Expect the Unexpected...

There are times when we may want to go out and simply stare up into the skies -- to regenerate, and marvel at the heavens. The universe is a pretty big place, but looking skyward from a city is sometimes a little disheartening. Too many city lights often block out the millions of stars staring back at us.

There's lots of action going on up there

A dark sky locale is generally called for. No distractions from artificial lights -  just out there in the peace and quiet of the night. Oh, and did I mention really dark?

Such a place is Pisgah Crater. 

 

Pisgah Crater is located in the Basin and Range Province, in the Lavic Lake volcanic field – which means, there’s a lot of ancient lava flows covering the desert floor near the crater. These flows span for many square miles, and in fact, can be easily seen from Interstate 40 or historic Route 66, at about the halfway point between the city of Needles (hometown of Spike, cousin of Snoopy), and Victorville, California, not far from where we make our home. 

Pisgah crater - viewed from the north 

Geologists believe Pisgah may have last erupted somewhere between 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, but there are disagreements about the exact date, even among the experts. Some argue that it may have erupted as little as 2,000 years ago. But, since the Amboy Crater, 54 miles to the east of Pisgah, last erupted about 18,000 years ago, it would make sense that Pisgah probably emptied its magma holdings around the same time. It’s much like how one earthquake can trigger a nearby fault causing a neighboring quake – one close volcanic eruption, can begin another volcanic eruption.

The Pisgah cone once stood at 2,638 feet, but now measures 93 feet shorter, at 2,545 feet. This reduction in height was caused in part by some natural weathering, but also by the impact of mining. It is privately owned by the Can-Cal Resources Limited, a Canadian company which mined the crater for railroad ballast for the Santa Fe Railroad. It appears that mining has not occurred for a few years from the lack of any structures or mining equipment on site.

Though it is private property, easy access proves a boon to many colleges and universities for weekend geology classes. Also, it seems the area has been used in films, music videos, commercials and much more.

The point being: when traveling, always expect the unexpected. 

Approaching the almost totally black volcanic cone one late afternoon, I noticed a number of semi-trucks and trailers parked on a large flat section on the west side of the cone. Suddenly, a helicopter buzzed above and made a daring swoop to the ground and then simply posed in mid-air. Hanging like a hummingbird looking for a feeder.

Why are these trailers on 'my' crater?

“What is going on?” I asked.

Truly, what is going on here?

“A helicopter is hovering,” Paul Bakas replied, my old friend who travels with me when my lovely spouse, Laureen, can’t make the trip. “Now, I think it’s backing up.”

The pilot was outstanding - swooping here and there - feet above the crowds

As we drove up the winding road to the flat surface of Pisgah, we knew instantly that this night was not going to be one of the dark nights, so desired for stargazing.

On the west side of the crater, dozens and dozens of people were milling around, dressed perhaps as aliens, or natives from another time. Skin colored body suits with black stripes over their arms and faces. Some wore outlandishly colored masks.

One woman we met named Lola, informed us she was an extra in a Latin rock video and her job was to walk toward the band as they were playing near the precipice of the volcano. As if the extras were being drawn to the sound like magic.

That sounded very musicesque (I made that term up). The band was there, performing on stage, but no music could be heard. Perhaps, a huge helicopter swooping here and there over the set filming, may have been the reason.

When asked the name of the band, Lola simply replied “I don’t know,” as she walked away in her body suit and painted face, towards the other extras.

Lola - the photo was posed - those actors!

Paul wandered around. He tried asking a limo driver, a food truck owner, anyone who could find, if they knew the band’s name.

“All I got was a Latin rock band,” he told me. “Weird, I asked twelve people.”

“A non-disclosure agreement for everyone?” I asked.

“I’m not a lawyer,” he responded. “But I think you just made that up.”

We watched, after setting up camp, as the actors marched down the hill toward the band and then back up the hill for another take.

Well, not only was the music blacked out, but so was the sky from the stage lighting. Not what we expected for a dark sky night looking at stars. But sitting in camping chairs and watching the action was pretty entertaining.

Always have a plan ‘B’, when plan ‘A’ doesn’t work out. No star gazing perhaps, but the next morning, hiking around the crater proved to be an almost surreal experience. Black sand beneath our boots seemed as though we were walking on another planet.

