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Circle Locust Ranch
You may be wondering how I came to wander through graveyards in Louisiana, or why my educational pursuits have included such macabre tendencies. Perhaps it would help to understand my early life and how I came to be working on a doctoral dissertation in Louisiana graveyards in the first place. My childhood probably wasn’t very much different than any other ordinary highly unorthodox, eccentric, wild desert rambling childhood.
My grandfather was a great influence and later supporter of my determination to become an archaeologist – this was before Indiana Jones films, although some have called me Cindianna Jones. My grandparents survived the Great Depression in Ohio, migrated to California and homesteaded a 160-acre ranch – Circle Locust Ranch – in the high desert of Johnson Valley, between Lucerne and Yucca Valleys. He had a rudimentary elementary education; he relied on access to libraries for research and applied engineering for hands-on ingenuity for modeling aircraft at Northrop. Similar to other weekenders in the desert, from the Ranch he would commute by private plane (without radio or license) to Los Angeles to work Monday through Friday – he commuted for 30 years. Sometime in the ‘60s, Life Magazine came out to do an interview him about the wind turbine prototype he had built – one of his many engineering/aviation projects – a 150-foot tower with two blades.
My entire family was in the aviation industry, and so every recession we were on the move until layoffs were called back – my father worked for Douglas, then McDonnell-Douglas, which after he retired merged to Boeing. Likewise, my mother worked for Hughes and other companies, and grandparents worked at Lockheed and various other plants. The Ranch was the only home I knew – we would visit on weekends and rarely in the heat of summers. There was no electricity but for the energy powered by the windmill and well pump generator (an old tractor motor and battery) – polka music on the radio and music instruments were our only entertainment for the two hours of lights that could be generated for the evening. On long days, after working in the alfalfa or riding the ponies – we had a pack of Shetland Ponies for which Pony Road off Old Woman Springs was named – I would peruse my grandfather’s collection of National Geographic magazines that went back to the early 1900s.
There were Indian artifacts found on his property and nearby in washes, material that was washed down from Indian encampments in the foothills where there were also petroglyphs. Prior to the 1966 Historic Preservation Act, just about everyone had mortars and metates on their patios and pottery sherds brought back in paper bags from Mesa Verde decorated California gardens. I collected arrow heads and obsidian from the washes and during family excursions to the nearby shifting Mesquite Dunes. Today, the area is mostly part of the 29 Palms Marine Base, Off-Highway Vehicle park and neglected homestead homes from the early to mid-1900s. The blades of the turbine are still visible from Old Woman’s Spring Road, Highway 247 (Google Earth 34 degrees 25’21.83”N/116 degrees 37’6.92”W), although in need of repair. The sand runway I helped clear for visitors to the Ranch is now FAA approved, the outline of the two circles – one to contain the ponies and the other circle containing the house and alfalfa are still apparent as remnants of my past. By 1976, my grandparents abandoned the homestead they built in 1956, with power poles and electricity came an undesirable element that shattered the peace and serenity of Johnson Valley. After several years of wandering and attending various Community Colleges, my grandfather supported my unorthodox childhood determination to enter a field dominated by men – archaeology. I was accepted to and began attending UC Berkeley in January 1982 – I was 25.
Next week:
Death Heads and Cherubs!