LIFE AT SLAB CITY
February – March 2005
Slab City is an abandoned 1942 Marine Corps Training station in the California desert east of the Salton Sea. In 1954 it was dismantled leaving only the concrete slab foundations in place, hence the name. It has become a winter refuge for those wishing to escape the cold from their homelands up north. It is free camping which in turn has attracted some of those who do not have a home in the typical sense.
Salvation Mountain is what can be termed as an art project created by Leonard Knight over two decades in the making. Leonard passed away in 2014 after being moved to a care facility where he lived for over two years. He was eighty-two. More can be found about Leonard online.
The following is an account of my first solo trip in my first RV.
Monday
My first day at Slab City; now that I am here the last two days full of driving seemed worthwhile. I suppose just the getting here is the hard part. First and foremost I need to learn how to relax. It is very peaceful here. The weather is perfect mid seventies with a slight breeze T-shirt weather that later on evolves into shirtless weather. The pace of the residents here is slow and relaxed. Generally it seems everyone is just going about his or her day doing what needs to be done towards survival as some might call it. I suppose existing would be more the word for it as there is not much activity to speak of. One diesel pick-up passes by on the dirt track in front of the Box (my 1976 Winnebago Brave RV with all the shape of a box on wheels) with two fifty-gallon empty water drums in the back and returns within the hour with both filled. This is an important piece of knowledge to have−where to get water−if I were to be a long-term resident, especially in the fact that I pulled in yesterday with water dribbling out of one of the rear faucets. It could only have been happening for the last thirty nine miles when I had stopped for lunch outside of Coachella.
We are in the area where we camped one time before visiting Slab City. Dogs are barking but not all the time and far enough away for it not to be bothersome. And it is nothing earplugs cannot silence at nighttime. Again I am struck with the peacefulness in the air, no traffic noise, no emergency vehicle sirens, no dogs barking directly across the street and no noisy kids, everything I left behind at home. As for kids, the school bus comes by at seven A.M. I had forgotten about that. I will take notice at what time in the afternoon it returns. Otherwise there is a fair amount of vehicles coming and going on the main road through Slab City. People going into town for food, supplies, mail, or maybe even a job, for some of these people look to live here year around.
This morning it is a little nippy but not too bad. I awoke at six A.M., force myself out of bed to heat coffee then crawl back under the covers to read. I feel lazy doing this for it is not what I do at home. All of this is new for me. Then finally it comes time for me to face the fact of having to use the toilet in the Box. This is not something I have ever done before in the past as we were always in a campground with restrooms or pit toilets or in the desert where I can dig a hole. Here none of those options are available. Of course this brings to mind the same thought as with obtaining water. These people out here must deal with the fact that the holding tank in their RV gets full and has to be dumped periodically. Where do they go? Where is the closest place? I know I will not be here that long for this to be a concern for me yet it is a vital piece of knowledge to be had. And then there are those living here outside of a trailer or camper, a whole different and even more challenging set of problems to deal with.
The day lingers on. I spend most of my time lying on the bed reading. Every once in awhile I’ll get up to do something: refer to a map, eat an apple, let Sinbad out for a walk, fix lunch, or see what is going on in the neighborhood. There are so many potential stories out here to be told. Here is one: While reading I hear this man yelling “HEIDI! Heidi, come here!” I look out the back window and see an old man, hunched over, hobbling along. Wearing dark blue dungarees held up with suspenders, a dark plaid shirt and blue ball cap he shuffles along hollering out that same phrase over and over “HEIDI! Heidi, come here!” I feel sorry for the old guy knowing his pet, most likely a dog, has wandered off. He heads west for a quarter of a mile, which much seem like over a mile to him, but no Heidi. After over a half an hour of fruitless searching and yelling he turns back. I watch to see where he goes and see that it is the fifth wheel trailer several hundred yards on the other side of me. Nearing home his wife, fashioned out in a flowered blouse, rose colored polyester pants and the typical puffy blue rinsed hair-do of elderly ladies, meets him part way. I feel for them. Why don’t they unhook the truck and drive around looking I think to myself. It would be a lot easier on the old guy and he could cover more ground. Sometime later I hear a diesel truck on the dirt road in front of me and it is them. Shortly they return and stop a fellow on a scooter and talk with him so I know they haven’t found Heidi. I hear the description−a small tan and black dog. Later in the afternoon he is back out on foot again. He only yells his line once but searches nevertheless. I can imagine how they must feel. If it were Sinbad...well I don’t even want to think about it. Hopefully I’ll have a good ending to this story.
