by David Hirst
I told him I figured we were snowed in, and he found it hard to believe we could be snowed in by two inches of snow.
‘You sure it’s snow? Is it white?’ Buzz asked.
‘I’d be damned worried if it was black,’ I replied. ‘We could be dealing with a volcano.’
‘Volcano! You’re a crazy motherfucker.’
‘I’m not saying I can’t drive in two inches of snow, Buzz. The problem is finding the road. I guess we can rely on airdrops. We are quite low on beer. Will the air force drop beer?’
‘You are one crazy motherfuckin’ Australian. It’s not the air force — it’s the National Guard. And they are sure as hell not gonna drop beer to a crazy Australian trapped in two inches of snow.’
Buzz, clearly enjoying this performance, loudly pointed out that the purpose of the markers on the edge of the road was to define the road so ‘crazy motherfuckin’ Australians’ could get their own beer.
‘Well, they’d probably refuse to drop Tecate anyway,’ I replied. ‘If they dropped Michelob, I’d tell them to take it back. I doubt even Adam would drink Michelob. I’d rather drink Lillie Langtry’s piss.’
The reference to the esteemed actress was lost on Buzz, and I left him muttering ‘motherfucker’ into the phone.
But apart from Tony’s exertions, no outdoor work would be done today. The snow made things too cold and slippery, and to my mind life was dangerous enough without challenging the howling elements. But Tony never slips or stumbles. He has no place to fall. Tony plays Seneca to the scores of Petroniuses that make up the remaining workforce. They would prefer dining with Trimalchio, and their work could well be described as The Fragments.
Instead, Boo and I decided to drive down to Yucca Valley, our nearest big town for supplies, just in case more snow did arrive. Bill had shown us photos of Boulder House under several feet of the stuff some years before when he had been cut off for days.
The back roads to Yucca are dotted with old ramshackle deserted cabins and shells of cabins that once were someone’s dream. After the Spanish war of 1898, president Harding made sections (360 acres) available to veterans, and later World War I soldiers took up parcels of the arid land. At that time, the area attracted victims of TB and poisoning from mustard gas. The remnants of a TB clinic remain a few miles away where Pipes Canyon Road meets Pioneertown Road.
These men and women replaced the cowboys, the cattle, and the cattle-rustling that dominated the economy after the passing of the Indians until the Depression of the 1890s, when beef prices fell so low that the game was not worth the candle. But in the boom years following the gold rush, when a single beeve could fetch seventy dollars, knowledge of water sources and familiarity with the scores of hidden valleys turned a pretty penny. Cattle could be stolen in Mexico, eighty miles to the south, or from the Ranchos based in Los Angeles and San Diego, driven through the passes, hidden in land where whites had scarcely travelled, and then herded north. Alternatively, stolen cows and horses from the Californian settlements could be given fresh brands in the hidden valleys, and then driven to Mexico for sale. In Mexico, rustlers deployed an early time-and-motion technique, stealing Mexican stock and running it north. Some of the poor beasts spent much of their lives being chased back and forth across the border.
Reading through the history of the early days, one is struck by the numbers who met an early and violent death. Like in the rest of the West, rustling, hard drinking, and gambling were practised by men openly brandishing hand guns or shooting irons, but today the churches are far more numerous than the bars, and far better attended.
In fact, the Desert Christ Park became a leading tourist attraction after Christ’s first physical manifestation in this part of the Eastern Mojave.
Taking the back road into Yucca to avoid the ugly strip, we passed this extraordinary park, one of the desert’s great blessings. Boo insisted on inspecting it.
It is perhaps appropriate that the Christ Park and the Cholla Park are adjacent, as some argue that Our Lord’s crown of thorns was manufactured from cholla — proving that when Christianity is involved, people will invent any manner of things. The Christ Park became a leading tourist attraction after Jesus’s first physical manifestation in this desert, in 1951.
