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Secret societies, shotings and a local rap artist

Posted by Aaron - 29/11/06 at 06:11:00 am

not related.

The best part of my job is gaining access into ultra secret societies to expose to the greater public of Barstow their undertakings. I am the Dr. Robery Langdon of Barstow.

So tonight, with camera in hand, I slid into the Elks Lodge on West Main Street for the first ever Police/Fire/Sheriff/Railway Police/California Highway Patrol/Marine Base Fire/Marine Base Police Department awards dinner.

Actually, I was invited. And actually, a lot of people were invited. And actually, the paper was called numourous times to make sure there was a reporter present. And actually, while the Elks are exclusive, they are by no secretive or like Opus Dei, at least I don’t think the Elks in Barstow have the ear of the Pope. They do have the ear of the Desert Dispatch, not an organized religion, but a local newspaper.

So I went, I had some chicken, frozen veggies (they were thawed at the time) and mashed potatoes and gravy, very good mashed potatoes I should add. People got awards; I took pictures of hand-shaking and then went back to the office poised to lead with:

If you planned on committing crime in Barstow, Tuesday night was a golden opportunity.

Or something much more clever. Hopefully clever. But the gist would be that with all the top brass of the all the police and fire types in one room…

Then I came back to office and found out someone was shot in Barstow–right around the time I was eating ice cream out of a little plastic cup served by Girl Scout Troop 109.

So maybe the best part of my job isn’t gaining access into secret clubs. Maybe this is the best part of my job. This is an article that ran today about a local rap artist from Barstow name Clinton Wayne.

Every once in a while you interview someone and just want to transcribe the whole thing and run that, perfect, complete, all their own words. Other times that doesn’t happen. Usually that doesn’t happen. Usually you interview someone and then you extract the story. Sometimes you can’t even find a story.

I interviewed this old lady one afternoon. She said she had some stories, and I thought I’d check it out. An hour later I walked out of her trailer with NOTHING.

I spent 30 minutes with Clinton Wayne and had a story. The trick was maintaining his voice, which his aunt, who called this morning, thanked me for doing.

Sometimes it just all falls into place.

nothing new, funny photo

Posted by Aaron - 28/11/06 at 06:11:00 am

I’ll post again when I have something to say. Right now, I’m just relaxing and no one wants to read about that.

For the time being, check out this picture of when I tried to use the French press my dad bought my for my camping stove in my studio’s kitchen. It was during the dark ages, the time when I didn’t have electricity but still wanted coffee. In the end, the French press exploded, blasting my stove and walls with coffee and coffee grounds. Flames shot out of the Iso-Pro stove. I thought for sure my studio was going up in flames. It didn’t, but I took this photo.

Off-roading after Thanksgiving

Posted by Aaron - 25/11/06 at 05:11:00 am

Happy Thanksgiving

Posted by Aaron - 24/11/06 at 07:11:00 am

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

A different Thanksgiving for me. I spent a majority of the day working, but really it wasn’t work. In the morning, I followed a family around as they delivered meals to homebound senior citizens. The Julio Burgos and his three kids, Alex, Samantha and JJ come up the hill from Apple Valley every year to deliver meals for the Mojave Valley Volunteer Hospice. I never got the feeling that any of the kids felt forced to do this. They would fight over who got to deliver the next meal, who got to carry what meal and who got to talk to old friends of theirs. JJ, 9, even admitted that he has realized that old people aren’t scary.

In the afternoon, I went to a local pizza joint that was finishing up serving about 600 people free turkey dinners. The event brought together three restaurant owners, the owner of pizza place, a Mexican food restaurant and a steakhouse, to cook for anyone who wanted a meal. They fed homeless people, police officers and travelers along the I-40 and I-15 who stopped in expecting pizza and got a full scale traditional dinner.

More on these stories will be published in tomorrow’s Desert Dispatch.

After work, Matt invited me to dinner at his place with some friends of his from Kent State. Matt, his girlfriend Brandy, Marin and Shanta (probably butchered her name) spent all day preparing their first Thanksgiving meal on their own. Turkey, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, salad, cranberry sauce, pumpkin and apple pie and some sort of banana pudding. I think everyone’s parents would have been proud. I showed up just in time to eat and eat and eat and then watch Grey’s Anatomy with the crew.

‘Twas the night before Thanksgiving…

Posted by Aaron - 23/11/06 at 06:11:00 am

and all through the apartment complex, not a creature was stirring, except for the tweakers in apartment seven.

They’ve never introduced themselves to me. Nor have I to them. Though tonight they, they being two of them, their names, I don’t know, showed up at my door, cans of budweiser in their hands, cigarettes smoked to the nub. They asked to use my phone, a request of which I am wary, and I lent them my old phone. About five phone calls later, I don’t think they reached anyone. Then they left. Now I have met the tweakers from apartment seven, er something like that.