There was another story on the road out to here after getting gas in Coachella. I had eaten my lunch in some flash flood ravaged desolate industrial area outside of town and had just pulled back on the road when I saw this hitchhiker. He was a scruffy looking character with long hair down his shoulders and an equally long beard flowing down his chest. He looked weather-beaten and probably around my age. The worst part, as I came up to him on the road he held out his cardboard sign - NILAND. Oh man, should I? He’s going to Slab City no doubt. Oh gee, why did I have to see that? I don’t want to have talk to anyone. I don’t want to answer questions. Maybe he’s the quiet type. Surely he wouldn’t care to be silent just as long as he gets a ride. Maybe he smells. I’d have to smell that for an hour. Maybe I should turn around or maybe not. I stewed about this for the next ten miles feeling like a jerk for not helping this guy out. Well, someone else is bound to pick him up, someone nicer than I. What if he sees the Box in Slab City? This raised another whole set of probabilities for me. I can see it now: “Hey buddy, why didn’t you stop and give me a ride, you some kind of asshole or what?” Yeah, you’re right would probably be the correct reply.
Tuesday
I make progress. This morning I set up the rug, table and chair outside. Maybe I will spend more time outdoors today rather than being holed up inside the Box all day reading. Sinbad is happy to be outside too. Today I feel a sense of getting into this lifestyle...loafing. Still the mornings are rough. I miss getting my wife her morning coffee. Being in the surroundings of the Box this memory is more persistent than if I were alone in the Trooper. If as the day wears on that proves to be the worst of it, I think I’ll make it.
I go for a little bike ride this morning before breakfast and have a stomach ache the entire time, so perhaps I should have eaten first. Anyway, the squalor! For all of those who appear to live here most of the time, I could count on one hand those who have a fairly tidy homestead. The rest have all their possessions−and there’s a thin line between the definition of possessions and junk−scattered all about. There are some areas where no one is living that are thickly littered with trash and junk. The refuse is so worthless that even I am not interested in getting off my bike to investigate. Those who are living/existing here, their habitat leave a lot to be desired. They could just as well drag their living quarters across the street to the refuse lot and be perfectly comfortable at home with no noticeable change in appearances. Most are old, beat up, weatherworn, dilapidated trailers, motor homes, fifth-wheels, campers, none of which will ever see the road again. I even see a few long-term residents living out of tents and one Indian tee-pee. When I return to the Box, it doesn’t look so shabby after all. In fact, if it weren’t for some of the high-end diesel motor homes and fifth wheels here, I may be considered among the elite.
Later on before lunch I take a walk that eventually brings me to the top of Salvation Mountain. It appears that Leonard has done a lot of work on his house. I am happy to see him giving a couple a tour down below. That guy must be pretty old by now but he’s still getting around just fine. I wander on down and soon he comes over to greet me. I tell him how we had been here before and he confirms that most of the work since then had indeed been on his living quarters. I don’t stay long for it is approaching lunchtime and I know I will come by later in the week.
I do more reading, sitting, looking about watching life go by. You have to be alert for not much happens and when it does it can be easily missed. I get a little restless so I go for another bike ride on my side of the “city”, which proves to be not as trashy. It would be hard to guess but I suspect a couple hundred camps are here. It sounds like a lot but the area is big and everyone is spread out so there’s no congestion.
I fill the solar shower around two-thirty P.M. and it has cooled a bit since the sun is behind some clouds. I think it best to do my shower now and I feel better afterwards. The best part of my shower is I see the old man walking a tan and black dog. I think Heidi might have come home. Tomorrow I will go by and find out the story. I also catch the school bus on its return trip today, which was at three fifty-five P.M. So I have that to do tomorrow also.
