Western Purgatories

I have a new travel memoir coming out soon. It’s about going places and doing things. Mostly, though, it’s about learning new topics. It’s a very non-fiction-y book for people who like that kind of thing. Everyone goes on and on about how great fiction is. Me? I think the best stories are the ones that actually happened.

I’m making this post because I have a few FREE! copies left to give out to those who want to read the book in advance and leave a review. “What kind of stories will I find in there?” you ask? Well, allow me to give you a teaser. This is an excerpt of what to expect:

Speaking of poems, I, unfortunately, wrote a few of them while I sat inside a family restaurant in Medford, Oregon. I say unfortunately because that town rubbed me the wrong way. In my notebook, I called the place an “Elvis Purgatory,” despite there not being a single Elvis impersonator anywhere in sight. I came to that conclusion while I stared at a guy in a wife-beater t-shirt playing a video poker machine in the lounge section of the diner. It wasn’t just him that gave off the Purgatory feeling, it was the whole eyeful of the place. He, with his feet propped on top of the poker machine, the faded orange 1950s Cocktails sign flashing above his head, and my waitress who was old enough to have been retired ten years ago announcing to the entire restaurant that she was going outside for her cigarette break. The scene was compounded by the fact that I had just suffered through a two-hour drive with nothing but religious stations on the radio to listen to. All in all, the whole town reminded me of a city that I had never been to before but never needed to have gone to in the first place. Most of me wondered why I was even there.

For what it’s worth, I have to say that Medford was not especially unique, for I have been to a few other places that were a lot like Medford in some way, shape, or form. What I have learned from all my travels is that a Medford-style Purgatory is a common enough place. Take the time I was in a perfectly preserved turn of the century Western bar in Virginia City, Nevada, replete with mahogany and mirrors, only to hear the live band bust out with Jimmy Buffet songs. I left that bar and went next door to another authentically Western watering hole only to have my ears assaulted with someone singing Roy Orbison over a karaoke machine. Personally, I would have rather heard heavy metal playing from either of those bars because I am of the opinion that Jesse James would have more likely listened to Megadeth than to the Traveling Wilburys. In other words, those places were serious buzzkills, aka: Western Purgatories. I will take the opportunity to describe a few of them in the following chapter.

Curious to read more? There’s a whole book waiting for you! Pick up your free ebook now! Click where it says: FREE! Did I mention that it was Free? It’ll never be free again after this month. Just so you know.