Would you believe that there's an entire Egyptian city buried in the sand dunes just north of Los Angeles? I wouldn't have either before I moved out here but it's true and it's a hell of a story.
The movie business has played more prominently in Southern California's modern history than any other industry. Over the last century, it's drawn everyone's attention to this area of the country, for better or for worse. These days it's a fairly regulated and normal business to be in but back when it first started, making movies was a little like ranching in the wild west. Sure you had big name directors and stars but there were still outlaws about and a sense of "anything goes".
By the early 1920's, there was no bigger name in the film industry than Cecil B. Demille. The man had made his name as a visionary and when he decided to film The Ten Commandments, he wanted it to be larger than anything that had ever been filmed before. He commissioned work on building a set like no other. It would contain an entire, life-sized Egyptian temple. There would be four gigantic statues of Ramses II (40 tons each). There would be twelve sphinxes, eight gigantic lions and all of it would be erected in what is now Sand Dune National Park along the Central Coast of California.
To say it was a massive undertaking is short selling it. The set build alone employed 1,500 carpenters and used 25,000 pounds of nails. Ultimately though, the sets were built and the movie was shot. Demille's vision was realized in what is considered to this day one of the greatest cinematic endeavors ever.
Remember though, that this was the wild west days of film making. Demille knew that if he left his sets out there intact, other directors would lead their own crews out and use them. So he did the only thing he could do. He destroyed them. According to legend, he burned them to the ground himself but in reality, he had his crews demolish them and bury the remains.
And that's the story as it was told to a young freelance journalist named Peter Brosnan back in the late 1970's. Brosnan had gone to film school and had heard the story there. He came up with an idea to get an archeology team together to uncover the remains. He figured he'd film a documentary about it but there was one problem. No one knew exactly where the set had been erected. The dunes themselves stretch for more than 30 miles. It would be like finding a needle in haystack.
Brosnan researched the area at local libraries, asked locals what they knew and did everything he could think of to find it. Finally, he was put in touch with a man who had driven cattle across the dunes frequently. He took Brosnan out on the sand and after hiking a mile or so, pointed out an area that he called "The Dune That Never Moves". Sticking right out of it was a piece of the set.
Unfortunately for Brosnan, he was never able to make his film the way he wanted. Between lack of funding and other problems, he gave up on it for years until circa 2010 when he was able to put together a small team that uncovered a sphinx head. By that time, the set had been buried for over 90 years.
Digging still goes on to this day. In fact, the reason I'm posting this is because just last week another sphinx head was uncovered. Here's a photo.
When you think of Southern California, most of the time people are talking about Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County. The thing is, if you break the state up into thirds, you find that places like Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo and even San Simeon fall into or very close to the southern third of the state. What I'm saying is that California is huge and so when I include today's column under the "Southern California" heading, I'm stretching that term to it's maximum.
In 2016, my family and I get this itch to go on a road trip. We'd done a huge international trip two years before and we'd been kind of laying low since then. At the spur of the moment, I asked for a couple of days off work and my wife booked a trip up to visit the Hearst Castle. We love that part of our state and rarely get up there.
While planning though, we decided that if we were going to head up for an extended weekend, we ought to hit up any and all of the little weird places along the way that we could. One of the must-see stops for us was in San Luis Obispo.
Imagine you're chewing gum, it's completely flavorless, your jaw is tired and you just want to get rid of it. You look around and there's not a trashcan in sight. Being the upstanding individual you are, you decide not to just spit it out on the sidewalk where someone else may step in it. What do you do? Well, luckily you're in San Luis Obispo, so you head down to Higuera Street and once you pass Broad St. heading North, you turn down Bubblegum Alley.
People have been depositing their gum on the walls of the alley since at least 1940. Some say it started before that. Either way, there are literally millions of pieces. Some people chewed multiple sticks and stretched theirs out to spell messages or names. Others took up the challenge to place their piece as high as they could. There are even business cards and playing cards stuck to the wall. It's pretty amazing in a colorfully disgusting way.
The bonus is that it's in an area of SLO that's pretty trendy and pricey. Nothing like an alley full of chewed up bubblegum to bring you back down to Earth as you pass hipster bars and coffee shops. Also, it's great when you can get that "I can't believe you brought me here" look from your daughter.
Which brings us to the werewolf part of this post. I could do a whole piece on the Hearst Castle and I may someday. For those who don't know, William Randolph Hearst was a newspaper magnate who bought a ton of property and built a gigantic house dubbed Hearst Castle. He's an interesting man and the house itself is amazing but in the interest of just keeping it weird, I want to just show one or two things that stood out on the tour.
As we were being led through the grounds, our tour guide pointed out this magnificent door that had been imported from Europe.
It's the kind of thing you'd expect to see on a cathedral. As I looked closer though, I noticed something about the two figures guarding either side of the entrance. They looked particularly hairy.
These are wildman guardians. They are Spanish in origin but the guide didn't know much else about them. The thing about Hearst Castle is it's so far up in foothills above the ocean that it makes sense that a pair of wild men would be guarding the place. I'd like to tell you there were more odd monster statues and artwork around the place but that would be a lie. Most everything was tasteful and normal.
