SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!!
(some graphic content: adult supervision advised)
From the intro:
The Coming of The Remittance Men—1889
In the rugged farmlands of the Southern San Joaquin Valley,
the name Rosedale arises as a suitable town name to attract
British colonizers. There are no roses in this area a few miles
west of Bakersfield. It is a name meant only to glorify the
supposed culture of a British Eden.
In response to colorful advertising efforts of the Kern County
Land Company, England sends a colony of noble scions. It was
to be a utopian paradise of water-filled, lush landscapes tended
by fruit growers and jam-makers, with hopes of peaches, plums,
grapes, apricots and jams and jellies aplenty.
Among the colonizers are a group of young noble-standing men
harboring alternate lifestyles. They are the first Lords of
the Southern Valley. Paid to leave England and stay away for
fear of disgracing their own family names, they become known
locally as ‘The Remittance Men’. They are the flamboyant,
the scoundrels, the queers, the secret lovers of Rosedale and
Bakersfield society. They have queer meetings, queer minstrel
shows at jam factories where they sing ‘Little Tin Geegee’,
and they entertain in extravagant fashion at the old Southern
Hotel. They have queer birthday parties, and they drink and
drink champagne and even pour their bubbly drinks down horses’
throats.
One young man arrives in Rosedale at age 17. He is frail and
hopeless, but works as a vine planter, an irrigation-ditch digger,
a cowpuncher and a California homesteader. He becomes an intellectual,
a writer. He later wins the Nobel Peace Prize. He becomes a
prominent white man of culture and wit, but never marries.
Rosedale has a distaste for farming. The jam factories close.
There are floods and drought. The colony fails as the minstrels
continue to sing. It was to be a Garden of Eden…
The White Orchid Society—1930s-1960s
Though the Remittance Men have faded away, the Lords of the
Southern Valley have not. An area rich in agriculture and oil,
Bakersfield has also become the ivy covered secret of Hollywood’s
backyard. The flamboyant come to film dozens of movies in the
nearby deserts and river valleys; they also come to hide, and
to live in decadence along with some of the wealthy and prominent
of California’s Southern heartland. In this society some
have forged a secret, and in doing so, blossom in forbidden
lusts and longings for young men. Now, instead of the young
men being Lords by title, the young become the pawns of the
White Orchids: a group of local businessmen, academics, journalists,
and flamboyant Hollywoodsters, who in their lordly dance for
decadence, terrorize the hearts of young boys.
The Lords of the Southern Valley—1977
The White Orchids of the Depression and War Years have gone.
But new Lords have arisen…
From Chapter 14:
“Devastation! Ha ha! I knew it. I knew something was
going to happen. I felt it in my blood!” Sundale laughed
as Joseph Stevens stood nearby, stone faced. Sundale’s
balding head, wide-set eyes and bushy eyebrows made him appear
comical as his body shook with strange laughter. Stevens thought
he looked a bit bucktoothed as well as he laughed and squint
his eyes in euphoric glee at the storm’s devastating power.
“Read it to me again, Stevens. You know, what we sent
out this morning.”
Stevens looked at Sundale with a grimace. He spoke slow, but
clearly, as if reading a children’s story: “Gale-force
winds whip Southern Valley. Duster closes schools, highways,
and businesses.”
“You know. We, as a newspaper have to choose our words
carefully. This is the biggest story in the history of this
paper. My great grandfather hadn’t published anything
like this except for the few times the city turned to cinders.
The opening line is most tragic, don’t you think?”
He took a paper from his desk and put a pair of reading glasses
down low over his nose. “Mighty winds—with gale-force
gusts to seventy miles per hour…” he paused and
looked over to Stevens who continued to nod his head like a
broken-necked puppet. “It’s hard to tell how fast
those winds have been going. All the d*** wind gauges in the
valley are shattered. And that means the winds are much faster.
But today we can only print what is credible, right?”
He didn’t wait for Steven’s response. He wiped his
nose. “D*** dust. I can’t breath.”
“Me either, sir,” Stevens said with a snort.
Sundale continued with his reading, “…wind whipped
the Southern Valley last night and today, leaving a trail of
destruction only five days before the yuletide.” He emphasized
the three words, “trail of destruction” as if those
words were specific as to the secret meaning of the universe.
“I love it,” he said. Every ******* idiot in the
valley is going to pick up this paper. I’m going to make
a fortune. I hope this storm lasts until Santa tries to shove
his fat a** down my chimney. I’ll pinch his fat a**,”
he laughed.
“It was a nice touch sir on page two to say the dust was
like an A-bomb cloud.”
“You like that, huh?”
“I certainly do. It works on fears, fuels them really…”
“Exactly,” Sundale interrupted. “While also
making the people feel like, ‘My god, the Tule Reader
knows our fears like an intimate member of our family.’
Ha! The quotes are fabulous—‘it’s like an
A-bomb cloud’ the idiots are saying! It’s times
like these you have to run church ads as near page one as you
can get. Talk those g***** churches into it. All you gotta do
is tell them that now is the time that people need you the most.