When time allows, send home a message to a loved one - that would be Laureen

Lava tubes opened up in front of us to be explored (note of caution though, these ancient tunnels where lava once flowed can be dangerous – extreme attention must be stressed).

Lava tubes, deep and long - caution is desired for falling rocks

Pisgah crater is a place to be visited – it’s even a great area to fly a kite. I did, why not?

Go fly a kite! Really, just fly a kite - it's fun.

The Real Bagdad Café

In the late nineteen eighties, Newberry Springs (a small town in the Mojave Desert in Southern California) was the scene for a meeting of the minds, between Hollywood and a German film crew. They met to discuss the filming of a rather eccentric movie, the Bagdad Café.

A must see film!

One problem though, there was no Bagdad Café in Newberry Springs.

No worries - we didn't either, at the time.

There once was a town of Bagdad, with a cafe, about fifty miles east of Newberry Springs. But when Interstate 40 made Route 66 seem like an afterthought, the town, like the desert sands, just blew away. Not enough business to maintain its lifeblood, it just stopped breathing.

There’s nothing left today to prove Bagdad once truly existed, but a beautiful tree with a plaque that reads - This tree is the last fragile remnant of the town of Bagdad. Please help us protect it by leaving it undisturbed. Thank You!

A beautiful reminder of once was - before progress came to town

Hollywood, with the German screenwriters and director, didn’t let those facts stop them. They just renamed the Sidewinder Café in Newberry Springs to, yes, wait for it – the Bagdad Café. And that is the magic of Hollywood.

We don’t need no stinking reality – we’ll just make up our own.

So, on a Sunday morning, we decided to take the short drive to Newberry Springs and check out the Bagdad Café. After the release of the film in 1987 in Europe, and in 1988 in the United States, the name of the Sidewinder Café was eventually changed to the Bagdad Café in 1995.

 A sound marketing tool, to incorporate the name of a film which used the restaurant for its focal point. The film, starring the likes of C.C.H Pounder, Jack Palance, Christine Kauffman, and German actress, Marianne Sagebrecht, won 6 foreign film awards, including Best Foreign Film at the 23rd Guldbagge Awards in 1988. In 1988, the film won an Oscar for Best Music, Original song by Bob Telson, Calling You.

Heck, even Hollywood came out with a television series, Bagdad Café in 1990, starring James Gammon, Whoopi Goldberg, Cleavon Little, and Jean Stapleton. After two seasons it went bust. A good film, not so good a series, perhaps – it happens.

Sorry, Ladies - a short but good try.

“This will be great,” I told Laureen, as we took the eastbound Newberry Springs exit from the 40 and drove onto Route 66.

“It’s an old café,” she replied.

“It’s historic. A place where two cultures, Germans and Americans met and created something special. I call it, where Hollywood and Berliwood shook hands.”

“Berliwood?”

“You know, Berlin.” I nodded. “Yeah, like Bollywood, but from a German perspective.”

“That makes sense,” Laureen mused. But, I don’t think she bought my conjecture on the topic.

We pulled in front of the red painted building with brown wood shingles on the roof. Laureen was right, it was old and bit worse for wear.

“Look at that,” I said, while pointing to a large black and white tour bus. There in front of us were dozens of people taking selfies by the entrance to the Bagdad Café and others just walking around looking this iconic building up and down.

“French,” I announced excitedly. “They’re French tourists.”

Laureen nodded in agreement. “Did you get that from the French they are all speaking?”

“Dead giveaway,” I returned.

The restaurant is open daily from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., and according to the owner, Andrea Pruett (she goes by André), “We get so many tourists, and it is really crowded sometimes. You know, we are the most visited café in the world.”

I wasn’t sure that was accurate, but in deference to the owner, I remained mute on the topic. Though, this café must be the most visited in the area.

Entering through the single door of the café, we were taken aback by the hundreds, if not thousands of flags hanging from the ceiling. It seemed every country on earth was represented inside the Bagdad Café.

Can you count the flags - we couldn't

“See what I mean?” André stated. “Most tourists are French; they loved the movie. But there are flags from Germany, Spain, and pretty much everywhere.”

I asked André, how many tourist buses stop by. “Oh, I don’t know – probably five or six per week. Most of the time, they just stop, take photographs and leave. They don’t spend a lot of money here. But we do have good food.”

