a hooded white robe. Dad hesitated only briefly before walking toward her. They exchanged a few words I couldn’t hear, and then both disappeared inside.
The door closed.
Darkness swallowed everything once again.
I lay back down beneath the blanket and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I have no idea how much time passed, but somehow, amid all the fear and uncertainty, I drifted off to sleep.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
The pounding jolted me awake.
“Dad! You scared me!”
He was standing outside the station wagon, pounding on the driver’s window.
“Quit yelling and unlock this door.”
Christian climbed over the front seat and raised the lock.
Dad leaned inside.
“They’ve invited us in for dinner.”
“But, Dad,” Shannah asked, “where’s Aaron? Why can’t we just get him and leave?”
“Yeah,” I added. “We don’t have to eat with them. We still have bologna sandwiches.”
I held up the plastic grocery sack.
Dad ignored it.
“Listen carefully. Aaron’s here. He’s fine. Things are just… complicated. We’re all going inside together. We’re going to be polite, eat their food, and when dinner’s over, we’re leaving with your brother. Plain and simple.”
He stepped back from the car.
“Now get out.”
We climbed into the cool desert night and followed him toward the hangar. About halfway there, Dad suddenly stopped. Without turning around, he spoke in a low voice.
“When we get inside, don’t say a word unless somebody speaks to you. Don’t talk to me. Don’t talk to your brother. Just keep quiet. Understand?”
I didn’t understand.
None of us did.
Still, we nodded and followed him the rest of the way to the door.
All I wanted was my little brother back.
The woman I had seen earlier greeted us at the entrance.
“My name is Mistress O’Dreiw,” she said. “My brethren and I thank you for joining us this evening.”
The white-robed cult leader, Mistress O’Driew, greets my father at the hangar door.
The hangar smelled of incense and wet poodle, though I never saw a single dog inside. Once used to shelter military aircraft, the cavernous building had been transformed into a colorful maze of hanging tie-dye blankets, swaying strands of plastic beads, and mismatched furniture gathered from who knows where. The dim interior glowed with candles, lava lamps, and strings of colored Christmas lights that cast strange shadows across the concrete floor.
Carrying an aqua-colored lava lamp to light her way, Mistress O’Dreiw led us toward the rear of the hangar, passing beneath a burned-out EXIT sign. We eventually emerged into a large room partitioned off by flowing white sheets. Suspended above the entrance was a hand-painted cardboard sign that simply read:
FELLOWSHIP HALL
There were five others in white robes inside the room, although at first I could make out only four of them. Two stood just inside the entrance while the other two lingered near the opposite wall. The room was illuminated by only a handful of candles, leaving much of it hidden in shadow.
As my eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, Mistress O’Dreiw led us into the center of the room, where we were seated in a semicircle on the floor before an assortment of homemade dishes.
The moment I sat down, something about the back of the room caught my attention.
Two cloaked men stood on either side of an elevated beanbag chair, slowly fanning its occupant with oversized woven fans.
At first I thought it was a little person.
No…
As my eyes finally came into focus, I realized it was…
“Aaron!”
Dad immediately smacked me on the back of the head.
“Shhh! Don’t say his name.”
Mistress O’Dreiw walked to the foot of Aaron’s throne, bowed respectfully, then turned to address us.
Aaron smiled at me, casually popped a red grape into his mouth, and fired a green plastic army man in my direction.
Mistress O’Dreiw looked upon her bewildered guests and began her introduction.
“My brethren and I are the Children of Cahrocia. Our destiny was revealed during a sacred visitation by the Grays. We have been called to seek the lost subterranean civilization that lies somewhere beneath this desert. There we shall dwell in golden pyramids alongside the ancient reptilian race until the coming of the apocalypse.”
Before anyone had time to respond, another white-robed woman emerged from behind a curtain of flowing sheets carrying a large metal urn upon a silver tray.
She smiled warmly.
“Would anyone care for some delicious grape Kool-Aid?”
It is always a good practice not to drink grape Kool-Aid when being served up by a hippie cult at an abandoned airfield in Death Valley.
I raised my empty cup toward the woman, but Dad snatched it from my hand before she could refill it.
Leaning toward us with gritted teeth, he whispered, “None of you drink that Kool-Aid. You hear me? Not one drop.”
“But…”
“Shhh.” He pressed a finger to his lips. “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid, and I’ll buy every one of you a soda pop the minute we get out of here.”
The woman smiled politely and disappeared behind the curtain with her urn.
Mistress O’Dreiw stepped forward once more.
“The Grays visited us again last night,” she proclaimed. “They spoke of the Chosen One.”
“The Chosen One,” the robed men echoed in perfect unison.
“They told us he would come as a child wandering in the wilderness. He would have fair skin, golden hair, and eyes that reflected the wisdom of the cosmos. He would become our prince… our spiritual leader… the one destined to guide us to the lost subterranean civilization.”
Dad leaned toward me.
“You didn’t drink any of that Kool-Aid, did you?”
Mistress O’Dreiw continued.
“When we discovered Guru Noraa standing alone outside the service station, we knew the prophecy had been fulfilled. Like the rest of us, he shall live a life that is organic, vegan, kosher, and one hundred percent gluten-free.”
She turned and bowed reverently toward Aaron.
Aaron returned the gesture by shooting her with a green plastic army man.
Dad slowly climbed to his feet.
“Look, lady,” he began, “I hate to break it to you, but that’s not your Guru… Nor…”
“Guru Noraa,” she corrected.
