rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

watched the Bears work Seattle.
that’s all I’m going to say about that.

“Super Mario Brothers 2″ is really hard.
and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
…
okay, no; fuck you, Birdo.

alright, anyway.
it was in the high 90s today. hey, there’s a fucking surprise.

Saturday was an all-around interesting day.
I woke up around 11 am. puttered around the apartment like an elderly man for about an hour; watched whatever college game was on, but didn’t really pay attention. I had shit planned, I had shit to do.

El Centro is the largest city in Imperial County, and it’s in the southern half. county’s big. goes on for a while to the east, west and north. from what I’m told, there really isn’t much to the east. just desert, and eventually Arizona. west takes you through the mountains to San Diego. did that last week.
so I went north. just north of here is Brawley, which is essentially El Centro with about 10,000 less people. from there, you can go west to Westmorland (couple dozen houses around a blinking red light) or north to Calipatria.
I kept north to Calipatria. nothing to speak of there, either. small town, gas station, hot and dusty. couple of stockyards nearby, but that isn’t much of a tourist attraction.
north of Calipatria is Niland.
this is the north side of the county. the north side, because of its sparse population, encompasses a large area to make up for its small number of residents. Niland is one of the larger towns up north, which is a very relative statement. can’t be more than two thousand, but I’d say that’s stretching it. it’s just a handful of people living in the middle of nowhere with only limited employment. no jobs, no people. simple as that.

back in the day, during WWII, I’m told Niland was bumping. there was a marine training base located only a few miles out of town, and as such, it was the place to be on your day off. Niland boomed, grew with the base, just like there’s development outside of Fort Hood and Camp Lejune, it happened there too, in the low desert. but then America won the war, they scaled back troop deployment, and the base closed up.
Niland went to shit. and there it is today.
apparently, a few of the marines didn’t want to leave. I mean, fuck, why would you want to leave southeastern California for? it’s a veritable Eden!
so they stayed. electricity, water and phonelines were cut. buildings crumbled. squatters moved in. and now you have Slab City.
they call it “Slab City” cause of the giant concrete slabs out there. and over the years, it’s become a destination for the RV crowd, people living “off the grid” and such. a lot of them are referred to as “snowbirds,” as they come down here to wait out the winters elsewhere. pansies.
I drove through Slab City. it’s not much to look at. a bunch of RVs in the desert. looks miserable, but if that’s your prerogative, then all power to you.
what’ll really slow you up is what’s on the way in.
there’s a giant, big, painted hill on the roadside. in huge, multicolored letters down the front it says, “God is love.” there’s a giant crucifix on top of it. there are drawings of birds and of trees, rivers. the words “Bible,” “Jesus,” “love” formed out of mud and straw, hardened in the desert sun, painted over. up and down the hillside, into the adobe clay huts built into the embankments. over the random car parts that help solidify the walls. Bible verses. John 3:16. Acts 3:28. the Lord’s Prayer. over everything.
there are a couple older trucks; maybe Studebakers or early Fords. a tractor on a hitch. a mobile trailer, a moped, scattered around the surrounding plain in front of Salvation Mountain. all of it, completely covered in bright pastels.
I want to make sure I’m getting my point across. are you following me?
the whole fucking hillside looks like a giant paper mache project – and that’s what essentially what it is. on top of that, there have been huts and a three story igloo made of tires, mud and hay, supported on the inside by a skeleton of snapped telephone poles and driftwood. when you paint that shit and scrawl Bible verses, it looks like Dr. Seuss found God and lost his mind.
the wildest shit, of course, is the fact that it has been essentially made by one man, a Mr. Leonard Knight. the guy had a spiritual experience back in the early 70s, eventually found himself out in the desert, and he’s been building this monument (or versions of it) ever since.
by himself.
he lives out there, sleeps in one of those trucks, or in a hammock he set up underneath a dead tree. he uses a tarp for shade.
it gets into the 120s out here in the summer.
when I got there, I didn’t see him. there were a couple of guys up on top of the mountain, looking around, but he wasn’t around. I started poking around, mouth agape, looking into all of these little rooms full of garbage he’d plastered to the wall in patterns, spelling out words. it was stifling hot inside there and silent, and for a little while, I was convinced some sort of demented clown was going to lunge out and kill me with a hammer.
when I came back out, I saw he was over there by one of the trucks talking to the two guys I had seen up top earlier. they were talking, but as Leonard saw me, he looked up and yelled, “Hello!” and waved. he excused himself, and started shuffling over to talk to me.
I knew a little about him already, from what I had heard other people say; guy at work Rudy had mentioned this place to me, which was how I found it in the first place. but I played dumb, just to hear him talk about it. asked questions.
“did you build this?”
“yeahp. for 23 years. I put over 90,000 gallons of paint in it.”
looking at this guy, he’s easy in his late 70s. and he does most of this shit himself. can’t be easy.
he gave me a little tour, showed me all the rooms. told me everything that goes into it, he finds wandering around in the desert. lots of car parts, dried out logs, shit like that. he showed me the igloo, which he said was going to be a museum when he finished. this is the three story one, mind you. the whole time, he talked about what he had created, the mountain, not as a project but as a friend. which I can understand. fuck, you put enough time into something, you’d probably be pretty close to it.
so Leonard told me to walk around, feel free to go up top, and not to leave without going by the truck.
and I did. went up to the top, followed the path he had carved and painted into the hill. the crucifix at the top was about fifteen feet tall. you can see back into Niland from up there. the other side looks into the Slabs. north is a Navy gunnery range in the Chocolate Mountains. you can see the disgusting Salton Sea (which I’ll save for another post as this is huge already), and past the lake, probably fifty miles off are what I think are the Vallecito Mountains. I’m not sure.
you can really see a long way in the west. if you get out in the middle of nowhere, shit just opens up. there are a lot of people in this state, but they all cluster around certain places. they cling to the coast. where I’m at, you don’t see a lot of people. El Centro is the big town at 30 grand. even the bonafide metropolis, Mexicali, is hidden across an international border. it’s masses are kept in check by an impenetrable dam. so even with that 15 miles away, it’s very solitary out here.
anyway. about 40 pictures later, I came back down and headed over to the truck. Leonard was sitting with those two dudes from earlier. he got up and showed me one of those visitor’s guides to California they sell at gas stations and welcome centers. 50 things you have to see in California.
“I’m number two. how about that?”
I told him to keep it up, and someday he’ll be number one.
he gave me two DVDs, 15 minute documentaries called “Welcome to Salvation Mountain.”
I haven’t watched it yet, but I don’t really think it’s necessary. I got the idea.
and I have pictures, too. so hold on to your yimmy, mang, I’m putting them up soon. and they’re boss. next post, I’ll say a little something about Bombay Beach, the most horrible little place on earth. get ready.