Financial Times, March 8, 1997, p. XIX.
Flight of the polyester- clad snowbirds
Nicholas Woodsworth learns there is more to Quartzsite than
the Silver Buckle Saloon
I crossed the Arizona state line around sunset one evening,
wondering, as I usually do at that time of day, where I was
going to park my van Modestine for the night. The only place
of any size was distant Phoenix. The prospect made me
uncomfortable. Strange things happen out in the lonely deserts
of the West at night.
Thirty miles farther on, without warning, Quartzsite came into
view. On the map it hardly figured as a one-horse town, a
place not much more than a wide spot in the road. Yet spread
out on the plain before me, stretching to the horizon, was a
vast human agglomeration - mile after mile of what, at a
distance, seemed to be single-storey, white bungalows.
But Quartzsite, lost in the middle of nowhere, turned out to
be an entire medium-sized city on wheels, its inhabitants
housed in lumbering, self-contained motorhomes. It also turned
out to be, to my mind at least, one of America's more bizarre
and seriously demented places.
I pulled up outside the Silver Buckle Saloon, a large
barn-like building and one of the few constructions that was
actually fixed to the ground. Inside, playing to a crowded and
over-warm hall, a band was sawing away at fiddles. Sitting at
tables, playing pool, and lounging at the bar was some of the
strange human flotsam that drifts back and forth along
America's highways.
Warily, I took the only remaining bar stool. To one side of me
was a hulking, white-bearded man his face burned by the sun,
his lank, greasy hair covered in a bandana printed with skulls
and cross-bones; he had not, by the goatish smell hanging
about him, had a wash for some time. On the other side was a
man dressed entirely in worn and dusty black leathers -
trousers, jacket and boots, his hair long about the shoulders
but short and flat as a table on top. He was having a solitary
and ferocious argument with himself. It was effing this and
effing that between each violent, knocked-back gulp of beer.
"Good God," was all that I, on the other hand, could find to
say in hushed tones to myself. I wondered where on earth I had
landed up. I nursed my beer and kept my elbows well in towards
my sides. Avoiding all eye contact, I gazed out over the
bar-room and Quartzsite's denizens at their Saturday night
leisure.
There were monstrous tattoos out there, razor-honed hunting
knives. spiky hairdos, beat-up cowboy hats, pierced tongues
and navels, motorcycle jackets, Navajo beads and feathers.
Quartzsite, it seemed to me that evening, was like a camp of
post-apocalyptic survivors evolving mutant strains of life far
out in the desert.
It did not appear all that different the next morning. Most of
Quartzsite's inhabitants were not, in fact, the misfits,
ex-cons, outcasts and psychopathic drifters I had seen the
night before. They were solid citizens - polyester-wearing,
TV-watching, mobile-home-owing, patriotic Americans. But they
were, for all that, no less bizarre than the other lot.
Who in their right minds would flee the densely crowded
suburbs of the great cities of America in order to set up
house in an even more densely crowded suburb lost in the
barren back of beyond? Millions of people, that is who.
When the phenomenon that is Quartzsite began 25 years ago, it
was a casual meeting of a handful of prospectors,
rock-collectors and semi-precious stone dealers. They gathered
for a few days each winter in their trailers at Quartzsite,
the site of long worked-out gold mines, to buy stones, trade
information and socialise.
But Quartzsite was more than just old mines. It had sunshine,
warm weather and vast ranges of public land where anyone could
set down a mobile home without the slightest interference.
Word got around and "snowbirds" - retired escapees from the
extreme winters of the northern US - started flocking to the
dusty roadside there in ever larger numbers and ever larger
mobile homes.
Promoters - entrepreneurs who knew a bored, captive,
financially solvent audience when they saw one - began buying
up large chunks of desert and laying on organised sales
exhibitions and entertainment. Quartzsite took off in a cloud
of dust and has never looked back. Today it becomes an
instant, moveable city each winter. Its summertime population
is just over 1,000, but in January alone it becomes a
temporary residence to more than 1.5m people. From its
commercial, "downtown" centre, mobile homes litter the desert
for 10 miles in every direction.
