Palm Spring Flip Side

Draw a circle around Palm Springs and the greater Coachella Valley and you’ll find some interesting destinations. The high desert and Joshua Tree Natural Park are just an hour away. Swing around the other way and you can be in the mountaintop artist community of Idyllwild in the same amount of time. Two hours will get you to Los Angeles, Laguna Beach or San Diego.

But head east and another world opens up. Skirting the Salton Sea, you could end up in East Jesus and West Satan. It’s a ‘lost world’ replete with fascinating characters, RV slummers and a few stragglers who look more like human residue scrapped up from the bottom of civilized society. It’s a step back in time and void of any semblance of the world up north of it. East Jesus is next to West Satan in an enclave known simply as ‘the slabs.’ To get there, you have to pass the Fountain of Youth trailer park on the way into town. I think you get the picture.

But before you get to this enclave of ‘Mad Max’ look-a-likes, you must pass by America’s own Dead Sea. While that moniker might be a little premature, the lake bed has been dying for years and little has been done, thus far, to reverse that trend.

The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake measuring more than 35 miles long and 15 miles wide in spots. It has a surface area of over 380 square miles and sits at 332 feet below sea level. The sea was created back in 1905 as the result of an accidental break in a canal cut into the Colorado River. For 16 months, the river ran unchecked into the lowest area around; the salt basin which became the Salton Sea.

But it wasn’t the first time that the area had seen a large body of water. Thousands of years earlier, Cahuilla and other California Indians occupied those lands. When they first arrived, the Salton Sink held a much larger body of water – ancient Lake Cahuilla. Geologists estimate the sea has appeared and then disappeared about every 400-500 years.

After the Indians, came the first settlers and railroad men who built a line of the Southern Pacific Railroad through a part of the sea. Nearby agriculture began to grow in what are now the communities of Coachella, Thermal and Mecca.

But two hurricanes; Kathleen in 1976 and Doreen in 1977, caused such wide-spread damage to neighboring farm lands that the runoff caused a major increase in the salinity of the sea. That, in turn, caused major fish-kills and bird-kills and created such a major issue with noxious odors that residential development came to a stop. Today the salinity level of the sea stands at 45 ppt. Only the tilapia fish is able to survive in such waters. While fishing is still good for the tilapia, fish kills continue to plague the area with their harsh smells.

Along the northeastern edge of the Salton Sea lies one of the world’s most important winter stops for migrating birds traveling the Pacific Flyway. The migration begins in October and by January more than 400 species of migrating birds fill the skies above the sea. By the end of May, the birds have moved on. Over the centuries the fragile ecosystem of the area has provided sanctuary to an extremely diverse collection of wildlife and the critical habitats that support and nurture them.

For example, the sea holds millions of fish that feed the masses of wintering birds, including herons, egrets, brown and white pelicans and kingfishers. In the fall, birds of prey arrive. Among them are peregrine falcons, osprey and ferruginous hawks. The fields and wetlands adjacent to the sea support huge flocks of snow geese, ducks, sandhill cranes and California’s largest population of burrowing owls.

It will take years, perhaps decades before the sea might possibly return to its past glory. More feasibility studies will be made, more funding sought and grand schemes hatched. The possibilities for commerce, recreation and development are enormous. Until then the Salton Sea is a magical place for walk the shoreline, observe the birds and time your visit to avoid the smell. A small price for a wonderful watery treasure in the middle of the desert.

Living below the ‘Line of Living’ might be a good description for our next destination. It resembles a ‘Mad Max’ holiday replete with a shoe tree, mummies at East Jesus, flying dune buggies, a conflagration in Slab City and a death stare at Bombay Beach. All of this and more for a quiet outing to the back side of civilization.    

Salvation Mountain is one of the premiere examples of folk art in the middle of nowhere America. The site has become a mecca for those intrigued with this kaleidoscope of painted hills, crude cave dwellings and religious scripture. The cave’s paint can and hay bale construction would challenge even the most daring of spelunkers.

The artwork is made from adobe, straw and thousands of gallons of lead-free paint. It was created by the late Leonard Knight (1931-2014). A deeply religious man, Knight created an art piece that encompasses numerous murals and areas painted with Christian sayings and Bible verses. Knight’s philosophy was built around the ‘Sinners Prayer.’

The old mountain carver is gone now and replaced by Jesus People and their small hugging kids. Many visitors bring paint to donate to the project and a group of volunteers have been working to protect and maintain the site.