A God-fearing pattern-maker from Inglewood, Frank Antoine Martin, had ‘sculpted’ a three-metre, four-tonne statue of Christ in his driveway in 1947, intending it to be placed at the rim of the Grand Canyon. Due to the extremely liberal position that the National Parks Service took at the time, this truly inspirational and wondrous monolith was deemed to contravene the division of church and state — the park being the possession of the feds. Martin argued that a cross was displayed at Easter sunrise services on the Canyon Rim, but the secular authorities countered that the cross was taken down after this annual service. Raising and lowering the 2,800-kilogram, ten-foot Christ might have proved to be as difficult a task as the resurrection itself. So the ten-foot Christ was rejected of men, a statue of sorrow, and, as Martin liked to tell newspapers and magazines, ‘not wanted’.
Not wanted by all accept Eddie Gardner, a desert missionary who was later to achieve national fame as the Desert Parson. Gardner found it fit to base his ministry at the head of Yucca Valley, at Apache and Santa Fe trails. And with the flair of an early Pat Robertson, he saw in the four-tonne statue a chance to draw attention to the spiritual needs of the folks of the desert and, perhaps, to himself.
Moving Christ to the desert was a more complex operation than the Son of Man’s efforts prior to his Temptation. In fact, it required the skills of the harbourmaster of Balboa Bay, Los Angeles — one Tommy Bouchey, who brought in cranes and heavy rolling stock to raise up Our Lord. By the grace of God, on 28 March 1951, Christ was lifted up once again in the wilderness, hair and robes flowing, arms somewhere between beseeching and crucifixion. After being dragged fifteen metres up a steep incline behind one of the scores of churches, he was placed upon a knoll in time for the 1951 Easter sunrise service on 8 April. Life and Time magazines both featured the miracle, although Time noted that Christ’s finger had broken off during his move. This would seem to diminish the statue’s spiritual status, as the Bible makes much of the prophecy that ‘not a bone of his body be broken’, and definitely does not suggest that an entire finger be lost.
But so taken were the people of the desert that Mr Martin immediately moved other artistic endeavours, including moving ‘Jesus Blessing the Children’ from Inglewood to the more biblical desert environment. The works, which can truly be described as ‘larger than life’, soon spread to cover five acres of hardscrabble desert.
Over the following decades, Martin created a virtual New Testament down on the Pioneertown side of Yucca Valley. His works multiplied until he had, in hundreds of tonnes of wondrous cement, recreated ‘The Betrayal of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane’ (lest anyone wonder where he was betrayed), ‘Christ at the Home of Lazarus’, ‘Mary and Martha’ (who apparently lived together), ‘Christ’s Blessing of the Little People’, and ‘The Scene at the Holy Sepulchre’, replete with three mourning women staring into a tomb that Martin had dug into the hillside, and where he sculpted ‘The Shroud’. Martin further beautified the desert with what has been described accurately as his ‘most magnificent and ambitious work’, a carved facade of the Last Supper with the head of Christ, framed in an open window, cut in three dimensions. The remaining figures are in bas-relief, and the whole box and dice, the facade, stands three storeys high and nine metres wide.
A nation aching for meaning during those days, when Godless communism threatened from within and without, poured cash into the work, and donations reached $3,000 a month. All manner of scenes from the New Testament soon dominated not just the hillside but a good part of the township.
But all was not well in the new Holy Land. Perhaps it was the surprise appearance of Eddie Gardner, the Desert Parson, as one of the twelve discip
les that caused a rift amongst the true believers. Rifts, akin to that of the nearby San Andreas Fault, appeared not only in the ‘immortal’ concrete statues, which stand gleaming white in the desert sun to this day, but also in the flock. Due to a ‘misunderstanding’, one parishioner bought the five acres upon which the handiwork had been brought forth, and proceeded to sell it back to his parish at a decent profit. The Reverend Gardner was described as ‘very saddened’ by this turn of events and left the parish, preferring to live and die on the Navajo Indian reservation in northern Arizona than remain in the world of filthy lucre.
