On Mon, 13 May 2002 01:20:33 GMT, hkhenson@cogeco.ca (Keith Henson) wrote:

> On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 13:47:16 -0700, ShyDavid
> <kill-spammers@nospam.org> wrote:

> snip

>> When I got to Baker, someone in the burrito shop
>> slugged me in the face and shoved me around a bit.
>> He had been assaulting his spouse,

> snip

> Long ago in a place not too far either physically or
> mentally from Baker [...]

LOL! "Baker isn't a place.... it's a mental illness."

> [...] I was in a bar full of cowboys and miners. This
> was a formula for fights and sure enough one broke out.
> One of the fighters went reeling across the dance floor
> and smashed into a table with 4 people sitting around
> it (two on either side) knocking the table out from
> between them.

Hate it when it happens....

> None of this would have been noteworthy, but I was looking
> right at the crash and saw all 4 of the people sitting at
> the table lift their drinks off the table about 1/4 of a
> second before the table was smashed out between them. They
> didn't spill a drop. None of the locals thought anything
> of this performance.

LOL again! Well, out there in the hot desert, liquid is precious. That must explain the behavior. The last time a fight interrupted my dinner table, I grabbed my drink AND my dinner plate; I wonder if that says more or less about me as these four blokes.

> I had to wonder how common fights were for the patrons of
> this place to be so well trained at salvaging their drinks.

You mean, "nature or nurture?" Maybe they learned it from their parents. (SMIRK!)

> Keith Henson
>
> PS Baker may have better water treatment now but the last
> time I stayed in a motel there the water they washed the
> towels in had so much salt in it that the towels were stiff
> enough to stand up.

Yes, the water is improved. The wells are filled with travertine in solution due to the limestone aquifer under most of the Mojave Basin. This is very hard to filter out, but somehow they have managed to get most of it. Laundry dried in the sun after being washed in the water will still be stiff.

> We were working at a turquoise mine about 30 miles up the
> Baker Grade and to give you an idea of how long ago it was,
> President Kennedy was killed while we were there.

Was that in Apache Canyon? There are still two guys out there at that location mining turquoise. They are two hard-rock guys named Cochise and Ed Nazelrod (the latter of which packs a .38 pistol), and the area you describe (30 miles or so) is around Apache Canyon. It took me over one hour to hike the 2.2 miles in because I do not have a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and the temperature was "very great." If I didn't think it would land you in prison, I'd give you the GPS coordinates. Oh, what the hell--- here they are:

35N26 115W57

I spent a month there one day, getting over stomach cramps from drinking the water at Hytens Wells. When I finally walked out of the area, I made it as far as Cree Camp before my bowels opened up like a rain cloud in a hurricane (so to speak). ----
"Your ignorance of my ignorance is showing." --- Chris Leithiser