For years the El Garces Hotel Restoration project manager Franz Lipszchult had a problem finding volunteer workers who wanted to help in the hotels restoration. Most the money invested in the restoration project by developer Allan Appleton was used for building materials. Senior Citizen groups would volunteer, but they were limited to the more simple chores. The City of Needles occasionally picked up some of the bills through the city's Hire the Youth Summer Program, but it was a slow on-going process lacking people, money and time. Franz allowed vagrant homeless people to live at the site in makeshift quarters in exchange for work. But most the homeless people who promised to work rarely lifted a finger. The El Garces had become a shooting gallery and a vagrant drop off for local police. Lipszchult personally spent a lot of time cleaning up makeshift commodes, broken glass and empty beer cans.
That all changed one cloudy day when a Lavelle showed up with a dozen volunteers from the Abyssinian Church to work. A couple of days after Lavelle's church members began work, a bunch of filthy hippies from Golden Shores (sans Corky & Don) showed up, asking to exchange work for living quarters. Later that same day about twenty Fort Mohave and Chemehuevi Indians volunteered to work in memory of Ginger Bryce. In fact everyday someone new from the local community would show up eager to work for free as long as they could live at the site.
Irv also showed up, but not to work, just to check out what was going on. Irv wasn't alone, Mayor Cheeseman, the Needles Police, the San Bernardino Sherriff's Dept. and a slew of other Federal Government agencies started to show up at the El Garces curious about the onslaught of volunteers. The original vagrant tenants were forced to work or leave! It seemed like every volunteer wanted to work in or around the courtyard. Lipszchult allowed the volunteers to live in the hotel rooms that had not been restored yet. At first everyone worked hard and there was surprisingly very few problems to deal with. Lipschultz convinced the city council for some slush funding to feed his assortment of born-agains, winos, Native Americans, and flower children.
But as time went on conflicts between the diverse groups increased to the point where Franz had to call the Needles Police in for help. A few of workers quit and a couple were arrested for traffic warrants and possession of marijuana, but most of the volunteers stayed on. One irritating and common problem, Franz noticed, was although the groups stayed to themselves they all had this strange habit of digging ditches in the courtyard and pounding holes through walls at night. For every two steps forward in the hotel's restoration there was a step backwards in the destruction of the hotels walls. Franz overheard the crazy rumors of a lost gold mine on the property but he dismissed this absurd notion and never reported this to the police. Pretty soon half the population of Needles was showing up to work for free! Treasure hunters from all over the U.S. were showing up only to be turned away. Even news crews from L.A. were there to interview workers about a secret cache of gold.
Then one night about 2 A.M. there was huge explosion and a pandemonium of loud cheers and noise from the west section of the courtyard. The next morning Lipszchult noticed a huge hole in the courtyards fountain wall opposite to the old suite that Darryl Zanuck had stayed at when he was producing the classic Hollywood film The Grapes of Wrath. When Franz looked inside the damaged wall all he saw was the name JuJubee 1939 scratched on some bricks and a empty Wells Fargo Lockbox.
The Golden Shores clan was long gone........
by KVJ
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