Lawrence Welk Resort

Posted on February 2, 2003 in Travels - So Cal

A collection of imagery:

I honestly wonder: if Columbia had disintegrated over Southern California and if the debris had fallen among the rocks that surrounded the resort, would anyone at the Lawrence Welk Resort disturbed my peace to tell me about it?

They had a large screen television in the pool room at the activity center: no one turned it on. Guests froliced in the pool, threw horseshoes, or played shuffleboard. Duffers trotted around the golf course. Things weren’t falling from their sky, so they enjoyed themselves.

The villas had names like Camelot, Brigadoon, Oklahoma, Melody Hill, Riviera, Candy, and Sunny which is where my mother’s timeshare was located. Candy was situated on a low hill. If you had a place higher up, they gave you a golf cart. I don’t know if a doctor or a nurse was on duty: plenty of those visiting could have stood one.

A firetruck was parked outside the reception center when we arrived. Farther still, a paramedic vehicle stood outside the theater, its lights glowing no less bright than the fires that ended the flights of Columbia the following day.

Old men with bulbous noses and guts that had grown to catastrophic proportions, ignored their wives who nagged them about their diets.

The map did not represent the territory. Roads which appeared on paper to lead to one place ended up at quite a different one. No less than twice did I end up at the wrong place: first, I bypassed the entrance booth and arrived at the pro shop. Then I ended up on a circular drive nearly opposite to where I should have been.

I got lost like this both in the truck and on foot, by night and by day. I’m legendary for my ability to locate myself on a map — when it matches the land.

The timeshare filled a section of a hexagon. Hallways followed the outer walls. The porch roof completed the figure. Everything was done in pastels calculated to sooth resettled middle class sensibilities.

I found it hard to sleep. I had two of those nights when the mind knows every moment of the dark. The roar of Interstate 15 was constant: cars made hoarse, whispering tunnels of sound. Motorcycles broke them with slashes across the eardrums.

Down by the shops and outside the theater stood a golden statue of St. Lawrence, recognizable by his particular attribute — the baton. The theater lobby held a modest museum containing fragments of television sets, a reconstructed midwestern radio studio, a wall of awards, photographs, and a gigantic mockup of a champagne glass decorated with chandelier crystals. A plump guard who was about my age came out of the bathroom and made a joke that I didn’t understand at first. “No one knows how much it hole-ds.” He was referring to the fact that the bowl was made of steel mesh.

A red balloon had fallen inside. One day, the guard told me, his producer lost a hacky sack bundle. No one had arms long enough to get it out.