André has owned the small local tourist attraction for 23 years, moving from Canoga Park to Newberry Springs with her husband. “It was quite a culture shock,” stated the petite woman. “The people called me, Hollywood, because I came from the Los Angeles area. My husband told me to enjoy the quite of Newberry Springs where I could just write. He’d run the restaurant, and my job was simply to come in once per day to collect the money.”

Seemed reasonable. The problem was, according to André, “There never was much to collect each day. It’s gotten better though, with the tourists – still wish they’d spend more.”

We had lunch and visited with André, between her greeting the numerous tourists. She was correct on both counts – the food was tasty and there were a lot of people stopping by the historic site.

Laureen, waiting for our lunch at the Bagdad Cafe'

This place, this Bagdad Café, is a must to see for any film buff. Not just the history of the building, but the impact it made in the cinema world joining the realms of cult classics. A place most have never hear of, but which made it into the stratosphere of filmology (yes, it is real – the study of film making – taken from, filmologie – and of course, it’s French!). So take a short byway off the road most traveled and find yourself something of international intrigue, on Route 66.

In Search of Ernest Hemingway

One of John's most respected writers is Ernest Hemingway. The iconic writer led a larger than life existence. This sometimes raucous man seemingly had it all: fame and fortune. Hemingway experienced numerous lifetimes all wrapped up in one.

'Papa' Hemingway's framed photograph in his Key West home.

'Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.' Ernest Hemingway

The quotation above embodies the life of this writer - all lives end in death, but sometimes the way a person dies, does make them different from others. Hemingway proved that by choosing the manner of death, committing suicide on July 2nd, 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho.

Traveling the Florida Keys, allowed John and Laureen, to truly slow down and discover many things they had no idea existed. It's a laid back sort of lifestyle - the Keys. Beaches everywhere, bars and restaurants located alongside Highway 1, and the residents very friendly.

So, how does this driving end up with a blog on Ernest Hemingway? Well, it isn't really about him, but the influence he had in Key West, during the nine years he lived there full-time. Attention-getting was not something Hemingway had to work at, but attention was certainly something he got. As one of the world's best known writers, both short stories and novels, wherever he went, news soon followed.

As we drove through the city/key of Islamorada, we noticed a beautifully appointed Bass Pro Shop, located on the Overseas Highway (a fancy title for the 113 mile road, also known as Highway 1). Being fans of the chain (strange since neither of us have any interest in fishing), we stopped and ventured inside to have a look-see.

There, in the center of this huge outdoor sports supply mecca, stood a thirty-eight foot trawler with the name Pilar boldly emblazoned on it's hull. John instantly got goosebumps. It couldn't be...could it?

Looks like the Pilar!

Was this the Pilar, that Hemingway had built for his time in Key West? Turns out it wasn't, but a cleverly created duplicate (sister-ship), built at the same place and same boatyard as the true Pilar -  now located in a museum in Cuba. This boat is almost identical to the one Hemingway had owned - down to the same exact model typewriter the writer had used for most of his prose in the southern most city in the United States.

John at the keys of Hemingway's typewriter? In the Keys.

Not disappointed at all that this wasn't the exact boat, no, in fact, it only made John that more fired up to get to Key West and tour the house and haunts that Hemingway lived and visited.

Well, Laureen wasn't in that much of a hurry -
relax a bit on the veranda and then hit the road. Island Time.

Key West, is to Florida what New Orleans is to Louisiana, an eclectic group of stores, bars, restaurants, residences and residents. As mentioned in the previous blog, In Search of Jimmy Buffet, Key West is a must-see destination. It is crazy fun, with so much to see in the narrow streets bordered by the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

Hemingway thought so too when he moved with his wife, Pauline, and their newborn son, Patrick. It was here in Key West that the author found his true success in writing, knocking out nearly 70% of all his combined works. A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon, and Green Hills of Africa to name just a few of the great works he tapped out during his Key West Days. In fact, Hemingway was probably, according to research, one of the first American novelists to have his work appear on the silver screen. At least eleven of his novels and short stories were turned into block bluster films.

