Cadillac Ranch and the Drive to Roswell, New Mexico!

Blogger's note: Sorry I didn't write for a few days (besides Mom editing the "Drive to Amarillo, Texas"), our Internet connection just completely shut down on us, plus I was playing with all the kids at the R.V. Park! (KIDS AGAIN! YAY!) But, the Internet should be good now, hopefully.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY COUSIN MAY! YOU ARE SO SPUNKY AND FUNNY AND NICE, AND SHINE LIKE THE SUN IN THE MONTH OF MAY!

In the 60's, a millionaire of Texas named Stanley Marsh 3 (literally, he was called 3 because he thought III was too proper and kingly) acquired some land and asked, or encouraged, the artist group Ant Farm (no not the popular Disney Channel show) to help him out with this work of art. Buying ten Cadillacs ranging from the late 40's to the early 60's editions, they used cranes and the like to put them down into the ground. Okay, so people from around the world graffitied the place, taking away their banana yellow, gold, sky blue, and turquoise colors, which I suppose is a bad thing. Not for Marsh though, he still says, "It's looks better every year" even though vandals took away the radios, stereos, chrome, and some of the doors. They welded the wheels to stay unto the axles though, so no more theft really happens. They moved it in 1997 to another location, putting all the trash and stuff and burying it around. Marsh says that people who come can do what ever they want there, and can put paint on it and the like, which will no doubt be painted over by another person. Long story short, in 2002 they painted them black in recognition of a founding member of the Ant Farm group dying. Funny story, I guess: Marsh captured a 15 year old for taking a part of one of his signs, another folky landmark he produced the money for, and is, opposite of his stand on the Cadillacs, concerned if you touch his signs or do anything to him. Eccentric guy.

Millionaire

Alive

Red faced (seriously, you can look on Google on images and type his name in)

Seriously concerned about his precious signs

Heavy (what can I say I had no other adjective!)

Our experience at Amarillo would be worth the visit. Dad said we needed to go very early, because it was going to both get windier and rain later, and to beat the crowd and have our own special time, you know, for sentimental reasons, I suppose. Putting on two shirts, a tee and a long sleeve, I then put on a blue jacket, and then the black leather jacket I had gotten the day after Christmas. Warm clothes. I then had jeans on and tied shoes, also a black ski hat. I took my video camera over a bag that my mom gave me, because I had lost it at Christmas time. Dad had a cap and a lot of clothes on also, and Rebecca had her big puffy pink jacket and a colorful ski hat. Mom had a ski hat two, with her big green jacket. Okay, so all ready together, I took that Smells Like Dog book at the last minute, as we got out of the R.V. I needed to read the Tramp book, I mean I hadn't even arrived at the tenth chapter of it yet and now I was starting another one? The problem with that book was that it was very boring at parts and the paragraphs were very large and lengthy, I mean it was funny, but it kind of lost you. I read about the young fencers in the different Corps at the universities of Germany with some interest, but that was lost later when he described a mountain like describing the whole world, taking the longest time. You can't even imagine...

This Smells like Dogs book was funny and really good descriptions, and I was very and I was very crazed that Rebecca was reading this, even though it was about adventurers and a boy and a dog, but I guess sometimes she is a tom boy. I didn't want to admit that to Rebecca though, because I sometimes, and I admit, that I read one of her books, because of her age, you know. So for the time I read it until much later I did not really admit that I liked the book. But anyway, the day still unfolding itself, we came up to a brown field of dirt, with rows and rows of humps, and a cylinder metal gate, all filled with different colors and an amateur sign on the top saying: "Ron Paul 4 President." There was a lot of Ron Paul for President signs that we had seen in Texas and then would later see in different parts of the Southwest. I guess that makes sense, because he is from Texas and the Southwest. He must of done a lot of things for the benefit of the state of Texas. Also was a white sign on a post with a little sketch of the Cadillacs, goodly done, and it said that Graffiting was....LEGAL!

