It's hard to shake a memory like Dick Champ. Even if you can get past his name, there's this man with these ocean-blue eyes, cauliflower nose and molting brows that wiggle in anticipation of your laughter. A great sense of humor, this dirty old man. Of course, with a name like Dick Champ—well, it's not as though he goes by Richard.
I met Dick more than two years ago, on a dark, cold October night in the town of Goldfield. It was the weekend that the historic society opens up the old Goldfield Hotel, giving ghost tours to Halloween enthusiasts. My tour lasted less than an hour, which left time to absorb all that Goldfield has to offer. My date and I went to a bar. We had all of three choices: the Mozart Club, the Columbia Bar or the Santa Fe. Mozart was closest.
When we wanted cigarettes, the bartender sent us down to the only place in town that sold them, the Columbia Bar, which was closing in 10 minutes, at 8. So we trotted down to the near-empty place, with its bright lighting and rec-club feel. An old man in a baseball cap sauntered toward us. He walked right up to me, gazed deeply into my eyes and said: "I love you just the way you are. You're perfect in every way. Your walk, your talk, your smile. The only thing I'd change about you is your name." His eyebrows arched repeatedly as he paused. "Your last name."
Meet Dick Champ. He's the owner of the Columbia Bar and, although he claimed to be 69, he could have passed for much older. With his sweatshirt and jeans and plain baseball cap, Dick would have blended in in any bar in America. But this was his bar—and in a small town like Goldfield, nobody blends. He was just getting warmed up on his repertoire of lines, jokes and stories. The 8 o'clock closing hour came and went; Dick was too invigorated by his own charm to notice. Eventually he professed his love to me. He was a lonely old man whose night was brightened by a young woman who allowed him to kiss her cheek and slow dance under the stuffed pig named Monica, in front of the mounted chicken and fox, past the locals who looked on. He told me that he was going to write me into his will, that I'd inherit this bar when he passed on. I didn't believe him, but I was enthralled by the idea: I could inherit a stranger's ghost-town bar!
At 4 in the morning, I had to leave. He gave me a postcard with a picture of the Columbia Bar on it that said, "Love You."
Since then I've wondered about Dick Champ, how he's doing—and about my inheritance. When I learned that this issue's theme was "In Search of …," my destination was clear. I was in search of Dick Champ.
"You know what we call a pretty girl in Goldfield, don't you? A tourist."
Armed with the "Love You," postcard, a disposable camera and a friend amenable to small-town bars, I set off for Goldfield. It's about a three-hour drive, north on Interstate 95, past Mercury and the Nevada Test Site, through Beatty, over sandy hills topped with snow-like mineral deposits, and into our destination, where there are more folks buried than living.
No, there's no life in Goldfield at 4 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon. The gas station's closed. So is the rock shop and the antique store, the hair and nail salon, the House of Gables and a boarded-up hotel. The trailers on both sides of the street are motionless, the cars parked in yards are still. The only thing that moves in Goldfield is the wind.
At the Santa Fe, three people sit in silence, as we walk in, looking for a room. The bartender greets us only because it's her job. Not exactly friendly, these Goldfield folks. After settling into our room, number three out of eight in this dying town's only hotel, we notice there's no shampoo. We set out in search of some, prepared to drive 26 miles to Tonopah because it doesn't seem like there are any places open in Goldfield.
On our way out, a store's open door beckons: Kelly's Korner, a small convenience store across from a parking lot of cars decorated with paint, tin cans, jewels and anything else you might glue on a car—remnants, we later learn, from the Burning Man festival.
Kelly's working the register and beams at us. A large woman with a mop of curly hair, she immediately knows we're from Vegas.
"Do you know Dick Champ?" I ask. "That's why I'm here."
"Champ," she muses. "That name sounds familiar."
Of course it does, in a town of around 200 (well, 185 to 350, depending on whom you ask). But she's not saying it in an I-know-that-name way. Instead, it's like she heard the name recently. "I think he may have passed this year. He was in his 90s, wasn't he?"
"I thought he could be around that age, but I was here a couple of years ago, and he told me he was 69."
"That sounds like something he'd say." Now she's smiling sadly, as though she's convinced herself that he's dead, and boy, does she miss him. "You know, Hooper would know."
Almost on cue, a red-faced man with a ponytail sticking out of his baseball cap walks through the door.
"Oh, there's Hoop. Hoop, did Champ die this year?" she asks.
"We've got five who died this year," he says, thinking. "But he wasn't one of them."
Relieved, I ask if he still owns the bar. They tell me that he does, and this is about the right time to catch him there. Pop Tarts, beer and shampoo in hand, we make our way to the Columbia.
"Did you hear about the toothless termite who walked into the bar? He said, 'Where's the bar tender?'"
