THE LAKE
Mayer, Milton
The Lake By MILTON MAYER THIS." said Bob Vogel. "is it." "Is what?", said I. "Is Lake Elsinore." said Bob. "Beautiful Lake Elsinore, The Largest Fresh Water Lake in Southern California." Before...
...I don't mind, myself, but I know you Quakers don't believe in pledges and oaths...
...Edson D. Washburn...
...That night—it was six o'clock then—we were to lead a panel discussion at the Elsinore Union High School Auditorium...
...Mayor Edson D, Washburn is a trusteee of my church and a fervent admirer of Gerald L. K. Smith and a leading authority on Communist activities...
...The subject of the discussion was the Dec/aratton of Independence and the Communist Manifesto...
...Blood and fish," I said...
...And then the gnats came, and they've sprayed everything, but the gnats keep coming, and the entymol-ogists, immunologists, meteorologists, and philologists don't know why...
...Like that...
...At least they haven't said so...
...But Lloyd Lafler will know about the smell...
...And there are 36 churches—in a town of 2,000 people—including the Holiness, Pentencostal Holiness, and Assembly of God...
...It was...
...The Wreden Hot Springs Hotel Dining Room—"Famous for Food"—was empty except for us and the waitress...
...Are they gnats," said Bob, "or locusts...
...The whole police force—all four men, including the Chief and the Captain—will be there tonight in plain clothes...
...First I've got to tell you something," he said...
...It isn't funny," said Lloyd, and it wasn't...
...The whole town turned out to haul them away and bury them, but they kept coming, and they had to get convict labor to haul them to the fertilizer factories in Los Angeles...
...We didn't do it," I said, "we just got here...
...It Can't Happen Here," I said...
...It isn't funny," said Lloyd...
...They don't know anything for sure any more...
...Do you mean," I said, "that the Communists dried up the Lake...
...But who's behind it all...
...Who's pushing it—the Legion...
...That smell is fish...
...Every seat was taken...
...I said...
...Things are bad," said Lloyd, when we got to his house...
...Look," I said, "do they know that I'm a Jew, and not a Quaker...
...The audience sat there facing us and looked at us hard, especially, I thought, at Jane...
...Nobody knows who did it...
...It was spooky...
...It's happening," said Lloyd...
...Employers' outfits...
...We drove through the darkening town to the Wreden Hot' Springs Hotel, "Famous for Food," "Visit the Elbow Room Bar and Lounge," "Nature-Heated Mineral Water," "Television in the Lobby...
...That," said Bob, "is where the gnats breed...
...Everybody looked at me and I said we would...
...The theologists don't know...
...The big double doors were at the back...
...Jane said she didn't like to take pledges under duress, but she agreed with Bob...
...It was spooky...
...It's spooky," said Jane...
...The town's got it bad...
...I've arranged for the doors to be left open for the first fifteen minutes, but the doors are at the back and you're at the front...
...They're scared of Communists...
...I was scared...
...Not," said Bob, "if they're brother and sister...
...Gerald Smith organizers...
...I've already told you...
...How do we look...
...Nope," said Lloyd...
...And then the Lake dried up...
...No," said Lloyd...
...They say it's Communist...
...Beautiful Lake Elsinore was about seven miles long and two and a half miles wide when it was a Lake...
...Gosh," said Jane...
...The local sponsors were billed as the Elsinore Lions Club, the Elsinore Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Elsinore American Legion...
...I agreed with both of them...
...Nope...
...mineral waters, mud baths, hot springs, reducing diet, and, above all, the Lake...
...Of course not," said Lloyd...
...The fish have been gone for two years," said Bob...
...Acheson and McCarthy tell us the Communists are everywhere, so we know they're everywhere, so we're suspicious of everybody...
...spookiest of all when we got into the little town and didn't see anyone in the streets...
...There had always been a few Negroes across the Lake, and along about the same time as the Jews came Negro families from Los Angeles started building summer cottages there, and now there were 400 Negroes...
...said Lloyd...
...Nope—the Lake...
...What makes it spooky," said Lloyd, "is that the hotels are all named Shore Acres and Lakeview Hotel and names like that, and the Chamber of Commerce stuff and the signboards all still say 'On Beautiful Lake Elsinore,' and the ads all say 'Private Beach,' 'Water Sports,' and thinks like that and show pictures of bathing and boating and fishing and water-skiing...
...Not for the town, not for the panel members, not for Lloyd or Bob or Jane, but for me...
...MILTON MAYER, a regular for The Progressive, has turned up in more than a score of American magazines, including Negro Digest, Fellowship, Life, Reader's Digest, Commmonweal, Bet' ter Homes 6 Gardens, The Nation, Harper's, and The Saturday Evening Post...
...Any Klan...
...So they're scared...
...Lake, fish, gnats," said Lloyd, "and this is a resort town, 'The Year Around Resort Town of Southern California.' That's its industry, always has been...
...II They didn't...
...He swung the car around from the shore line—that is, from where the shoreline used to be and the mud is now—and drove down Lake Shore Drive...
...It isn't funny," said Lloyd, "and I'm scared, too...
...I heard down at the Lions Club today that Jane was one of 'those women Communists.' They say that you two are a brother-and-sister team...