The wind swayed as it does on a boat, as Dad got out of the back of the car some spray colored cans Seymore, pronounced SEEMORE. They were in a brown bag. I hated all this wind, it felt like Jack Frost and his whole family at a reunion taking a picture, their backs to me. BRRRRR.... Dad had parked, our side facing the Ranch, as I'll call it from now on. Now we closed the door, as I turned on the video camera, and Dad locked the car. We walked through a swinging door that was hard to open, as the wind faced it. We went right through a small gate on two sides, like an outdoor corridor. I looked at the Cadillacs, all the rainbow colors on there, everywhere from red to blue to yellow to green to black to white to beige to brown to...okay hold on I'm out of breath. So many colors, all around. We walked more on through the big field, barely able to have our hats on, tucking them so tight we could barely see. Mom brought up the rear, because she had gotten some of the cameras. I was next in line. Dad and Rebecca were the first. I caught up with them, talking to the camera and showing the Cadillacs that slowly but surely took up all of our vision. The only bad part of this was... the freezing cold.

We came up to the ten Cadillacs, with all the doors gone and the wheels not looking natural, detached. There were signs, symbols, stripes, and all different colors. We went around and through them, and the ground was almost totally littered with spray cans, bags, trash, and different drink bottles and parts of McDonald's and the like. Sad. But they allow it, for some odd reason. The animals avoid the place anyway. But still. I got into one, which had no steering wheel, and looked up through the broken window, as it was half buried. Sure, the place wasn't as we had expected, (we thought there would be a lot more and a museum) but I thought it was worth the trip, to put our name there and it not be illegal, and everything. My ears turned red though, and even to this day I can still feel the stiffness and the numbness of my hands, as they tried to hold onto my video camera. Dad took out a white cylinder spray can from the brown bag, hitting the top onto one of the cars and making the top come out, with some powdered color to follow. Impressive.He said he would make the top of the roof of the car, which we were facing and was standing straight up, white, or some of it. He said to get really close and for everyone else to back up, as he pressed down hard, erasing the name of Jamie in purple. Sorry Jamie, but it's the way of life. This was to be Rebecca's car roof. She did R.B. 2012 in red, fairly big, and it was hard to do it.

On another car top Dad did the whole white thing and then did the same process of taking the top off with the blue spray can. I got up close to it, my fingers shaking, and pressed down, as the wind blew some of the powder and my family got away. The wet gas and liquid came down eventually. It was hard, as I said earlier. I wrote in blue: "BlueMan 2012" and found another one, doing a cross and having, as you know since it is perpendicular, A in the left corner, B in the right top, 20 in the bottom left, and 12 in the bottom right. Done with the making now, we took some more pictures, did some other things, and I videotaped, before we walked back, more kind of running though too, because of the coldness. But that only made it more cold, because of the wind hitting us as we did so. We got to the car, and there was a sedan behind us. As we got in and tried to warm up, I came to the realization that I probably wouldn't be able to move until like way later. We told the old couple coming out that we had left the spray cans, because we would never use it again, and sadly it was a waste, and that they could try 818 359 7590 to find them, in the brown bag. 


They said they were just there to look at it, because I think that they thought it was illegal and we didn't know that. But we did. And it was legal. We got in the jeep, which wasn't even street legal. Dad remarked, as we got into the car, "I'm glad we're gone; that place was as cold as a witch's titty." Sorry I had to mention it, but he said it.

We stopped at a truck stop diner, with a gift shop and gas station, and had pretty good hot breakfast that certainly filled our stomachs. We looked at the things a little, and then left, with some R.V. liquid. It had frozen and we needed to replace it. I had a good time at The Cadillac Ranch, putting my mark on history and seeing such a work of art. So what if my part on it will be no doubt painted over by another person's art? I had a fun time, minus the cold, and stuff.

