I FOUND AN OUT-OF-THE-WAY CORNER to lean against a wall and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I would have sat on the curb, but I didn’t want to be some kind of criminal vagrant.

  I googled up the walking tour agency. The reviews were good and I was delighted to see that the price was considered “modest” by former guests. Unfortunately, “modest” is a highly relative term.

  Tours started at $35 per person. By my slipshod mental arithmetic, I had about $34 in my account. Not enough, even without leaving a tip. And only monsters and sadists don’t tip.

  Well, so much for that.

  It didn’t bother me much. I’ve never done a walking tour before or since. If I wanted to get to know Palm Springs, it was just a matter of going.

  So I picked a random direction and started walking.

  I don’t think anyone is going to try and deny Palm Springs is a beautiful town. Just hearing the name conjures images of blue skies, yellow sun and palm branches rustling gently in a desert breeze and it doesn’t disappoint.

  You walk down streets that are lined with shops peddling everything from antiques to high end fashion. Every corner is dripping with color; bright lagoon blues, chili-pepper reds, and flashes of bright palm green with the distant earthy browns of the Chocolate Mountains looming up over everything.

  Every street has a different smell, a hot, sweet scent of fresh-cooked meat mixed with the salted, dusty breezes blowing in off the desert. People go on and on about their mountains and pines… as far as I’m concerned, heaven smells like the desert in Spring.

  There’s really nothing not to love. I mean, as long as you can look past the aggressively spoiled tourists clogging up all the sidewalks (despite the handy Sit-and-Lie ordinance) and shoving at each other with barely muted geriatric fury. You don’t have to love that.

  Prime shopping, artisan food, resort-style activities… Palm Springs has a bit of everything. Well, if you can afford it.

  If you’re anything like me, you can’t afford it. If that’s the case, all I can say is that it’s a good thing the town is so darn pretty. They can’t charge you for looking and it is absolutely worth looking. It’s like wandering through a painting. God’s own desert town by way of Thomas Kinkade.

  It’s a lovely town. I get the appeal. I truly do. But I was trying to look a little deeper, steal a peek at the philosophical underbelly of the thing.

  After all, there are a hundred million lovely towns scattered across the Rand McNally Road Atlas that no one has ever heard of and probably never will. Lots of lovely towns never become anything more than curious names on signposts that fly by the passenger side window at 60mph.

  Palm Springs is more than just another name on a map. There is a mythology to it. It’s sacred. One of those special places that has latched onto the American psyche like a cultural brain parasite.

  It’s the favorite hobnob of the classic Hollywood gentry- the Playground of the Stars.

  Bob Hope had a house here, for chrissakes.

  And that’s the special sauce. Palm Springs isn’t just some lovely town plucked off a map. Palm Springs is the town there the stars go. And not just any stars, the classic stars, the faces of old Hollywood circa 1940s-50s that pioneered the Television Age.

  For an entire generation of Americans who gathered in front of that shiny new Moving Picture Box in the living room every night, these were the faces that anchored all of culture. Bob Hope, John Wayne, Lucille Ball, Carey Grant, plenty of others… These were the personalities that gave you a glimpse at that forbidden, glamorous world of the talented, the beautiful, and the iconic.

  And all of them went to Palm Springs. It must have been that fair and distant city on a hill, a mythical playground where only the Special Folks got to go. If you can make it to Palm Springs, you’ve really made it. You’ve done something grand. You, too, are one of the special folks.

  But the 50s passed by and the 60s after them.

  More and more normal people started climbing that golden ladder of the American dream, making it to the land of Palm Springs for themselves.

  The old stars died off or retreated into seclusion. The new stars looked for other, more exclusive, places to get together and be special. The stars moved on but Palm Springs remained, a new type of playground for a new type of star: The Tourist.

  They don’t come just to remember the stars but to feel like stars, to bask in the nostalgic glow of an old pinnacle of an old America.

  That’s why so many of the wealthy old still make the pilgrimage, to pay homage on the altar of the old ideal, the attained unattainable. They come to offer the funerary rites of a deceased culture at one of its greatest monuments, a sort of Mount Rushmore of the golden age of Americana.

  I wonder how long it can last.

  I wonder how many Dads will pack up the family minivan to go on the classic American Palm Springs vacation just to wind up in this beautiful little town dragging along kids who don’t know Palm Springs from Kansas City.

