‘We are in love, we are married’
In this extract from Paul Henry’s new book, I’m in a United State, he reveals how he came to find love just as he was about to turn 60, and how he found salvation in the Californian desert.
Perhaps there is nothing more ageing for a man than seeing his daughters get married. Weddings are a great mortality bellwether. The people you see at weddings have aged since the last event that brought you together, and in many cases their place in the family order has changed.
My ex-wife Rachael was naturally at Bella’s wedding, and I’m pleased to say she will be at mine in a few days. The first wedding we attended together as guests a thousand years ago was that of a friend of hers. Then came our wedding as bride and groom with all our parents in attendance. By the time we changed roles to mother and father of the bride at Lucy’s wedding my mother had just passed. My daughters had no grandparents left. I am now a grandparent, and so before I attend Rei’s wedding as the old grandfather with acute drinking skills sitting at a table surrounded by young folk disbelieving of his stories, I need to squeeze in another wedding as groom.
Diane and I have known each other for many years. I have looked out for her and she for me. We were briefly together many, many years ago, but the media attention on our relationship and other pressures pulled us apart.
Until about three years ago I was with the wonderful Linzi. We separated only because of a particular circumstance beyond our control. I love her dearly and always will. The worst thing about this coming weekend will be how sad it will make Linzi. I wish she could be there, but that’s so much to ask that I will not ask it. We will, I hope, be best friends for life.
Diane and I will be married at our stupidly beautiful home in Remuera. I had originally favoured the idea of the Chelsea Register Office on the old King’s Road. We have an apartment in Chelsea, right on the Thames next to Chelsea Bridge. I called into the register office one day to see what the requirements were for non-residents. All quite doable. I had visions of us leaving the building and standing atop the brick steps as so many have done before. I would quickly assemble the passing crowd, hand out confetti and get one of the strangers to take a snap on my phone. The family would be told it had happened and showed the snap at a later date.
Diane appreciated the idea but in the end decided the family should be there. OK, I said, but just the children and at home. No fuss. She agreed but only temporarily. It seems you can’t have a wedding without so many people unless you’re me. After all, what would they think? Who cares did not cut it, so in the end I held the number to just under sixty. Take me now, Jesus!
I had always thought a Vegas wedding would be the way to go. In the country I love. I would not get Elvis to officiate. It would be classy. The Little White Chapel on the Vegas Strip. A limo from the Bellagio and dinner up the Eiffel Tower afterwards, looking out to the fountain across the street. The next day, helicopter into the Grand Canyon with champagne. Alternatively, I had pondered on Salvation Mountain as a wedding venue. It’s about an hour’s drive from my home in Palm Springs, past Salton Sea and Bombay Beach, through the awful town of Niland and into the desert about three or so miles. Just before you reach Slab City, there it is. One man’s dedication to Christ. You see, just writing this down has me marvelling in wonder. I love America. This is a spectacular landscape with a backstory to literally die for...
The one man was Leonard Knight. I met him and talked to him once on one of my many trips to Salvation Mountain. He was wearing his painted painting overalls and a gritty determination. In scorching heat, he was fighting to further his vision as the desert quietly fought to level it. Leonard was a deeply spiritual man and driven. His message: God is love and love is the way to lead your life.
He was disillusioned with traditional forms of worship and had found nothing that he could support that he felt best honoured Jesus and spread his message of love. So he decided to build a monument in the desert, and for the last twentyeight years of his life almost single-handedly built a mountain with cement, sand, straw and paint. He scavenged car parts and wood and steel to build caverns and he painted vehicles into his landscape. It’s estimated he used half a million gallons of latex paint. The elements were no match for his tenacity. For years he had painted and displayed on a large sheet of plywood at the entrance: ‘Entry Free – Please Leave Paint’. Several of the cave-like rooms he constructed were being used as memorials for lost loved ones. In one, parents had placed toys and old driver’s licences as a resting place for their fallen. I have seen people brought to tears by the majesty of Leonard’s monument.
On the trip out to Salvation Mountain from Palm Springs, just before you get to Niland, you pass an immigration checkpoint. Your car is photographed automatically as you pass. On the way back the road passes through the bordersecurity building and you’re stopped. An armed officer questions you and looks over your documents. If they feel the need, your car is searched, although it’s never happened to me. Mustangs are not ideal for smuggling Mexicans into California. It’s a one-Mexican trunk at best! Nevertheless, it can be tense and non-citizens need to show passports.
