Sons of Pioneertown
Nov. 22nd, 2006 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947A
It was dark by 5:30 P.M., and little could be seen beyond the lighted perimeter of California Highway 91. Billboards, gas station signs, and large shop signs were sometimes visible over the freeway walls, but none of the scenery and hills along the route. We were just a tiny part of the long, winding, snake of headlights making their way out of Los Angeles, through Anaheim, toward Riverside, in route to Palms Springs. But Palms Springs was not our actual destination. I was in a truck with Jim and John, and we were heading to Pioneertown, CA, to meet up with Greg. This would be my second visit to Pioneertown.
In December of 2003, Jim had suggested a quick overnight journey to Palms Springs. The trip was to serve the dual purpose of reuniting the four or us, and discovering a new part of California. Jim had read an obscure travel article about a small rustic, high desert, resort called Pioneertown, just north of Yucca Valley, near Palms Springs. He thought that its midway location, between San Diego and Los Angeles, would provide accessible travel times to both Greg and us, and curiosity would motivate us the rest of the way. Although Greg was never able to make the trip that December, the three of us did.
Pioneertown proved to be a marvelous discovery. We spent that night in the Pioneertown Motel, a log cabin-looking lodge, explored a frontier town-looking Mane Street and the surrounding desert areas, grooved to the mellow Blues performed at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, and swore to return someday, with Greg. It was a retreat that offered simple beauty, and sweet solitude. I was especially captivated by a paragraph in the motel’s flyer claiming that Pioneertown had been a popular retreat for Hollywood artists and writers. It fascinated me that this scenic locale could have been home to a colony of artists, or a school for writers.
B
What would you think of the title, The Lone Pine School of Writing? What about the Pioneertown School of Writing? Is it a title for a story, a magazine article, or a name of an actual school of writing? I haven’t really decided. I suppose I first thought of it in the context of my three friends who come together annually to reconnect and refresh our friendship. We tell stories of the past and present, and discuss the future, but only one of us wants to record these occasions. Me. I am the one who feels the need to write, but I also see their potential. John, Jim, and Greg could all become artists or writers. The Lone Pine School of Writing was a prod to make them believe that they had the ability to express themselves through art, or put them on paper. When I talked about it to them, they laughed and ignored me.
We first became friends during our senior year in high school. I was in the same Class of 1966 with Greg and Jim, and John was Jim’s younger brother, in the class below us. The friendships matured during college, despite our diasporas to different schools. I went to UCLA. Greg went to Santa Monica Junior College, Long Beach State, and UC Riverside. Jim went to Cerritos Junior College, and Cal State Fullerton. John went to Viet Nam for two tours of duty. It was during those college years that we began traveling together, throughout California, and Baja California. First to Big Sur, then to Monterey, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Lone Pine, Mammoth, Ensenada, and Rosarito. The trips would be discussed and finalized when we came together on Fridays or weekends, to hang out, go out, see a movie, or just play cards, drink, and talk.
For many people, college years and the bachelor days that follow, can be times of great loneliness and desperation. For us, those were the best times, because they were supported by the constant encouragement and reassurances that only high school friends can provide. I would date and break up, or I would pine away for girls who were indifferent to me, but I could always count on the faithfulness of my friends. I might form other alliances at school and work, but I would always respond to the bugle call of “Let’s meet at John’s for cards and beer”. We were all dreamers, then. They were different dreams, but when they were threaded together on the occasions that we met, we believed that we had experienced them equally.
Over the following years of marriage, careers, families, disappointments, and successes, we had fallen into a seasonal pattern of meetings, trips, and reunions. We would decide to get together at a variety of locations in California or Mexico, depending on the climate, interest, availability or inclination. Ideally, all four of us would reunite. When that was not possible, those who could, would meet and “bad mouth” those who couldn’t.
The four of us had not been together since our trek to Stovepipe Wells, near Death Valley, in fall of 2005. It was there that I had again mentioned the idea of our becoming a colony of writers, dubbing it the Lone Pine School. The proposition was received with the same indifference as the year before. So, I took photographs to record our explorations of Beatty and Ryolite, Nevada, and assumed that there would be more opportunities to talk of life, loves, and retirement, and discuss artistic expressions.
