>Robbin, the coral you speak of is in fact fossilized coral, built by an
>ancient species of reef-building clams (really!) near Travertine Rock, if
>that rings a bell...
If the rock was thrown away it is now sitting in a landfill outside of
Spokane (in eastern Washington State) to be discovered sometime in the
distant future and used as a key to understanding the geologic development
of the area and the trading patterns of past civilizations. Talk about
misplaced data.
If I remember Salton Sea was part of a wider utopian dream of the time that
envisioned a technologically improved environment and included the Seattle
Worlds Fair and Epcot Center in Florida. My father's family was fairly
nomadic (my grandfather worked for the railroad) and they had this concept
of "California" as an ideal place. His brother moved to LA to be a movie
star and his sister moved to Las Vegas (which was basically an extension of
California at the time) and married a trumpet player at the Sands Hotel.
That slab of concrete in Slab City was his attempt to purchase a piece of
the new Eden for us and though he never made it there that ideal space was
quite real within the family. This utopian dream has come down to me as
rather dystopian and the romantic ruin of the slab city appeals to me much
more than my father's utopian "dream space".
I've been reading too much J.G. Ballard.
Robbin Murphy