Bakersfield, California
Not quite Hopper... but...
Almost everyone I met in LA/SF was horrified that I had visited Bakersfield, let alone that I quite appreciated it. There's no doubt, the place has a visceral reality, and I found the people friendly and hospitable - if rather right wing... But then, just don't mention down there that you like NY and SF. Oh well.
Just north of Bakersfield on the Amtrak train to San Francisco.
Flatness. In SF people were perplexed not only to why I spent time in Bakersfield, but why I didn't take the coastal train. The coast is lovely, but the interior was entrancing. There was a lulling monotony; a repetitiveness - of right angle crossings by roads and rails; telegraph poles, fences, barriers; fields, furrows, tracks; bells, doppler effects. Space etched by rail.
"He is telling all of this while he keeps fixed to his map, andPrairyerth: A Deep Map - William Least Heat Moon
as he speaks, he draws in the ties of his tracks, a couple hundred little hash marks. At first I see them as tallies of wrongs, but when he keeps marking them even after the topic changes, keeps laying down those little sleepers, I think: of course, the most important elements in a trackman’s work is the crosstie—that piece holding the railroad together, the predicate between subject and object, the linking between soil and rail. A trackman’s days go to battling ties; as feet are to a walker, so ties are to a train"