In an informal poll conducted myself, in which I interviewed two people, I have determined that the night before Thanksgiving is not a big bar and drinking night in Barstow. My editor had never heard of the tradition and a sports writer said people in Barstow go out after Thanksgiving dinner for a few drinks, and then a few more. This certain sports reporter and I have plans for tomorrow night to see the drinking habits of Barstowians around the Thanksgiving holiday.

In other news, two men cannot walk around the streets of Barstow, wearing dress slacks and shirts, without being asked if they are Mormons. The Mormons do have a presence here in Barstow and a history. This I deduce from a mural just off Main Street near the Starlight Donut Den, a mural of which I have only seen the word Mormon and a wagon wheel. Symbolic I think of…I also think I-15 maybe an old historic Mormon trail, but I have no evidence what-so-ever to back this up. I haven’t even talked to any Barstow local, usually sufficient for establishing truths about this place.

But back to why two men cannot walk around the streets of Barstow dressed up without being called Mormons. Because it happened to David and me when we walked into the Fast Track service center to get my car the other day. The guy behind the counter, someone who I think maybe the owner or at least someone important, just flat out said.

“You guys look nice. What are ya, Mormon?”

Unsure how to take this, unsure whether this was a joke and unsure whether David is a Mormon, I leaned on the counter and, took a deep breath and said, “No, we’re reporters.”

Nice one Aaron.

The next moment

Posted by Aaron - 22/11/06 at 08:11:00 am

I wake up every morning and believe this will be the day everything goes right. This will be the good day in a week of bad days. And no matter what condition I come home in at night, no matter what time I come home at night, I still wake up the next morning believing that this will be the day everything goes right.

Each day is a fresh start. Each morning the newspaper we worked so hard to put together falls on the doorsteps and is shoved into the boxes of people across Barstow. Each morning people pump quarters into a machine, pull a little door open and take a paper from the top of a stack. Each morning, people read our articles. And we’ve already began writing tomorrow’s news. I begin writing tomorrow’s news at 9 a.m. every morning. I sometimes will have already written tomorrow’s news before I get the chance to sit down and digest today’s news. My life is three hours behind the East Coast but one day head of the newspaper reading public.

No one likes to read this stuff. No one likes to write this stuff. You should stop reading right now. You should stop writing right now.

Unfortunately, you don’t wake up every morning on the doorstep to the Old City of Jerusalem. Some mornings you wake up an hour late, knowing you are going to have to take the bus to work that morning because your car still isn’t back from the shop. Some mornings you stand next to a sign that says “bus stop” with a vast desert behind you, waiting for, hoping for the bus to come. Then you sit on that bus as it traverses though the neighborhoods, delaying you even further from your destination. You listen to the people behind you complain about the price of eggs and share grocery shopping strategies.

“I go to Save-A-Lot for all my canned goods, then Food-4-Less for my meats.”
“I like the milk prices at Food-4-Less.”
“I can’t stand dairy products.”

And you sit there, and you read your newspaper and you remember that four summers you rode a bus through Fairfax, Virginia on your way to the Metro station on your way into the District, on your way to the Department of Labor on your way into a future in politics. And you sit there now and you try to be miserable because you know you are late and have a long day ahead of you and your car is going to cost you $500 plus dollars and you were up late last night and…

…and you sort of enjoy it all. You sort of enjoy the bus ride, the people, the memories of what you were going to do. And then you enjoy going to the Police and Sheriff stations, looking for your story for the day, being picked up by your editor, arriving at the office and all the times you ran your fingers over your face and through your hair and signed loudly expecting it to excuse you from the blank page in front of you that was supposed to be filled an hour ago.

You sort of like it. And that’s your job. And that’s your life. And so if you’ve made it thus far in the post, you know that while things are hard right now, I sort of like them.

Dr. Mahler wrote me this in an email today. It was about perfect.

“Don’t get impatient with your life. This is an honorable start, and the key is to pay the rent while you’re accumulating experience. You’re doing that.”

Thanks.

not going anywhere

Posted by Aaron - 21/11/06 at 07:11:00 am

Car not fixed. Rode my bike around like a 10-year-old. Taking the bus to work tomorrow. Week off to a bad start.

Fastrack Towing

Posted by Aaron - 20/11/06 at 08:11:00 am

On my way out to Afton Canyon to take some sunset photos, my CV joint blew to pieces and scattered itself along the desert shoulder of the I-15 about 40 miles north of Barstow. I was not going anywhere.

Constant Velocity Joints or CV joints are attached to each end of a drive shaft and transfer the torque at a constant speed to steered wheels as well as to accommodate up and down motions of the suspension. Basically, it allows power to go to the wheels even when the wheels are turning or bouncing up and down.