Once, returning from a few hours at the mountain in 2014, I was stopped by a particularly aggressive-looking officer. Dark glasses and hand on gun, he asked through my open window, ‘Where have you been?’
‘I’ve been to Salvation Mountain,’ I said. This heavily set, uniformed guy of about thirtythree stepped back one stride. He took his hand off his gun and used that hand to take off his sunglasses. His other hand removed his cap. ‘Leonard died yesterday. A great man. You take care.’ He waved me on as he returned his form to attack mode.
Leonard had achieved his goal. He spread the word of Jesus. His message of love. On 15 May 2002, Salvation Mountain was proclaimed a national treasure in the Congressional Record of the United States. After his death a plaque was erected at the mountain acknowledging Leonard’s dedication.
On subsequent trips, the desert is clearly starting to win in its bid to reclaim the land. The mountain’s own salvation is now in the hands of a sort of committee of workers from Slab City. I fear this is not an endeavour best suited to a committee! I fear Slab City inhabitants are not ideal committee members. But then, they have taken on a project I would not, so godspeed.
When I first called into Slab City it was a raw and quite threatening place. A place of squatters, misfits and criminals. There were many stories of people coming to a sticky end there, tales of suspicious deaths, of Winnebagos burning to the ground at night. Not a place to visit after dark, a little like a scene from Wrong Turn. An exciting place though, vibrant and genuine.
It’s called Slab City because when the US Marines left the site and disbanded Camp Dunlap at the end of World War II all they left were the slabs their buildings sat on. The opportunity to slip out of society and go to ground was too great for many to miss and soon a renegade community had established itself. Well, renegades attract wannabe renegades who in turn attract wannabe artists and, god help us, minstrels. The last time I visited with Sophie we were directed to Slab City’s own art park. A haphazard collection of disparate ideas.
I have a reasonable amount of money, but Diane has more. During our vows, at the line ‘for richer or poorer’ a ripple of laughter ran around the gathering. We both got the giggles. Although both of us have come from very frugal backgrounds neither of us would do well ‘poorer’ and our friends and family know that.
Wankers call it art. I call it at best interesting s... on a large scale. I loved it and so did Sophie, but true salvation it will never be.
Where the real renegades are now, I don’t know. And that’s just what makes them genuine.
Salton Sea has an eclectic recent history. It takes up four hundred square miles and until 1905 wasn’t a sea at all. It was dry and arid and called Salton Basin. Because it was a basin, in the dry arid desert! In the early 1900s, farms in California needed more water. How hard would it be to get it from the mighty Colorado River? the engineers said. As this is America, not hard at all. However, the massive irrigation system failed, and water from the Colorado started flowing into the basin. This continued for two years until workers finally managed to staunch the flow.
So opportunity had come a-knocking for Salton Basin, and in the States there are always people listening out for the rat-a-tat-tat of opportunity. In 1905 Salton Sea was born. A holiday playground. An affordable paradise for those up-and-comers from the suburbs of Los Angeles but also for the rich and famous, many of whom owned properties and had friends and colleagues in Palm Springs.
Campgrounds opened on the shores of this new playground in the desert. Hotels and resorts sprang up and towns were built, with housing projects aplenty. This was the French Riviera of the desert, a happening place when people were looking for just that. Salton City and Niland were booming, as was the resort town of Bombay Beach, the lowest community in the United States at 223 feet below sea level. People flocked there. I have a small collection of original postcards proclaiming the ‘fun times’ to be had. For several years the speedboats raced across the sea. Water-skiing, fishing, camping. It was a Mecca for entertainment.
The 1950s and ’60s were the golden years for Salton Sea. The warm waters attracted millions of visitors. But this was a sea with nowhere to go. The water had only two fates. To evaporate or seep into the ground. The dream was souring and so was the lake. By the 1970s it was becoming obvious the lake was unstable. The salinity was rising to alarming levels. The warm waters encouraged algal blooms and bacterial levels that promoted and then killed thousands of fish and spread disease that killed thousands of birds. Many hundreds would be found dead daily. The smell of the lake and its decomposing leftovers was at times hard to bear. The people stopped coming. The businesses moved on. The dream was over.
