Only one page further in the thesis – but I pause a moment to give a Justus Motter update, as I see there has been a mild interest in my hi-desert test sites post, since “guest’s” new comment.
Jus is about 100 years old… really, something near that and he lives here locally on some primo real estate at the base of Pioneertown Road. When I heard that some artist was developing a test site there – I went out of genuine interest. We joined the cars parked along side of the road and hiked in.
The road into the Motter property 
We all convened in the dilapitated dome. 
The young artiste – complete with shaggy black hair and black tux was standing around grinning anxiously with a small camera crew. The premise was to make a film of Jus giving a tour of the property and to end with the visitors adding to the “artwork” there.
Photo by Uudam.
The irony here is that there is so much about Jus’ history that could get made or translated into art or a good story at the very least (he made a living doing a human juggling act with his blind brother for years!) and yet we walked around and looked at painted rocks like this:
Now that is simply not interesting in of itself, never mind that the rock was painted by Jus’ nephew, not Jus.
Sadly, the real fascination with this man and his property should be related to his enormous “collection” of junk and trash, which apparently is not just a function of his age, but a personal propensity. Of the seemingly endless string of beat-up trailers and cars, it was truly impossible to see which one was habitable. It was more than just a little bit gross. Furthermore, Jus is really somewhere in his nineties, and as we hiked around with Jus narrating, he was clearly getting overheated, gasping and needing water and the artiste was doing nothing about it. In fact, when I offered to help Jus and get him some water, the artiste (I won’t even bother figuring out his name) was irritated and clearly wanted me out of the “movie” project. Talk about bald-faced colonialism – this guy had no regard for Jus – just wanted a piece of the cool desert trash sprawl for himself. I was sickened by the whole affair.
Unhappily the entire property burned last month in the Sawtooth fire (see a sawtooth fire pic at Maya’s blog). Ironically, only the dome was saved – which does Jus no good, because it hasn’t been lived in for over 20 years. It looked like this inside (upstairs):
The fire fighters could not tell which building/trailer was Jus’ home, any more than we could a few months earlier. Luckily, Jus is fine. I heard from him last week. He is happily living with his nephew (the rock painter) in a condo in Palm Springs. They are rebuilding with federal loan funds … I can’t even imagine what that would mean; it would take years to heap up that amount of garbage again.