So I called a tow truck and proceeded to be stuck in the middle of the desert. At least I had lots of water with me.

Much fast than I thought, Russell from Fastrack Towing was pulling off to my side of the I-15. He caught me taking a photo of an orange juice box thrown to the side of the road. I took advantage of being stranded along side a major freeway to check out what gets thrown out during the drive to Las Vegas. Conclusion, either people save up their beer and liquor bottles all week so they can discard them along the way or there is a lot of drinking going on en route on California’s freeways. I choose the latter.

As a joke, the tow company sent possibly the only Ohio State fan in Barstow to my rescue. As soon as he saw my blue plate, the jeering began. It soon stopped though, because Russell had much more important things to tell me. Originally from Ohio, Russel has lived in Barstow since 1987 and appears to have learned quite a bit about the city’s history.

Some of Russell’s insights:
- The buildings around The Cats bar (now the Copa Cobana Club) all go down three stories underground. The military used to store ammunition in these underground caches. If you notice, there are no sewers on Main Street in this area.
- There is a 1000 meter shooting range underneath the Barstow High School football field. Marines could train there without being noticed.
- There are professional hit-men living in Newberry Springs. They take their jobs very seriously.
- The fruit transportation industry is run by the Mafia.
- There are two tiers of gangs in Barstow. There are the young, wanna-be “gang-bangers,” who are responsible for a majority of the gang-related crime and mischief. There are also old skool gangsters. Members are 30 to 40 years old now and don’t go around causing trouble. As Russell said, if there is a problem, they solve it, but they don’t go around creating problems. Russell said he became good friends with many of these gang members and they, to this day, look out for him and his family.

Russell talked for the whole 45 minute ride back into town and thanked me for listening to him. Then he charged me $200+ for my company. When he ran my credit card number, it was denied, so he had to impound my car. Then he gave me a ride home. He didn’t charge me for that. At least I had plenty of water.

Aztec playoff football pictures

Posted by Aaron - 20/11/06 at 06:11:00 am

On Friday, the Aztecs of Barstow took on the Aztecs of Palm Desert in the first round of the CIF-SS Eastern Division high school football playoffs sponsored by Toyota (no joke, sponsored by Toyota). Obviously, the Aztecs won. But which one? Find out at the bottom of the post and enjoy the photos.

Wal-Mart Watch

Posted by Aaron - 19/11/06 at 04:11:00 am

I went to Wal-Mart today at around 5 p.m. expecting to see people waiting in line for the Nintendo Wii. In all video game console fairness, if the my newspaper ran a photo of mornons waiting for the PS3, it should run a photo of morons waiting for the Wii to drop. Unfortunately, no one was waiting. There was one person sitting on the bench in front of Wal-Mart, but the line between transient in front of Wal-Mart and gamer in front of Wal-Mart is very thin.

But the Wal-Mart parking lot did not disappoint. I ran into this truck into the parking lot. Literally, I didn’t run into the truck, I just happened to stumble upon it with a camera ready.

I did not think this would look good on our Sunday edition’s front page. Not that the paper has adopted a stance on homosexuality, but seriously, as a shrine to gay-bashing, this is really lame. He didn’t really even do a good job.

By the time I was leaving, a large crowd of Wal-Mart employees had gathered around the truck and were taking pictures with their cell phones. I asked two of the employees if this guy parked his truck here often, thinking this was a constant assault on the moral values of my Barstow neighborhood Wal-Mart.

Nope. They had never seen the truck before. Then we got a little closer. The license plate was from South Dakota. And I quote:

“Those are some country ass mother fuckers.” — Wal-Mart employee

The owner of the truck finally came out of the store to a hoard of dark blue shirted young adults with cell phones snapping photos and snapping comments. He was an older man, white beard, white hair. He wore a red shirt with a cross on the back. The front said something to the effect of “Jesus Saves.” He was disappointed because none of the assembled crowd wanted his flyers.

Last night Matt Peters and I went down to Palm Desert to cover the Barstow Aztecs vs. Palm Desert Aztecs CIF-SS Eastern Division play-off game presented my Toyota. Yes, they were both the Aztecs. Even before the game, Matt wrote the headline, Aztecs win. Unfortunately, the wrong Aztecs won. Unfortunately, the wrong Aztecs scored someone around 21 points on three straight offensive plays. Figure it out, after about a minute, the Barstow Aztecs lost. You can read Matt’s article here for more information.

The impressive thing is, the Barstow Aztecs did not give up and never once did they pull a Kenny Rogers and take the frustration of getting beat out on a water cooler. But just in case they did, I had my lens focused on the lone watercooler after every Barstow turnover or Palm Desert touchdown. No such luck.

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