Wagon Train

Just three days from the commemorative journey's end, Boyd Gardner sat atop Boballen, the sturdy steed that carried him 800 miles across the deserts of the Southwest. Somewhere outside Hesperia, the 69-year-old cowboy stopped his horse to explain why this Mormon wagon train from Salt Lake City to San Bernardino, a reenactment of the original one 150 years ago, was so trying.

The sound is the thing that gets to Jim Reinartz most, that creaking, rhythmic "crunch, crunch, crunch" as the wheels of his antique horse-drawn wagon rattle across gravel roads and rut-covered fields. "Hear that rumble?" the one-time rodeo star asked wistfully. "When I was a kid we always had steel-wheel wagons and that's what it sounded like. That's probably the way it sounded back when the pioneers crossed the prairies, too."

Is the Los Angeles School District too large, cumbersome and inefficient? Since there has been much talk lately about breaking up the Los Angeles School District into smaller districts, I would like to add my two cents worth. When it takes over three months to receive a set of textbooks ordered from a supplier within the state, only a few hundred miles away, it begins to be very frustrating. I am a teacher in the Los Angeles district, and I ordered a set of textbooks for a business organization class the first week of the semester.

Escape From Death Valley: As Told by William Lewis Manly and Other '49ers, edited by LeRoy and Jean Johnson (University of Nevada Press: $14.95, paperback; $25, hardcover) The saga of William Lewis Manly and the rescue of the Bennett-Arcan wagon train is one of the most stirring (if seldom-told) stories in the history of the West and the literature of survival.

Question: Where can I find information about an ancestor who was a wagon master? He worked out of either Independence or St. Louis, Mo., and led wagon trains to California. Answer: Check with Society of California Pioneers, 456 McAllister St., San Francisco 94102 to see if they have any biographical material pertaining to him in their Overland Records collection. The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry St., Columbia, Mo.

Seven prairie schooners set sail Thursday from Moorpark with the same hope of hitting pay dirt as the Forty-Niners who poured into California during the gold rush of 1849. But the drivers of these horse- and mule-drawn wagons are not spending four days on the overland route to Camarillo to enrich themselves, but to raise funds for the Ventura County Arthritis Foundation.

Today's sampling of local records turns up a diverse and solid batch of new releases. There's blues from Sydney Ellis, bluegrass from the Andy Rau Band, alternative rock done with cerebral care by Volkwood Ghost and with grungy loudness by Ragabash, plus the genre-jumping pastiche of Sublime. Ratings range from * (tedious) to **** (transcendent). Three stars denote a solid recommendation.

Forest Schmidt has one foot in the past, one foot in the future. One minute he has his hands around the reins of an 1880s wagon pulled by two of the biggest draft mules a city boy has ever seen. The next he is sitting alone behind the joystick of an ultra-light airplane buzzing along the treetops of his 40-acre ranch east of Paso Robles at 55 m.p.h.

Soon the low roller will be cruising to Las Vegas in the same high style of the high roller. Cindy Tractman, who transported Eastern vacationers to Atlantic City during the '70s, will be delivering Southern Californians, door to door, to Las Vegas' new 332-room San Remo Hotel Casino & Resort by super-stretch limousines starting June 30. The $179 package will include round-trip transportation, three days/two nights at the San Remo. Tractman's limos will feature an open bar, videos and TV. The door-to-door limousine/hotel service is programmed for vacationers looking to be pampered without paying the hefty price.