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| Concrete crews worked 24/7 for over three years to continously pour the 5,000,000 cubic yards of concrete required. |
Kanab, Utah, was in our rear view mirror before six am as we continued to parallel the Utah/Arizona border. We drove into Page, Arizona, stopping briefly at a scenic overlook to get a good view of the Glen Canyon Dam and the Colorado River. We had crossed the wide and somewhat lazy Colorado ten days before, at Blythe, just before that little Hitler-acting dude took our apples. The same river, only different here; fast and narrow, nestled deep inside a gorge that the river carved over several hundred million years.
The city of Page is modern, clean, and new-looking, as it should be. It is new. The entire city was created in 1957 to house and supply the workers who built the Glen Canyon Dam, which formed Lake Powell. A deserted corner of the Navajo Indian Reservation until the government decided to build Lake Powell, the city now has a population of over 7,000 and pulsates with activity.
The dam was planned to contribute to the betterment of western life in general by stopping the seasonal flooding/drought cycles, and providing over 1,250,000 kilowatts of electricity for the power grid. Environmental groups rightfully fought the project. In addition to all the natural beauty of the canyons, the lake forever submerged thousands of American Indian archeological sites. The lake straddles the state line; the dam is in Arizona, but most of the lake is in Utah.
President Eisenhower officially started construction on October 1, 1956, by pushing a button on his desk in the Oval office which detonated explosives in Utah to start diverting the river around the dam site. That’s how we do things in this country, we suck up to the boss. Rig a button with 2000 miles of wire so the president can blow up a rock in the desert of Utah and never leave his office. I consider that a waste. Why could he not just issue a proclamation, like he did with the interstate highway system? Or just have him mash a button and “symbolically” blow up part of Utah. Maybe the button could ring a bell in the basement and a guy with a phone there could call long distance and have the explosives detonated. That would have saved enough money to pave two or three miles of road in the new town they built.
Actually, we do that remote button thing quite a bit, I suppose for dramatic effect. The first time I know of was on May 1, 1931, when President Herbert Hoover pushed a switch in Washington which lighted and officially opened the Empire State Building in New York City. I bet the developers paid for that wiring job. A side note---the Empire State Building didn’t show a profit until 1950.
That’s the hard thing about writing---staying on the subject. The other hard thing is remembering all the words. I know there is a word for straying away from the point of a story, starts with a “d”, but I can’t recall. Oh, yeah! I remember. I’m supposed to say, “But I digress….”
On September 22, 1966, the Glen Canyon Dam was dedicated by Lady Bird Johnson, ten years after Eisenhower blew up that big rock and started construction. It took seventeen years for the lake to fill. At the dedication ceremony, Lady Bird suggested that they plant some wild flowers around the dam and along the highways out there. The Secretary of the Interior and the Governor of Arizona exchanged knowing glances and rolled their eyes.
The Ford dealership was happy to see us and changed the oil and serviced Wayne’s new pickup for no charge. Wayne has a deal whereby he can take his vehicle into any Ford dealer in the world and they will do routine maintenance; change the oil and filters, rotate the tires, inspect the brakes, etc., all for no charge. I think the way that works is the Ford people figure out what all maintenance will cost over the lifetime of the vehicle, double it, and add that to the purchase price, so it won’t be noticed and can be financed. Someone in their accounting department should have been a senator. But then, maybe I am getting a bit cynical.
“Me and that old man with the white legs over there are on a sort of bucket list road trip. We’re running the blacktop, just seeing what’s over the hill.” I heard Wayne, with all his boyish exuberance, say to a bystander who happened to be standing in the wrong place.
The bystander introduced himself. He was manager of the dealership and very anxious to meet anyone from Texas. He instinctively knew we were rich, and he wanted to move to Texas. By the time the shop finished changing the oil, the manager had given Wayne four copies of an eight-page resume, printed out by the dealership’s computer, probably between invoices. True to his word, Wayne distributed it to Ford dealers around Austin when we got home.
With almost 4000 total miles on the new pickup and fresh oil in the crankcase, we continued to parallel the Arizona/Utah border, this time on the Arizona side, crossing back into Utah at Goulding Trading Post in Monument Valley. Once again, absolutely spectacular scenery unfolded in every direction. Easily the equal of anything we saw on the trip, but entirely different. The Navajos called this land” Tse Bii Ndzisgaii,” meaning “Valley of the Rocks.” Of course it was sacred ground to them.
Red sandstone buttes stand isolated from each other, like sentinels guarding their part of an almost flat valley. The taller formations tower about a thousand feet above the valley floor, but, because of the isolation, appear to be smaller. Think of several one hundred story office buildings with no windows, painted brown/red and scattered about a large, sandy valley. On second thought, don’t think that. Just think that I don’t have the talent or vocabulary to describe this magnificent place.
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| Wayne in his own private Nirvana |
Wayne had something akin to a religious experience in the John Wayne Movie Museum at the old Goulding Trading Post. Posters, still pictures, and other paraphernalia from “Stagecoach,” “The Searchers,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” “Easy Rider,” and “The Eiger Sanction” brought the museum to life. We felt we had been there for the making of history. We were walking the same ground trod by John Ford, Ward Bond, Harry Carey, Jr., and The Duke. Not to mention the dainty little feet of Natalie Wood and Joanne Dru.
By the way, Natalie Wood was in her late teens when she played the Cynthia Ann Parker part in “The Searchers”. I read in “Vogue” magazine that, during that period of her life, she was “discovering her sexuality” and practicing it with just about any willing male she could find, from directors and leading men, to camera operators and stage hands. I always wished she had come to Lubbock to hunt around for her sexuality and maybe practice a bit. But I digress….
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| The Iconic "Mittens" in Monument Valley. Either of these buttes approximately equal the height of the Chrysler Building in New York City. |
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