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Saturday, July 04, 1998
TRAVELING MAN
Chuck Woodbury drives all over the West to write about the unique people and places that define the region.
By Ed Vogel
Donrey Capital Bureau
VIRGINIA CITY -- As she writes up an order, the fortysomething waitress in the garish Delta Saloon casually mentions she is the only left-handed person she knows in her town.
Her innocent remark is the only opening Chuck Woodbury needs.
Quickly he wonders aloud why there are so few left-handers in Virginia City. The waitress cannot wait to talk.
Within minutes, he has discovered she lives in a teepee without running water, but still finds places to take two baths a day. She would tell him her life story if there weren't other patrons.
Give Woodbury, 51, even the most mundane of openings and he can find the essence of practically anyone.
For the last 10 years, he has wandered the West in his 24-foot recreational vehicle in search of ordinary people, wacky road signs and good places to eat.
He publishes Out West, a quarterly tabloid newspaper with a circulation of 8,000 that details his journeys and the people he meets along the way.
It helps that Woodbury looks so unthreatening. Wearing shorts and clutching a tiny camera, he passes for a typical tourist. He carries a small notepad in his pocket, but seldom pulls it out even after he has identified himself and his mission to write about the West.
People just aren't themselves when someone keeps scrawling away in a notebook, he explains. You must make eye contact and devote all your attention to their words.
"You have to be curious," he said. "Most people will talk about themselves. When you travel it is not the places you go, but the people you meet."
In Montana, he met Dishwater Pete, a 27-year-old man whose goal is to wash dishes in every state in America. In Hawthorne, Nev., he ran into Bob and Ginny Becker, a couple who run the only television station between Las Vegas and Reno in their old mobile home.
And Woodbury told his readers in a recent issue about the time he stopped in Beatty to make a telephone call.
"The entire phone `book' is a phone sheet. It was taped on the booth, so at a glance you can see who lives in Beatty and their phone numbers. You do not need to have your fingers do the walking in Beatty, only your eyes."
He also has memorized most of the better high school nicknames in the West. The Virginia City Muckers and the Gabbs Tarantulas are among his favorites.
"The prettier the town, the more it is for tourists," Woodbury said. "People in ugly towns are real and funnier."
In a more serious vein, Woodbury laments the Wal-Marting of the West and the loss of small-town stores. It also puzzles him why espresso coffee shops today dot towns in Montana, Wyoming and even Virginia City. Citified people have flocked to small towns like Prescott, Ariz., and Nevada City, Calif. and brought the worst attributes of urban life.
"Their newly arrived residents often bring with them their big-city ways, which include an inclination to keep to themselves. They occupy space, but are largely invisible in the community," he said. "Many do not know, or care to know their neighbors. Their close friends are elsewhere, not around the corner and down the block. There is no need to borrow sugar from next door when a 7-Eleven is close by."
For his subscribers, Woodbury has become a fond friend who offers insights on places they might visit.
In his estimation, Nevada's prettiest place is the Great Basin National Park. Valley of Fire is close behind.
The best hamburgers are found at the Shooting Star Saloon in Huntsville, Utah. The cook won't reveal the ingredients. But these days Woodbury is watching his cholesterol count, so he searches for veggie burgers.
On this trip, like many of the others, Woodbury isn't even sure where he is going, only he'll visit Nevada and Oregon and then head to his home in Washington state.
"That's the beauty of it. Half the time I don't know where I am going until I turn on the ignition key."
Virginia City -- the 19th century mining town with its wooden sidewalks, antique saloons and scores of tacky shops selling T-shirts, hot dogs and fudge -- remains one of his favorite Nevada destinations.
"Sure Virginia City is a tourist rip-off," he said. "It's always been that way. When Mark Twain was here, he made up stories."
Twain's first newspaper job was on Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise back in the 1860s.
While Woodbury avoids most cities, Las Vegas is a city he likes. It is especially convenient for RV travelers. He'll walk the Strip, write of new hotels and select the best rides.
But it is the rural towns that he truly loves.
"What I love most is the openness and air and lack of people," he said. "I tell people Nevada is the most mountainous state. They can't believe it. They think Nevada is flat."
He places Nevada second to Wyoming in retaining its Old West atmosphere. Outside of Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada remains much today as it always has been.
At the state Capitol in Carson City, Woodbury chuckles to find the marked parking place for the car of Gov. Bob Miller.
"This is the only place I know where you can walk up and say hi to the governor. In California, there's lots of security."
In Out West, Woodbury continues a tradition that Twain himself may have started with "Roughing It," his travelogue on territorial Nevada. A century later, novelist John Steinbeck made his own journey on the back roads of America in "Travels With Charlie."
At about the same time, the Los Angeles Times' Charles Hillinger took to the road. Then Charles Kuralt became a household name with his sentimental television stories of small-town people around the country.
Woodbury credits them all. He even jokes of writing a "Chuck Book."
"I like being a minor-league celebrity," he said. "I just love spinning a yarn and laughing when I write.
Most writing occurs in the evenings. He'll drive up to a campsite and pull out his portable computer.
A native Californian, Woodbury earned a good living as a small newspaper publisher in the Sacramento area and as a free-lance Western writer. But coming back from an assignment in Wyoming one day, he decided he wanted to spend all his time traveling the West.
"It bored me to death writing about golf tournaments," remembered Woodbury about his days as a "serious journalist."
Within a month after his first issue of Out West, Woodbury was featured in USA Today. By the time of the second issue, ABC News had sent a film crew to spend three days traveling with him through Nevada.
Suddenly he had thousands of subscribers.
One person who read about Woodbury was a travel magazine editor from Boston who asked him to write some stories for her publication.
They met in Seattle to negotiate a deal and hit it off immediately. Woodbury invited her on a trip. In 1991, they married.
"I never thought I'd meet anyone," Woodbury said.
At times, his wife, Rodica, and daughter, Emily, now 6, head off on the road with him on month-long trips. But those trips are less frequent with Emily in school.
So he relies on his cellular phone.
"Paying $2 for two minutes to say good night to Emily isn't so expensive," he said.
Woodbury advises others also to follow their dreams.
"Some people wait until they are retired and aren't physically able to do what they really want to do. You just have to do it. I hope I have inspired people."
Woodbury maintains an Internet Web site (http://www. outwestnewspaper.com) that features many of his past stories.
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