Suckers for zealous outreaches. They’re as bad as me come
to think of it.”
“What about other devastating news?”
“Now’s the time to run it. Give the people their
pity party. Make them feel like the whole world is falling apart.
Run the bit on the earthquake in Iran. Doesn’t matter
that it’s yesterday’s AP news. Now is the time to
make people feel at home with their apocalyptic beliefs. That’s
the great thing about there being a church on every corner here.
They’re paranoid delusions. They’ll think God’s
judged them for sure.”
“It’s more than that though, isn’t it, sir?”
“Well of course. I’ve judged them, Stevens. I’ve
judged this entire Southern Valley. You’re catching on.”
Stevens gave a smile as if he fully understood.
“Do you know what we’re going to run tomorrow? Don’t
even bother to answer. Let me tell you. Tomorrow we’re
going to take this devastation to a new level. We’re going
to print pictures of dust piled in banks like snowdrifts. Cars
stuck. People stuck. Power lost. People lost and desolate. People
dead! Bodies covered in dust. School children devastated. Economy
near ruin. We’re going to make this ******* Southern Valley
look like the Wasteland of all wastelands. We’ll take
pictures of what looks like an atomic valley, corroded and choked
with dust, exploded into mud and guts from the killer storm’s
explosive power. The people of the valley will appear isolated,
alone, infinitesimal, and hopeless. It’s the mystery of
our mysterious end. And it will sell papers. By god, it will
sell papers.”
“Yessir.”
“You know, Stevens, there are these great mysterious explosions
in the East, just off the North American coastline. Let’s
run those too. We’ll reinforce the false idea that the
world is about to end, even though it isn’t. It’s
great how we can shape mass thought, isn’t it? We’ll
shape consciousness for years to come. Hell, for good measure
you can throw in something about the Punic Wars. Those were
rather devastating weren’t they? People will think, ‘Dear
God, history does repeat itself. The plague has come to Bakersfield!’
Ha ha!”
“I have an idea, sir.”
“Oh?”
“We could throw some salt on the wound.”
“Oh we could? How?”
“I mean, since the people here are so apocalyptic and
Christian-minded. Why not throw in something that will devastate
them.”
“Like?”
“Something subtle as in the Punic Wars, yet hurtful, like
the fact that their hero Christopher Columbus who sailed the
ocean blue was a beer drinker.”
“I love it.”
“I just read a study on it.”
“Sounds marvelously deceitful. It will crush their spirits.
Just when you think all is lost—so goes Christian history—for
the good of the people of course.”
“For the good of the people,” Stevens echoed.
Sundale threw him a grin as he left the newsroom. “This
business is too exciting. I have got to go into the eye of this
beast.”
Already a host of reporters from the local media had gone out
into the storm. The rust colored sky glowed above channel 38’s
6 o’clock news van as it made its way down Chester Avenue.
It was the only TV news station still operating with an undamaged
transmitter. Even the local cable network had been knocked out
of commission by the high winds. The driver smelled of a dusty
farmland summer and his clothes were coated in a pale brown
film. He looked up, amazed at the plum-colored sun, then nearly
crashed into an old Studebaker that had just swerved as the
wooden clown head of Woody’s Toyland ripped from its downtown
moorings and smashed headlong onto the street—its menacing
smile a shocking grin that rolled end over end. The head smashed
and tore apart as the wind tossed it in front of the careening
news van. Puffs of dust went up from the driver’s sleeves
like smoke as he gripped the wheel. Tumbleweed flew by next.
From Arvin to Bakersfield never before had the city been under
such a storm of barbs and dust. Tumbleweed piled beneath freeway
underpasses; it crowded fences and blocked entire streets. Cars
and trucks could be seen driving down any road with round weeds
dragging along the streets beneath them. Mountainous piles of
dust dunes were covered in weeds that rolled and tumbled and
got stuck in huge clutters. One crashed into the side of the
van and shattered into a confetti storm of barbs as a dozen
others sailed past and smashed into store windows.
Sundale sent reporters to every area of the Southern Valley.
Straight into the mighty Arvin winds, news crews arrived to
witness the devastation firsthand. As the wind tore through
the valley they snapped pictures and trailed stories that in
their collective minds would make them heroes of the people,
champions of the truth, that little to their knowledge were
mere pieces of a large puzzle that Sundale manipulated. He snapped
the pieces together as he wove the Southern Valley consciousness
to his machinations. In Bakersfield the reporters braved the
storm. They went to the schools. They marveled at the hospitals
and businesses. They dodged downed power lines and shot pictures
of felled trees in the hundreds; and they all stood and snapped
pictures, or in their best schoolboy and girl journalistic jingo,
attempted to describe the fate of the atomic-like dust storm
that seized their valley.
“The collective consciousness,” Sundale boomed,
“is no more than a reflection of the collective news.”
Sundale stood in a public restroom that swirled with dust and
debris fallen from palms, pines, and oak from the large park
that stood next to the mighty Kern River. “Dammit if this
storm isn’t a great diversion,” he marveled...
