Where the locals go ... (Beatty, Nevada)

Huge, clean rooms awaited us at the Exchange Club Motel in Beatty. The neat elderly gentleman at the reception desk explained carefully about the heater (we all got an illustration with our keys, probably so that we didn’t need to bother anyone about it later) and, upon our question regarding a good place to eat, sent us to Denny’s. Really? Could a chain restaurant truly be the most recommendable in a town like this, when there was a place looking right out of the Wild West straight across the road from our motel?

‘Sourdough Saloon’ said the sign over the covered porch. No horses were tied up in front, but cars were parked along the road, and light shining from the windows invited us in. We peeked in: a saloon, alright, the bar packed, juke box playing oldies – no place to sit, it looked like. A door at the far end of the bar led into a second room, the restaurant part, obviously. Here, too, all tables were full, with a couple of people already standing in the corner, waiting their turn. Well, we’d wait, too, even if it meant curbing our appetite for a while longer, because this place had atmosphere, and the food, as Johann found out in a conversation with another customer at the counter, was supposed to be great. 

It didn’t take all that long until we had a table and the waitress placed a jug of beer in the middle. We ordered our pizzas, ignoring the day’s special, ribs, which seemed to be a favourite. It looked as if most of the other guests were locals: a bunch of guys celebrating someone’s birthday, two very proper looking elderly women digging into their food with gusto. A pool table gave Siegfried and Manfred opportunity to brush up on their skills while we waited for our orders and studied the decorations on the walls: hub caps, hood ornaments, even steering wheels from cars ranging from Chevrolets to BMWs. Hundreds of one dollar bills were tacked to the rough wooden walls, each signed, and in many cases with comments, by former customers as far away as Russia and England. I half expected someone pulling out a guitar singing country songs, but that didn’t happen. The men at the birthday table obviously had a good time, and the beer made them a bit more rambunctious as the evening progressed. One of the older ladies must have felt offended by the frequent use of expletives and called them to order, telling them to watch their language. It made me smile: I imagined that she had known these guys since they were little boys and felt she absolutely had the right to tell them off. 

The pizza was about the best one we had eaten on our trip, and the beer, cheaper than often, tasted good, too, at the end of a long day. Johann had not only gotten a positive review regarding the food from the woman he talked to, but also a recommendation where to go to see wildflowers. The evening was a great success all around – and we only had to walk a couple of minutes to get back to our motel.