Riding with Ghosts by Maka Gwen

Author:Maka, Gwen [Maka, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Eye Books
Published: 2014-06-27T04:00:00+00:00

BORDER COUNTRY

As you progress southward you may be forgiven for thinking you have crossed over the Mexican border as Spanish increasingly becomes the tongue you will hear. But it wasn’t a Mexican who bestowed on me the unfriendly treatment I got in Havisu City (actually a small town) and which made me childishly happy about the cock-up they made over their London scenario. I will explain! The site of this desert town is about as far removed from a River Thames ambience as it is possible to get, nevertheless the dignitaries-that-be have selected this place to be the second London — a London look-a-like. So at great expense, and to make it so realistic that no one would notice, they bought Tower Bridge.

Well, they thought they had bought Tower Bridge! But it turned out to be the far less lucrative London Bridge! Thus they were robbed of the chance of flaunting images of torture racks, gruesome executions and the whole associated paraphernalia of that ancient monument. As if we would sell Tower Bridge indeed!

So, London Bridge spans this bit of the Colorado, upon which ducks swim in the homely shadow of one red London bus, one English telephone box and one red letterbox. It was all rather ridiculous! I would have been more forgiving if this display of apparent love for English traditions made me, as a genuine English specimen, worthy of some degree of politeness.

This is also the winter home of the white-haired ‘snow-birds’. When the chill bites further north they soothe their chilblains in this balmier climate. Entire retirement complexes for the not-so-young are sprouting up in this scorching desert — alien and depressing settlements where the occupants are cut off from the rest of America. If residents dare to hint that since they reached eighty they like to have a nap after lunch, then they are liable to be dragged off to the baseball pitch and made to whoop and holler with all the other good sports!

Okay, that’s a bit over the top, but if you wish to slow down a bit in your later years, then this is not the place for you.

I am not suggesting that the elderly should sit alone by the window all day, thinking about dying — but there is a middle way, which I think lots of American towns have found, where it is possible to age in a mature way, accepting the realities of ageing but also living a full community life, not one based on hyperactivity in a strange place, with strange people and in a desperate pretence that nirvana means being over seventy.

In spite of the shimmering heat, the mountains are dark and sombre along the south-eastern California border area; mountains isolated by seas of sage and desert which spread up their sides leaving their peaks pushing through into the skies, like summits through the clouds, and inspiring awe and intimidation. These ‘Sky Islands’ are natural wilderness areas antipathetic to human beings. Only the Apache had the skills

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