John, Greg, and I had managed to get together on three occasions during the 2006 year: a weekend in January, to Rosarito and Ensenada to scout hotel accommodations and tour the wine country in that part of Mexico; another weekend in April, to participate in the Rosarito-Ensenada Bicycle Fun Ride, with their adult children taking part in the ride; and finally, another weekend in June, to San Francisco, to participate in the Bay To Breakers Race. All three events had been memorable and enjoyable, but they lacked the sense of continuity that existed when the four of us were together. It was finally Jim, the black sheep, and oft-absence member of the group, who, when prompted by an email from Greg to meet somewhere, proposed a re-visit to Pioneertown.
C
Pioneertown, California is an unincorporated, small town in the Morongo Basin region of Southern California, approximately midway between Palms Springs and Joshua Tree.
Pioneertown is about 130 miles east of Hollywood. To reach this high desert community, one takes Interstate 10 about 100 miles to Highway 62 (29 Palms Highway - Joshua Tree National Park). After driving about 25 miles NE on Highway 62 to Yucca Valley, you can look for the sign; “Pioneer Town”. Turn left (north) on Pioneertown Road for about 5 miles. First, you'll see the sign: “Pioneetown 1946”, then look for Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace or The Pioneeer Bowl. The Pioneertown Motel is located just behind Pappy & Harriets on Curtis Road.
Pioneertown was founded in 1946 by a group of Hollywood personalities led by cowboy actors Dick Curtis and Russell Hayden, as a permanent frontier town for filming western movies. On September 1, 1946, Roy Rogers broke ground for the first buildings, assisted by the Sons of the Pioneers, from whom the town takes its name. Though it was built as a real town, it was also built as a permanent movie set by a group of investors who envisioned an 1870’s frontier town that would also function as a living movie set. Over 200 movies and TV serials were filmed there, as were an unknown number of background shorts for other productions. TV westerns, including the The Gene Autry Show, The Cisco Kid, Annie Oakley, and The Adventures of Judge Roy Bean were filmed here. Western stars including Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gail Davis (Annie Oakley), Duncan Renaldo (The Cisco Kid), Leo Carrillo (Pancho), Gene Autry, The Sons of the Pioneers (for whom the town was named), Jock Mahoney (The Range Rider) and Russell Hayden, (Hopalong Cassidy movie series) all walked and worked these dirt roads and streets. Other movie greats including Barbara Stanwyck, Jackie Coogan, Dick Jones, Edgar Buchanan, Tom Skerritt and Barry Sullivan all made movies here from 1948 to 1998.
In 1960, after bankruptcy claimed much of the town, a silver- tressed matriarch, named Frances Aleba, purchased several buildings on Mane Street, including the old gas station. She turned the gas station into the "Cantina", and it became famous for its Mexican-style food and somewhat infamous for its motorcycle riding clientele. Around 1980 Fran turned her business over to her daughter, Harriet Allen, and her husband Pappy. For the next decade, the food, the music, the people and the unequaled ambience of Pappy and Harriet's Pioneertown Palace thrilled locals and visitors world-wide. After Pappy's death in 1992, Harriet carried on until she sold the business to its current owners. Pappy and Harriet’s continues to thrive in Pioneertown, and it attracts guests, diners, and music lovers from the entire Palms Springs area.
The Pioneertown Motel, which was originally called The Townhouse, was built in 1947-48 by Dick Curtis, Roy Rogers and Russell Hayden. When the Saturday Evening Post writer, H. Allen Smith, visited Pioneertown in the Fall of 1949, the motel was already being put to pragmatic use by movie makers. Columbia Pictures was shooting its serial, “Cody of The Pony Express” starring Jock Mahoney and Dickie Moore. Their cavalry fort was none other than the motel with a log-gate-facade strategically placed in the camera-foreground. This illustrated the "double purpose" Dick Curtis originally envisioned when he had ridden into the Sawtooth Basin on horseback years before. First: design all buildings for an old west period look; second: construct them as solid permanent dwellings to house and feed cast, crew and support labor. The motel became the embodiment of this plan. No doubt the Columbia crew using the motel as a fort by day, boarded there at night. Phil Krasne, producer of the “The Cisco Kid” series, estimated this efficiency factor shaved 3 days off any of his schedules for a savings of $30,000.