Wednesday
With the start of each new day I find myself becoming more and more comfortable with being here. The Box is slowly taking on the appearances of an old geezer living alone in the desert. I have empty tin cans and bottles sitting on the counter-top, papers and eyeglasses scattered about the table. The few dishes that I do use are half washed, just rinse and wipe. Clothing is not an issue for I wear the same thing each day. Still I sense a slight bit of squalor forming in my own life. Is this an inevitable aspect of living like this? My main concern at this point is I’m running out of reading material. I’m down to my last book. Fortunately it is a thick one. I do have my Dad’s letters to go through but don’t feel like this is the best place after all for getting into that, or I’m just not in the right frame of mind for it. [These were letters my father had sent home while he was in the Navy just after the Second World War. I lost my father in 1954 when I was five years old] Food will not be an issue. I’m not hungry much and I miss my wife’s cooking. Water too will not be a problem. The water in the tanks is funky and needs to be dealt with. I left water in there after the last outing and now it smells. Not bad, but I know it could be better. I plan to pick up a bottle of bleach on the way home and let it slosh around inside for the trip. I never turn on the radio nor listen to any of the music I brought along and I’m just fine with that. I can list the appeal of this place: The weather, temperature, the peacefulness, the wide spacious uncluttered view and the solitude.
I will try to describe some of the scenery and characters in the neighborhood. Directly across from me, a couple hundred yards on the other side of the ravine, is what I call ‘The Mexican Encampment’. There are four large and one small travel trailers arranged in a square formation. I don’t know if they are Mexican or not for I only see one fellow doing anything there. A couple times a lady is present and I think I heard Spanish spoken so it got tagged ‘The Mexican Encampment’. Except for one, the trailers look to be of fifties vintage. One has a solar panel on top angled skyward. The fellow I observed wears a sleeveless shirt and black Levis. For three days now, although nothing has yet happened today, he has been working on establishing a solar panel on another trailer. The first day was building the support for the panel. The second day was mounting it to the roof. All of what’s been done so far normally could have been accomplished in a few hours. I doubt I will be here long enough to see its completion. They have a shaggy dog chained to the ground and two cats. I saw the lady out with a black & white cat on a leash with a young cat running loose. There are two other dogs always running free. One is large and the other medium size with stubby legs. They have a collar and a harness on and I think they live in the Encampment but later I’m not so sure. George and Ralph, I call them, have their routine always exploring the neighborhood trying to root out ground squirrels with no luck. They are never a bother and Sinbad always keeps a watchful eye when they get near. Only Ralph, the short legged one, came close one evening evidently trying to snatch a hotdog from the barbeque. Sinbad tipped me off and besides the barbi was too hot for George to make a snatch and grab.
East of the Encampment a hundred yards is ‘The Fighting Irishman’. He received that name for he wears the same t-shirt every day from the fighting Irish of Notre Dame with the number 12 on the back. Each day he takes his dog for a walk, usually in the direction between Salvation Mountain and me. Now the only reason I write about this fellow is he’s doing his thing out of a tent. It is a large family size dome tent with a fly over it. Off to the side, and not very far off by that account, is a little porta-potti size tent with a blue tarp on top, which I suspect, is just that, his toilet. He has erected a shade structure in front of his tent with all of his gear stacked on a couple of tables. I never could see a car there, but today returning from my walkabout I see he has a Trooper. He parks it in the same exact spot that is blocked by the tent.
Behind me is ‘Red Shirt’. He is an old geezer living out of a little old fifties style trailer. Everyday he has on this long sleeved bright red sweatshirt. There is a beat-up old Ford pick-up next to him and an odd looking camper van. I have never seen anyone else there nor him going to the camper van. I never see him go anywhere either. He ventures no further than the ditch next to his bleached white trailer. There he tosses his garbage or washes out a rag. For the most part he is inside that cramped looking trailer. What does he do all day long in there? This one is really bothering me to know. If that wasn’t enough, I never see a light on. Does he have no power? There is a propane tank outside. Then the question arises, what about a toilet? Maybe there are things I don’t want to know.
I have the usual contingent of vehicles drive by in front of us as they negotiate the ravine in getting to the main road. It is a short cut but one I cannot do in the Box so I have to go the long way around on the “street”. There is a couple of diesel trucks, one if not both from “Camp Heidi” (I haven’t found out about the return of Heidi yet), a couple of military style jeeps usually running an errand such as getting water, a VW or two and then there’s “Radio Man”. I can hear this guy coming before I see him. He is another geezer driving a white Saturn. I suspect he is hard of hearing and has the radio cranked up because of that. It’s always a talk show. I find this amusing.