Dad went into a repair shop, as I read a little of Smells Like Dog and then relaxed for a while on my seat. He got this green liquid in a white big gas bottle called Anti-Freeze that the other one broke, and so he wanted to put it in the engine. 


We came back to the R.V. park, and sadly went about our duties in the cold, the whole process. We left in a hurry, and saw some more little towns and oil wells, a lot of shrub and desert. We were finally in the Southwest, the newest part of the country, per say, away from the big cities and skyscrapers, in the good ole West. The next few blogs will be not much museums or history stuff, but more of the scenic and National Park kind of things. But the next blog would be more interesting, with some cool wildlife from this world and some things supposedly from another. Texas was a great state. There was the battleship and the war monument in San Jacinto, The Alamo and the Riverwalk, Austin and Dallas, and recently the Amarillo Cadillac Ranch. There is a whole lot of history, presidential libraries, and just cool little things. Very interesting, exciting and fun. I'll never forget Texas. I thought that this was the best place on our trip so far, in stuff to do and all the things we saw. Would the next states be better and more exciting? 


Read on, my friend.

In a small town we took a picture by a big sign with the Welcome to New Mexico logo, with some red beans, or jalapenos, or whatever they are called. New Mexico, along with California, Arizona, and parts of Utah and Colorado, were all under Mexico, but we bought them for a lot of money, securing the promise of Manifest Destiny. Not the best part of our history, really. We came into north New Mexico, by the "city" of Roswell. Not actually city-like. There were some brick buildings, of older style, and a lot of closed shops, all full of alien costumes, and some that said Zone 2, Aliens only welcome, and even a large International UFO Museum, that I will describe in full later. It was sad, how deprived the town was. We passed by a weird McDonald's, and then into the more residential and commercial area, some stores that we had seen earlier on the trip of the Southwest. 


I wish that Roswell, New Mexico had built the town around something else then aliens...well, I'll talk about that in the next blog.

There were aliens everywhere, well...fake ones. I texted many people, mentioning that I was in Roswell, New Mexico and things of the nature. In New Mexico, for some reason, I did a lot of texting and keeping in touch with people, however in Arizona my friends were more quieter in their responses. But anyway, I took pictures of the green little creatures with big heads, which probably aren't how they really look. Rebecca and Mom said that they didn't like being in this place, because aliens weren't real and all that was here were geeks. Dad and I, on the other hand, totally believed in aliens, that they had to be out there, because the universe was so big and that we couldn't be the only people out there, that the ancients were helped by aliens, and the crop circles and all. We would settle that debate later. For now, we got into the R.V. park, with a big nice rock sign, and came into the gravel place, with some good amount of R.V.'s. 


Going up to a flat roofed little building with blue wood and...weirdly, signs everywhere, a porch and walkway, and a pathway to the pools and all the other stuff, we saw this office. It was dark and locked inside, as we got a form from a box on the door, those things at the post office. We only saw something or somebody moving around, and all the signs saying that it was closed and to take the form and put the money in. Somebody in there was trying to go unnoticed, but it might of been a cat or something. Or an alien.

We had parked the R.V. at the entrance, on a long road, and were in the jeep. We parked at a site, and spent the evening as the sun came down between setting up, with Mom (we had to use a second cord to reach the outlet) helping us out and me texting my friends. A lot of friends. We heard a sound, like a bird but sounding alien...I can't really describe it. Would we see aliens? Well, that was only a question on the morrow. There was some trees, but the rule said no peeing dogs on the grass. What grass? We were in the desert. The T.V. didn't work too, and there were huge trashcans at the back of all the sites, not dumpsters but plastic trashcans. A large mountain, that had ripples, brown and gullies, overlooked us. It was a quiet evening of eating in, because there wasn't many good restaurants in the sad town. The next day would bring alienated birds, lakes that looked like aliens, National and State Parks, and shocking info that would turn the tides of History, ALIENS ALSO! Goodbye for now.

Can I park my UFO here?,

Andrew.