The Pioneer Bowl, Hayden Ranch, and Mane Street have been designated by the State Department of Parks and Recreation as historical resources.
D
After a torturously long drive to Beaumont, the traffic finally lightened up, and we found ourselves speeding along Interstate 10 towards Palms Springs. I had spoken with Greg via cell phone on a couple of occasions already, and we suspected that he was approximately 10 minutes behind us. Even though we could easily have driven straight through to Pioneertown and met up with him there, a stronger imperative seemed to urge us to band together as soon as possible. We identified the intersection of Interstate 10 and Twenty-nine Palms Highway as our rendevous point, and met there. Jim jumped into Greg’s car, and we all proceeded to our reunion in Pioneertown.
We checked into the Pioneertown Motel and spent our time on Friday between our rooms and Pappy and Harriet’s Palace. The Palace is always a wonder. It is such a “dive” looking roadhouse, but it serves up the best music and food in the county. There was a Tex-Mex Blues band playing that evening who reminded us of Los Lobos. They were great. After dinner, we made our way back to the patio area outside our rooms to catch up on our lives and activities. John provided the necessary liquid lubrication to facilitate our communication, and we spent the rest of the night, and early morning, talking, arguing, joking, and laughing. We were all in good health and spirits, and looking forward to retirement (except for John, who took an early retirement from the LA Fire Department last year). There were no startling revelations in our affairs, and our lives seemed to be pretty predictable and mundane.
On Saturday we just “hung out” together, talking, and making decisions by consensus: “What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do?” Jim’s suggestions usually won out. I think this is because he is the only “real” bachelor in the bunch. That is, one who has never been married. He also has the strongest ego, with many eccentric preferences. The rest of us are usually willing to concede to him to avoid useless head-butting, or arguments. There were remarkably few fights on this trip. We did do considerable eating and drinking. The only exercise was our walk along Mane Street, through the center of the frontier town stores and buildings on Saturday morning. Other than that, we pretty much sat around, watched TV, drank beer and wine, and ate. Looking back, it was a very civilized way to spend a weekend with friends, away from work, troubles, and responsibilities .
On this trip, I was especially captivated by the story of how Pioneertown was founded by Dick Curtis, Russell Hayden, and a group of their western movie friends. Here were a bunch of cowboys-turned stuntmen, and “B – Movie” actors, who wanted to build a place of their own. It appears they envisioned something of an early-day Universal Studios: a working frontier western movie set, with frontier town facades, and a tourist attraction with stores, arcades, and entertainment centers built on the other sides of the sets. I’d like to believe that it was founded by buddies with a dream. Not a big dream, just a dream of building a self-supporting place where they could just “hang out” in a locale that would not entice wives. They could ride horses, go bowling, listen to music, eat and drink. It sounds like a club! An all boys club! Pioneertown even got its name from a group of buddies who backed this idea, the Sons of the Pioneers (a western singing and acting group of men). Those guys could ride, rope, shoot, drink, and sing. They were more than cowboys, they were artists who sought a place to play and work.
Needless to say, their golden dream never panned out. Although hundreds of movie and TV westerns were filmed there, Pioneertown never became a lasting success as a permanent movie set and tourist attraction. It simply continues to exist as a testament to men’s desire to build a place where men can bond, play, share stories, create, and grow old together. This would correspond with the need that Jim, John, Greg, and I have to meet, revisit the past, discuss the present, and worry about the future. We have also talked about buying rustic homes and retreats in the deserts and mountains to which only we can escape. I suppose that if we had the money (or financial support) and a common profession, a Pioneertown concept might have been something we would have made into fact. Who knows, we could have become the new Sons of Pioneertown.