I have visited many times. I drive into Bombay Beach and pass the faded rusty signs still encouraging you to play in paradise. In this town, when a house burns down the charred remains just stand guard over the unwanted section. The sea has receded and it’s quite a walk to the water’s edge.
The smell can be extraordinarily bad and at times you can’t see the shoreline for dead fish. It’s now saltier than the Pacific Ocean. Its viscosity gives the water an eerie calm. Who knows how many people live at Bombay Beach now (best guess, well under 200) or how unhealthy the atmosphere is–it’s a disaster site with an exotic name and short-lived exotic past. The mud contains high levels of arsenic, among other things, but people like me call in to witness the atmosphere of ghostly abandonment.
Incidentally, although the name sounds exotic its origins are anything but. I have been told that for a time the sea in that area was used as a practice site for the dropping of bombs, and at that point you could see the aircraft doors open, exposing the ‘bomb bay’ in the fuselage. Strangely appropriate given the state of the town now. There is a minor resurgence taking place as artists have discovered Bombay Beach and its ugly beauty. I love it. It’s such a rich part of the American tapestry. All my daughters have had their photos taken on the shore. They have all marvelled at the place.
Lucy was due to fly back to New Zealand for my wedding on the late flight from Melbourne to arrive very early Saturday morning, the day of the wedding. Her flight was postponed to the point where it had to be cancelled as it would then be too late to land at Auckland Airport due to the early-morning curfew. Air New Zealand, like all airlines, was in crisis mode due to the now debilitating response to the spread of coronavirus but they put Lucy up at an airport hotel and gave her a voucher for food. They also transferred her to an early-morning Qantas flight that would have her arrive at the house, now a full-blown wedding venue, just in time to race into hair and makeup and not miss anything.
She was concerned she would miss the alarm, so ordered room service and emptied the minibar into herself while watching The Kardashians. She had a fantastic night. Lucy is very good at ‘glass half full’. Before she had left New Zealand less than a week earlier, she had prepared her dress and shoes for my wedding. It was her idea to wear the very dress my mother Olive wore to my first wedding. She looked amazing.
The last thing I wanted was to take anything away from Bella’s wedding just over a week before, so almost no-one knew I was getting married. People thought they were attending a housewarming. We intended to and did call people a few days before to let them know what it really was, as those sorts of surprises on the day can be disastrous. The New Zealand Herald found out and ran a story about our rumoured wedding on the Thursday and so we stationed two security guards at the gate to prevent unwanted eyes. I have no interest in promoting my personal life although, interestingly, I am doing it in these pages. I’ve never talked so personally in previous books. It must be part of my ‘United State’.
When Lucy arrived at the gate in an Uber, dishevelled and still full of minibar, she literally fell out of the car door, with her case falling on her and bursting open on the street. So very Lucy. She thought it was odd to have wedding photographers at the entrance and told them as she pulled herself to her feet and started collecting her things not to worry about taking pictures of her. The Herald must have these snaps on file.
Because the world was closing down and ‘selfisolation’ was now the term on everyone’s lips, Lucy had had to get board approval at the last minute from the hospital she works at to leave the country. As it turned out, she would arrive back in Melbourne with less than three hours’ leeway before she would have been forced to self-isolate for fourteen days.
Our home had been transformed. More flower arrangements than I thought entirely necessary but quite beautiful. Wonderful food, a live band of two – saxophone and harp. There is almost nothing posher than a harp! And lots of people standing far too close to each other. It was a corona playground and probably one of the last weddings like it for a while. It would be only days before the virus would render such gatherings impossible to execute.
Both Diane and I have been married before. We are both turning sixty this year and we were surrounded by our beautiful children. Diane looked gorgeous but most importantly she was gloriously happy. As was I. I have a reasonable amount of money but Diane has more. During our vows, at the line ‘for richer or poorer’ a ripple of laughter ran around the gathering. We both got the giggles. Although both of us have come from very frugal backgrounds neither of us would do well ‘poorer’ and our friends and family know that.
Bella got fabulously drunk as did Lucy. Sophie as usual was abstemious. Oh, she can drink but often she chooses not to. My ex-wife Rachael was lovely. She was there with her new boyfriend and really seemed to embrace the event. Clearly, she has given up all hope of getting me back and judging by her enthusiasm for the occasion is entirely happy with that. Diane is just happy. We are in love, we are married, and it’s a beautiful thing.