Wed 13 May 2009
Note: Photo captions are time and place of WiFi connectivity.
May 30th, Part Two
Booked early into a Motel 6 here in Hurricane, Utah (with WiFi, although spotty at best!). Just up the road from Colorado City, Arizona - that was interesting! But first: Gunsmoke!
Spent the night in Fredonia, Arizona as you know. A total hole and completely forgettable, with the exception of the Crazy Jug Motel (not making this up) where I stayed. Clean, massive and a passable restaurant open 24/7, though ‘why’ the long hours is anybody’s guess!
Up the road about ten minutes is Utah and the town of Kanab. This name won’t mean anything to anyone (does it?!), but it has one of the longest filmmaking histories in… well, the history of filmmaking. The area around Kanab was used as a film set for westerns and even biblical epics since the invention of film stock.
No, I didn’t know this before I went. I spent the better part of a half hour looking for an ATM machine. I had all of a buck fifteen in my pocket and was about to head out on back roads again - I needed coin of realm! Couldn’t find a bank to save my life.
I went into the little Utah Tourism building to ask the whereabouts of an ATM. “Well,” said the attendant, “we have three major ones. The Bank of Zion, The Bank of Ezra and The Christian Bank of Souls.” (I’m making the last one up - the first two, uh-uh). They all have ATMs, she said, and would accept just about any bank card. After being assured I didn’t have to wash my loins in the blood of the lamb, or something like that, I trundled off and got my money. I cannot tell you how bizarre it is to stick your bank card into an ATM that has instructions — withdrawal, deposit, tithe — superimposed over a smiling picture of Jesus Christ on the monitor - I shit you not!
Inside this little tourism building was a small movie museum with autographed pictures of just about anyone who WAS anyone back when they made westerns. John Wayne, John Ford, Clint Eastwood and even Cecil B. DeMille had houses here, so often did they return to make movies. Clint Eastwood shot the TV series Rawhide here, and returned many years later to shoot The Outlaw Josie Wales. Even Gunsmoke shot their exteriors here. Apparently the set of Gunsmoke exists somewhere off in the hills. So, I went ‘in search of’, as Leonard Nimoy used to say.
Found the turn off and headed into the badlands to duke it out with Marshall Dillon. About halfway there I happened upon a sign that said (words to the effect): “Now would be a good time to turn on your four wheel drive!” By this time I realized my TWO-wheel drive PT Cruiser was up to its hubcaps in sand. I knew if I stopped the car, there was no way I was getting out of hot sand with this vehicle. I kept driving… in reverse… to get out of the sand and back onto solid dirt. Fuck James Arness and the horse he rode in on! Miss Kitty and Chester too, while you’re at it!
Meanwhile, the polygamists are beginning to pile up….
If I hadn’t seen Anderson Cooper’s report on CNN about the town of Colorado City and it’s fugitive ‘prophet’, Warren Jeffs, I wouldn’t have bothered going in, or driving past for the matter. And I can’t see that anything would have looked out of place with only a cursory look. But three things stood out like sore thumbs during the half hour I spent driving around and through the small ‘breakaway’ community this afternoon.
1. Street Names: At the one end of the community all the street names are Apple, Plum, Cherry, Orange, etc. And they’re all ‘Streets’. All lead from the main street (Center Street) and end before they hit the highway. In other words, they’re all dead end streets. The streets at the other end of town are named in some form or other in a political manner: Capitol, Justice, American, True, etc. All of these were ‘Ways’ (see a pattern here?!) In the middle of town, along Center Street, there sits a community college: Mojave Community College. Next to that, a constabulary of some sort. This appears to be the dividing line between ‘Fruit’ and the ‘American Way’ - a sort of ‘latter day’ DMZ, literally and figuratively. It seems as though the town is divided in two. Not everyone who lives there, it appears, is a polygamist, an LDS member or even a Mormon. In fact, there’s a Baptist church just on the edge of the city limits. With a hand-painted sign underneath the church name that reads: ‘Conservative Baptist’, so the congregation is definitely in the RIGHT ballpark, obviously!
2. Big Houses: Cooper, in his reports, mentioned that there was an enormous amount of housing construction going on in town, and yet they couldn’t find anyone who would admit to the ‘influx’ of couples or families who were moving in. Well, no one appears to be moving anywhere. I counted twenty (and then stopped) houses — HUGE houses, what we would call ‘Monster Houses” on the west coast — being built in and around the community - yes, all in the ‘fruit’ section. Interestingly, they were not only empty, but complete, save for interior fixtures. In other words, they were built, framed, shingled, painted, bricked, and in some cases landscaped, but there were no doors, windows or completed interior walls in any of them. Again, massive houses. Shall I say, ‘multi-family’ dwellings, if you catch my drift?! I swear these places each had to be 3000 square feet minimum. This wasn’t mentioned anywhere in CNNs reports.
3. White Cars: It took me awhile to twig onto this one. When I arrived, taking the almost hidden exit off the main highway, the town’s roads were practically bare. After about ten minutes traffic was of a size one would expect in a small town at lunch time. Then it struck me (this was my ‘Stepford Wives’ moment!)… all the vehicles except mine were white - all of them. No I hadn’t noticed this right away as white appears to be the colour of choice in the American southwest. In fact, CIL, the paint manufacturer who supplies most of the car paint in North America, says statistically white is the most popular car colour everywhere. But, those statistics don’t take into account all drivers having military crew cuts, wearing dark glasses, and staring at the only non-white vehicle in town! I’m not making this up. Cooper had said in his report that within twenty minutes of CNN arriving — in a non-flagged vehicle — they were being shadowed all over town by several “white” vehicles. First rule of surveillance… if everyone looks like you, and you know everyone, and they know you, then whoever ain’t, is. Capice?
Interesting web link about a book written by a former member of the polygamist sect in Colorado City.
And with that, I’m off to dinner with Leonard Nimoy!
Reporting tonight from Hurricane, Utah