Postcards from the Funny Farm

Let me tell you a little about the place I live. It’s in an elevated ex-mining town in the County of San Bernardino, California, USA and it’s about 4-5 hours South of Las Vegas down Interstate 15. It is a tri-city region that includes Victorville, Hesperia, and Adelanto. Victorville is the most well known. It’s also about 1.5 hours to Disneyland with good access to the beach too at about 1.5 hours as well. Roy Rogers and Dale Evans used to host their museum up here off Palmdale road. Now, their place is just an abandoned shack next to the courthouse. I think they moved it to the Midwest. I live with my family in Victorville.

We have ONE main road that goes through the whole town: Bear Valley Road. You may think to yourself: “Surely there are side streets?”

NO THERE ARE NOT, and don’t call me Shirley! (Oh yeah, forgot to tell you locals here tend to get miffed when you pretend to know Bear Valley.)

Bear Valley is a nightmare traffic road on which there is no alternate route. It is truly awful.

High Desert property values have set records in a recent boom. In 2002, a 3-bedroom was selling up here for 80k. Now in ‘07 they average about 300-350k. Some people made a killing. There are also a LOT of foreclosed homes up here however making the neighborhoods less than safe and desirable in some places (especially Adelanto). Section 8 housing is a big culprit here, but that’s another post.

[quote]Adelanto might be considered a mess by planning standards, but I can’t help but love it anyway.[/quote] It is just residential houses. No stores to speak of and it’s full of 1/2 way ideas for everything from abandoned tire shops, to smoke shops. Ironically, it has an amazing post office and there is never a line so I use it. I teach in Adelanto and have found the students’ ability to succeed to be much greater than most people as a whole would anticipate. The closest way I could describe these “Adelanto” kids is with the social term “Inner City” types, but they have so many other traits that inner city kids don’t share.

As a whole, they appreciate everything you give them and when you use the right techniques of explicit direct instruction they can get grades higher than the richest kids down the hill in “Orange County” where I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth.

Hesperia is horse property zone. Not much else to say. There is some downtown area, but mostly it’s just a lot of big old lots and houses that seem to defy any code that might dare to show itself.

There’s a desert heat and a dusty wind outside today. It’s about 100 degrees. It makes me wonder how folks could have ever habitated this area before air conditioning. But There’s a railroad through here and a Victorville station that proves they did.

It’s a growing area, but not a new one. It’s like a place where people have tried and tried to make something of the place, but each time it just goes South. In a very odd way, it kind of give the place a charm I can’t describe. Maybe it’s because I feel like my life has kind of been like that. Nonetheless, out here in the desert I just “keep on going” like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner. I may make this a series including “pictures about town.” There is some amazing desert stuff up here to see. Stay tuned for that.