Long time ago, my dad's friend, after my dad died, finally took me out to the desert. He'd told me about it for years and it had become one of those sort of mythical places you build up in your mind when somebody you trusts tells you so much about it. Two of his friends, who were older than he, had come across an old cow corral out on the edge of an ancient lake bed and had constructed a shack out of it 40 years previous. That's where we headed.
Well we went out there several times over the next few years and he would tell me all sorts of stories about the area: finding arrowheads, a tomahawk, a broken Indian pipe, sweat lodge rings, WW2 strafing mounds with targets and bullets all over, wild horses, UFOs, murders at the nearest rest stop, it was a land of magic and mystery.
Well one day we were bumping along in the old Tacoma on what could barely be called a two-track, my late dad's friend draining a gallon of Gallo wine filled with green olives (that was his thing) when he tells me a whopper of a story. "Out over yonder there's a barbed wire fence. Now I was out on foot one night and I'd had a little bit to drink, and I found that fence while I was out. It had signs on it with skull an' crossbones so of course I found myself on the other side of it. But I swears, when I looked down, I saw purple dirt!"
I was incredulous as I looked over at him, jug of box store wine tipped back as he peered around it at the steering wheel. 'Purple dirt, yeah'. Dude spilled his wine on the ground and didn't know what he was looking at. Not much of a story anyway but one that he stuck by. I knew him to tell some stories but somehow it didn't seem like the sort of narrative he'd totally fabricate. But later, when I went back to that shack on my own, I found that fence. On that fence were rusty metal signs, official-looking signs, emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, like a story too tropey to be believed. No purple dirt though.
When I got back to town after the weekend, I did a little digging and found that back in the day, a chemical plant up in a city two hours north of where I lived had been contracted by the federal government to produce a little Miracle Gro for the war effort in Nam. Agent Orange. And when the war came to a less decisive and more abrupt halt than many expected, there was a whole bunch of that nasty junk left over in tens of thousands of 55 gallon drums. That they buried in the middle of a desert beside a dry lake bed where only cooky old codgers and curious young men would ever think to look.
My dad's friend is still kicking around but he's got that slightly...unique edge to him. Both of his older friends have since met their respective ends to cancer. The desert is a weird place.
Well we went out there several times over the next few years and he would tell me all sorts of stories about the area: finding arrowheads, a tomahawk, a broken Indian pipe, sweat lodge rings, WW2 strafing mounds with targets and bullets all over, wild horses, UFOs, murders at the nearest rest stop, it was a land of magic and mystery.
Well one day we were bumping along in the old Tacoma on what could barely be called a two-track, my late dad's friend draining a gallon of Gallo wine filled with green olives (that was his thing) when he tells me a whopper of a story. "Out over yonder there's a barbed wire fence. Now I was out on foot one night and I'd had a little bit to drink, and I found that fence while I was out. It had signs on it with skull an' crossbones so of course I found myself on the other side of it. But I swears, when I looked down, I saw purple dirt!"
I was incredulous as I looked over at him, jug of box store wine tipped back as he peered around it at the steering wheel. 'Purple dirt, yeah'. Dude spilled his wine on the ground and didn't know what he was looking at. Not much of a story anyway but one that he stuck by. I knew him to tell some stories but somehow it didn't seem like the sort of narrative he'd totally fabricate. But later, when I went back to that shack on my own, I found that fence. On that fence were rusty metal signs, official-looking signs, emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, like a story too tropey to be believed. No purple dirt though.
When I got back to town after the weekend, I did a little digging and found that back in the day, a chemical plant up in a city two hours north of where I lived had been contracted by the federal government to produce a little Miracle Gro for the war effort in Nam. Agent Orange. And when the war came to a less decisive and more abrupt halt than many expected, there was a whole bunch of that nasty junk left over in tens of thousands of 55 gallon drums. That they buried in the middle of a desert beside a dry lake bed where only cooky old codgers and curious young men would ever think to look.
My dad's friend is still kicking around but he's got that slightly...unique edge to him. Both of his older friends have since met their respective ends to cancer. The desert is a weird place.