Maybe it was the line of dune buggies flying over the hilltop and descending on Salvation Mountain that signaled our next decent into hell’s crude cousin. Slab City otherwise known as ‘The Slabs’ is a snowbird campsite used by recreational vehicle owners alongside squatters from across North America. It takes its name from the concrete slabs that remain from an abandoned World War II Marine barracks of Camp Dunlap.

It’s estimated that there are about one and fifty permanent residents (squatters) who live in the slabs year around. Some live on government checks, others just want to live ‘off the grid’ and a few come to stretch out their retirement income. The camp has no electricity, no running water, no sewers or toilets and no trash pickup service. Sounds like a dry run for the apocalypse.

Despite the free shoe tree on the way into town and the free library, most of the residents have sectioned off their trailers, tents and sleeping bags with tires, pallets or barbwire. Free is free unless it comes to their piece of the desert then even squatters want their personal space recognized.

No trip to Slab City would be complete with a swing by East Jesus. This outdoor gallery has been described as an experimental, sustainable art installation. Made from discarded material that has been reused, recycled or repurposed, East Jesus encourages visitors to imagine a world without waste in which every action is an opportunity for self-expression.

I think West Satan is a simply a suburb of East Jesus. I found the art gallery there fascinating and mind-expanding. It was like tripping out minus the acid and sneaking a glimpse into the lives of those who don’t want to be a part of ‘any scene’ here in fantasy land.

Our venture south of paradise was a fun trip that gave birth to other mind images that are still whirling around in my head. It challenged the notion of ‘what art is’ and dragged us out of our comfort zone for at least one afternoon. It was at once fascinating, intriguing, sad, mind-expanding and challenging. It was finding iconic and cultural-pop treasures in the middle of nowhere California…just a stones-throw from Palm Springs and the flip side of reality there.

It was tripping out without the acid and a glimpse into the lives of those who don’t want to be a part of ‘any scene’ here in fantasy land or the rest of the world. I get it. They got it…and want to keep it that way.

I’ve always been intrigued by a dark cluster of trailer homes strewn alongside the Salton Sea half way to Slab City. Its name, ‘Bombay Beach, North Shore,’ always seemed like the perfect title for a play. I had to swing by just to satisfy my curiosity.

With apologies to Slab City, Bombay Beach isn’t much of an alternative. Its housing seems beaten down by the harsh summers and its distance from civilization. Sharon and I drove down its main street and intended to stop to ask directions until we looked into the dead-eyes of one young woman shuffling down the gravel roadway. One stare was enough for us to gun the engine and ‘get out of Dodge.’

Despite this initial impression of doom, I could feel all the trimmings of a good story among the populous. It wouldn’t take much to dream up some pretty fascinating scenarios for a cast of characters in and around ‘The Bombay Beach Club.’

Now as the sayings goes, all I have to do is write the play, novel, novella or screenplay. There’s a delightful tale there just waiting to be told.

Off-Off-Broadway

I rolled into town as a journeyman scribe and left a more intrepid visitor. A country rube goes to the big city…well, not quite…but not that far off either.

New York City had never held much appeal for me. Despite the romance of ‘West Side Story’ and numerous ‘it’s a lovely summer in the city’ songs, The Big Apple has never held much sway over my affections…until now.

I’m not a fan of big cities in general although a few stand out from the rest. These cities have captured my imagination with their history, location and that strange indefinable vibe you feel upon stepping onto the tarmac or exiting the train station. Singapore, London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Copenhagen have all had a special way with me. Several have played an integral part in several novels and screenplays of mine.

Now I can add ‘Gotham City’ to my list of urban retreats. I don’t know if it was the old lady with whiskers, the somber yet respectful respite that is the World Trade Center Memorial or T-Rex on the way home. It could also have been those pesky ‘Jersey Boys’ or the lilting melody of ‘Amazing Grace’ that changed the equation for me. Whatever it was that recaptured my imagination has me already mulling over another future venture into mid-town mayhem.

The last time I rode into New York City it was on a tired old Greyhound bus coming down from Boston. It was a bright and sunny day but there were storm clouds on the horizon and a chill in the air. It was a different time and a different place.

One of the first things I remember back then was passing a young guy on the street, probably a model, dressed in his blue shirt, tweed or herringbone sport coat and pressed blue jeans. I had no idea one could dress like that and still look so cool. Welcome to the land of anything goes. Yet despite the coolness of the place I still felt like a country rube lost in that vast urban wilderness.

