City refugees go to the flow

Leonard Hook hangs dead catfish from a tree as testimony to his angling prowess and tribute to the river that still fortifies his spirits six decades since it first drew him here as a kid.

His porch overlooks the shallows where carp forage in the mud and great blue herons impale minnows on pointed bills. Beside him, flashes of color flicker in a bucket of water.

“Bait,” he said, peering at the goldfish inside.

Like others here, 62-year-old Hook fled smoggy, cramped Southern California for the slippery banks of the Colorado River.

His wife, Debbie, 47, came along for the ride and was seduced by the solitude.

“It was my husband’s dream to live on the river, though it was difficult for me at first,” she said. “But the river is always there to call you.”

Here at the ragged edge of California, where mile markers double as addresses and 100-degree temperatures are welcome respites from the oppressive heat, hundreds of people have staked out lives in a stark world of sun, water and rock.

Known as the Colorado River communities, this string of remote, often hidden hamlets stretches out north of Blythe along the river, ending just below the crumbling semi-ghost town of Vidal, where Wyatt Earp once mined for gold.

This isn’t Lake Havasu, with its beer-soaked frat boys and drunken flotillas of barely clad young women. These are the real river rats, the hard-core few who live with a hot desert behind them, a hotter desert in front of them and a ribbon of water in between.

They gamely endure the daily harshness of life in a place where rattlesnakes are not only plentiful but come in two colors -- red and green. A place where scorpions slink into empty shoes and vinegarroons, their creepy cousins, spray acetic acid at anyone getting too close.

Most residents live down narrow dirt lanes obscured by trees and brush. Until recently the roads didn’t have names. Addresses are still hard to come by. One woman simply lists her own as, “the house next to the Lost Lake store.”

Cable television is unavailable; newspapers arrive late and by mail. Emergency medical situations usually involve helicopter flights, and a routine doctor’s visit is often a two-hour drive.

Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson represents the area. At 5,000 square miles, his district is one of the largest in the nation and this is its farthest-flung corner, the last outpost of the Inland Empire.

“It’s easily a good 180 to 200 miles from the county seat,” he said. “We have had problems with emergency personnel finding people up there.”

And yet many thrive here, taking frequent refuge in the river as it bends gracefully between California and Arizona.

“I can stand the heat,” said Cordelia “Corny” Schlabitz, taking in the sweeping river view from under a giant Indian laurel shading her home. “I walk my dog Rosie along the banks, then float with the current back home. I’m like a fish in the water.”

Schlabitz, 72, left Riverside in 1986 for Ranchos Not So Grande, a collection of trailers off California 95, the sole route in and out of the area.

“We feel somewhat isolated here,” she said. “You need to drive to Indio or Palm Springs to see a doctor. There is no DSL or newspaper. When people ask where I live I tell them mile marker 15 or 16.”

Yet the sheer remoteness is what attracted neighbor Barry Bennett.

“I like the fact that it’s isolated,” said the 57-year-old former Anaheim resident. “What do you want to do, be around people all day listening to them complain?”

Bennett works at a service station in Blythe 30 miles south and clearly hears lots of complaints.

His community began as a weekend getaway, but gradually people began staying year round. The same happened at Aha Quin, Paradise Point, Water Wheel, Twin Palms, Hidden Valley and other neighborhoods off the highway.

On holidays they fill up, but full-timers number only around 60 or 70 in Lost Lake and some of the other larger settlements. Places like Ranchos Not So Grande have as few as 20 permanent residents, maybe fewer.

Some are irascible, rough-and-tumble types badly wanting to be left alone. Others are fixated on boating and fishing. And there are those who seem to have stepped from a Somerset Maugham story, genteel expatriates in an exotic land sipping cocktails in 115-degree heat.

“You either love it here or hate it, there is no middle ground,” said Janet Keener, who chairs the board of directors of the Colorado River Senior Center in Hidden Valley, one of the more upscale river communities. “We are a flyspeck clinging to the edge of California.”

The center is a focal point of river life. On Thursdays, knots of women array themselves around card tables, playing dominoes.

Others talk, cook or quietly sew, basking for a time in the company of others.