...Bob said he never heard of such proportions, and how did it happen...
...There are about 400 Jews in this town of maybe 2,000, and they are good customers, so nobody talks anti-Semitism...
...On the far shore, across the width of mud, was a narrow strip of gray water, maybe a foot deep...
...The school was on a knoll, and the auditorium, which was also the gymnasium, was up a long, wide flight of stairs...
...Are there any Communists in town...
...Oh, I know the Quakers always use first names, but Elsinore doesn't...
...It wasn't funny...
...An inveterate lecturer, he speaks throughout the country under the auspices of the Great Books Foundation, the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Jewish Peace Foundation...
...The geologists don't know...
...said I. "I don't know," said Bob...
...Most of the bungalows and cottages facing the mud seemed to be empty, and they had For Sale or For Rent signs on them...
...III Then Lloyd told us about the Lake...
...Something terrible is happening to us, and we don't know who's doing it, and we're scared...
...Nope...
...We asked Lloyd about the Lake...
...Everybody in town is scared...
...You bet it isn't," said Bob...
...and between the doors and the dais were rows of folding chairs...
...Mayer...
...But they wouldn't...
...The town is terribly tense, and maybe we'll have a meeting and maybe we won't, and maybe we'll begin the meeting and maybe we won't finish it...
...It was spooky long before we got there, coming up Highway 395 from San Diego, out of the richly irrigated orange and walnut groves and- into a stone-and-shale-strewn country of poor little clapboard farms and corrugated shanties with names like "Good Hope Chicken Ranch...
...If I was going to Elsinore," said a man in Palomar, when I told him we had to be in Elsinore before dark, "I'd rather get there after dark...
...One morning the whole surface of the Lake was solid with dead fish...
...Of what...
...We keep telling ourselves we aren't ruined, but—" "You are," I said...
...And there are about 400 Negroes...
...And they're scared stiff of the Mayers...
...The blinker light at the main intersection blinked at the emptiness...
...They say you aren't even married...
...And where does the smell breed...
...He was...
...I was scared that maybe I wasn't a pacifist...
...The food was not famous, but it was cheap...
...I've been begging them to see it through, but they're scared...
...The fish all died one day summer before last," said Lloyd...
...Before us stretched a long bed of gray mud, maybe five miles long and a mile wide...
...Nobody knows...
...You don't look good," I said...
...I don't know how many of the panel members will show up...
...But there wasn't any chatter in the audience, as there always is before a meeting of any sort...
...subsurface water pumped out, diverted out, lowered out, dried out...
...The Lake dried up...
...The town was hot—"360 Days of Sunshine Every Year"— and empty...
...Lloyd Lafler, the parson of the Elsinore Methodist Church, was to be chairman of the meeting...
...A potato valley turning to wasteland...
...But the smell never went away, and they're scared it never will...
...I'm not scared for myself," he went on, and he wasn't, "but I'm scared for you, and for the people on the panel, and for the town...
...Lloyd said that in 1940 there were one or two Jewish families in town, and then some Los Angeles Jews who succeeded in getting their old folks out of the Old, or Hitler, Country started settling them in El-sinore, where they could sit inexpensively in the sun and the mud baths, and one old Jew told another and now there were 400...
...I said...
...They're scared of the American Friends Service Committee...
...Elsinore, California, was one of a series of one-night stands that Jane and I were doing for the American Friends Service Committee...
...I mean," said Lloyd, "that the Lake dried up...
...Down at the Lion's Club today somebody said we'd all have to take the pledge of allegiance to the flag tonight...
...The members of the Civilian Defense Organization —it's the biggest thing in town now —will be scattered through the audience...
...I shouldn't have...
...the dais for the panel was at the front...
...And the whole town will be there, scared and smelling blood...
...an audience of 300 adults out of the town's total population of 2,000...
...Lake Elsinore is—was—highly mineral...
...and Mrs...
...That comes from your being billed as Jane and Milton Mayer, instead of Mr...
...Of Communists," said Lloyd, "since the Lake dried up...
...Bob Vogel, of the Service Committee, was along as general manager and to take the free-will offering, if any, for the work of the Service Committee...
...It was spooky about the Lake, and spookier still about the fish...
...At least I hope not...
...The hydrologists don't know., The hydrotherapists don't know...
...We'll ask Lloyd...
...They say it's the minerals that killed all the fish when the water went down...
...It isn't funny," said Lloyd, "and they don't say you did it, because they don't know for sure...
...The Lake was Elsinore and Elsinore was the Lake...
...That smell isn't minerals," said Jane (who is also Mrs...
...The panel members were to be twenty Elsinoreans, including a bartender, a Catholic priest, a Negro school teacher, a Jewish lawyer, a public utilities man, and the mayor's wife, Mrs...
...On the way to the Elsinore Union High School we didn't see anyone, and it was spooky, and the smell, or the sense of smell, was stronger in the dark...
...Bob said he guessed we'd better take the pledge of allegiance to the flag, because Lloyd would be in a bad spot if we refused...
...It was spookier still, as we approached Lake Elsinore, to see all the For Sale signs along the highway, the closed motels and hamburger joints, and the signboards rusted, splintered, and fallen...
Vol. 15 • August 1951 • No. 8
