It’s Garbo’s Kind of Town : Privacy Is Closely Guarded in Remote Desert Community

“This is a community of strangers. People don’t talk to one another. Everyone wants to be left alone,” sighed Marion Carden.

She was talking about Hi Vista, a desert community in the northeasternmost corner of Los Angeles County.

Carden, 43, is president and only member of the 55-year-old Hi Vista Improvement Assn. It’s the only organization in town, other than a church and a two-student school.

The church and school meet in the Hi Vista Community Hall. There’s a boarded-up grocery store closed 12 years and 350 homes scattered for miles in the creosote and cactus.

Roads are dirt, except a two-lane paved stretch of macadam through the area. Many who live here lack electricity, telephones and indoor plumbing.

Carden does her best to get people interested in the community, to join the Improvement Assn. “I sent flyers last year to every home in the area urging people to come to a meeting and join the association. Dues are only $5 a year. Only four people showed up. Nobody joined,” she said.

For years the Improvement Assn. was the life of the community. The association built the community hall in 1935. “Potluck dinners were held each week for years. There were dances, an annual wildflower show each spring. People were friendly then,” Carden said.

“As time went on, many moved away. Some died. Newcomers came into the area, nearly all to escape the city, to keep to themselves and not get involved with their neighbors.”

The Improvement Assn. kept losing members. Four years ago when she was elected president, only seven were left. Six quit that year, leaving only Carden.

“I would quit too. But the bylaws say the president cannot leave office without a successor. I can’t just walk away,” she lamented.

The Improvement Assn. treasury is down to $240. To ensure proper maintenance of the community hall, the association leases the building without charge to the Abundant Life Deliverance Church and School. The church pays the utilities, taxes ($196 a year), and takes care of maintenance and repairs.

In addition to serving as president of the Improvement Assn., Carden is one of two teachers at the two-student church school. The other teacher is Sheila Patterson, 33, mother of the students, Patrick, 13, an eighth-grader, and his sister, Jennifer, 15, a high school freshman.

Patterson and Carden take turns teaching. They teach for free.

“A deputy sheriff visited school last week. He told us this is part of his patrol but he hadn’t been here in three years because nothing ever happens in Hi Vista,” said Carden, adding:

“No one cares about anything out here. We can’t even form a volunteer fire department. A few weeks ago a house burned to the ground before the nearest fire engine from 12 miles away in Lake Los Angeles arrived on the scene.”

The bewildered Improvement Assn. president said: “The trouble with Hi Vista is no one has any community pride.”