  They’ll do the historic tour, point out all the old hangouts and mansions and golf courses where the stars once played and expect it to mean something to a generation of kids that don’t know what a Bob Hope is and can’t understand why, if he doesn’t have a YouTube channel, they should care.

  I was turning all this over in my head, trying to suck the last drop of caramel macchiato out of the bottom of my Starbucks cup, when I realized a bit of a chill in the air.

  I had spent long enough wandering around, taking in the sights and smells, that the California sun had started going down on me. The lights were coming on all over Palm Springs, flashing through the deep blue of an oncoming desert night.

  My feet were getting sore and my tummy was beginning to rumble. I decided to grab a bite and call it a night.

  The sun goes down fast over the desert.

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  By the time my phone led me down the side streets to a local Denny’s, nothing remained of the day but a faint orange glimmer on the horizon. A big, yellow moon was on the rise and the air was getting chilly.

  I stepped into the diner and found a seat.

  Denny’s is a great place to be short on cash. Sure, most of their food is over-priced heart-attack fuel, but their value menu is great for folks with stomachs as empty as their bank accounts.

  I got an order of biscuits and gravy with two fried eggs on top for around six bucks. Factor in the tip (of course) and I still had around $26 and a tummy full of hot gravy by the time I left.

  Without anything else to do, I had just started to stroll down the empty street toward where I had stashed my car when a voice piped up from the parking lot behind me.

  “Hey, man, you gotta light?”

  I turned around and looked at him.

  He looked familiar to me. I could almost have sworn it was the same kid that’d nearly gotten his teeth knocked out by George’s knees for sitting on the sidewalk. I couldn’t be absolutely sure, but it wouldn’t be all that surprising. Palm Springs is the right size for that kind of serendipity; it's not uncommon to see the same couple faces half a dozen times wandering around downtown for the day.

  He was coming up to me through the parking lot, smiling, curly mess of hair still sticking out at odd angles from under his cap. He was holding an unlit cigarette between his fingers.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I dug around in my coat pocket for a zippo lighter that I usually use for lighting my camp stove.

  It always pays to keep a lighter close by when you travel. Partly for an easy way to light a camp stove and partly for lighting cigarettes. I can’t tell you how many friendly conversations begin just by having a lighter at hand. The less you smoke the more useful it is.

  Smokers are a social breed and possess the natural solidarity of the pariah classes. I’m naturally drawn to pariahs. Probably because I lack the courage to actually be one myself.

  Anyway, I lit his smoke. He took a few puffs to get it going.

  “Thanks,” he said, “You from around here?”

  “Nah. Not me. You?”

  He shrugged.

  “I just moved back. I grew up around here, but I left four years ago. I was smart. I got out.”

  “Why’d you come back?”

  He laughed.

  “A girl,” he said.

  “Was it worth it?”

  “It better be,” he said, “We’re getting married.”

  He took a long drag and sighed smoke out all over everything. I tried not to cough. It’s embarrassing to cough around smokers. Makes you look like the weak wildebeest in the herd.

  “Congratulations,” I said and I hoped he couldn’t hear my voice scratching.

  “Thanks.”

  “When’s the date?”

  “I dunno,” he shrugged again, “When I can get a job. Find a place for us to live. Next year, maybe.”

  “Not a lot of work to go around, huh?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  He nervously flicked the ash off his cherry with his thumb nail.

  “There ain’t nothing here but this tourist shit, man. Little shops and stuff. Part-time nickle and dime shit. I can’t afford some $1200/1500 dollar a month apartment on that. Even if you can get on somewhere full time, good luck keeping on over the summer, once all the snowbirds go home.”

  He shook his head and watched the little flakes of white ash spin down toward the black pavement.

  “I’m not even looking at the fuckin’ houses. I’ll never own a house in this town. If I ever have that much money in one place, I’ll go buy a house somewhere… I don’t know- somewhere like North Dakota or somethin.”

  He paused then added, almost like reminding himself, “If she’d leave her mom. She probably wouldn’t.”

  No need to ask who she was.

  “We’re staying with her mom now. In the spare room. Its alright. But its not home, you know? Not our home. I want us to have a home. I gotta a daughter on the way, I want my kid to have their own room in their own home.”

  “I would think, with all the tourism, there’d be lots of work. Maybe resort type work?”

