THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604050164
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: IN PASSING
SOURCE: BY MARGO MATEAS
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
I am a new Suffolkian, recently transplanted from sunny Southern California.
After 18 years of baking in 128-degree summers and navigating my way through a society based completely on obscene wealth, I was eager to get back to a country breeze and a way of life based on home and hearth.
Palm Desert, Calif., near the celebrity haven of Palm Springs, is a place where cars cost as much as houses, houses cost as much as yachts and golf memberships run as much as med school. Most billboard advertising features plastic surgeons, who will boost and/or vacuum your body in every conceivable location for the price of a Bermuda vacation or new vinyl siding, and dentists who want to cloisonne your teeth for a year's wages.
In Palm Desert, one has to cross Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Ginger Rogers and Fred Waring (streets!) just to get to the supermarket. Living in a gated community with less security than the U.N. is considered low-class; driving a car that is worth less than $60,000 is unspeakable. Even the police don designer shorts for the summer season.
Dining in Palm Desert is a definite sit-down experience, as there are no drive-throughs allowed by city ordinance (far too tacky). You can try the California Pizza Kitchen, where a single-serving pizza will run you $15; for more intense fare there is Ruth Chris' Steakhouse, where you have to reserve your seat three months in advance and pay up to $60 per person for a steak dinner. Executive car washes, dry cleaners and golf shops abound on every corner. To have your hair cut in Jose Eber's El Paseo salon or JAG, another posh place, will run upwards of $150.
There are 342 days of sun back home. Of course, there are 7,000 swimming pools in Palm Springs alone, and plenty of fountains and water treatments to make you feel cool despite the bake-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk spring and summer months. Every March the ``Santa Ana's'' create hellacious sandstorms, and every rain storm brings flash floods.
If you like this brutal weather and have lived in the desert for more than five years, you can be dubbed a native - a ``desert rat.'' Coyotes, scorpions, black widows and rattlesnakes are common in the region, and most people have the pleasure of entertaining more than one of these in their homes.
These creatures should consider themselves fortunate, because people do not ``visit'' in the desert. You can't get past the security guards to drop off your home-made apple pie.
First you have to call your friend, then your friend has to call the guard, then you have to tell the guard who you are, and then, if you're lucky, the guard will write you a pass and lift the gate, after which you can get lost looking for your friend's address because all the houses look the same.
In fact, the desert has professional ``welcome wagons,'' people who are paid by promotional companies to visit you and give you pre-packaged goodies like toothpaste coupons and French melba toast.
The home-baked lemon cake and congo cookies my neighbor Doris Hurley brought me the other day were a real welcome wagon. Not to mention Joyce down the street, who stops by to give my dogs treats, or Ken and Elaine Harvey, who bought Mrs. Johnson's house on Pinner Street, who play a mean game of Tripoly. These are real folks, folks who buy their pizza at Pizza Hut, bake their own cookies, keep a hot pot of coffee on tap, and hand out authentic, human charm, a commodity that makes Suffolk outshine the Palms as one of the richest communities in the union.
That reminds me - I've got to make Mrs. Hurley a batch of my mock chicken legs to say thank you. MEMO: Ms. Mateas is a correspondent for The Sun.
by CNB