It was dark by 5:30 P.M., and little could be seen beyond the lighted perimeter of California Highway 91. Billboards, gas station signs, and large shop signs were sometimes visible over the freeway walls, but none of the scenery and hills along the route. We were just a tiny part of the long, winding, snake of headlights making their way out of Los Angeles, through Anaheim, toward Riverside, in route to Palms Springs. But Palms Springs was not our actual destination. I was in a truck with Jim and John, and we were heading to Pioneertown, CA, to meet up with Greg. This would be my second visit to Pioneertown.
In December of 2003, Jim had suggested a quick overnight journey to Palms Springs. The trip was to serve the dual purpose of reuniting the four or us, and discovering a new part of California. Jim had read an obscure travel article about a small rustic, high desert, resort called Pioneertown, just north of Yucca Valley, near Palms Springs. He thought that its midway location, between San Diego and Los Angeles, would provide accessible travel times to both Greg and us, and curiosity would motivate us the rest of the way. Although Greg was never able to make the trip that December, the three of us did.
Pioneertown proved to be a marvelous discovery. We spent that night in the Pioneertown Motel, a log cabin-looking lodge, explored a frontier town-looking Mane Street and the surrounding desert areas, grooved to the mellow Blues performed at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, and swore to return someday, with Greg. It was a retreat that offered simple beauty, and sweet solitude. I was especially captivated by a paragraph in the motel’s flyer claiming that Pioneertown had been a popular retreat for Hollywood artists and writers. It fascinated me that this scenic locale could have been home to a colony of artists, or a school for writers.
B
What would you think of the title, The Lone Pine School of Writing? What about the Pioneertown School of Writing? Is it a title for a story, a magazine article, or a name of an actual school of writing? I haven’t really decided. I suppose I first thought of it in the context of my three friends who come together annually to reconnect and refresh our friendship. We tell stories of the past and present, and discuss the future, but only one of us wants to record these occasions. Me. I am the one who feels the need to write, but I also see their potential. John, Jim, and Greg could all become artists or writers. The Lone Pine School of Writing was a prod to make them believe that they had the ability to express themselves through art, or put them on paper. When I talked about it to them, they laughed and ignored me.
We first became friends during our senior year in high school. I was in the same Class of 1966 with Greg and Jim, and John was Jim’s younger brother, in the class below us. The friendships matured during college, despite our diasporas to different schools. I went to UCLA. Greg went to Santa Monica Junior College, Long Beach State, and UC Riverside. Jim went to Cerritos Junior College, and Cal State Fullerton. John went to Viet Nam for two tours of duty. It was during those college years that we began traveling together, throughout California, and Baja California. First to Big Sur, then to Monterey, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Lone Pine, Mammoth, Ensenada, and Rosarito. The trips would be discussed and finalized when we came together on Fridays or weekends, to hang out, go out, see a movie, or just play cards, drink, and talk.
For many people, college years and the bachelor days that follow, can be times of great loneliness and desperation. For us, those were the best times, because they were supported by the constant encouragement and reassurances that only high school friends can provide. I would date and break up, or I would pine away for girls who were indifferent to me, but I could always count on the faithfulness of my friends. I might form other alliances at school and work, but I would always respond to the bugle call of “Let’s meet at John’s for cards and beer”. We were all dreamers, then. They were different dreams, but when they were threaded together on the occasions that we met, we believed that we had experienced them equally.
Over the following years of marriage, careers, families, disappointments, and successes, we had fallen into a seasonal pattern of meetings, trips, and reunions. We would decide to get together at a variety of locations in California or Mexico, depending on the climate, interest, availability or inclination. Ideally, all four of us would reunite. When that was not possible, those who could, would meet and “bad mouth” those who couldn’t.
The four of us had not been together since our trek to Stovepipe Wells, near Death Valley, in fall of 2005. It was there that I had again mentioned the idea of our becoming a colony of writers, dubbing it the Lone Pine School. The proposition was received with the same indifference as the year before. So, I took photographs to record our explorations of Beatty and Ryolite, Nevada, and assumed that there would be more opportunities to talk of life, loves, and retirement, and discuss artistic expressions.