The parking area is full, and there are raucous sounds coming out of the screened-in porch, and it's nice to realize that there is, indeed, life in Goldfield. Sage, a small blue-heeler dog, greets us, and the first guy I see is Dick. He's sitting with a small group of people, drinking a Miller High Life, looking exactly as I remembered. He comes over to make sure we're not startled by the pup.
"You're Dick Champ." I say. He looks at me. No recognition.
I show him my postcard. "We met years ago," I remind him. "I drove up from Vegas to see you again. You said you were going to write me into your will."
"I don't have a will," he smiles, and tells the bartender to give us a drink on the house. The bartender's his daughter (so much for that inheritance). She'd just moved to Goldfield yesterday with her husband and daughter from St. Paul, Minnesota, with the starting-over hopes that many have brought to this town. She smiles at the postcard, which Dick is now staring at wistfully, battling his mind for a memory that, goddammit, he just can't grasp.
The he bursts forth with that line.
"I love you just the way you are. You're perfect in every way. Your walk, your talk, your smile. The only thing I'd change about you is you name. Your last name."
He'll use it again throughout the evening, eventually attributing it to Ricky Scaggs. He probably mutters it most evenings, thanks to a touch of failed memory and a truckload of charm. He pulls up a chair next to us and orders another Miller High Life. A light of merciless flirtation glimmers in his eyes, much like the gold that once, at the beginning of the 20th Century, made this town the largest in Nevada.
"I want to buy you a drink at the Ford Hotel," Dick begins, his eyes sparkling.
"OK, Dick," I say.
"Do you know the Ford Hotel?"
"No," I reply, setting him up perfectly.
"It's in the backseat of my Ford."
The dirty old man's laughter sputters like the engine of a beat-up truck, and he stares into my eyes, searching, hoping that the joke goes over, that I appreciate his humor, begging ... And I do.
"Don't ever let another man tell you that," he says, almost protectively, as though he's protecting me against the evil world of men by subjecting me to, well, him.
"My name's Dick Champ. But all the ladies in town call me Big Dick."
Between drags off his cigarette and swigs of his beer, Dick beams with pride at how well his daughter's tending bar on her first day. And the real Dick starts peeking out through the joke-loving male chauvinism, exposing a sweet man who's trying his best to live a good life.
She's adopted, he tells me. He got her when she was about 18 months old, and her Native American mother left her father on the reservation. He got a call from a friend, saying that a baby needed a home, and without hesitation, not even discussing it with his wife, he picked up the infant and took her home.
"I walked into house with a baby in hand and said to my wife, 'Here, it's our kid. And we're going to take care of it for a while.'" The marriage didn't last. Neither does Dick's seriousness. "Goldfield is so small, the local hooker is a virgin," he announces.
At 8:30, a half-hour after the bar was supposed to close, a man who's a few teeth shy of a full dental record buys a round for the house (there are six of us.) He shares some of the town's history with me while Dick's gone to take care of some business, giving my ear a moment of respite. He tells me that they used to build houses out of ammunition boxes back in the early 1900s, when wood was at a premium. And of the fires that have burned through the town—one of which they put out with beer.
The woman next to him is short and brawny, with slow speech and a ponytail. She's carrying around a stuffed monkey, introducing it to the barflies. It's Mikey Monkey. We all smile and greet the monkey kindly, because, well, this is Goldfield. And it seems like the right thing to do.
The stories, the commercials, the memories, the jokes go on for hours. I buy the bar a round. Then Dick does, all the while talking about life ("the only thing you have to spend is time"), regrets ("pointless") and kindness ("it's in giving that you will receive. That's what makes me happy. I'm serious about that"). The stories are all followed with jokes and laughter, an easy escape for a man who'd rather not think about the bad times. Not when he has young ladies to entertain.
Meanwhile, my friend's in a deep conversation with a guy who's hiding out in the sleepy Nevada desert from a job he had, years ago. All I can hear are juicy snippets: "Vietnam," "JFK," "Anal Ease." But before I can really listen, Dick's got me by the hand, and once again, we dance around the bar. When I tell him I'm only up for one song, he dances with a mop. Then he apologizes sincerely for not remembering me and says it won't happen again. But I'm not offended. By now it's clear, from his repeated jokes and stories, it has nothing to do with me.
"Is there a place I can rent a bed here? I said 'No, but I know where you can rent half of one.'"
By midnight, it's time to go. Dick asks me to send a picture and says I can write whatever I want about him, as long as I mention Goldfield and the Columbia. They all want to know when we're coming back. I don't know what to tell them.
The Dick Champs and Goldfields of the world are something that you can't have too often. This is a special place you go when you need to forget your own worries and embrace those of a small, dying town. But it's not just that. Because our presence was their escape, too. New faces to share old stories with, and a night from which new stories can flow.
To go there more often would be too close to living in that small town, getting caught up in the gossip and the politics and the mundane. But to visit every two years or so is worth the three-hour drive. Just to bring a smile to the face of a man like old Dick Champ, who will always, in my dirty little mind, be 69.