  “Fuck the tourists.”

  “They’re that bad?” Even while I asked, an image of George’s blustering face popped into my head.

  “Naaaah, they’re not bad,” he consented, “They’re alright. I mean, they were great. They brought a lot of money into this town. But then they started really throwing money around, buying up places. They’re everywhere now. You can’t hardly find a place under half a million bucks anymore. And all these houses… they just sit empty half the year. They’re these winter houses, you know? Vacation places.

  “Its fine for them. They come down, enjoy the sun, relax. The resorts fucking love em. But they get to pack up and go home. Some of us actually live here. We don’t get to go somewhere else when things get hot.

  “Most of them are retired, you know? They don’t have to worry about trying to find a place to live workin part-time at a fuckin McDonald’s. They don’t have to worry about that shit.”

  He took a meditative breath and held it. He’d got a little more heated than he intended, and I could tell he decided to reign it in. When he spoke again the words took on a deliberately calmer tone.

  “I don’t hate em or anything,” he said, “But, damn, I wish some of em knew what it's like to go lookin for work and find nothing because it's the off season and everything is shut down. Or go lookin for a place to live and you can’t find nothing because all the places are bought up for rich people’s winter homes.”

  He dropped the glowing stub of a cigarette on the sidewalk and ground it out with his toe.

  “What about you?” he said, “You here on vacation or something?”

  “Something like that. Just wandering, I guess.”

  “Going to be in town long?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said and I shrugged at him, “I’m too broke for this town. It even smells expensive.”

  He laughed.

  “It's a hell of a town to be broke,” he said, flashing a smile chock-full of classic Californian bravado, “But -Hey- at least there’s always the desert. You can go out there with a tent and pretty much be left alone. It’s not great but it’s free. It could be worse. You can’t do that just anywhere.”

  “That’s true,” I said. If all else fails, there’s always the desert. Out where the riff-raff roam, scuttling over the rocks like lizards.

  “It’s not so bad out there,” he said, “Not really.”

  He spoke like somebody who knew, so I chose to believe him.

  He thanked me for the light and wished me well. I did the same and told him congratulations for the daughter on the way. He headed off down the street his way and I headed off in mine.

  The streets had considerably thinned out, the place had gone all dark and empty, the shops long closed up for the night. I strolled down the empty sidewalk, taking in the cool air rustling through the black-leafed palm branches.

  My thoughts wandered through images of rocks and lizards and riff-raff and that gorgeous, sun-blasted, monument to the Ghost of America Past and its devoted pilgrims in their designer handbags and sunglasses, sneering down their noses at all The Poors they think are invading their carefully-curated paradise.

  They can sneer and complain, and all the while remain blissfully blind to the fact that they… the Georges and the Bird-Ladies and the screaming, grumbling, spoiled hordes so insistent on being good and pampered they’ve forgotten how to be good guests… they are the invaders.

  The riff-raff they despise is as much a part of their creation as Palm Springs itself; the castoff of the conquering consumer in his quest to turn a whole community into a commodity.

  Palm Springs isn’t just another name on a map. There’s a mythology to it all right. You can still catch a glimpse of that glorious, departed age on these streets, taste of bit of that old savor clinging to the air. If you can afford it.

  Otherwise… well, there’s always the desert.

  I’m afraid there is a possibility that Palm Spring’s best days are behind her. Not just because the last people who remember her as anything other than just another lovely town are taking their final bow before exit stage left and come what may, by Glory. I think it’s more than that.

  Her sun still shines, her palms still rustle in the breeze, but there’s a little tinge of sickness at the corners of her eyes. Her soul is tired, her dreams are wearing thin.

  Whether she means to or not she’s clinging to a past that will never come again.

  The trouble with nostalgia is while you’re busy looking backward there can be no forward, no new horizon. People need more than nostalgia to make a town a home. They need opportunities for community, pride… personal and familial growth.

  Once you stop growing… what’s left but to start dying?

  Only time will tell.

  It’s not like I’m an expert. I just wandered in, poked my nose around, ate at a Denny’s and slept in a parking lot. Take that for what it’s worth. Or not.

  I spent that night back in one of the corner parking spaces in the Home Depot lot.

  Early the next morning I crawled into the driver’s seat and headed east, along the edge of the desert, out of town.