John, Greg, and I had managed to get together on three occasions during the 2006 year: a weekend in January, to Rosarito and Ensenada to scout hotel accommodations and tour the wine country in that part of Mexico; another weekend in April, to participate in the Rosarito-Ensenada Bicycle Fun Ride, with their adult children taking part in the ride; and finally, another weekend in June, to San Francisco, to participate in the Bay To Breakers Race. All three events had been memorable and enjoyable, but they lacked the sense of continuity that existed when the four of us were together. It was finally Jim, the black sheep, and oft-absence member of the group, who, when prompted by an email from Greg to meet somewhere, proposed a re-visit to Pioneertown.
C
Pioneertown, California is an unincorporated, small town in the Morongo Basin region of Southern California, approximately midway between Palms Springs and Joshua Tree.
Pioneertown is about 130 miles east of Hollywood. To reach this high desert community, one takes Interstate 10 about 100 miles to Highway 62 (29 Palms Highway - Joshua Tree National Park). After driving about 25 miles NE on Highway 62 to Yucca Valley, you can look for the sign; “Pioneer Town”. Turn left (north) on Pioneertown Road for about 5 miles. First, you'll see the sign: “Pioneetown 1946”, then look for Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace or The Pioneeer Bowl. The Pioneertown Motel is located just behind Pappy & Harriets on Curtis Road.
Pioneertown was founded in 1946 by a group of Hollywood personalities led by cowboy actors Dick Curtis and Russell Hayden, as a permanent frontier town for filming western movies. On September 1, 1946, Roy Rogers broke ground for the first buildings, assisted by the Sons of the Pioneers, from whom the town takes its name. Though it was built as a real town, it was also built as a permanent movie set by a group of investors who envisioned an 1870’s frontier town that would also function as a living movie set. Over 200 movies and TV serials were filmed there, as were an unknown number of background shorts for other productions. TV westerns, including the The Gene Autry Show, The Cisco Kid, Annie Oakley, and The Adventures of Judge Roy Bean were filmed here. Western stars including Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gail Davis (Annie Oakley), Duncan Renaldo (The Cisco Kid), Leo Carrillo (Pancho), Gene Autry, The Sons of the Pioneers (for whom the town was named), Jock Mahoney (The Range Rider) and Russell Hayden, (Hopalong Cassidy movie series) all walked and worked these dirt roads and streets. Other movie greats including Barbara Stanwyck, Jackie Coogan, Dick Jones, Edgar Buchanan, Tom Skerritt and Barry Sullivan all made movies here from 1948 to 1998.
In 1960, after bankruptcy claimed much of the town, a silver- tressed matriarch, named Frances Aleba, purchased several buildings on Mane Street, including the old gas station. She turned the gas station into the "Cantina", and it became famous for its Mexican-style food and somewhat infamous for its motorcycle riding clientele. Around 1980 Fran turned her business over to her daughter, Harriet Allen, and her husband Pappy. For the next decade, the food, the music, the people and the unequaled ambience of Pappy and Harriet's Pioneertown Palace thrilled locals and visitors world-wide. After Pappy's death in 1992, Harriet carried on until she sold the business to its current owners. Pappy and Harriet’s continues to thrive in Pioneertown, and it attracts guests, diners, and music lovers from the entire Palms Springs area.
The Pioneertown Motel, which was originally called The Townhouse, was built in 1947-48 by Dick Curtis, Roy Rogers and Russell Hayden. When the Saturday Evening Post writer, H. Allen Smith, visited Pioneertown in the Fall of 1949, the motel was already being put to pragmatic use by movie makers. Columbia Pictures was shooting its serial, “Cody of The Pony Express” starring Jock Mahoney and Dickie Moore. Their cavalry fort was none other than the motel with a log-gate-facade strategically placed in the camera-foreground. This illustrated the "double purpose" Dick Curtis originally envisioned when he had ridden into the Sawtooth Basin on horseback years before. First: design all buildings for an old west period look; second: construct them as solid permanent dwellings to house and feed cast, crew and support labor. The motel became the embodiment of this plan. No doubt the Columbia crew using the motel as a fort by day, boarded there at night. Phil Krasne, producer of the “The Cisco Kid” series, estimated this efficiency factor shaved 3 days off any of his schedules for a savings of $30,000.
