| Heinz - Re your "land of the free" and the burgeoning prison population in these United States... One of my favorite drives is to cruise northward along Hwy. 395, which parallels the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. My usual destination is Lake Tahoe. But along the way one passes through several small towns in what is, generally speaking, a sparsely populated area. High desert, lava beds, and treeless, dry, stark mountains to the east serve as a counterpoint to the snow-capped Sierras. Those few towns date back to the time when white settlers first came to this land. One of them I find particularly interesting, largely because of its small but unique museum. The town has no industry, and beyond a restaurant or two and the incidental gas station, cannot be said to exist by dint of the tourist trade. It is the county seat, however, and a decades-old courthouse catches the eye. Venture off this highway, its concrete covering what was once a rutted dirt road used by wagons, and you stumble across the town's most modern building. You guessed it: a prison. The town's name is Independence. Almost as a postscript, nearby are the remains of the infamous Manzanar - the place where Americans of Japanese descent were held during WWII. There is much, much more to the story of Independence and its sister towns, but this isn't the place to tell it. R |
