Road Trip Number Nine--Pit Stop in the Desert

Wayne and General Patton--Kindred Spirits

     Somewhere north of Mendocino, we eased back to the coast and travelled between the Redwood Forest and the Pacific Ocean.  It was an absolutely beautiful drive and eventually led us into the Redwood National Park, which was the first of seven national parks and several national monuments we would see on this trip.  Thank you, Theodore Roosevelt!

     Actually, we skirted the Joshua Tree National Monument when we first entered California, while I was still smarting over that little apple-stealing Hitler-acting guy.  Wayne and I pulled off for a pit stop at a place called Chiriaco Summit and discovered a museum dedicated to and named after General George S. Patton.  Because this was in the middle of the California desert, we were curious about what Patton could have done there and decided to take a look. 

     Both of us remember World War Two—we were five when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor—and we are both a bit too blindly patriotic for most of today’s younger generation.  Patton was one of our heroes, even if he did slap that kid.  We consider that a temporary lapse, blown all out of proportion by an over-zealous media.   (Look here, Mr. Senior Editor, there is not a thing happening—nothing to report.  The Germans are quiet and our soldiers are just lying around, waiting……  Well, Mr. War Correspondent that just won’t cut it.  If you don’t find something to make some news about, I’ll put someone out there who will.)

     At the start of the war, Patton was put in charge of armored vehicles—tanks, etc.—and was told to prepare to go to North Africa and fight Rommel and the Germans in the Sahara Desert.  To prepare for that, the general insisted on some sort of desert training ground.  He thought, and rightly so, that pulling teenage troops out of their comfortable homes and sending them, untrained, to fight in tanks in the desert would end in disaster.  Patton considered the desert part of the enemy.   The government eventually agreed and essentially gave him the Mojave Desert and told him to build a base and train his troops.  Someone named it Camp Young and it became the largest military base in history, about three hundred fifty miles long and two hundred fifty miles wide.

     When the general came to the base for the first time, in the early spring of 1942, construction was in progress and a source of water was desperately needed.  There was a City of Los Angeles Reservoir nearby and Patton called the powers that be in LA to arrange permission to tap into the system for the base.   The bureaucrat in Los Angeles said, “Oh my, that’s just not possible!  It will take at least two years to get all the paperwork done before permission can be granted!  It takes time to do things properly.”  Patton replied, “Well, you get started on that paperwork and get it done as soon as you can.  We tapped into the system yesterday.”



With legs like that, I don't have much to live for.



     Camp Young was later called the “California-Arizona Maneuver Area of the Desert Training Center” and more than a million troops were trained there.  It was decommissioned in 1944 and most of it was returned to the Department of Interior.  The museum was an indoor/outdoor affair, with every kind of WWII tank and armored vehicle imaginable on display.  I have trouble understanding how anyone could get into those primitive, clumsy vehicles and ride around the desert with temperatures well into three digits while Germans shot at them. 

      I guess Steinbeck explained that in “Grapes of Wrath”.  He said, “It don’t take no special courage when you ain’t got no other choice.”  I have always been awed by the courage and fortitude the American People demonstrated during World War Two.  This museum reinforced that feeling.

     Now,  to get back to the Redwood Forest National Park.  We followed the coast thru the park and to the Oregon line and turned inland for the last hundred or so miles to Medford, our Road Trip mid-point destination.  We pulled up in front of Wayne’s brother’s house at about five pm, right on schedule.  Ron had been cooking all afternoon and served us barbequed pork ribs, pinto beans and something he called “hot corn”—a delicious mixture of grits, corn, cheese and green chilies. 

      Wayne and Ron had a lot of catching up to do—they have seen each other rarely since adulthood because Ron moved off to Oregon and Wayne wisely stayed in Texas.     In spite of their long separation, it was obvious to me that there was a lot of affection there.  They told stories of their childhood, their parents and sisters, and their home life.  We laughed about stuff that happened fifty years ago—I grew up across town, so we told a lot of “Lubbock” stories.  It is amazing how that country marks its people—within an hour, Ron and I were old friends.

     We wound down and went to bed relatively early.  Ron had a big weekend planned.  Tomorrow, we would go to Crater Lake and Sunday we planned to ride the rapids on the Rouge River.  We needed our sleep. 

      Boy, that “hot corn”  and those ribs were good!