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Authors: William J. Mann
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standing ovation, except for the time he was named Teacher of the Year back in Inglewood about fifteen years earlier.
Frank was born hereâwell, not here, not in Palm Springs, but in Beaumont, a working-class town thirty miles to the west on the 10. His father had owned a small apple orchard in the 1940s, back in the day when Beaumont was called âthe land of the big red appleâ because of its orchard industry. But then, during the cold war, Lockheed had opened a rocket test site just to the south of the town, spilling toxic chemicals into local streams, which Frankâs father believed eventually destroyed his orchard. One year the trees simply failed to produce fruit; the next year they were all dead. Frankâs father had to declare bankruptcy. There were no charity fund-raisers to help Frank and his family.
So they moved to Los Angeles, where Frankâs dad got a job at a factory and saved enough money to send Frank to Cal State L.A., where he got his bachelorâs as an English teacher. When I met him, he was teaching at a high school in Inglewood. Ten years later, after getting his masterâs, he accepted his current job at the College of the Desert, because he had vowed to himself on the day his family had packed up and left their orchard in Beaumont that someday heâd return to the area. And Frank Wilson was a man who took his vows seriously.
I looked over at him, his face lit by the sun, the mountains reflected in his sunglasses. How he loved it here. When Frank was a boy, his father used to take him out of the cool orchard valley and drive along the dusty road into Palm Springs (Interstate 10 had yet to be built). Theyâd cheer on the sports car races along the airport tarmac, gravel flying every which way, and then theyâd head over to the Saddle and Sirloin for hamburgers, keeping an eye out for Frank Sinatra or Bob Hope or Gene Autry. As a boy, Frank had thought Palm Springs was the most glamorous spot on the planet. âIâd look up at those mountains,â he told me, âand in my mindâs eye, Iâd see Indians hiding behind the rocks, popping up now and then to shoot their arrows, and posses of cowboys riding in across the valley.â
My eyes followed the uneven crest of the mountain range in front of me, the subtle transition from brown to purple to gold to blue. The ridges and the canyons, the granite outcrops suddenly jutting into the sky, the serpentine trails worn down by generations of men and coyotes and bighorn sheep. In two thousand years these mountains had never changed. They still looked the same as they had when Frank had come here as a boy, omniscient and indestructible. They still offered the same awesome views once marveled over by pioneers in covered wagons and Elizabeth Taylor in a Cadillac convertible. It was the city around them that had become different. The old dusty roads and the arid valleys studded with cacti and red ocotillo had been replaced with three-lane highways and Fatburger drive-ins, marble mansions and golf courses, man-made lakes and rainbow-hued gay bars. Yet those sturdy granite sentinels enclosing the valley seemed to temper the excess, to contain the ostentation, like stone-faced colossi charged with keeping the peace.
I hadnât always shared Frankâs love of the desert. On my first trips out here, for casual weekends of sex and drugs, Iâd thought the mountains looked dead. They werenât like the hills of New England, where Iâd grown up, lush and rolling and green. Palm Springs might be fun for lazy lounging around swimming pools, or drinking martinis at Lucite bars, or for dancing shirtless at the White Party, allowing yourself to be passed among a hundred different boys in the course of an hour. But beyond that, Iâd seen little of value, just Canadian snowbirds in wide-brimmed hats and Bermuda shorts and ticky-tacky T-shirt shops along the palm treeâlined main drive.
All that
Frank was born hereâwell, not here, not in Palm Springs, but in Beaumont, a working-class town thirty miles to the west on the 10. His father had owned a small apple orchard in the 1940s, back in the day when Beaumont was called âthe land of the big red appleâ because of its orchard industry. But then, during the cold war, Lockheed had opened a rocket test site just to the south of the town, spilling toxic chemicals into local streams, which Frankâs father believed eventually destroyed his orchard. One year the trees simply failed to produce fruit; the next year they were all dead. Frankâs father had to declare bankruptcy. There were no charity fund-raisers to help Frank and his family.
So they moved to Los Angeles, where Frankâs dad got a job at a factory and saved enough money to send Frank to Cal State L.A., where he got his bachelorâs as an English teacher. When I met him, he was teaching at a high school in Inglewood. Ten years later, after getting his masterâs, he accepted his current job at the College of the Desert, because he had vowed to himself on the day his family had packed up and left their orchard in Beaumont that someday heâd return to the area. And Frank Wilson was a man who took his vows seriously.
I looked over at him, his face lit by the sun, the mountains reflected in his sunglasses. How he loved it here. When Frank was a boy, his father used to take him out of the cool orchard valley and drive along the dusty road into Palm Springs (Interstate 10 had yet to be built). Theyâd cheer on the sports car races along the airport tarmac, gravel flying every which way, and then theyâd head over to the Saddle and Sirloin for hamburgers, keeping an eye out for Frank Sinatra or Bob Hope or Gene Autry. As a boy, Frank had thought Palm Springs was the most glamorous spot on the planet. âIâd look up at those mountains,â he told me, âand in my mindâs eye, Iâd see Indians hiding behind the rocks, popping up now and then to shoot their arrows, and posses of cowboys riding in across the valley.â
My eyes followed the uneven crest of the mountain range in front of me, the subtle transition from brown to purple to gold to blue. The ridges and the canyons, the granite outcrops suddenly jutting into the sky, the serpentine trails worn down by generations of men and coyotes and bighorn sheep. In two thousand years these mountains had never changed. They still looked the same as they had when Frank had come here as a boy, omniscient and indestructible. They still offered the same awesome views once marveled over by pioneers in covered wagons and Elizabeth Taylor in a Cadillac convertible. It was the city around them that had become different. The old dusty roads and the arid valleys studded with cacti and red ocotillo had been replaced with three-lane highways and Fatburger drive-ins, marble mansions and golf courses, man-made lakes and rainbow-hued gay bars. Yet those sturdy granite sentinels enclosing the valley seemed to temper the excess, to contain the ostentation, like stone-faced colossi charged with keeping the peace.
I hadnât always shared Frankâs love of the desert. On my first trips out here, for casual weekends of sex and drugs, Iâd thought the mountains looked dead. They werenât like the hills of New England, where Iâd grown up, lush and rolling and green. Palm Springs might be fun for lazy lounging around swimming pools, or drinking martinis at Lucite bars, or for dancing shirtless at the White Party, allowing yourself to be passed among a hundred different boys in the course of an hour. But beyond that, Iâd seen little of value, just Canadian snowbirds in wide-brimmed hats and Bermuda shorts and ticky-tacky T-shirt shops along the palm treeâlined main drive.
All that
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