Well, except for this picture of a group of demons with faces for genitals pulling a baby out of a sleeping man's mouth.
I don't talk about sports often on this blog. In fact, this is the first time. There's a reason for that. One, I'm not much of a sports writer and two, when it comes to my team I've found that sometimes I hold victories and defeats a little too close.
Watching my Georgia Bulldogs lose would sometimes ruin a Saturday for me. Three years ago, I made the conscious decision to not let my football team's performance effect my life in such a way. Not writing about them helps me keep that focus.
That said, I watch almost every single game. I root hard while they're playing and I repeatedly use language totally becoming of the sailor I am. My wife tends to stay on the other side of the room but trust me, she swears too.
Fifteen years ago, I flew across the country to see my Georgia Bulldogs win the SEC Championship. That year had been a mixed bag. We had no shot at all of being the in the National Championship game, but seeing us beat Arkansas and win our conference was enough for me. When we went back three years later and won it again, I couldn't make it to the game but I told myself we'd be back soon enough. I was right but both times we got beat. Once by LSU and again the following year in what may be the most heartbreaking loss I've every experienced when we came one play away from beating Alabama and punching our ticket to the National Championship game against Notre Dame.
It's been a long twelve years since we've held that Southeastern Conference Champions trophy, which is what makes last Saturday night so sweet. Watching my Dawgs dismantle Auburn (28 unanswered points) and punch their ticket to the College Football Playoff was a thing of beauty. I have a lot of friends back in Athens right now who are happier than they've been in years.
It's a four week wait until we play on New Year's Day. It'll give us time to get healthy and get ready for what will certainly be the biggest contest we've had all season. For now though, I hope those players and coaches take a day or two just to let this win sink in. It's been a long time coming and they've made the entire Dawg Nation proud.
I know that Halloween is over and we're supposed to be focused on giving thanks at this point and shopping for Christmas, but allow me one more horror-filled post.
What's the scariest book you've ever read?
Talk about a tough question!
If you piled up all the scary books I've read over the years and put them on a scale, I'd wager that I've literally read a ton of horror books. It takes a lot to actually scare me though. More often, I get intrigued and engaged to a point where I can't stop turning pages.
As a kid, when I was first reading books like Peter Benchley's JAWS and Stephen King's The Shining, I'd get nightmares from what I read. Then the next day, I'd be back to reading them to find out what was happening to these poor characters!
I remember reading Shirley Jackson's story The Lottery and really feeling creeped out. The same with Richard Matheson's short story Duel. After that one, I thought every semi-truck on the highway was being driven by an insane murderer.
As I got older though, scaring me to the point of nightmares got a lot harder. The exception is a book that was first published in 1979, but that I didn't read until about ten years ago. That book is Peter Straub's Ghost Story.
It starts with these words:
What was the worst thing you've ever done?
I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me... the most dreadful thing...
What spills out from there is a tale of four men in a small town called Milburn, New York. They've gathered back together because of something they did when they were younger. It's something they thought was behind them but all the evidence points now to the contrary.
There are two reasons I wanted to bring this book up in a blog post.
1. It's scary. Very scary. The final showdown between our main characters and the antagonist filled me with so much dread that I didn't want to read further even as my hand was turning the pages.
2. It's possibly the most original take I've ever read on the idea of what a "ghost" actually is. So much so, that it inspired me to write my own "ghost story" book, but not using Mr. Straub's idea. Instead, his book inspired me to jump far outside the normal box people usually write ghost stories in. When another book inspires you, then it's done more than its job!
About 20 years ago, my wife took me to Las Vegas for my very first time. We decided to drive since from our door to the Strip is only about 4 hours or so. It quickly became one of my favorite drives. You leave Orange County with all its office buildings and planned housing developments and cross over Saddleback mountain into what's called the Inland Empire. There, you'll see more housing and a lot more industry. Giant distribution and production facilities for brands like Monster Energy Drink and Amazon line either side of the highway as you head further out into the desert.
Soon you're getting out to areas where there just aren't any cities to speak of. It's just desert and highway as far as you can see. It's in this area that I'm reminded of growing up in Florida. You start to pass billboards for things like the "real ghost town" and "the world's largest thermometer". Sure they're blatant attempts to get people to pull off the highway and spend a few bucks on cheap food and souvenirs, but they remind me of tourist traps I grew up around. Traveling through South Florida in the 1970's, you'd see billboards for Gatorland (which is still a thing and is pretty awesome), McKee Jungle Gardens (which is now a neighborhood) and Spook Hill near Bok Tower (where your car would roll uphill even when the engine was off!).
That first time we traveled to Sin City, we passed an exit sign for the most oddly named road I'd ever heard of.
I remember looking as we passed the exit and there was nothing on it. Not a gas station or convenience store in sight. It was just a road that went off into the hills and desert. For years after that, it became one of those landmarks we looked for on the way out to Vegas. I just figured it was a weird joke of some kind and never wondered much about where the name really came from. It's a pretty fascinating story though and it involves this man.