Alone, with nothing but a cement mixer, Anton continued his work tracing the Biblical fables, from the manger almost to the cross. But the constant effort, in boiling heat and icy winds, caused Anton to sicken and die on this hillside so far from Galilee. A mile or so from the Christ Park, he sculpted a sabre-toothed tiger by the highway. The stark beast is truly fearsome, in contrast with the meek and mild figures of Christ, the Apostles, the Wise Men, Mary — everything but the crazed swineherd — that stare ‘Christlike’ down at the highway. All are overlooked by today’s connoisseurs of fine art who would prefer the works of Mapplethorpe to these uplifting scenes.
So overlooked, so unwanted, are they that, though built to endure the blast of an atomic bomb, they have been unable to withstand the march of time. Heads of the apostles have rolled, and outstretched arms as big as a child have had their cement and rebar steel exposed. The children that Our Lord is beseeching to ‘come unto me’ seem to be suffering from terrible nappy rash, and look somewhat flyblown.
Unhappily, on sultry summer nights, sordid things happen, even in this place of innocence.
Young men, and men not so young, seeking not salvation but sex, are drawn to the place. Holier visitors began hearing noises coming from the men’s toilets. The park ranger commented that Christ Park had become a veritable ‘Sodom and gonorrhoea’.
The police chase them away, through the nativity scene, past the manger, and into the cholla thickets.
20
Whereas Pioneertown is almost embarrassed by its authenticity, Yucca fails entirely. It is not the ugliest city in America, but is well named.
Not long after our arrival, Ernie introduced me to Tom, one of his gun-fighting cronies, who also happened to be mayor of the city of Yucca Valley. For reasons I never established, Tom promptly asked me what I thought should be done to ‘beautify’ Yucca. This was akin to being asked for the definitive explanation of the origins of the universe, and I demurred.
Finally, it came to me. ‘Get a bulldozer,’ I told the mayor.
Yucca is a horrible example of the American blight — two Chevron stations, a Taco Bell, the mandatory McDonald’s, and endless other fast-food drive-throughs. Car yards pile alongside ghastly Walgreens and Shop Rites, and every other abomination a city should hide in shame. In its defence, Yucca boasts the magnificent snow-capped San Gorgonio Mountain as a backdrop, and still has feedlots with huge Trigger-like horses standing guard out the front. There are no parking meters and no traffic officers, and it does have one of the finest signs in the history of capitalism from a local realtor: ‘Your nest egg will be safe with Betty Henn’. A row of antique stores in ‘Old Town’, with names like Horse Feathers, are cheap, and jammed with Old Western relics that ten years of lying out in the desert sun have rendered desirable.
Every weekend, one of the world’s great swap meets converts the old Sky View drive-in into a wonderland of irresistible junk sold by cowboys and mountain women from the backs of their cars. Here, between stalls laden with snakeskin walking sticks and 1940s newspapers, Patti Page pauses in mid ‘Mocking Bird Hill’ while the intercom loudly announces, ‘David, your bacon and eggs are ready in the Sky Café. Come and get ’em while they’re still nice and hot.’
Lately, the fingers of the New Age have touched tiny portions of the strip, and there are a few stores, like The Cactus Garden, that my mother might describe as ‘tasteful’.
But few they are indeed, and a visitor with the slightest semblance of refinement would be challenged to see anything but uninterrupted ugliness.
Humanity somehow overwhelms this godforsaken dreariness, and indeed Yucca advertises itself as ‘the friendliest place on earth’. The ‘girls’ at Vons discuss health and family problems with the customers at the checkout at exasperating length. Milo bags the food, and greets his customers and us with an embrace. The flower girl fills in my cheques if I have forgotten my glasses. They are a merry crew at Vons. It is indeed odd to walk into this giant national enterprise and to be greeted as an old family friend.
The Valvoline operation on the highway once worked on my car for two hours and refused any payment, as they had only established the cause of a leak from some part of the thing. The Palestinian men who run the local store offer credit with an alacrity that would have me short-selling the store’s futures. Buzz has credit with every liquor store in town.
But none of this makes Yucca any less ugly. It’s a place to stop, stuff some poison down the kids’ throats, and drive on to someplace else.
One attempt to pretty up the place has occurred near the Palestinian liquor store, and opposite the Jelly Donut — a landmark of almost anthropological importance.