There are other cars too but they are not noteworthy although are regulars passing by in my front yard. Finally there are a couple of motorcycles, scooters and bicycles that make their way through my front yard. And just as I was writing this an older fellow slowly made his way by on a bicycle with bags hanging fore and aft and a backpack on his back. It all makes me wonder.
On my afternoon walkabout I get to see more than from a bicycle seat because I am moving slower. For all the refuse that is scattered about there is absolutely nothing of any use. I suppose the reason is that the residents have picked it all over long ago. These people are after all a resourceful lot. I come across several more burned out rigs. It makes one wonder what happened and where did they go afterwards? My guess most of these were due to the occupant falling asleep with a cigarette. I imagine the firestorms that must have been coming out of these tinder dry stick homes. One incident, the nearby cottonwood tree and creosote bushes were fried in the process. No doubt it is enough to make a neighbor worry. It is best to camp away from your nearest neighbor.
After my walk I come to realize that the Box is not so bad after all. In fact after seeing a lot of what is out here I’m pretty well off. Being unfamiliar and uncomfortable in it makes me a bit nervous. I just need to give the Box a chance and respect it more for its potential. It is better than having nothing at all. I need to allow it to serve me until we are able to do better and upgrade. When that time comes I’m afraid I will have a hard time letting it go. I should do as I have often thought about; put it up on blocks and have it as a little retreat for me in the desert. Slab City would be ideal. No investment in property. No taxes. I would worry though that it would get vandalized from what I’ve seen here, so this is not an option.
Thursday
It is a wonderful day in the neighborhood. I get out of bed by six-thirty this morning and it doesn’t seem as nippy. After a cup of coffee and wiping the dew from my bicycle seat I go out to do surveillance on the school bus stop. Only one kid shows, a teenage boy. When the bus arrives right on schedule, there are only two other kids on the bus. Back home I do some maintenance on the Box. I check all the fluids and everything is right up to snuff. I am surprised thinking at least I would have to add some oil. I just don’t give the Box the respect it deserves. I then do a little bit of housekeeping. Things are not as bad as I may have led on before. Just put a few things away, tidy up, sweep out the floor and things look ship-shape. I wash the front and rear windows in preparation for the drive home.
This has become an issue. I keep thinking about what to do regarding going back home. I am content to stay here. I have enough supplies although the reading material may run out. On the other hand I feel good by getting out, feeling I purged the wanderlust out of my system for a while and am kind of energized about finishing up some projects at home. And most of all I miss my wife to share my adventures with. I thought several times about the prospect of her driving down here and meeting me when I come again. Maybe stay until she’s had enough (twenty-four hours worth most likely) then she could return home. I think that may be an interesting and fun thing to do. Maybe not from her viewpoint and I’m sure she’ll tell me so.
Sinbad is really doing great and I am happy to have him along. After a couple of days he is content just to sit inside and look out. I don’t even have to shut the screen door. If he decides to go out then he lets me snap the string on and out he goes. He will go outside and sit, roll around in the dirt or just lie there and sun bathe. After a while he will come back in. His only problem is his string gets wrapped around these little tuffs of grass and he won’t pull hard enough to free himself, so he will meow at me and out I have to go to free him. Sometimes as I look at him I get the feeling he might be bored but maybe that’s just a human point of view.
I walk over to see Leonard this morning. Mainly I want to leave him with a donation. As usual, when I arrive he is giving tours. He sees so many people−two hundred in a day sometimes he tells me−that he doesn’t remember my having been there two days earlier. I sit for a spell while tours are being conducted and then finally, I just have to ask. “When are you ever able to get any work done with so many visitors?” He says that it is a problem at times. But the man is so conscious about people coming by that he feels if someone has stopped and he hasn’t greeted them, he hops on his scooter and rushes over apologizing for not having said hello.
While we talk he is re-arranging ladders. I ask if he needs any help lifting something into place. He is elated by my offer. Pointing to a muddy wheelbarrow he asks if I have ever mixed adobe.
