Bottling the Desert

Cabazon. While the green hue that is cast across the bordering mountains this time of year makes it seem less like a desert community, tumbleweeds pile up like refugees against chain link fences and jackrabbits shade themselves in the shadows of coyotes. I would like to say, based on the sporadic, gypsy reminiscent neighborhoods that dot the landscape like ant colonies, that Cabazon was never meant to be a rest stop or a gateway or anything more than a dot beside Banning. But then the "World's Biggest Dinosaurs" opted to brave extinction for a chance at roadside attraction, a forgotten Bingo hall made itself over into a towering casino, and a faded outlet mall spread along the freeway like a designer disease. Windmills at the edge of town beckon motorists forward into the real desert of yuccas, rock formations, and golf courses, but Cabazon, with its burger joints and date shakes, yaps at their heels like a stray dog.


I am fascinated by the new against the more ramshackle, by the impermanence of this life in a flood zone, and by this rural town that hangs on to the map by railroad track staples and asphault threads. Like many desert towns, Cabazon emanates contradictions like heat from a Tucson highway. While a small corner market serves as a grocery store for the local community, the outlet mall boasts a Starbucks, a Haagen Dazs, and a Auntie Annies specialty pretzel shop. Shoppers coast on a diet of caffeine, sugar, and salt, while some residents take their meals filtered and in a paper bag. At the casino, a brazen Las Vegas style billboard advertises an authentic pow wow and gamblers, intent on nickle slots and roulette wheels, barely see the imported desert flora that graces their path to imagined riches.


Further south, a well maintained mobile home serves as a Set Free, an organization to help drug and alcohol abusers through work and salvation. Meals are shared at a redwood picnic table beneath a large jacaranda tree and men mill about drinking styrofoamed cups of coffee. Across the main road, sheriffs patrol the dirt roads and empty fields looking for drug dealers. Nearly every home has its own fence, yet dogs run free in the streets. New homes, their stuccoed exteriors painted in terra cotta, sand, or other desert hues, stare at the mobile homes, their sides dented and their roofs rusted, that huddle behind cactus gardens and mesquite. A perpetual wind coats everything in a gentle dust and a rock filled riverbed reminds golden weeds that their predecessors were green. Nearby and silent, save for the semi trucks making their pick ups, the Arrowhead bottling company continues about its business.

The tower of the casino stands like a lighthouse in an evaporated ocean, welcoming passerby to dry up their savings accounts. But behind the clink of ice against ice as another waitress is summoned, there is the sighing of ancestors whose traditions have been lost to material pursuit and of desert tortoises searching for water, dreading rain. The windmills, sentinels of the rural wanderer, whisper "go away" and yet the off ramp clogs like an artery and the parking lots swell. Cabazon.

Billboard

Traveling westbound along the 10, I noticed a billboard for a conservative talk radio station. It was simple and direct, with a solid colored backdrop and "When in doubt, tell the truth. "-Mark Twain. Having bored of the limited supply of CD's that I have in the car, I once tuned in to the station just in time to hear one of their hosts say, "Barack Obama used fear tactics to pursuade people to go along with socialism.".


Because I am trying to be patient with all sides to every story (feeling this will be the best way to teach Ava how to form her own opinions), I continued to listen to their complaints about the inaguration, their supreme belief that the country (with Obama at its helm) is headed to "hell in a hand basket", and their general displeasure with our new president. And I was really okay with their opinion, having heard all of their arguments at least a half dozen times a day for the past year. But then one host went into a tirade about how telling it is of Obama supporters that former President Bush was booed and serenaded with that "Hey Hey Hey Goodbye" song. I for one (and I know I am not alone) did not condone nor appreciate those actions, feeling that those particular fans lacked class. And, in case it isn't already quite evident, I am a huge supporter of our new president.


Needless to say, I have two things to say to the station:

#1. If you want to attract people to your view point, try not to insult them first.

#2. A better quote for your billboard would be: "First know the facts, then distort them as you please" -Mark Twain.