TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/052289/05228900.068

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 8.4 KB | 165 lines

                                                                                TRAVEL, Page 108

Parked in the Middle of Nowhere


Migratory retirees with RVs prepare to leave their place in the
sun

By Joan Ackermann-Blount


    Here you can do as you diddly darn," says Gerry Bloomquist,
65, a retired dress-shop keeper from Minnesota who is wintering
in the outskirts of Quartzsite, Ariz. She sips a drink, relaxing
in front of her 33-ft. Holiday Monitor recreation vehicle, or
RV, in a lawn chair set on a piece of Astroturf. "My grass," she
calls it. While the sun, rattlesnakes and tarantulas bed down,
Bloomquist and tens of thousands of other tanned retirees enjoy
another happy hour parked out in the desert, gazing at the
mountains, puttering around their mobile homes, filling
hummingbird feeders, thriftily sidestepping the cruelties of
winter and old age in as mercurial and rambunctious a community
as the Wild West ever saw.

    North of Yuma, east of the Colorado River and smack in the
middle of nowhere, Quartzsite is not an official town. Never
incorporated, possessing no mayor, no schools, no stoplight, no
town water or sewer system, no zoning rules or local police,
the "gem of the desert" is home year round to maybe a thousand
people.

    But Quartzsite is subject to the same forces that control
the vast flocks of migratory birds that traverse the continent
twice a year. In winter the town swells to absorb 200,000
people. They are refugees from the frozen North, most of them
retirees making their seasonal escape in RVs. Then, usually in
April, when the temperature begins to rise and the lure of the
North is greater, the huge encampment with its bustling activity
rolls away, evaporating like runoff from a desert cloudburst.

    There are several species of snowbirds: "boondockers," like
Bloomquist and her husband Len, 75, a retired farm-equipment
dealer, park their mobile homes and set up housekeeping;
"tailgaters," who use their vehicles as shops on wheels,
selling all manner of goods; and "tourists," who just drive
around. Quartzsite is not the only winter oasis that attracts
such migrants. According to the Recreation Vehicle Industry
Association, some half a million Americans go south each winter
in motor homes, most to established cities in Florida, Texas and
Arizona. Quartzsite is for those who prefer to rough it.

    "People can't figure out why we're out here and why we
aren't bored," says Gerry Bloomquist, enjoying the sunset with
her neighbor Mary Lueth. Back home in Minnesota, the Bloomquists
and Lueths live an hour apart; here in the desert they live at
either end of a laundry line. "Oops, there's our noise for the
day," cracks Gerry, looking up at four Army helicopters.

    Cheap rent, warm sun and clean air are just some of
Quartzsite's attractions. Winter residents also enjoy an easy
and active social life: evening bonfires, potluck dinners, dirt
biking, rock hounding, panning for gold (and finding it), plus
more dances than you'd find in a teenager's calendar. In
February Quartzsite plays host to the largest gem and mineral
exhibition in the country. And there's an abundance of flea
markets, where a person can buy, among other things, crocheted
cowboy hats, petrified dinosaur manure, pet ID tags, Whitt's
"hillbilly" billfold and racoon-penis earrings -- all at bargain
prices.

    It's a curious desert scene that kicks up a lot of dust.
Part Bedouin bazaar, part fair, summer camp, westward ho and
Outward Bound. Highway I-10 is the town's main drag, essentially
one long flea market running about 2 1/2 miles east to west.
North of I-10 is the quiet neighborhood of mobile homes, where
locals live and where a new Quartzsite Alliance Church is being
built because the old one, a converted garage, can no longer
hold the burgeoning congregation. "Half the guys working on the
roof have had heart surgery," boasts Pastor Stanley Peterson.

    South of I-10 is La Posa recreation area, where boondockers
pay just $25 to the Federal Bureau of Land Management for the
privilege of parking all winter in the most primitive
circumstances: no water, no electricity. Water is purchased in
gallon jugs from private wells in town; power is produced by RV
generators run by propane. There is one set of public pay
phones six miles south of town, but trying to make a phone call
out of Quartzsite in the winter is nearly hopeless -- too many
voices crowding too little cable.

