Up in the high desert of
southern California is a small town called Agua Dulce; Sweetwater. There’s not
much to Agua Dulce at first glance. The main street is a quiet little country
road grandly named Agua Dulce Canyon Blvd. The word boulevard is truly a
misnomer and a bit of hyperbole. It is truly more of a country road that winds
through a narrow canyon. There are side streets that lead off the main road.
The word streets is also a bit misleading, most are no more than lanes really. There
are also many smaller “private roads”.
Private road is a catch phrase that really means dirt road.
Just out of the center of
town is a surprise. Town of course encompassed an excellent Mexican restaurant,
a plant store a small shopping plaza with market and a gift shop. Then there
was the surprise! Around a bend in the boulevard one encountered a vineyard.
Right there smack in the middle of the high desert was a good sized vineyard.
Rolling hills are covered with vines warm in the winter sun slowly grow grapes
soon to be made in to wine. Will the wonders of irrigation never cease?
Cabernet, Chardonnay, Merlot they had them all. Life is good in the high
desert.
There are also movie ranches
out there, faux western towns. Blazing Saddles was filmed on one of these
ranches. Imagine Madeline Kahn dressed as Lily Von Schtupp wandering about
town. Running off of several of the side streets are dirt roads. Rutted and
ribbed like the cliché washboards these roads wind into the hills. Driveways
even more if possible more rutted and ribbed lead off of these dirt roads
bending around hills to where movie ranches are hidden recreating the wild
west.
The movie ranch I was just on
was owned by a cigar chomping “cowboy” named Pete. Pete’s cowboy movie ranch
encompassed a couple of dozen acres of land. On Pete’s ranch are an array of
buildings and western implements lying around on the dusty high desert. At
first glance it really does look like a western town. The buildings it turns
out are actually pre-fab structures decorated to look old and western-y. Pete’s
masterpiece though is the interiors. Most movie ranches have empty buildings or
false fronts. Not Pete’s his are decorated. It appears that Pete has never left
a flea market empty handed. Every inch of every building has something. The
walls, ceilings and floors are all covered with stuff. One of the buildings is
a saloon and it is decorated saloon-y. Poker tables with old cards are laid out
under kerosene lamps next to walls covered in bottles and glassware. There is a
bar covered in old bottles at one end of the room ready to sidle up to for a
snort. The saloon also boasted a large collection of taxidermy animals.
Buffalo, deer, elk, bobcats you name it Pete’s got one in his saloon. Not far
from the saloon is a livery. No horses actually live in the livery. It is
filled with buckboards, buggies and basic western gear like saddles and horse
shoes. The livery does have one more very authentic attribute, the aroma of
manure.
The views from Pete’s ranch
are truly spectacular. They are occasionally marred by an electric line or
satellite dish but over all they are just what one wants from the wild
west. Pete and Agua Dulce are an hour
and a half’s drive from Los Angeles but it is a world away.
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