Daily News, August 7, 1994

Back in 1965, when Daniel Moynihan drew attention to the fact that one-
quarter of all black families were born out of wedlock, he took so much
heat for it that all discussion of the matter was squelched for the next 20
years. The result is that today two-thirds of black children are born out
of wedlock, and in cities like Washington, D.C., the illegitimacy rate for
teen- age moms is 92 percent.

Even so, the black underclass isn't our worst problem today. Whatever
the pathologies of this group, even on its worst day the black underclass
never amounted to more than a small percentage of the population. A
potentially much greater problem today is the looming white underclass -
22% of white children are born illegitimate (up from 4 percent in 1985).
Furthermore, unlike the black underclass, which is almost entirely confined
to the inner city, the white underclass has the ability to destabilize the
entire country once it fully emerges. And one of the places it is emerging
first is Wonder Valley.

Don't feel uninformed if you haven't heard of Wonder Valley. It's
located 150 miles due east of Los Angeles, one mountain range to the north
of Palm Springs in so blasted and desolate an area that pilots from the
nearby Twentynine Palms Marine Air Base occasionally mistake it for a
bombing range. The valley is 20 miles long and eight miles wide, rimmed by
distant jagged peaks, with crystalline air, suffocating summer heat, frigid
winters, alkaline water that comes out of the ground at 120 degrees,
innumerable creosote bushes, marauding coyotes and dozens of dry lakes on
which drug smugglers once landed contraband from Central and South America.

It's easy to tell when you've reached Wonder Valley driving east from
Twentynine Palms. Suddenly the road is cracked and broken, and then off on
either side of the road, you see these battered cabins set back from the
road, with bullet holes, smashed doors and missing walls. Others, obviously
occupied, are surrounded by battered trailers and junked cars. There are no
water lines, no sewage system, garbage collection or law enforcement (one
local law enforcement official claims he doesn't have the manpower to
patrol the area even if he wanted. And besides, he says, the residents are
''a bunch of drunks who don't want us out there anyway.'')

Because the area is both cheap and remote (a sign at the edge of
Wonder Valley warns eastbound motorists - No services next 100 miles), the
community has become a refuge for convicted felons and sex offenders from
Los Angeles and Orange counties. Abandoned shacks and cabins are available
for the taking and others can be rented, one resident told me, for as
little as $100 a month. Some people buy little 400-square-foot cabins and
then build additions as finances permit, usually without the benefit of a
building permit. ''You build what you want,'' says local attorney Don
Kemby. ''Put a fence around and get yourself a mean dog.''

The problem is, there's no work in Wonder Valley - half the 4,000
residents of Wonder Valley are on public assistance or disability; another
40 percent are retired; only 10 percent actually have jobs. With so many
parents crippled by welfare, alcohol or drugs, the children of Wonder
Valley roam the desert like feral animals stealing cars and breaking into
unoccupied cabins.

Once when I visited Wonder Valley, I took a tour with Jack McConaha,
the irrepressibly voluble former fire chief who now runs a one-man security
service. Every time we would pass a desolate bullet-ridden cabin, he would
rattle off its capsule history - ''guy got drunk here and burnt up his
girlfriend's car;'' ''that family has six or eight kids, all involved in
burglaries;'' ''the man who lived here was mental. He lived on dog food.''

People drive 70 and 80 mph on these little dirt roads. Their cars
aren't registered. They drive into town on back roads and then park at the
food store with the front facing out so the cops can't tell they don't have current registration stickers on their license places. They can't afford to have water hauled ($40 for 1,800
gallons.) Instead they live out 2 1/2 gallon plastic bottles that they
fill up free in Twentynine Palms.

''People are living in conditions that are worse than a Third World
country,'' says Wonder Valley roads commissioner Jim Copeland. ''No running
water. No electricity. They lack fundamental hygiene. No showers. The kids
raise themselves because the parents are drunk from sunrise to sunset.''

''It takes a certain mind-set to live up here,'' says Jack Shay, a
former Marine pilot who runs a tire dealership in nearby Twentynine Palms.
''There's no opera, no symphony, no sporting events. Unless you live in the
city itself you have to haul your own water. Fifty percent of the people
don't want their phone numbers listed.''

Shay, who invariably dresses in bright green T-shirts, says he is
forever running into people who try to pay for tires with a check, but then
refuse to give him their phone number or address for fear someone will come
and visit them or the county will call them up for jury duty. As a result,
even the county doesn't know exactly how many people live in the area. Then
school starts in the fall and all of a sudden all these extra kids show up
for classes that no one knew were out there. The county has tried to
estimate the population by counting mail boxes, phones and water meters.
But a lot of people don't have phones and they don't use city water.
''Frankly,'' says Shay, ''a lot of the people who live up here are
paranoid.

Leo Flanagan, a sixth-grade teacher at Oasis Elementary in Twentynine
Palms, used to have his students keep personal journals. But then he
started reading all these stories of incest, child abuse, beatings, and
neglect. They families were so dysfunctional the parents would go away for
the weekend and leave the kids behind without any food. Or else, says
Flanagan, the children would be living with an uncle and aunt because both
parents were in prison.

In one case, says Flanagan, the family simply walked out the door,
leaving behind four dogs and three cats. There was no food and no water.
''The dogs ate the cats and then started eating each other.'' For Flanagan,
that was the last straw. ''Now my students don't keep journals anymore.''

Larry Riggs, a Wonder Valley resident who runs a gun and tattoo shop
in Twentynine Palms, told me when I went to see him one day last winter
that when he first moved to the valley he didn't even have to lock his
door. ''It ain't that way no more. I got alarm systems and everything
else,'' including ''good biting dogs'' and a neighbor that shoots at anyone
who goes up there without permission.

Later I go see Dave Munson, a former construction foreman who now
lives on the edge of a dry wash along the southern edge of the Twentynine
Palms Marine Air Ground Combat Center. Munson, who is confined to a
wheelchair as a result of a motorcycle accident nine years ago, originally
came to Wonder Valley to get away from shopping malls, the people, the
pressure and the rules -''Your dog had to be on a leash. You couldn't put
our lawn clippings except the night before the trash.''

Now, with his back injury, Munson couldn't afford to leave Wonder
Valley even if he wanted to. Out here, he says, ''I can get by on $600 a
month. I couldn't afford to live down in the city. And if I did, I wouldn't
like it.''

The only problem is there's no work in Wonder Valley. Before Munson
got hurt he could earn $30 an hour doing carpentry in Palm Springs, $17 an
hour at the foot of the mountain at Banning, $12.50 an hour in Yucca Valley
at the other end of the Morongo Basin from Wonder Valley. But in Wonder
Valley, says Munson, ''you're lucky to get $6 or $7 an hour.''

''So how do people out here make a living?'' I ask.

''By the grace of God, man, pretty much.''