    "This isn't a town," says one boondocker, watching the
traffic in front of Dolly's Restaurant, where I-10 crosses I-95,
"it's an intersection." But in the winter that dusty crossroads
is sometimes gridlocked. "During the gem and mineral show, we
counted 2,700 cars moving through the intersection in one hour
and 1,000 pedestrians," says Dave Springsteen of the highway
department.

    The traffic coming through Quartzsite has varied over the
years: Spanish miners, prospectors, mules, stage drivers,
cavalrymen, Indians, cattle, even camels imported from North
Africa by the U.S. Army in the mid-1850s for a desert experiment
in supply transportation. A Syrian named Hadji Ali (Hi Jolly to
the locals) served as chief camel driver. Like most travelers
who pass through Quartzsite, the camels moved on; the hard-baked
rocks were too tough on their feet, and they didn't get along
with the Army's mules. But Hi Jolly's gravestone, a pyramid
topped with a little copper camel, remains, a permanent fixture
in a town of transients.


    "We got to work like crazy six months a year to try to
survive," says Vangie Millard, who owns the Quartzsite Beauty
Salon and Barber Shop. Before the booming RV industry redefined
the town a decade ago, her shop was half doughnut shop, half
beauty shop, with just four dryers and one shampoo bowl; now
there are no doughnuts, and she has 16 dryers and eight shampoo
bowls.

    After most of the golden oldsters have departed, the
handful of permanent residents settle down for the summer heat.
"This is one of the hottest places in the States," says Johnny
Braswell, owner of La Casa Del Rancho restaurant, "but you learn
to live with it." Braswell and his wife Betty have lived here
for 17 years and raised six kids, packing them off to school in
nearby towns. In a community where no one is in charge, Braswell
takes it upon himself to maintain the big Q sign on Q mountain.
"A while ago, I filled my pickup with 4-H kids, drove up there
and poured whitewash over the Q. Got to go up there again.''
Like everything else in town, his business is geared toward an
older clientele. "Ninety-five percent of the people who eat here
have dentures. We serve bread pudding, oatmeal, mashed potatoes,
and don't make the food too spicy. We only serve the soft-shell
taco. It's a whole different atmosphere here. If it's someone's
birthday, the whole room sings."

    At the east end of town, James ("J.J.") and Bonnie Jackson
run a shop for gold prospectors. "Lot of folks here got the
fever, gold fever," he says. The Jacksons have done well during
their first year in business selling gold pans, metal detectors,
black-sand magnets and an instrument that separates gold flecks
from gravel. ("You run water through it, and the gold walks up
the veins into your little catchall. Just walks on up like it
has a mind of its own.") "Folks around here like to dig in the
dirt."

    They also like to dance on it. South of town is the
Stardusty Ballroom, where twice a week in season 300 ballroom
dancers fox-trot and waltz to the supple beat of a five-piece
band that displays its name, Desert Varnish, on maroon baseball
caps. The dance floor is made of plywood panels, and the ceiling
is the blue Arizona sky. DANCE AT YOUR OWN RISK reads the sign
posted near a huge cactus. Couples dance in the desert, romance
hovering like heat haze; some dress in matching colors. Stuck
in the ground around them are plastic hyacinths, windmills,
ducks. "I can't help it if I'm still in love with you," sings
a man to himself, staring off at the mountains.

    Not far from the ballroom is a pile of rocks, a grave with
a planted cross that reads OLD MAN WINTER. By mid-May the grave
and a whole lot of tire tracks will be all that remains of the
flock of snowbirds that have migrated north to follow the
seasons. Traffic on I-10 will be down to a trickle, and the
swamp coolers in Dolly's Restaurant will be cranked up, working
overtime to beat the heat.