A Place to Call Home
Okay, I get it.
Palmdale is not Montreal.
But it is my adopted home; a sleepy suburban town in California’s High Desert that just doesn’t get much respect in crime fiction.
Or in real life.
The city’s motto, “A Place to Call Home,” is supposed to emphasize its quality of life, its diverse housing options, and desirable community environment for its residents.
Uh-huh.
First time I realized this was while watching Accomplice, a 1946 B-flick featuring Los Angeles private eye Simon Lash and his partner Eddie Slocum discuss the possible location of a suspect. When “Palmdale” is suggested, the gasp of astonishment and distaste is immediate — and hilarious.
Turns out the windy little burg is depicted as a sort of backwoods blackhole, inhabited by inbred shady types and mink ranchers.
Since then, there have been only a few other shout-outs.
One is from the 1980 pilot film for Tenspeed and Brown Shoe by Stephen J. Cannell. Flim flam man E.L. “Tenspeed” Turner, talking a mile a minute, bluffs his way into the cockpit of a commercial jetliner about to take off, posing as a flight inspector. Here it is, taken right from the script:
But my favourite is the sly wink in Honey Don’t!, the 2025 film directed and co-written by Ethan Coen, and starring Margaret Qualley as Honey O’Donahue, a Bakersfield, California eye who definitely likes girls.
After a round of particularly rigorous sex, she asks her partner, “Did you see heaven?”
To which the woman, still glowing from one mother of an orgasm, replies “I saw at least Palmdale.”
Palmdale’s about seventy miles away from Bakersfield.
Submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Got anymore? Send ’em along… I’m a big boy. I can take it.
