I have to say that “respect” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Slab City, an informal community of faded snowbirds, desert rats, creatives, burnt-out meth heads, and a few others who simply want to drop off the grid.
But there it is, emblazoned on the side of a concrete structure as you enter: “Respect Slab City.”
There’s a touch of kismet here, for me personally. At our church we have a New Year’s tradition where we pick a random card from a basket. The card is printed with a word to meditate on in the course of the coming year.
The word I picked was “respect.” It’s not a word I would have picked on my own. I think I do a pretty good job at respecting the law, respecting tradition, respecting my neighbors. But now, on a dried-up section of desert land east of the dying Salton Sea, where people live like hermit crabs in broken-down RVs, I’m asked to rethink the word “respect.”
I admit that I felt very mixed on this particular sightseeing trip. I came to ogle the weirdness of it all, but I also didn’t want to disturb people who most likely just want to be left alone.
And I was surprised to find quite a number of signs catering to tourists. “House of Dots,” “Ice Cream Floats,” “Public Library.” Granted, most of these signs are scrawled on splintered plywood, attached to crazy assemblies of fencing material that surround weird collections of campers and dead vehicles. But they suggest something of an economy, something of a civic life even here in the “last free place in America.”
If I’d been a little more comfortable in my own skin, a little less self-conscious about being such a looky-loo, I might have stopped and talked to some of the folks I saw riding a bicycle or scratching at the ground next to a creosote bush. How do you get water out here? Yes, some folks had large plastic reservoirs on their compounds, but still. What about electricity? I saw a couple of generators. One or two solar panels. It didn’t seem like enough to keep a root beer float frosty.
So in the end, I came away with more questions than answers. And more to ponder about the meaning of “respect.”
To learn more about Slab City read Jonah Gercke’s excellent write up on Spin: A Bad Thing Haunts Slab City.
