Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California.

Now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert, fallen on the Mojave?

If you are visiting our part of the high desert, welcome.

Welcome to Dirt Pile City.

Dirt Pile City is named for the scenic piles of dirt and sand and rubble piled alongside every road and business and vacant lot in the area.

You see, it rained a couple of weeks ago.

Here in Joshua Tree.

It rained pretty hard.

And I missed it.

I missed the excitement.

I was out around Area 51 in the Salt Flats and the Ruby Mountains, running around up in the Nevada interior, windover, the biological weapons site, where the Inola Gay crew trained to drop the bomb on Japan.

It's an evil place, the evil seetting out of the salt-crusted land.

It smells bad up there, too.

Heading out of Salt Lake City is a particularly grim stretch of Interstate 80 through the salt flats, of course,

as like some dreary colony on a forgotten planet.

Worker housing now and then pipes coming out of the ground, great corroded pipes,

lots of trucks and beat up cars and weird smokestacks poking out of the sides

of dead brown mountains.

And when you finally get to Wendover, the Nevada side called West Wendover, you are suddenly

blinded by the flashing lights and the giant neon signs of a half-dozen casinos on the frontage road.

And at the end of that road is what appears to be a Home Depot, but it's actually a liquor store.

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