Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...pulsating glow of Los Angeles fills the night sky 75 miles to the west, and the velvety oasis of Palm Springs is only 16 miles away. But Cabazon, Calif, (pop. 855) is a seamy, sun-seared desert slum. A drab procession of beatnik churches, hamburger stands, service stations and motels, Cabazon straddles the confluence of three major highways. The blast-furnace winds of the Colorado Desert roll in through San Gorgonio Pass, and on winter nights the temperature drops to subfreezing levels...
...sordid development, Cabazon got more than its share of human tumbleweed, and with it on the hot desert winds came unbridled avarice and violence. The town is stonily accustomed to all sorts of trouble. In Cabazon last month, a Four-square Gospel preacher and a gun-toting bandit-who was shot to death by Los Angeles cops the next night-fought a grim, barefisted battle for the right to buy the festering town dump. In Cabazon last fortnight, two octogenarians battled over a woman...
...waited. In 1954 came the sort of man that Tallent had been waiting for: Jerry Kosseff, a glib, messianic promoter from Hollywood. On the speaker's stand Kosseff was a Bible-quoting spellbinder. Recalls one Cabazonian: "Kosseff told us, 'Look around us. This is the Sinai Desert. All we have to do is stretch out our hands and the manna will fall from heaven.' Don't ask me why, but we believed...
...movements" become ever more "flexible and limber." Two years ago in a Harper's Magazine piece titled "The American West: Perpetual Mirage," Webb pointed out the "one overwhelming fact which 17 states have been trying to hide for the last century": "The heart of the West is a desert" both geographically and culturally...
...would all get pretty dull without the shows. To hold the customers' attention, the gaudy hotel nightclubs rely on big old names (Sinatra, Dietrich, Tucker), but they also reach out for newcomers. Last week new acts got a big play in the neon-painted desert...