“I live in a place with 19 trailers, but only three are occupied,” said Pat Miranda, 74, who moved from Pasadena. “I keep pretty busy and I’m a reader. I have a dog to talk to and she doesn’t give me any lip.”

They are physically isolated but apparently not lonely.

“We lived in Costa Mesa and didn’t know half the people on our street,” Keener said. “I have many more friends here.”

Down the gravel road outside, past green alfalfa fields, the mobile homes of Hidden Valley emerge against the deep blue of the river and its islands.

From Al Querry’s place, Arizona is literally a stone’s throw away.

The former Costa Mesa building engineer climbs the spiral staircase to his roof on summer nights to watch lightning dance across the sky. He’s building a crow’s nest to get even higher.

Querry, 65, and his wife moved here in 2004. Their home is framed by poplars and cottonwoods just yards from the water. Deer, foxes, spiders and assorted reptiles often drop in.

A few doors down, Don Osburn, 63, fiddled with his dune buggy, a homemade contraption with a Corvette engine that reaches 115 mph.

“I like it here, but you got to leave once in a while or you’ll go crazy,” he said. “You can only play so much.”

Adjusting to river life takes time.

“I hated it at first. I didn’t like the heat. I didn’t like the river,” said Chloe Swegle, 86, who moved to Aha Quin from Beaumont in 1990. “We bought a trailer and came on weekends. I got to like it and now I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

It helps that it’s cheap. While some mobile homes go for $350,000 or more in newer places like Hidden Valley, they are usually much less expensive along other stretches of the river, and the monthly space fee is often just $200 or $300.

“This is a cheaper place to live, especially if you like wide open spaces,” Keener said. “Our social life runs with the seasons. In summer our social life goes away. Most of us would say winter is our favorite time of year.”

Keener, 64, keeps a close circle of friends at Hidden Valley. They meet for early morning walks, have lunch at the senior center and once a week throw cocktail parties at one another’s homes.

It was Gary Tiveron’s turn recently, and he laid out a table with hors d’oeuvres, cheese, wine and mixed drinks for about 10 well-dressed friends.

“I worked my butt off and this was my sanctuary,” said Tiveron, 67, who owned an Orange County auto repair shop. “I brought my kids here and it kept them out of trouble. If you work hard you should have something to show for it. It’s true we are on the edge here, but it’s a great edge to be on.”

Farther north in Lost Lake, the atmosphere is a bit more rough-hewn, wine and cheese parties less common.

People get around in golf carts, and mobile homes are smaller and more densely packed than those in Hidden Valley.

Jagged mountains pocked with abandoned gold mines tower nearby, their silhouettes growing sharper in the fading daylight.

This spare, arresting landscape proved irresistible to Leonard Hook. Since he was a boy he wanted to live here, and as he grew older he tried to come every two weeks.

Last year he and his wife moved from Hesperia. He immortalized the moment in ink, tattooing “Lost Lake” on his biceps.

“You don’t hear no helicopters, no sirens, you don’t see searchlights,” he said. “It’s totally safe at night. The only thing you gotta remember is if a fire breaks out it will take them 40 minutes to get here, so you are on your own.”

Hook, a former truck driver, is an idea man. Not that many have come to fruition. There was the bait shop idea that hasn’t come much farther than some bait and a few fishing lures on his porch. Then there was the water taxi scheme that still has some kinks to work out.

Fishing is his major passion -- he has landed catfish weighing more than 40 pounds -- and perhaps the dinner specials at selected restaurants in Parker, Ariz., about 20 miles northeast.

“Steak with all the trimmings for $6.99,” he said of one. “You can’t get a better deal than that.”

The Hooks stroll along the road, eager to show off their community. Egrets float into inlets and coves like billowy white sheets.

Not far along they find Paula and Dave McGuire holding court on their porch. The happy couple are swigging tumblers of vodka and orange juice. They invite the Hooks up for a drink.

Hook lighted a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

“I used to read the papers,” he said. “But now if someone were to attack the U.S. maybe I’d find out, but only if someone ran up from Blythe and told me.”

Debbie Hook left her husband on the porch to continue his visit and headed for home.

“In Southern California if you say you are going to the river everyone knows what you mean, there really is just one river,” she said. “The river has its own culture and is its own world.”

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david.kelly@latimes.com