Salon Wanderlust | Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
Visiting Australia? Share your stories and advice on going down under in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
Letter from Pusan: The party's over
By Rolf Potts
The heady rise and fall of expat decadence in South Korea
(09/24/98)
Swimsuits -- and more!
By Beverly Gage
Past and present collide at Atlantic City's annual Miss America extravaganza
(09/23/98)
The cheapest air ticket around
By Dawn MacKeen
Couriers fly halfway around the world at half (or less) the normal price
(09/22/98)
Paris' cafe renaissance
By David Downie
There's a lively new scene in the City of Caffeine
(09/21/98)
The heart of a tourist hustler
By Lisa Dreier
Lonely in India, she befriended the local playboy. Who could know what would happen next?
(09/18/98)

Browse the
Wanderlust Passages archives

"L I V E__F A S T,__D I E__Y O U N G__A N D
L E A V E__A__B E A U T I F U L__C O R P S E"
Searching for the site of James Dean's fatal car crash leads to Nowhere.
Book cover

[ E X C E R P T ]

"DRIVING TO DETROIT"
BY LESLEY HAZLETON
FREE PRESS
306 PAGES

BY LESLEY HAZLETON | It's a good thing I was looking for Cholame, or I'd never have realized it was there. On my map, it looked to be about halfway between Yosemite and Los Angeles, which is to say it was in the middle of nowhere. This was not the California of international repute -- neither the glories of the Sierras nor the glitz of the coast -- but the tough, dry, hilly grazing land that leads down to Grapes of Wrath and Cesar Chavez country, where migrants work bent in the fields of the San Joaquin valley until sunset, their rusted pickups parked haphazardly along the road side.
I spent the morning entirely on four-digit roads, the kind of roads that are unnumbered on state maps, their lines printed in a gray so pale it looks like it might fade into the paper at any moment. Narrow strips of asphalt, barely ten feet wide, they wind from one tiny township to the next, ten or twenty miles away.
The creekbeds were dry except for an occasional shallow greenish scum, and the grass on the dry rolling hills had withered to deep gold. The whole landscape was waiting for the first rains. Even the black cattle huddled under the occasional stand of scrub oak seemed to be waiting for moisture.
I kept going south, guided by the sun rather than my map. The radio picked up one Latin music station after another, the music absurdly happy, full of a lusher, more vibrant life. By the time I emerged onto Route 46, about twenty-five miles east of Paso Robles, it was early afternoon.
"Cholame, population 65," said a sign.
Wherever those sixty-five people were, they were very well hidden. There was no small cluster of buildings, no store, just the occasional semi taking the sole east-west route through this part of California that could accommodate heavy trucks. The only building I could see was the Jack Ranch Cafe, whose rundown wooden frame shivered and trembled in the slipstreams of the trucks, as though it might collapse in on itself at any moment.
Maybe I'd been given a bum steer. This didn't seem to be the place I wanted. But if the cafe didn't look promising, it did at least offer the prospect of a hamburger. I'd been hungry ever since Coalinga, and if you're hungry enough, even the worst hamburger can taste pretty good.
Two semis were parked in the shade of a large tree off to the side of the cafe. I drew up alongside, searching for a bit of shade left over for the Expedition. Only when I nosed around behind the big trucks did I see that there was a kind of sculpture built around the trunk of the tree: two curved, overlapping four-foot-high walls of what looked like brushed aluminum, flecked with shreds of sunlight coming through the branches. And at the foot of the silvery walls, a plaque.
I'd found the right place after all.
The plaque was titled "Tribute to a Young Man." In more modest versions, I'd seen hundreds like it all over the United States, homespun roadside memorials to young lives cut violently short. A makeshift white cross, a browned and dried bunch of flowers, a hand-lettered sign: pathetic but touching attempts to rescue sons and daughters from the anonymity of traffic casualty statistics. But this memorial was neither modest nor homespun. In this place, it was jarringly professional.
"His name was James Byron Dean," the inscription began. I'd never known his middle name was Byron. How perfect. "He died just before sundown on September 30, 1955, when his Porsche collided with another car at a fork in the road not nine hundred yards east of this tree, long known as the Tree of Heaven. He was twenty-four years old."
The implied idea of James Dean in heaven struck me as thoroughly odd, since he lived his life as though he had no intention of going any where but hell. This plaque might suit a saint. It was tailored to the romantic idea of youth as innocence, and there was something in its use of the tree that reminded me of the John Keats poem about the basil pot, the one where the beautiful Isabella's lover is murdered by her brothers. In a weird combination of the gruesome and the romantic, Isabella finds the body, cuts off the head, takes it home, and puts it in a gardening pot. Then she plants basil over it, and waters the basil with her tears. The basil flowers profusely. Love lives on in fragrant foliage.
Jimmy Dean would have sneered at the idea.
A smaller plaque declared that both plaques and sculpture had been erected in 1977 by a Japanese fan called Seita Ohnishi. He had evidently given the tree a suitably romantic name while he was about it. And fudged a detail or two. There was no mention of how fast Dean had been going. Nor of the name painted on his car: "Little Bastard." Too earthy for a legend, perhaps. And though it's true that Dean crashed at 5:59 p.m. on that day, he didn't die on the spot; he suffered severe internal injuries, and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital in Paso Robles.
The Spot. That was where I wanted to be. That was why I'd come here. To stand on The Spot where Jimmy Dean died. Forget ambulances and fussy details of time. Despite what I knew, it was fixed in my mind that James Dean died here, in Cholame. Sort of.
N E X T+P A G E | souvenirs and straight talk