“Ah, no” I reply and immediately think what did I get myself in to? Mixing adobe looks like WORK.
“Later on I could use some help with that, but till then, do you want to paint some flowers?”
Now this sounded more to my liking. I tell him sure and that I will be right back. “I’d just like to go and get some water and check on my cat.”
“Thank you so much. Lord that would be a great help.”
As I wander back to the Box I think even more as to what I have got myself into here. But maybe I reason, it will be a good experience and a memory I will not forget. Oh how that was later proved to be so prophetic.
Back at the Box I get my water, camera, an apple and change into my sleeveless shirt. I return finding Leonard struggling with the same two ladders.
“Hi Leonard, I’m here to paint flowers.”
“Oh praise the Lord, thank you. I’ve have about seventy-five years of work to do yet. I tell you what. You don’t mind painting to you? What I think I’ll have you do is paint the waterfall” and I follow him over to the paint depository which is hundreds of one and five gallon cans of paint scattered about the desert ground. He picks out a gallon of deep blue.
“This is blue isn’t it?” he asks. I ask if he is color blind but he said he doesn’t think so. It is just sometimes the blue looks turquoise to him. I think Leonard needs to wear some eye protection. The colors are so brilliant in the blazing desert sun that it’s nearly blinding. He isn’t even wearing a hat both days I see him and later I call him on that.
“Usually I do,” he informs me.
Leonard finds me a four-inch wide paintbrush that previously has been used for green. Over we go to a fifty gallon drum of dirty water and he rinses it out, slapping it dry against a twelve-by-twelve pillar. Up on the mountain he gets me started on going over the blue on the waterfall saying that after a build-up of six coats, “...it will last twenty years”. I don’t have to put on six coats, just one of the six. He says he will come back in twenty minutes and check on me.
Twenty minutes stretches out to over an hour with all the tours he is giving. Meanwhile I am getting into my task. I am enjoying this plus gaining an even deeper appreciation for what this man has done. Also I am fielding questions from tourists walking along the Yellow Brick Road above me, most of who refer to me as “his helper”.
“How long have you been helping Leonard?”
“What time is it?”
“10:30”
“About an hour.”
Sometime later he comes by and is thrilled with what I had accomplished, especially having done the detail work in and around the flowers. “Oh I like to do detail work” I tell him.
He says he would like my help with something else later and I say sure. “I just would like to finish up to this point”, as I hate not finishing something. “I like the sense of accomplishment you know.” He agrees.
Then I add on a second thought. “Maybe we should do it now while no one is here” for I know he will get distracted. He likes that idea and I set down my paintbrush and follow him over to a wheelbarrow full of freshly mixed adobe.
My first thought is Whew, I don’t have to mix adobe. My second thought is this old man did, and had done so while I was painting and in between tours. How does he do it?
He has four 5-gallon buckets and throws a shovel-full of adobe in each. He asks if that is too heavy. “Huh?” I lift a couple and say, “No problem. Put another shovel full or two in.”
Oh he is full of praises and so thankful to have a strong hand to help out today. Then I discover we have to haul the buckets up to the top of his three-story “museum” he is constructing!
Okay, I can do this. And really it wouldn’t have been too bad...BUT, this building is a pyramid of hay bales set in no particular order or fashion. Then on top of the already adobe covered and painted hay bales, he has other hay bales stacked in to use as climbing surfaces. As I crawl up this wall of teetering hay bales, lifting up buckets of adobe one bale at a time, I am thinking would OSHA approve any of this? Anyplace else I’d be required to wear a hardhat and safety harness. And of course, this old man does this every day. How does he do it? How in creation does he get these hay bales up here? At the top he asks if I have ever worked with adobe and shows me how to go about plastering it onto a hay bale. Then some more visitors arrive down below. As he leaves me on top to go greet the new visitors only then he asks if I am afraid of heights.
