Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Beyond the little town of Mojave, the desert ended and the landscape erupted in smooth
hills and citrus groves. I crossed the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which carries water from
northern Cali fornia to Los Angeles, fifty miles to the south. Even out here the city's smog
was threaded through the hills. Visibility was no more than a mile. Beyond that there was
just a wall of brownishgray haze. On the other side of it the sun was a bleary disk of light.
Everything seemed to be bled of color. Even the hills looked jaundiced. They were round
and covered with boulders and lowgrowing trees. There was something strangely familiar
about them-and then I realized what it was. These were the hills that the Lone Ranger and
Zorro and Roy Rogers and the Cisco Kid used to ride around on in the TV shows of the
1950s. I had never noticed until now that the West of the movies and the West of television
weretwoquitedifferentplaces.MoviecrewshadobviouslygoneoutintotherealWest-the
West of buttes and bluffs and red river valleys-while television companies, being cheap,
had only just driven a few miles into the hills north of Hollywood and filmed on the edges
of orange groves.
Here clearly were the very boulders that Tonto, the Lone Rangers faithful sidekick, used
to creep around on. Every week the Lone Ranger would send Tonto off to creep around on
some boulders inordertospyonanencampment ofbadguysandevery week Tontowould
getcaptured.Hewashopeless.EveryweektheLoneRangerwouldhavetorideinandsave
Tonto, but he didn't mind doing that because he and Tonto were very close. You could see
it in the way they looked at each other.
Thosewerethedaysallright.Nowchildrensitandwatchpeoplehavingtheirvitalssprayed
aroundtheroomwithachainsawandthinknothingofit.Iknowthatmakesmesoundvery
old and crotchety to all you youngsters out there, but I think it's a pity that we can't have
some good wholesome entertainment like we had when I was a boy, when the heroes wore
masks and capes, and carried whips, and liked other men a whole bunch. Seriously, have
youeverstoppedtothinkwhatstrangerolemodelsweweregivenwhenwewerechildren?
Like Superman. Here's a guy who changes his clothes in public. Or Davy Crockett, a man
whoconqueredthefrontier,foughtvaliantlyattheAlamoandyetnevernoticedthathehad
adeadsquirrelonhishead.It'snowonderpeoplemyagegrewupconfusedandgotheavily
involved with drugs.Myfavorite heroofall was Zorro,whowhenever hewas peeved with
someone would whip out his sword and with three deft strokes carve a Z in the offending
party's shirt. Wouldn't you just love to be able to do that?
“Waiter, I specifically asked for this steak rare.” Slash, slash, slash!
“Excuse me, but I believe I was here before you.” Slash, slash, slash!
