|
 Back
before the earth cooled completely, I was a reporter for the
newspaper in Victorville, California. Victorville is a high desert
town between L.A. and Las Vegas and is celebrated in folklore as
“where the car broke down as I was trying to get to Barstow.”
And every spring about this time, that ol’ desert country tries to
outdo itself in setting new records in how hard the wind blows. It’s
not always the same, of course. Sometimes there’s a bunch of sand
and dust in the wind and sometimes it’s clear skies and there’s just
a mountain or two in the wind. But it blows.
If there was anything or anyone out in that desert
that was unusual or off the beaten path, I covered it. You know,
Iron Water Alice who soaked in iron water (of course) to increase
her psychic potency, “Guv” Reeve who lived with a harem of
well-wishing church ladies and ran for governor every four years,
the beat goes on. Polite people who answered the phone at the paper
referred unusual phone calls to “the color story reporter named
Slim.” Sounded better than weirdo writer, didn’t it? [to top of second
column] |
And one March, two young boys
called in from Apple Valley, about five miles to the east, and
reported that someone had stolen their tent. They had set the tent
up in the back yard because they wanted to be tough outdoorsmen, of
course, and this was a good way to start. The tent had a floor and
walls and a roof, of course, was pegged solidly to the desert, but
when they went out the next morning, someone had stolen it!
The sheriff’s office wouldn’t even take a report on it, but the
Victor Valley Daily Press would, by golly. So the word went out to
every windblown acre of the high desert, and the crime was solved.
Yes, it seemed an 80-year-old man who had a little cement-block
shack in Lucerne Valley, about 20 miles east of the launch pad back
yard, found a full-grown tent in one of his elm trees about 10 feet
off the ground.
One little rip, but some tape took care of that. Thank the Lord for
freedom of the press. And spring zephyrs that make a reporter’s job
fun.
[Text from file received from
Slim Randles] |
