QUARTZSITE — It doesn’t take Paul Winer long to get dressed for work. When he gets up in the morning, he puts on his cowboy hat, sunglasses, sandals and a necklace. That’s all. Except for a tiny thong that covers a small area located at the confluence of his left thigh and right thigh.
QUARTZSITE — Gene Hassler doesn’t let things go to waste, especially if they’re things he can use to create a whale or a velocipede. Hassler is a welder and artist who spends some of his time in Quartzsite because he owns Hassler’s RV Park here. The property is adorned with about 50 of his creations, all made of scrap materials.
His rendition of an ostrich has car headlights for eyes and pipe wrenches for legs. Nearby, a huge hand made of bolts reaches out of the ground to grab a vine crafted from reinforcing rods. Elsewhere are palm trees, velocipedes, cowboys with six-shooters, elephant feet and cactus, all rusted because they’re all made of previously used metal.
The thing most people notice right away when they enter the Quartzsite Cemetery is a stone pyramid topped by a copper camel, and there’s quite a story behind its presence. The cairn marks the grave site of a man they called Hi Jolly, who came to this country in the 1860s to act as a camel driver for the U.S. Army during an ill-fated attempt to use the animals as beasts of burden for military purposes in the deserts of the Southwest.