Fast forward a lifetime of travel and it was with some excitement that I agreed to a quick week-end foray up from Annapolis for a couple of Broadway plays in the Big Apple. There were a lot more miles on this old chassis of mine now. So I would be coming into town with a different perspective. It was one short weekend on the east coast and away from the reality of Sharon’s Mom’s failing health back home.

We landed at Penn station and immediately got swept up in the street scenes of characters and chaos that define the city.

‘Jersey Boys’ entertained us that first evening. As we pushed through the crowds on Eighth Avenue I was reminded of the epic battle back in the ‘60s between city planner Robert Moses and urban pioneer Jane Jacobs. I had devoured her now classic book ‘The Life and Death of American Cities.’ I was in the heart of that battle still being fought and reality would come in the form of an old woman with whiskers.

The next morning found me sitting at a Starbucks overlooking the circus that is Times Square. Garbage had piled up from the night before. There were painted illusions on the side of a tour bus. Tourists were wandering about pushing past the nattily-dressed business man in his bright pink tennis shoes. The city was coming alive.

I was squeezed in next to a Chinese tourist on one side and a French couple arguing over my shoulder. The old homeless woman was close enough to rub elbows with me. She was nursing her cold cup of coffee and mumbling to herself. She had no place to go and a seat at the counter was as good as it got.

She began by telling me that “They don’t have nutmeg here anymore” and thus began a half hour lecture on herbs, vitamins, supplements and other medicinal medicines. A life-long New Yorker she had spent her better years working the work. Now she was trying to stay warm in a crowded Starbucks at 7:00 in the morning.

Her parents were Ukrainian Jews who had escaped the holocaust and landed in New York City after the war. The old woman had lost half her hearing and half her sight but her observations of life were spot on. She repeated herself a lot yet her knowledge of alternative medicines was clear as day. It was a lesson for me in the foibles of quick judgement calls on my part and the simple honesty in that old woman’s Canterbury Tales.

For that brief half hour it was one human being sharing her vast knowledge with another. She could recount old radio shows on nutrition, the best places to buy supplements in New York City and the evils of some vitamins. It was a lesson in urban survival replete with the old woman’s secrets for a long and eventful life. I was her student and she the teacher. There was a lot to learn from a life of hard living. I got her a refill and then had to leave. As I walked out the door she turned to the Chinese tourist and had engaged her as I disappeared into the teaming masses outside.

World Trade Center Memorial

A walking tour of the World Trade Center Memorial was a somber reminder of lives lost and the worth of each minute. I remember being eyes-locked on my TV that morning not believing what I was seeing. Now I was at that site and struck by the beauty which had transformed that old site of unmitigated horror.

After a harrowing ride back to midtown, I became an expert in the game of cabby chicken. It’s a glorified game of stare-down and fender bumping. My driver wasn’t about to lose to some other cabby or impertinent truck driver. Then his ears perked up when we heard the thunderous roar of an ambulance right behind us. He pulled over and as the flash of colors rushed by he cut in behind it along with two other cabs. It was a flat-out ‘balls to the walls’ race down Eighth Avenue as a river of traffic parted ways and we plowed ahead.

We made it up three blocks before he had to make a split-second decision whether to hold his place in line or miss the tourist that had just stepped off the curb. “Can’t clip a nip” he shouted as he slammed on his brakes and we watched the Japanese man leap back to the sidewalk. We lost our place drafting the ambulance and were relegated to crawling the rest of the way home.

Lunch was at a Paris Bistro before ‘Amazing Grace.’ We were listening to two Belgium college students debating something we couldn’t decipher.

Then the Amtrak back to Annapolis, Maryland.

T-Rex had just come back from Comic-Con 2015. He was over-lubricated even before he stumbled down the aisle and aimed for a seat next to us. Fighting his ‘damn tail’ that kept getting in the way he landed with a heavy thud. He was loud and boisterous and very funny as any reptile can be. He couldn’t get a good picture of himself but managed to capture us…his audience.

 

On the way back to crab town I reviewed my mental notes from the plays I’d seen. When or if I return is still in question. But the old lady with whiskers and cabby with nerves of steel got my mind to wandering.

I’d like to go back to that laboratory of lost lives and denizen of dark dreams. I want to mix with the masses and overhear their tales of hope and dreams and desperation. There are universal stories there that need to be told and I’d like to think I’m the man to write them.