"Imagine you own a hardware store and have lived all your life
in a clapboard house with a white picket fence in small-town
America," said Howard Armstrong, the biggest promoter of them
all. He had to shout as we roared along a Quartzsite "street"
- a wide, dusty alley between endless vendors' stalls - in his
humming electric buggy.
"You'd want to see the world, wouldn't you?" he hollered. I
had to admit, I hollered back, that I might.
"Well, all the world is here to be seen in Quartzsite," he
yelled triumphantly, as we screamed round a corner into yet
another endless alley of stands.
And, indeed. all the world is here. or at least the most
crack-brained parts of it. Renting out space along the
roadside to more than 2,000 vendors and their stands,
Armstrong - a former popcorn concessionaire at the California
Rose Bowl - has assembled all the loonies of what amounts to
a latter-day travelling medicine show.
We puttered along through thick crowds of gawking visitors. We
watched Arnie, the Ukranian-Cree fiddler, playing his
instrument of choice, the electric toilet plunger. I spoke to
baseball-capped, air-filter guru Denver Puckett, who
guaranteed that his new, improved filter could add an extra 12
to 18 horsepower to my vehicle.
I gazed at large collections of handguns, knives, legtraps,
high-powered crossbows and - my favourite steel-dart-firing
blowguns.
I inspected sun-visors for dogs and cats, hand-sewn Indian
breech-cloths for leather fetishists, medical magnets -
"Nature's secret force for the relief of pain" and the
Microwave Miracle Steamer (As Seen On TV). I inspected a
thousand other outlandish items. And at Jim Fecho's rock stand
- stones and gems are still big drawers at Quartzsite - I was
given a clear-as-glass, six-sided rock crystal as a memento.
"The spiritual people are really big on the crystals they want
the energy," Fecho, a professional rock hunter said. "At my
stand they pass their hands over them. If I haven't washed
them properly, they can tell. Too much negativity."
My own crystal has been properly washed. I can tell. It sits
on Modestine's dashboard and positively hums. Quartzsite is
now many miles behind, but whenever I pass my hand over the
hexagonal stone I can still feel some of the energy - and some
of the weirdness, too, that is America's.
[End]
Flight of the polyester- clad snowbirds
Nicholas Woodsworth learns there is more to Quartzsite than
the Silver Buckle Saloon
I crossed the Arizona state line around sunset one evening,
wondering, as I usually do at that time of day, where I was
going to park my van Modestine for the night. The only place
of any size was distant Phoenix. The prospect made me
uncomfortable. Strange things happen out in the lonely deserts
of the West at night.
Thirty miles farther on, without warning, Quartzsite came into
view. On the map it hardly figured as a one-horse town, a
place not much more than a wide spot in the road. Yet spread
out on the plain before me, stretching to the horizon, was a
vast human agglomeration - mile after mile of what, at a
distance, seemed to be single-storey, white bungalows.
But Quartzsite, lost in the middle of nowhere, turned out to
be an entire medium-sized city on wheels, its inhabitants
housed in lumbering, self-contained motorhomes. It also turned
out to be, to my mind at least, one of America's more bizarre
and seriously demented places.
I pulled up outside the Silver Buckle Saloon, a large
barn-like building and one of the few constructions that was
actually fixed to the ground. Inside, playing to a crowded and
over-warm hall, a band was sawing away at fiddles. Sitting at
tables, playing pool, and lounging at the bar was some of the
strange human flotsam that drifts back and forth along
America's highways.
Warily, I took the only remaining bar stool. To one side of me
was a hulking, white-bearded man his face burned by the sun,
his lank, greasy hair covered in a bandana printed with skulls
and cross-bones; he had not, by the goatish smell hanging
about him, had a wash for some time. On the other side was a
man dressed entirely in worn and dusty black leathers -
trousers, jacket and boots, his hair long about the shoulders
but short and flat as a table on top. He was having a solitary
and ferocious argument with himself. It was effing this and
effing that between each violent, knocked-back gulp of beer.
"Good God," was all that I, on the other hand, could find to
say in hushed tones to myself. I wondered where on earth I had
landed up. I nursed my beer and kept my elbows well in towards
my sides. Avoiding all eye contact, I gazed out over the
bar-room and Quartzsite's denizens at their Saturday night
leisure.