	T A B L E_T A L K Visiting Australia? Share your stories and advice on going down under in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Letter from Pusan: The party's over By Rolf Potts The heady rise and fall of expat decadence in South Korea (09/24/98) Swimsuits -- and more! By Beverly Gage Past and present collide at Atlantic City's annual Miss America extravaganza (09/23/98) The cheapest air ticket around By Dawn MacKeen Couriers fly halfway around the world at half (or less) the normal price (09/22/98) Paris' cafe renaissance By David Downie There's a lively new scene in the City of Caffeine (09/21/98) The heart of a tourist hustler By Lisa Dreier Lonely in India, she befriended the local playboy. Who could know what would happen next? (09/18/98) Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives		"L I V E__F A S T,__D I E__Y O U N G__A N D L E A V E__A__B E A U T I F U L__C O R P S E" Searching for the site of James Dean's fatal car crash leads to Nowhere. [ E X C E R P T ] "DRIVING TO DETROIT" BY LESLEY HAZLETON FREE PRESS 306 PAGES BY LESLEY HAZLETON \| It's a good thing I was looking for Cholame, or I'd never have realized it was there. On my map, it looked to be about halfway between Yosemite and Los Angeles, which is to say it was in the middle of nowhere. This was not the California of international repute -- neither the glories of the Sierras nor the glitz of the coast -- but the tough, dry, hilly grazing land that leads down to Grapes of Wrath and Cesar Chavez country, where migrants work bent in the fields of the San Joaquin valley until sunset, their rusted pickups parked haphazardly along the road side. I spent the morning entirely on four-digit roads, the kind of roads that are unnumbered on state maps, their lines printed in a gray so pale it looks like it might fade into the paper at any moment. Narrow strips of asphalt, barely ten feet wide, they wind from one tiny township to the next, ten or twenty miles away. The creekbeds were dry except for an occasional shallow greenish scum, and the grass on the dry rolling hills had withered to deep gold. The whole landscape was waiting for the first rains. Even the black cattle huddled under the occasional stand of scrub oak seemed to be waiting for moisture. I kept going south, guided by the sun rather than my map. The radio picked up one Latin music station after another, the music absurdly happy, full of a lusher, more vibrant life. By the time I emerged onto Route 46, about twenty-five miles east of Paso Robles, it was early afternoon. "Cholame, population 65," said a sign. Wherever those sixty-five people were, they were very well hidden. There was no small cluster of buildings, no store, just the occasional semi taking the sole east-west route through this part of California that could accommodate heavy trucks. The only building I could see was the Jack Ranch Cafe, whose rundown wooden frame shivered and trembled in the slipstreams of the trucks, as though it might collapse in on itself at any moment. Maybe I'd been given a bum steer. This didn't seem to be the place I wanted. But if the cafe didn't look promising, it did at least offer the prospect of a hamburger. I'd been hungry ever since Coalinga, and if you're hungry enough, even the worst hamburger can taste pretty good. Two semis were parked in the shade of a large tree off to the side of the cafe. I drew up alongside, searching for a bit of shade left over for the Expedition. Only when I nosed around behind the big trucks did I see that there was a kind of sculpture built around the trunk of the tree: two curved, overlapping four-foot-high walls of what looked like brushed aluminum, flecked with shreds of sunlight coming through the branches. And at the foot of the silvery walls, a plaque. I'd found the right place after all. The plaque was titled "Tribute to a Young Man." In more modest versions, I'd seen hundreds like it all over the United States, homespun roadside memorials to young lives cut violently short. A makeshift white cross, a browned and dried bunch of flowers, a hand-lettered sign: pathetic but touching attempts to rescue sons and daughters from the anonymity of traffic casualty statistics. But this memorial was neither modest nor homespun. In this place, it was jarringly professional. "His name was James Byron Dean," the inscription began. I'd never known his middle name was Byron. How perfect. "He died just before sundown on September 30, 1955, when his Porsche collided with another car at a fork in the road not nine hundred yards east of this tree, long known as the Tree of Heaven. He was twenty-four years old." The implied idea of James Dean in heaven struck me as thoroughly odd, since he lived his life as though he had no intention of going any where but hell. This plaque might suit a saint. It was tailored to the romantic idea of youth as innocence, and there was something in its use of the tree that reminded me of the John Keats poem about the basil pot, the one where the beautiful Isabella's lover is murdered by her brothers. In a weird combination of the gruesome and the romantic, Isabella finds the body, cuts off the head, takes it home, and puts it in a gardening pot. Then she plants basil over it, and waters the basil with her tears. The basil flowers profusely. Love lives on in fragrant foliage. Jimmy Dean would have sneered at the idea. A smaller plaque declared that both plaques and sculpture had been erected in 1977 by a Japanese fan called Seita Ohnishi. He had evidently given the tree a suitably romantic name while he was about it. And fudged a detail or two. There was no mention of how fast Dean had been going. Nor of the name painted on his car: "Little Bastard." Too earthy for a legend, perhaps. And though it's true that Dean crashed at 5:59 p.m. on that day, he didn't die on the spot; he suffered severe internal injuries, and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital in Paso Robles. The Spot. That was where I wanted to be. That was why I'd come here. To stand on The Spot where Jimmy Dean died. Forget ambulances and fussy details of time. Despite what I knew, it was fixed in my mind that James Dean died here, in Cholame. Sort of. N E X T+P A G E \| souvenirs and straight talk