Many winters ago, the aforementioned wondrous artist and sculptor Anton Martin created a perfect rendition of a sabre-toothed tiger, a creature that once walked or stalked these lands. The sabre-toothed tiger has been described as the greatest killing machine nature ever invented, and the alabaster tiger of Yucca is a fearsome-enough-looking beast, even if the stark white paint he is dressed in detracts from his beastliness. The most terrifying animal nature ever created — at least in the Northern Hemisphere — stands on a tiny isthmus by the highway, hidden from the tourist view by cactus and a sea of American flags so dense one could mow them.
The town is blessed by fine eating houses where a patron is helped through the complexities of sophisticated culinary delights. At Jerry’s Bar and Lounge, a waitress was good enough to inform us that ‘The Chablis is the white one. The Cabernet is the red one.’
‘They are nothing like each other,’ she added helpfully.
They are nothing like wine either.
The purveyors of battery acid dressed up as drink have done well out here, and seem to sell the most rancid of their products exclusively to the haunts of the upper desert. Wine in such places is not drunk for the betterment of the palate or the gastronomic juices, but for the hit. These are wines that in LA would only be drunk by winos. When asked for something kinder and gentler on the palate, a bottle of Pink Zinfandel is invariably produced with the sort of look that suggests ‘We have culture in this town.’ The Zinfandels taste like — and probably are — a thin mix of bad Chablis and some rotten red with just a suggestion of urine. Or bad apple.
At the same time, Jerry’s offers steaks so superior to those we were accustomed to in Venice, Santa Monica, and Hollywood that after a few mouthfuls even the urine starts to taste reasonable, and one is reminded that an Indian prime minister — was it Desai? — used to drink his each morning. Perhaps he still does. We don’t hear much from him these days. Pity.
Tuesday night is fifty-cent taco night, and a good many residents of Yucca — and much of Pioneertown — descend on Jerry’s for their fill. Three and even four generations of families loll around the big wooden tables while toothless babies and toothless great grandpas stuff their gobs with the greasy cheesy delights.
Yucca Valley — population twenty-five-odd thousand souls — may have more fat people than any other town in America. So great have they grown that the supermarkets provide electric golf carts so they can drive themselves around the aisles — loading fat food into the baskets attached to the front. Fat couples ride along side by side, blocking entire rows. Boo has renamed it Fat Fucca Valley.
As we made our way along the shelves past a man with a trolle
y stuffed to the gills with frozen pizza and nothing else, she zeroed in on an item of unusual houseware.
‘What do we need those for?’ I protested, staring at the rolls of sticky, rubbery shelf-lining prominently displayed in the kitchenware section.
‘We’ll need it for earthquakes,’ she announced, snatching up enough to line the Titanic.
The coming big one — the mother of all disasters — The Quake, is one subject so absolutely terrifying from both a personal and a financial aspect that it is not often discussed. Two of the world’s largest and best-known fault lines run damn near through Boulder House’s bedroom. San Andreas is twenty miles to the south, and Landers is half that distance to the north. San Andreas has yet to pop, but the experience of the Landers affair is instructive.
At 5.45 on the morning of 28 June 1992, a 7.6 quake shook the desert awake. The entire populace fled their homes in terror as roads changed course, school buses bounced about like broncos, fences moved thirty feet, and huge underground water tanks sank so deep they were never to be found again. The earth became a sponge, and the shaking lasted for three terrible minutes. Tough desert men will attest to the terror. Eric, a man who loves nothing more than a good fight, and carries many a scar to prove it, remembers screaming as he and his roommate tried to open their Yucca apartment door. Finally they crashed through into a dawn full of the cries of the fearful. A wheelchair-bound neighbour was thrown from his bed and could not make it to the chair. His toilet exploded, and water raced through the apartment, threatening to drown him as he floundered on the floor. Eric dragged him to the uncertain safety of the street — a new world of wrecked houses, many fit only for the bulldozer. A couple visiting from the Dakotas had left their baby girl with a sitter for the night, and a chimney collapsed upon her cot, killing the child. It was the only death from the Landers quake, but many still talk of miraculous escapes.