Curtis Howe Springer was a radio evangelist who had developed a following in the 1930's despite his amazingly bad hair choice (well, I guess it was radio). He'd been stationed in Pittsburgh but soon decided to head West because as some of his contemporaries had discovered, there was gullible gold in them there hills. He staked his claim (literally, a mining claim) in the Mojave desert in 1944. On the land there was a mineral spring and Curtis Springer set about building the resort he'd dreamed of. He named it Zzyzx claiming it would be the last word in the English dictionary and also easy to find in the phone book.
He promoted the
resort through his radio show and soon he had guests coming in by the
busload. Literally. Because he offered free rides via his own bus that
departed every Wednesday from Los Angeles. People visiting Zzyzx Mineral Springs could stay in the onsite hotel. They were encouraged to bathe in the supposedly healing waters of the artificial lake, swim in the cross shaped pool, soak in concrete tubs (pictured below) and of course, listen to Springer preach at the on-site chapel. They were served meals that included his health restoring "Antideluvian Tea" and were encouraged to try some of the health promoting cures he'd developed using the mineral springs miraculous waters.
There was only one problem with all of this. Well, actually two problems. First, the cures were complete bunk and soon people started to call him out on it. That caused the local government to pay more attention to what Springer was doing and he lost more than a few court cases where he had to pay fines for duping former guests.
The second (and bigger) problem was that his ambition got the better of him. Springer began selling lots next to the resort. He pitched it as a way for wealthy people to take full advantage of his healing mineral spring by having access to it every day of the year. Unfortunately, Springer didn't own the land he was selling. It belonged to the U.S. government and once they found out what he was doing, they booted him off the property. That was in 1974.
Since then, California State University has used the land to house its Desert Studies Center, but you can still drive out on Zzyzx Rd. and see what's left of the Zzyzx Mineral Springs resort. While there, marvel at a simpler time when people believed that mineral water could cure hemorrhoids and baldness. While you're at it, consider that the man selling it to them had a haircut that made his head look like a cross between a guitar pick and a penis.
It's going to be a short post today because let's face it, no one is reading. You're all stuffing yourself full of turkey and sides (it's all about the sides, people!) and you're gearing up for your Black Friday shopping spree.
With that in mind, I want to say thanks for a few things.
Thanks to those of you who have been reading this blog, commenting and furthering the conversations. I've had a great time meeting and interacting with you and look forward to more of it!
Thanks to those of you who picked up The Wash and especially to those of you who have reviewed it. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
Finally, thanks to my family for being so supportive as I continue this whole writing endeavor. You're the best.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving and I'll catch up with you next week!
There may be nothing I love more than hearing about an odd discovery or a weird mystery that either hasn't been explained yet or has turned accepted facts upside down. There have been plenty of times that I've used those as jumping off points for a story. More often than not though, I just love to think about them and wonder just how much we don't know about the stuff we think we know.
One of my favorites comes from my adopted home state of California and it happened to be discovered less than an hour away from where I live. It also involves diving, which is always a big draw for me.
Back in 1975, a couple of guys who ran a scuba equipment shop were diving off Palos Verdes. The area is a beautiful place to dive. There is plenty of reef available to find lobster and abalone which these two gentlemen were doing at the time. Instead of finding dinner though, they found one of these.
Now, obviously Mother Nature doesn't usually make donut shaped rocks and she definitely doesn't make them over 300 pounds each. The two men got one of the rocks to the surface and back to their shop and over the course of a few weeks of diving found many more. It was a pretty strange phenomena and as word of it got around in the diving community it was eventually brought to the attention of Professor James Moriarty III at the University of San Diego. He and an associate Larry Pierson studied the rocks and determined something groundbreaking. They were approximately two thousand years old and were part of a shipwreck. That's right! Somewhere around the time of Christ a large man-made sailing vessel had cozied up to the shoreline near Palos Verdes and gotten a little too close to the reef. This was a major find, mostly because the accepted history up to that point was that no ancient civilization from another continent had ever set foot in what is now Southern California. In fact, the commonly accepted theory was that the Spanish were the first non-native people to explore this area of North America and that was only about 500 years ago. So who were these ancient sailing explorers? A lengthy study of the stones revealed they were anchors and ballast and that the sandstone they were made from originated from Southern China.
In it, she dug into the writings of Chinese explorers who documented their visits to a mysterious land called Fu Shang. The texts are extremely old. One is from 500 AD and the other from 2200 BC. Mertz drew some interesting parallels between their descriptions and major landmarks in the western United States. Now, be aware that Mertz made some mistakes in her research, mostly by misidentifying some texts and making a few assumptions when she probably should have let the facts speak for themselves.
However, if you just look at the facts presented, she makes a strong case. For one, she converted the old Chinese units of measures into miles and when she did, she found that they indeed would have placed the Chinese explorers in California. She also pointed out descriptions of landmarks that sound very much like Mount Shasta and the Grand Canyon among others.
We may never end up knowing for sure who came to California originally and perhaps recorded history will always stick with the Spanish being the first explorers, but it sure is fun to think about there being a hidden history behind the accepted one.
