Beauties and big plans in Barstow

Tim Andrews promised he’d never read another column of mine.

Sandy Cooper was insulted by my snarky description of her “dusty, drive-by town.”

Barstow Mayor Lawrence Dale offered to set me straight with a guided tour of his high-desert community. And so did the pride of Barstow, Raquel Beezley, the newly crowned Miss California USA, thanks in part to years of sponsorship by Barstow Tire & Brake.

I saw no option but to accept.

Don’t get me wrong. I did not go to Barstow intending to apologize for anything. I stand by what I said about that debacle of a beauty pageant early this month in which Christina Silva of Los Angeles was crowned Miss California, only to have her tiara revoked four days later because of a so-called voting error. But to be fair, I couldn’t hold Barstow responsible for the yo-yo’s running Donald Trump’s Miss California USA pageant.

When I got to Barstow Monday afternoon, the mayor and Miss California were momentarily tied up. So John Rader, the city’s press officer, got stuck with me.

I wondered if Rader was going to put me in stocks in the town square and let the locals throw cow chips, but my actual sentence was far more inhumane.

I had to hear a lecture on Barstow’s economic development plan.

Motorists make an estimated 60 million trips through this town of 23,000 on the way to Vegas and elsewhere each year, Rader said, and a good many of them stop for food, gas, or shopping at the Tanger outlet center.

But Barstow has big, big plans on the books to keep visitors in town a little longer. City officials have plans to import a couple of Indian tribes to run a proposed casino that would sit on private property and pump millions into the local economy.

Think about it. In half the time it takes to get to Vegas, you could lose your entire paycheck in Barstow, where the city slogan is Crossroads of Opportunity.

Or you could put down roots and never go home. Houses go for about $175,000 on average. And if you don’t find work at Fort Irwin, or NASA’s satellite tracking center, or the huge Barstow railroad yard, where goods are positioned for shipment nationwide, then maybe you’ll land a job at the planned Wal-Mart distribution center, which expects to be filling 750 jobs.

And where would you live? Possibly in the proposed Waterman Junction development, which city officials say will have an astounding 25,000 new homes, two golf courses and a man-made lake -- provide the state has a drop of water left. Imagine it: They would be tripling the town’s population in one running of the bulldozers.

So Barstow may indeed be dusty. But drive-by? No way. I can’t recall visiting a city with more ambitious plans, or more beauty queens.

The current Miss Barstow, Jordan Lee, joined local boosters for my mea culpa dinner at the Idle Spurs Steakhouse, and she wore her crown and sash. I don’t recall sharing a meal with royalty since I took my sons to Burger King 25 years ago, but Jordan wears her crown well and has got the smile down cold.

When I asked 18-year-old Jordan what she thought about Raquel stealing Christina’s crown, I was hissed by the town elders and had to back off.

One of the diners, LAPD veteran and current Barstow Police Chief Dianne Burns, couldn’t stop selling her newfound paradise. Before the check arrived, there was talk of my relocating to Barstow.

There’s plenty of backroom politics in Barstow, and more than a few critics of the mayor and council’s plan for the casino, the awarding of big contracts and whatnot, so I’d have ample material to work with.

But I’m going to delay a decision for now.

At Monday night’s City Council meeting, I did get a feel for Barstow’s small-town charm when Mayor Dale honored the state champion cross-country team from Barstow High and declared Dec. 17 Raquel Beezley day.

The next morning, for my big tour, I joined the mayor and the beauty queen at Leonard Purdy’s Barstow Tire & Brake, where local movers and shakers start each day with coffee and gossip. Or, as a sign says, “Will trade coffee for fish stories.”

Beezley suggested we should start our tour of Barstow at the former Harvey House, where there’s a Route 66 museum and Santa Fe Railroad history and mementos. The former Harvey House was one of a series of restaurants that served rail travelers before trains had dining cars.

And where after that?

The 21-year-old Beezley, who wants to be a “broadcaster” for “Extra” or “Hollywood Access” and strikes me as already qualified, turned to the mayor for help.

“Where should I take him after Harvey House?” she asked.

The mayor had it all planned, and the tour began with breakfast at the Del Taco restaurant managed by City Councilwoman Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre, whose family founded the chain. This wasn’t just any Del Taco, either. It was the first in the world. And get this, amigo, the Mexican fast-food chain was started by Germans.

Mayor Dale, a retired railroad man, showed off the Harvey House and the rest of his town with great pride as Miss California and Miss Barstow kibitzed in the back seat about gowns, hair color and the weight of crowns. They stopped gabbing long enough for Beezley to point out her all-American house, the one with Old Glory, a black Hummer and a Santa Claus outside.

I confessed to Beezley that I’d run into a former teacher of hers who now tends bar at the High Noon Saloon, and the bartender wasn’t entirely complimentary when her name came up.

Beezley correctly guessed she’d been accused of being a snob.

“Some of my best friends used to think I was stuck up,” Beezley said.

Excellent answer, but she’s been pressure-tested in pageants from the age of 12.

Beauty. Poise. Pride. Raquel Beezley’s got the whole package, and the good sense to eat only half her Del Taco breakfast burrito with another bathing suit competition looming.

Even before Leonard Purdy said he could beat L.A. prices on the tires I’ve been shopping for, I had to admit that Barstow was winning me over. I would have gladly kept up the fight to have the crown returned to Miss Los Angeles, but Christina Silva told me she’s done with beauty pageants.

“It’s not about world peace and saving whales,” she discovered. In the end, she realized, it’s just a beauty contest.

Not in Barstow, where they’re already talking about Beezley making the town even prouder at next April’s Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas.

“Are you going to come to that?” she asked me.

Well, I do need to pick up those new tires, and I’d already be halfway there.

--

steve.lopez@latimes.com