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THE LAND WHERE TIME STANDS STILL:
We cross the Utah line and the red
rocks start to rear up. |
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Half an hour later we pull into Goulding's
Trading Post in Monument Valley, the Navajo Tribal Park made famous
by Hollywood. Gerald La Font, the owner of the post, opens the car
door. "Welcome to the real world," he says. He's not kidding.
Brought up near an Indian reservation in Gallup, New Mexico where
his father had a rading post, he feels the wilderness is the only
reality. |
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"There's nothing phony about life here," he says, What you see is what you get." WESTERN BACK LOT |
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Gerald and Roland LaFont, two brothers
bought the lodge in 1981 and expanded and modernized it considerably.
They are still owners. Reservations now are handled by computer, but
the Hollywood atmosphere still prevails.
John Wayne's framed picture from "Stagecoach"
still hangs in the dining room beside Richard Widmark's time sheet
for morning makeup call in "Cheyenne Autumn," and the
promontory that overlooks the entire valley is still called "John
Ford's Point" -- even by the Navajo. |
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Strangely, when a cowboys-and-Indians movie shows on the reservation, the Navajo cheer for the cowboys. They identify with the good guys because that's how they see themselves. One hundred and sixty thousand strong -- the largest of all the Indian nations -- they are fiercely patriotic and proud when a son makes the US Marines.
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