On the subject of Watts

[Roger E. Rustad, Jr.]

A few weeks ago, several friends and I visited Simon Rodia's Watt's Tower 
(the tower Pynchon talks about in his Watts essay, 
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html) For those 
who haven't (or can't) see it, you can check out some of the pics here: 
http://www.trywatts.com/, http://www.trywatts.com/tower_tour/index.html, 
http://www.trywatts.com/tower_tour/tourpage.htm.  Here's a good shot of 
what it looks like from the bottom:  http://www.trywatts.com/united/PIX11.JPG

On display in the adjacent museum was some cool shovel art (it's more 
interesting than it sounds) and other mosaics put together by children (my 
favorite being one made completely with bottlecaps). (Here's a pic of that 
museum: http://www.trywatts.com/images/art_center_1.jpg)

We talked to the tour guide for a while (a very friendly black man who'd 
periodically spray his head with water to keep cool), bought tamales from a 
local vendor, saw the Rainbow Bridge 
(http://www.trywatts.com/menu/newrain/picture_00.htm), read the Watts 
timeline etched in the stone, and then tried to figure out what type of 
parrot was chirping from inside the blue house directly across from the towers.

Roger

P.S. All that remains of Simon Rodia's house: 
http://www.trywatts.com/tower_tour/STOP03/PICT0074.JPG.  A firecracker 
landed on the roof of Rodia's home in 1955 and it burned down.
P.M.S. Afterwards we visited the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  It's hard 
to classify the art in there: displays run from an ant that inhales a plant 
spore to later become a permanent part of a tree to a tiny pope that fits 
in the eye of a needle. 
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