On the Fringes of the Slabs

On the northern fringe, Container Charlie has made his home and his mark. The container he lives in, complete with satellite dish, and the ground he has claimed, hint of his rather broad creative endeavors.


This is Moth, Charlie's friend, watchman and caretaker of the museum Charlie is building. His intent is to transform the junk all around him into art works.


Here are two completed projects, a van and a car, that powerfully express something.


The detail on the vehicles is just amazing.


Charlie was at work when we visited. Moth explained that he works one week and can then "coast" for a month. How many Americans could do that?


The Slabs chapter of Loners on Wheels occupies the southern fringe. They are a nationwide organization for RVing singles.

A hundred or so members cluster here in the winter, enjoying the company of one another and the fairly extensive facilities they have built, such as a kitchen, library, game room, dance floor, and a shelter. They safeguard their holdings in the summer by hiring a "slab sitter."


On the eastern fringe runs the beautiful Coachella Canal, lifeline for man, beast and crops. This is snowmelt from the Colorado mountains, clean, cool, revered almost to the point of worship, squabbled over, and meticulously subdivided by farmers all along its 123-mile course from the All-American Canal near Yuma through the Coachella Valley.


There's a big story here. Can you see it? Side by side, the old and the new concrete-lined canal, completed last year. Too much water was lost to seepage in the old canal.


We say goodbye to the Slabs for now. As Thoreau said, we leave for as good a reason as we came: We have many more lives to lead and cannot spare any more time for this one.