Ludlow

The next stop, just down 66, was Ludlow. One of the guys taking pix at Amboy said it was a neat place to check out old buildings and it was on the way back to 40 so... We decided to have lunch there at this great old cafe, the Ludlow Cafe (in its second incarnation I believe) and listened to this guy go on about how those nosy Anglenoes are keeping him from smoking when and where he wants. He was very upset and wanted everyone know who to blame. He was pretty rough around the edges with a gold cross dandling from one ear and a bluetooth phone in the other (Really? Who's he talking to? Is he plotting revenge against the Jewish cabal on the coast responsible for keeping him and his Salems apart during the lunch hour?) and a kind of gross looking bandage on the back of his neck with something weeping through. It wasn't pretty but I've got to give the best description I can in case someone sees him hiding in there bushes blowing a butt and muttering about those damn angelenoes. The woman working the counter wore what may have been the oldest waitress uniform in the western desert and I think the guy working the counter with her was in a gang, and the mens room smelled like meat but they got an A so were were in. I thought it was a good patty melt so there you go. Afterward we backtracked a little to check out the old buildings, took some pictures and were were off again.

Once the repair shop.


I think this was the original Ludlow Cafe. There was a pic in its current location, where we ate.


The old gas station.


No idea what this is but I like the star on the sign. Jess pointed that out, I'd missed it. Ludlow used to be a railyard of some sort. Maintenance or something. Maybe it was part of that or an inn. Who knows? It's nothing now.


After we got back on the road we just put it on autopilot and let it go. In Travels with Charley (which I read on this trip) John Steinbeck writes about the point where a trip is over. About how everything falls away but the getting home and how every ounce of your attention is focused on that goal. That's the point we both found ourselves. We were so close to home that nothing else mattered. So there you go.