His own life was an ongoing film. Married four times, wounded in World War I as an ambulance driver, he had traveled the world and even lived in Paris with the likes of James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and the Fitzgeralds. He embarked on lengthy deep sea fishing and explorations of the Caribbean aboard the Pilar, went on Safari into Africa, wrote about bull runs in Spain. He was a reporter during the Spanish Civil War, and during World War II, earned the Bronze Star for his  journalistic work. Rumors and myths are still alive today, that Hemingway informally led a small platoon of soldiers at the retaking of Paris from the Nazis. He wasn't supposed to do that, being simply a journalist, but that couldn't stop Papa Hemingway. Adventure was in his blood - a few German soldiers were not likely to scare this man.

He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952 and the Noble Prize in 1954. He did it all.

The house which the Hemingway family called home, is located at 907 Whitehead Street, a quaint and beautifully quiet section of Key West, just blocks from the sea which the writer loved so much. The white and black, two story abode rests comfortably on nearly an acre of land - the largest privately owned residential property on the island.

John, standing at the entrance to the Hemingway house

The house is stately, but not overly flashy. A place where the writer and his family would be comfortable and afford Hemingway a hidden oasis to write. His fame, and his drinking in town, especially at Sloppy Joe's, caused Hemingway to choose to have a tall wall built around the home. People would often just walk up to the front door to see Hemingway at all hours of the day or night. He needed his privacy.

How Hemingway looked while living in Key West

Office where Hemingway wrote

One truly interesting item about the house is the number of cats roaming freely. You'd think Hemingway, being muy macho and all that, would have a love for large beastly dogs. Nope. He liked cats - and they are everywhere about the home. He had been given a six toed feline when they first moved to Key West from a ship's captain. This first polydactyl (six-toed) feline was named Snowball - and all of Snowball's descendants, nearly 50 of them, still reside around the property.  There's even a kitty cemetery on the grounds.

Cats own the house and the master bed

When Hemingway had returned home from covering the Spanish Civil War, he found that Pauline had torn down his beloved rear yard boxing ring. In its place was the largest privately owned pool south of Miami.

It seemed, Pauline had learned that her husband had taken up with her friend, Martha Gellhorn during the Spanish Civil War, where Martha was also working as a journalist. So, as payback, Pauline had Ernest's boxing ring torn down and a pool put in.

The largest pool in the Florida Keys - of course

Not to be outdone, Hemingway got drunk at Sloppy Joe's, which was being remodeled and dragged a urinal all the way home in the dead of night. When Pauline saw it in the back yard, she asked what it was. He told her, "You have your pool, and now I have my own."

The urinal pool - laying sideways

The couple didn't last long after that, which was truly the way Hemingway's marriages usually went. Get married and get divorced. Interesting, he tended to marry the women who were introduced to him by his current wife at the time.

His first spouse, Hadley introduced Pauline to Ernest - soon there was an affair and a divorce. Pauline, his second spouse, introduced Martha to Ernest, soon there was an affair and a divorce. Martha, his third spouse, introduced Mary to Ernest, soon there was an affair but this time no divorce. Mary made sure not to introduce any of her female friends to Ernest - safer that way.

"I don't mind Ernest falling in love," Pauline once wrote, "but why does he always have to marry the girl when he does?"

So, the search for Ernest Hemingway in Key West was complete. We learned a lot more about the author than what was available simply in material research. We walked where he walked. We had a drink or two at his favorite watering hole, and learned why he had moved to Key West in the first place.

Key West is an Ernest Hemingway mecca for millions of his fans. His influence can be seen and felt throughout the city. There's even an annual Hemingway Days each July - many white-bearded gentlemen (not Santa) arrive, trying to look like the writer himself.

He  moved from Key West to Cuba in 1939, when he married Martha. He'd spent only nine years in the keys, but left an indelible mark nearly a hundred years later.

Though Ernest Hemingway was larger than life, in many ways, he was still simply a man. At the end, he was suffering from severe depression, the inability to write, and overall tiredness from an excess of adventures. Severely wounded during World War I, continual pain from two plane crashes, liver issues (hmmm, wonder why), weight issues, and other maladies collected, over a lifetime of abuse - both mentally and physically.

He lived life on his own terms, and on that summer morning in Ketchum, Idaho - he decided to go out on his own terms, as well.

As a tour guide stated at the Hemingway house - "We can't judge him for committing suicide. It was his choice, as was his entire life. He decided how and when the whole adventure would be over."

We may not agree - but then again, it's okay to agree to disagree.

For further information:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway

https://www.hemingwayhome.com/

https://fla-keys.com/hemingway-days/