A roadside stop in Boron, two museums with absolutely no transition, one 4-1 autopsy and California’s mandatory one-pick card.
Yesterday, on the way to Bakersfield, I stopped in Boron, California.
Boron is named after boron because subtlety was apparently not part of the original town-planning process.
The main attraction is the Twenty Mule Team Museum, which tells the story of borax mining, the people who dragged it out of the desert and the twenty-mule teams that hauled it around before America discovered trucks, significantly reduced its mule-related administrative costs and perhaps single-handedly created the truck-nuts industry.
It is essentially a museum about soap.
That sounds dismissive, but borax is everywhere. It cleans things. It preserves things. It kills insects. It shows up in glass, ceramics and about 400 household projects recommended by a woman on YouTube who owns twelve identical glass jars.
Still, when you enter a museum devoted to borax, your expectations are fairly controlled.
There will be minerals.
There will be mining equipment.
There will be mules.
All three are present.
There are enough stuffed mules lined up inside the museum to recreate the entire twenty-mule team, assuming the original team was significantly smaller, considerably softer and looked like the animated version that made a very brief appearance at Disneyland.
The museum also contains a portable typewriter from 1901, an old Brownie camera, an exhibit about Erin Brockovich and a newspaper clipping identifying Boron as the “booze capital” of the 1920s and ’30s.
This is where the museum begins to feel less curated than accumulated.
It is not organized around a central historical narrative as much as the guiding principle:
This shit happened near Boron. Put it in the building.
That is not criticism.
That is community confidence.
The best story involves a prospector named Aaron Winters testing crystals he suspected were borax. The test required pouring alcohol and sulfuric acid over them, then setting the whole thing on fire.
If the flame turned green, it was borax.
The flame turned green.
Winters allegedly yelled to his wife:
“She burns green, Rosie. We’re rich, by God!”
This was science in 1881.
I also think it may have happened during Season 2 of Breaking Bad.
Pour chemicals on a mystery rock. Set it on fire. Shout the results toward your wife.
Today, that experiment would require three permits, protective eyewear and a YouTube disclaimer reminding viewers not to attempt it at home.
Back then, it created an industry.
Then I walked into a separate building.
This distinction is important.
The rockets were not hiding behind the soap.
Boron has an entirely different museum devoted to aviation, test pilots and space exploration because Edwards Air Force Base is nearby. You leave one building filled with borax, bootleg whiskey and stuffed mules, cross the grounds and enter another containing flight suits, aircraft photographs and reminders that human beings eventually escaped the atmosphere.
No transition.
No connecting exhibit.
Well, technically there was a mock train station. It could have served as a Hogwarts Express-style transition, but that was never made clear.
Just two neighboring buildings containing opposite ends of American achievement.
In one building:
Here is how we cleaned the laundry.
In the other:
Here is how we challenged gravity.
Boron looked at its contribution to history and decided it required two museums.
One for removing difficult stains.
One for leaving Earth.
That is a fairly impressive range for a town most people pass at 75 miles per hour while wondering whether they should stop for gas.
We cleaned the clothes.
Then we left the planet.
And now, the perfect transition to gambling:
It’s GREEN, Rosie!
Yesterday’s Autopsy
Yesterday went 4-1.
Apparently, removing the anchors was the correct response to Memphis dragging the entire previous card to the bottom of the ocean.
The Bills -1.5 beat Houston 36-31. Buffalo drove 96 yards for the winning touchdown with less than two minutes remaining, then forced a fumble as Houston threatened to answer.
Normal. Relaxing. Exactly how we drew it up.
The Raiders -3 beat Miami 27-13. I left Las Vegas to protect myself from the emotional blast radius, and the Raiders responded by producing the least stressful result on the football portion of the card.
Apparently, they perform better when I leave the state.
Baseball handled its assignments without requiring additional paperwork.
The Rays moneyline demolished Houston 14-4. Freddy Peralta threw five hitless innings, Tampa Bay hit four home runs and the Astros committed the sort of defensive mistakes generally associated with people who have somewhere else to be.
The Padres moneyline completed the evening with a 6-4 win over San Francisco. San Diego built a 5-0 lead, then allowed the Giants to make the final score interesting enough to prevent anyone from going to bed early.
Four winners.
Then there were the Lions -7.
Detroit led New Orleans 21-0.
Twenty-one to nothing.
When you are favored by seven and leading by twenty-one, the assignment should be complete. You should be able to place the cover in a padded envelope, apply the correct postage and send it directly to my account.
Instead, the Lions allowed the Saints to force overtime.
Detroit scored first in overtime to lead 31-24, briefly putting us back on the number. New Orleans answered with a touchdown and attempted a cocky two-point conversion rather than kicking the extra point.
The conversion failed.
Detroit won 31-30.
We lost by six points while backing a team that never trailed and once led by twenty-one.
That is not losing a pick.
That is having a pick slowly removed from your possession while you are still holding it.
Still, the card went 4-1.
No anchors.
No agricultural collapse.
No maritime investigation.
The picks traveled better than expected.
They also smelled considerably better than the car.
The Giant Scoreboard
ALL SPORTS: 1,069-1,089-7
TENNIS: 1-1
Who the hell bets on tennis?
Today’s Pick
Today we are exercising restraint.
Not because yesterday’s 4-1 card taught us restraint.
Because I am in California.
That leaves us with one pick already placed before I crossed the state line:
Kansas City Chiefs -2.5 over the Denver Broncos.
Patrick Mahomes returns at Arrowhead against a Denver defense that can make this uncomfortable. The Broncos can rush the passer, Kansas City has questions along the offensive line and Mahomes is playing his first game since the knee injury that ended last season.
So naturally, we are asking him to return on Monday Night Football and immediately cover a divisional game.
There might still be some magic in that old hat Taylor Swift found.
Still, the number remains below a field goal. Kansas City does not need to look like the old Kansas City.
It needs to win by three.
One game.
One pick.
No round robin.
No anchors.
No access to additional bad decisions.
California has introduced regulatory restraint to the model.
Chiefs -2.5.
That’s it.
Please admire the discipline while it lasts.
Bad Picks. Better Stories.
This isn’t called Pick What I Pick.
It’s called Don’t Pick What I Pick.
Please wager accordingly.