Debris

It came to me one warm winter evening as I walked up Palm Canyon Drive and passed the Greyhound bus stop. An odd assortment of student travelers, elderly passengers and numerous transients were lined up on the street waiting for the bus to arrive. In a flash the phrase ‘Debris from the West Coast’ popped into my head. It stuck there even as I passed the motley-looking crowd and continued on.

Almost immediately a story began to percolate up from my subconscious. I thought about the woman at a consignment store weeks earlier who had announced to her volunteer partner that she was in Palm Springs because that was as far as her bus ticket would take her. I remembered the beautiful woman at Starbucks who claimed to have just arrived from India, having bypassed L.A. and who was looking for work. She hinted that she was as good with her brains as she was on her back. I politely declined to offer any suggestions for her future employment. I thought about the transients who camped out in the desert and only came into town at night to scrounge through the dumpsters. I thought about the oldsters who moved in their cheap trailers to live out the rest of their sad lives.

Then I thought about the Palm Springs neighborhoods where most of the homes have their own shimmering blue pool and many are surrounded by lush golf courses. Palm Springs was the perfect setting for two totally different worlds; rich and poor, cultured and illiterate, ambitious and arrived.

That story idea became a treatment. That treatment then became a rough draft. The rough draft, after five rewrites, became ’Debris.’ My novel became a microcosm of various relationships set in Palm Springs.  Palm Springs was the perfect setting for such a story. It’s your average surreal environment disguised as a resort community, vacation hotspot and the newest hipster’s haven. It’s probably no different than other resort communities like Key West, Las Vegas, Los Cabos or Aspen.

In short, it’s the perfect place for a collision of lives subtly hidden by crystal clear skies, shimmering pools of blue and warm seductive nights. ‘Debris’ is a Roman coliseum of broken individuals each at various points of conflict in their lives and almost all of them seeking some kind of redemption.

Millie is the aging movie star whom time and Hollywood have long since abandoned. She is an icon for all that was the glory and power of old Hollywood. But she is lost in the new Palm Springs.

Juliet is in the desert to find another man to fill out her tepid life. A chance encounter with Natalie, her new boss at the real estate firm, now elicits emotions long since buried beneath her puritanical upbringing and societies standards.

Brett & Payton seem the perfect couple newly ensconced in Palm Springs’ growing design industry until a chance encounter with Kevin threatens the stability of their relationship.

Robert is the half-Mexican kid scrambling to grab a foothold in the construction trade while he fantasizes about a better life. Opportunities and pitfalls await his every step.

Miranda is the troubled young woman who gave Robert a start but now faces her own avalanching doubts about a future in the valley.

The Indian Kid wants desperately to break out of his tribal constraints while still respecting his elder’s traditions.

Other characters keep piling up. Each is an footnote or a chapter liner without whom the main characters couldn’t function or evolve.

The Goldsteins who lost a son in Afghanistan and now grapple with finding meaning in their lives.

Tom Thornton whose eye for Juliet doesn’t rise above her waist and who must deal with a sordid past that is fast catching up to him.

Franee who has it all in money and power and beauty. All except the one thing she wants to control…Robert.

In its original form, Debris was too big as a print book (over 600 pages) and even larger as an e-book (more than 1500 pages.)  For an unknown author such as myself, a book of that size can be a very hard sell. So it was suggested that the original story be broken into two stories and a third added to form a trilogy.

                

           

Vida, my Jill of all Trades, has helped me break down the original draft into two separate stories. A third treatment written after the original ‘Debris’ and originally entitled ‘Tahquitz Dawn’ is now the basis for book three of the Debris series.

It will be a challenging and somewhat monumental task to rewrite books one and two and create an entirely new book three. But I think I’m up to the task. If for no other reason than my love of Palm Springs and the creative juices that flow there.

Once immersed in that task, I’ll be able to go back to old Palm Springs and relive the glory and glamor and sordid ‘tales of the city.’ I’ll journey with Robert as he struggles to carve out a place for himself among the rich and infamous. I’ll explore the strained relationship of Brett and Payton and get close to Juliet as she questions her own sexuality. I’ll peek into the lives of other characters that appear and then fade in and out of various chapters.

It’s going to be one heck of a journey. But with the San Jacinto Mountains looking over my shoulder, I’ll feel like I’ve come home again.