“Right… Guru Noraa. He’s my son.”
“It’s Guru Noraa,” she repeated patiently. “N-O-R-A-A.”
“N-O-R-A-A?” Dad shouted. “You just took my son’s name and spelled it backwards! We’re taking our boy and getting the hell out of here!”
Before he had taken two steps, the four robed men surrounded him, each grabbing an arm or shoulder.
Dad’s expression changed instantly.
“It’s okay!” he laughed nervously. “Just a misunderstanding. Let’s all settle down and enjoy this delicious meal.”
He eased himself back onto the floor.
Truth be told, the food was excellent.
There were Persian-spiced lentil patties, seasoned garbanzo beans, roasted garlic kale, and quinoa salad. The brownies, however, bordered on the miraculous. I still have no idea how they managed to make a vegan brownie taste that good.
For a brief moment, I completely forgot we were eating dinner with a hippie cult that had kidnapped my little brother.
I was only two bites into my brownie when Aaron looked down from his beanbag throne, chocolate smeared across his face.
“Brownie.”
He pointed directly at me.
“Gimme his brownie.”
“Give Guru Noraa your brownie,” the robed men chanted together.
“Dad, I don’t want to give him my brownie,” I protested. “He already ate all the Slim Jims!”
“Do what they say,” Dad muttered. “Give him the damn brownie.”
Reluctantly, I carried the rest of my brownie to Aaron.
He accepted it with a grin.
As I returned to my seat, he looked down at me and smirked.
“He’s smirking, Dad,” I whispered. “He’s actually smirking at me.”
Dad answered with a sharp elbow to my ribs.
“Hush.”
Silence settled over the room.
Dad cleared his throat, preparing to speak.
Aaron beat him to it.
“Gimme his yo-yo.”
The robed men responded immediately.
“Give Guru Noraa your yo-yo.”
I looked around in disbelief.
He was pointing at me.
“I don’t have it anymore,” I said. “I lost it.”
Aaron didn’t hesitate.
“It’s in his pocket.”
Yo-Yos can be a game changer when confronted by hippie cults in Death Valley.
“Dad, please don’t let him have my yo-yo!” I begged. “It’s my light-up yo-yo! It cost me four hundred tickets at Chuck E. Cheese! Do you have any idea how many games of Skee-Ball I had to play to win that thing?”
Dad jabbed me with his elbow.
“Give him the damn yo-yo.”
Reluctantly, I handed it over.
I sat back down, refusing to look directly at Aaron. Even so, I could see him out of the corner of my eye.
He was smirking.
Silence settled over the room once again.
Then Aaron spoke.
“Gimme twenty dollars.”
The four cloaked men didn’t hesitate.
“Give Guru Noraa twenty dollars.”
For a brief moment, panic washed over me. I didn’t have twenty dollars.
Then I realized…
Aaron wasn’t pointing at me.
“I’m not giving you twenty dollars, son,” Dad said firmly. “That’s gas money. If I hand you twenty bucks, we’re hitchhiking halfway back to Iowa.”
The cloaked men repeated their command.
“Give Guru Noraa twenty dollars.”
I leaned over and elbowed Dad.
“Give him the damn twenty dollars.”
Dad shot me a look that could’ve melted steel.
With a long sigh, he reached into his wallet, pulled out a crisp twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to Aaron.
As he did, he leaned in close enough for all of us to hear.
“When I get you home, me and you are gonna go round and round.”
Aaron accepted the money without the slightest hint of remorse.
Dad returned to his place on the floor.
Mistress O’Dreiw stepped beside Aaron’s beanbag throne.
“I thank you all for joining us this evening,” she said warmly. “But I’m afraid it’s now time for the four of you to leave. Guru Noraa has many spiritual responsibilities awaiting him tomorrow, and…”
She never finished.
One of the cloaked men suddenly let out a horrified scream.
“Guru Noraa’s eating…”
He pointed in disbelief.
“He’s eating a… beef stick!”
Little known fact, but beef sticks are the best commodity to have when kidnapped by a hippie cult in Death Valley.
At the sound of the words “beef stick,” Mistress O’Dreiw covered her ears, threw back her head, and let out a mournful howl.
“The Chosen One has to be just like the rest of us! Organic, vegan, kosher, and 100% gluten-free! Get that brat and his family out of here!”
“See!” I shouted to my dad as the cloaked hippies escorted us out of their compound. “I told you Aaron had the last Slim Jim hidden in his pocket!”
The drive back toward civilization was a quiet one.
Dad reclaimed his twenty dollars before we reached the highway. Aaron protested, but former spiritual leaders apparently have very few rights once they’re back in the family station wagon.
For the next hour, nobody said much. We simply watched the desert fade into the rearview mirror.
Then, as if nothing had ever happened, Shannah sat up and smiled.
“The Name Game!”
She cleared her throat and began to sing.
“Aaron, Aaron, bo Baron…
Banana-fana fo Faron…
Fee-fi-mo Maron…
Aaron!”
Thanks for riding along on another one of my family’s unforgettable adventures. We were all lucky to have escaped that hippie cult from their compound in Death Valley. Who knew we would have been saved by a single beef stick. Anyway, I am a survivor now so don’t let my life be in in vain. Make sure you check out more of Big John’s Adventures in Travel real soon. While you’re there, feel free to post a comment or just show a little love on social media.
Peace!
Happy travels,
Big John
Posted in North America, Tall Tales and Big Fish Stories and tagged death valley, Nevada
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