This is dirty work but I’m getting in to it. I dump a bucket of adobe. I grab a handful of the gooey mix and work it in with my hands, then another handful and another. Then I smooth it all over thinking how when this dries it will be hard as concrete and the water will run right off the smooth surface I’m leaving behind. Adobe is my medium. I write my name and date in the fresh adobe. After I finish with the fourth bucket I start back down for another load, this time only one shovel full in each I say to myself. I also think I should bring my camera back up next time. At the bottom I wash up in that fifty gallon water clean-up center so I can get a drink and handle the camera. Now I discover why my finger hurts. There is a piece of straw jammed into it like a splinter. I would never think so from straw. But I need to get it out and with what? I have nothing. Fortunately I am able to press it out backwards and then the blood starts to flow. Let’s see, didn’t the Indians use mud for arrow wounds? So I don’t worry.
Back at the wheelbarrow there is just enough for one shovel-full in each bucket. Good, it will look like I didn’t wimp out when he sees the now empty wheelbarrow, plus it will be the end of this manual labor that I am not accustomed to. Back up I go. It takes four or five stages of lifting and climbing to progress to the top and at each stage I look up. I don’t remember it being so far before. Midway I am whupped. Leonard comes back up and tells me how happy he is with what is getting done.
“I’ve wanted to do this for two months.” It’s then I learn that this isn’t the top. He plans on bringing more hay bales up and applying more adobe! And then it has to be painted. It is only when I see him trying to fit in this automobile windshield as a skylight that I’ve been crawling around that I get an idea of how much more he plans to do up here. Fortunately some more visitors arrive and he gives up on the windshield. He is back down and off to conduct another tour. I get the four empty buckets and make my way down, not as sure footed as I was before, taking extra care on the wobbly hay bales. I am spent.
I clean off adobe from my hands and arms grab my haversack and go back over to the waterfall where I want to complete my painting. With the current batch of visitors gone Leonard comes back over to me thanking me for all my help. I am not too proud to tell him I am spent and let him know the deep sense of appreciation I have for what he has done, what he does, and all this in light of he being seventeen years older than I. He tells me that any time I want to help out I am more than welcome. “We are good friends.” In fact if need be and I am a bit down on finances, he would pay me ten dollars and hour for a week’s worth of work! I’m shocked and only can reply that I should pay him ten dollars an hour just for the privilege to work with him. To see how he lives and what little possessions he seems to own, I wonder how he could afford such a sum. Then I have to only consider with all these people stopping by many give him money without his asking. He never asks for money or imposes his strict belief in God and all God provides upon you. Earlier I was standing next to him when a gentleman slipped him a twenty. It went right into his shirt pocket along with a “God bless you”. Yep, I think Leonard has a good thing going here.
While I finish up, Leonard is off on his scooter into town to check his mail. I clean my brush in the fifty gallon clean-everything-tub and put my paint, glitter jar and rags away. On my way out I find he has left me with a stack of postcards and two giant full color jigsaw puzzle pictures of Salvation Mountain. Thank you, Leonard.
Back at the Box I find I have been working for over three hours. It feels like a full day. Sinbad is happy to see me especially since I have some great new smells on me. Off with my boots and socks. My dogs were barking. Off too with the sweat-soaked shirt. A cool one is in order. I sit and reflect and groan. My back is sore. I shower and clean up which helps a little. I doctor my hand injury. After I finish my beer I still hurt. Looking in the medicine cabinet I find some ibuprofen. I bet Leonard doesn’t do this and I gulp one down.
Friday
I make a decision. We will leave Slab City today and go as far as the Salton Sea Campground forty miles north. It will be a change of scenery and I can dump the tanks there. I take my time. I get things squared away for the drive out leaving my bicycle for last. I want to go around and say good-bye to Leonard. When I arrive there is no one home. But I think I see him on his scooter talking to someone down the road so I pull up a chair. Leonard is happy to see me and I assure him I will be back, thanking him for the experience. He mentions how he sure would like for me to send some help his way and I tell him I will do what I can. Yesterday I told him about possibly being able to do this, thinking it would be a good piece for this year’s Burning Man. [That year at Burning Man I had a large display of Salvation Mountain with a write-up about Leonard, directions on getting there, the free camping and all the fun in helping with the art project. It received a lot of interest. If only a couple followed through, then it worked] He then asks if I can spare him ten minutes. He has cut some sticks down the road a ways and wonders if I would like to help him load them up in his “Scout” which is really a Jeep Wagoneer. Of course, what else do I have to do?
After he finally locates his car keys we’re off down the road about a mile. The “sticks?