Herman Bazel (Buster) Burris spent 50 years building what he hoped would be a boom town in the barren desert northeast of Palm Springs, but the boom never came. At 80, Burris is set to sell out, walk away and, he says with a Jimmy Stewart crackle, "never look back."
"I hate to leave," he said, "but I'm ready any time."
The price tag on his life's work, Amboy (pop. 24), is $2.5 million--less than the cafe, motel, tire shop, service station, three homes, mobile home, artist's studio, post office, airplane hangar and 40 acres plus are worth, Burris said, but he's not interested in digging for gold at this stage of his life.
"I figure it inventories out at around $6 million, stock and everything--no livestock, just cats and dogs--but it wouldn't make a difference," he said, if he got more than the asking price. "At my age, I couldn't spend it anyway."
The biggest selling point for the tiny town on old Route 66, Burris said, is that life midway between Barstow and the Arizona border is still quiet, clean and simple.
Burris came to Amboy with his first wife and his in-laws in 1939, and through the years, as they passed on, his burden grew as he took over operation of the cafe, motel, service station and tire shop. He also kept watch on the family's 53-acre parcel 9 miles away, which he's selling along with Amboy.
It's been a hard life but a good one, and for Burris there has been no place like home. He has rarely left town for long, except to buy supplies, and he was happy there.
"The air is clean. We don't have all the noise and racket, and we don't have a bunch of gangsters or roughnecks like you do," Burris said. "It's good country out here: fresh air, no noise, no traffic. . . . You live 20 years longer here than where you are."
Burris said the decision to sell the town and the nearby undeveloped acreage, which he owns free and clear, was tough but inevitable.
"Six months ago, I decided I was just getting too old to handle it. I do most of the work myself. The tires are getting big and heavy. My eyesight's not that good. My wife does all the driving.
"If I was 20 years younger, I wouldn't sell--under no condition--but I'm not able to do the things that have to be done and I can't get people to do things. The younger generation doesn't want to work. They're not reliable."
'Special Type of Person'
Burris first put Amboy on the block 14 years ago, listing it at $350,000 with Joe Lovullo of Anchorage Investments of Dana Point.
