Low Life in the High Desert by David Hirst

Author:David Hirst
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, TRV025130, BIO025000, TRV001000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2018-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

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.

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