There were monstrous tattoos out there, razor-honed hunting
knives. spiky hairdos, beat-up cowboy hats, pierced tongues
and navels, motorcycle jackets, Navajo beads and feathers.
Quartzsite, it seemed to me that evening, was like a camp of
post-apocalyptic survivors evolving mutant strains of life far
out in the desert.
It did not appear all that different the next morning. Most of
Quartzsite's inhabitants were not, in fact, the misfits,
ex-cons, outcasts and psychopathic drifters I had seen the
night before. They were solid citizens - polyester-wearing,
TV-watching, mobile-home-owing, patriotic Americans. But they
were, for all that, no less bizarre than the other lot.
Who in their right minds would flee the densely crowded
suburbs of the great cities of America in order to set up
house in an even more densely crowded suburb lost in the
barren back of beyond? Millions of people, that is who.
When the phenomenon that is Quartzsite began 25 years ago, it
was a casual meeting of a handful of prospectors,
rock-collectors and semi-precious stone dealers. They gathered
for a few days each winter in their trailers at Quartzsite,
the site of long worked-out gold mines, to buy stones, trade
information and socialise.
But Quartzsite was more than just old mines. It had sunshine,
warm weather and vast ranges of public land where anyone could
set down a mobile home without the slightest interference.
Word got around and "snowbirds" - retired escapees from the
extreme winters of the northern US - started flocking to the
dusty roadside there in ever larger numbers and ever larger
mobile homes.
Promoters - entrepreneurs who knew a bored, captive,
financially solvent audience when they saw one - began buying
up large chunks of desert and laying on organised sales
exhibitions and entertainment. Quartzsite took off in a cloud
of dust and has never looked back. Today it becomes an
instant, moveable city each winter. Its summertime population
is just over 1,000, but in January alone it becomes a
temporary residence to more than 1.5m people. From its
commercial, "downtown" centre, mobile homes litter the desert
for 10 miles in every direction.
"Imagine you own a hardware store and have lived all your life
in a clapboard house with a white picket fence in small-town
America," said Howard Armstrong, the biggest promoter of them
all. He had to shout as we roared along a Quartzsite "street"
- a wide, dusty alley between endless vendors' stalls - in his
humming electric buggy.
"You'd want to see the world, wouldn't you?" he hollered. I
had to admit, I hollered back, that I might.
"Well, all the world is here to be seen in Quartzsite," he
yelled triumphantly, as we screamed round a corner into yet
another endless alley of stands.
And, indeed. all the world is here. or at least the most
crack-brained parts of it. Renting out space along the
roadside to more than 2,000 vendors and their stands,
Armstrong - a former popcorn concessionaire at the California
Rose Bowl - has assembled all the loonies of what amounts to
a latter-day travelling medicine show.
We puttered along through thick crowds of gawking visitors. We
watched Arnie, the Ukranian-Cree fiddler, playing his
instrument of choice, the electric toilet plunger. I spoke to
baseball-capped, air-filter guru Denver Puckett, who
guaranteed that his new, improved filter could add an extra 12
to 18 horsepower to my vehicle.
I gazed at large collections of handguns, knives, legtraps,
high-powered crossbows and - my favourite steel-dart-firing
blowguns.
I inspected sun-visors for dogs and cats, hand-sewn Indian
breech-cloths for leather fetishists, medical magnets -
"Nature's secret force for the relief of pain" and the
Microwave Miracle Steamer (As Seen On TV). I inspected a
thousand other outlandish items. And at Jim Fecho's rock stand
- stones and gems are still big drawers at Quartzsite - I was
given a clear-as-glass, six-sided rock crystal as a memento.
"The spiritual people are really big on the crystals they want
the energy," Fecho, a professional rock hunter said. "At my
stand they pass their hands over them. If I haven't washed
them properly, they can tell. Too much negativity."
My own crystal has been properly washed. I can tell. It sits
on Modestine's dashboard and positively hums. Quartzsite is
now many miles behind, but whenever I pass my hand over the
hexagonal stone I can still feel some of the energy - and some
of the weirdness, too, that is America's.
[End]