The Pioneer Bowl, Hayden Ranch, and Mane Street have been designated by the State Department of Parks and Recreation as historical resources.
D
After a torturously long drive to Beaumont, the traffic finally lightened up, and we found ourselves speeding along Interstate 10 towards Palms Springs. I had spoken with Greg via cell phone on a couple of occasions already, and we suspected that he was approximately 10 minutes behind us. Even though we could easily have driven straight through to Pioneertown and met up with him there, a stronger imperative seemed to urge us to band together as soon as possible. We identified the intersection of Interstate 10 and Twenty-nine Palms Highway as our rendevous point, and met there. Jim jumped into Greg’s car, and we all proceeded to our reunion in Pioneertown.
We checked into the Pioneertown Motel and spent our time on Friday between our rooms and Pappy and Harriet’s Palace. The Palace is always a wonder. It is such a “dive” looking roadhouse, but it serves up the best music and food in the county. There was a Tex-Mex Blues band playing that evening who reminded us of Los Lobos. They were great. After dinner, we made our way back to the patio area outside our rooms to catch up on our lives and activities. John provided the necessary liquid lubrication to facilitate our communication, and we spent the rest of the night, and early morning, talking, arguing, joking, and laughing. We were all in good health and spirits, and looking forward to retirement (except for John, who took an early retirement from the LA Fire Department last year). There were no startling revelations in our affairs, and our lives seemed to be pretty predictable and mundane.
On Saturday we just “hung out” together, talking, and making decisions by consensus: “What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do?” Jim’s suggestions usually won out. I think this is because he is the only “real” bachelor in the bunch. That is, one who has never been married. He also has the strongest ego, with many eccentric preferences. The rest of us are usually willing to concede to him to avoid useless head-butting, or arguments. There were remarkably few fights on this trip. We did do considerable eating and drinking. The only exercise was our walk along Mane Street, through the center of the frontier town stores and buildings on Saturday morning. Other than that, we pretty much sat around, watched TV, drank beer and wine, and ate. Looking back, it was a very civilized way to spend a weekend with friends, away from work, troubles, and responsibilities .
On this trip, I was especially captivated by the story of how Pioneertown was founded by Dick Curtis, Russell Hayden, and a group of their western movie friends. Here were a bunch of cowboys-turned stuntmen, and “B – Movie” actors, who wanted to build a place of their own. It appears they envisioned something of an early-day Universal Studios: a working frontier western movie set, with frontier town facades, and a tourist attraction with stores, arcades, and entertainment centers built on the other sides of the sets. I’d like to believe that it was founded by buddies with a dream. Not a big dream, just a dream of building a self-supporting place where they could just “hang out” in a locale that would not entice wives. They could ride horses, go bowling, listen to music, eat and drink. It sounds like a club! An all boys club! Pioneertown even got its name from a group of buddies who backed this idea, the Sons of the Pioneers (a western singing and acting group of men). Those guys could ride, rope, shoot, drink, and sing. They were more than cowboys, they were artists who sought a place to play and work.
Needless to say, their golden dream never panned out. Although hundreds of movie and TV westerns were filmed there, Pioneertown never became a lasting success as a permanent movie set and tourist attraction. It simply continues to exist as a testament to men’s desire to build a place where men can bond, play, share stories, create, and grow old together. This would correspond with the need that Jim, John, Greg, and I have to meet, revisit the past, discuss the present, and worry about the future. We have also talked about buying rustic homes and retreats in the deserts and mountains to which only we can escape. I suppose that if we had the money (or financial support) and a common profession, a Pioneertown concept might have been something we would have made into fact. Who knows, we could have become the new Sons of Pioneertown.
