Big Bear City might be the meth capital of Big Bear.
There are quite a few sad and desperate mountain towns in this area but Big Bear City has got to be one of the most pathetic of them all. Cars sit on blocks in front yards. Trash lines the streets. The houses are old and worn down, just like the people who walk the boulevard.
This could be any town in the midwest today. This could be any town where factories are closing and jobs are in short supply. In the distance pine trees cover the snow capped mountains and that is a pretty sight on this cold, cold winters morning, but it is over shadowed by the despair that hangs heavy in the icy winds.
Big Bear in the winter is a ski town, and every person I see is heading off to a seasonal job at one of the Ski Resorts, Snow Summit or Bear Mountain. Kid’s in Snow Summit jackets hitch hike on the boulevard, mitten clad thumbs in the brisk mountain air. It’s maybe twenty degrees this morning as I make my way past the two ski resorts. Near the cut off in Big Bear the two different kinds of traffic converge on the resorts parking lot; from the Big Bear City side old pick up trucks and falling apart Geo’s with tire chains on the wheels. From the Big Bear side of town Yuppies are pulling in to the parking lot in their BMW SUV’s with snow boards on the roof.
This morning I was remebering was Presidents Day weekend and it had been the driest winter any one can recall. Big Bear got fourteen inches of snow the night before; the only snow they saw all season. The people in this town need this weekend to be big, they need the business to make a little cash and help pay some bills.
There are quite a few sad and desperate mountain towns in this area but Big Bear City has got to be one of the most pathetic of them all. Cars sit on blocks in front yards. Trash lines the streets. The houses are old and worn down, just like the people who walk the boulevard.
This could be any town in the midwest today. This could be any town where factories are closing and jobs are in short supply. In the distance pine trees cover the snow capped mountains and that is a pretty sight on this cold, cold winters morning, but it is over shadowed by the despair that hangs heavy in the icy winds.
Big Bear in the winter is a ski town, and every person I see is heading off to a seasonal job at one of the Ski Resorts, Snow Summit or Bear Mountain. Kid’s in Snow Summit jackets hitch hike on the boulevard, mitten clad thumbs in the brisk mountain air. It’s maybe twenty degrees this morning as I make my way past the two ski resorts. Near the cut off in Big Bear the two different kinds of traffic converge on the resorts parking lot; from the Big Bear City side old pick up trucks and falling apart Geo’s with tire chains on the wheels. From the Big Bear side of town Yuppies are pulling in to the parking lot in their BMW SUV’s with snow boards on the roof.
This morning I was remebering was Presidents Day weekend and it had been the driest winter any one can recall. Big Bear got fourteen inches of snow the night before; the only snow they saw all season. The people in this town need this weekend to be big, they need the business to make a little cash and help pay some bills.
It was twenty degrees in Big Bear that morning and snow boarding down a icy hillside with the wind chill did not sound like my idea of fun, so instead I took off for the empty forests near the Fawn Skin side of the lake and snow shoed a couple miles before work.
