There it was.  The Sheriff station.  Just as I imagined it.  A lovely white building.  Green grass in front.  Stupid rocks put in the middle of the green grass.  But wait…

It’s right downtown.  Not on the edge of town, right, freaking downtown.  How did I fail to realize this when I google-walked the city?

However, the F4 phantom was there, right where it was supposed to be, and right beside that, train tracks.  Hmmm.  Busy train tracks.  Something I hadn’t realized.

But the real problem was where I had originally placed my building, Parkmen Technologies was about 3 min from the police station.

GACK!

Oh, it’s something I can move and, frankly, to make the story work, I’ll need to move a bank as well but my image of Lancaster’s main street was just so wrong.

It had trees, for one, and plenty of parking, and all manner of stores that seemed to be doing quite well, thank you very much. It reminded me of Sidney (on the island) or White Rock (on the mainland.)  Err, without the water.  But, you know, that kind of neat little town.

Music drifted from little, green light displays.  Overhead, Hometown hero banners hung.  Down the street from the sheriff station was a beautiful library and an historic hotel and a post office and on some of the walls, murals to former heroes like Chuck Yaeger and Curtis LeMay.

Oh boy, did I ever get this wrong but I soaked up everything so that I could get it right and, what’s really cool, right is better than what’s in my mind.

This is a military town.  Makes sense since it’s so close to Edward’s AFB but the local medical outreach has flags in the windows, the US flag and the armed forces flags.  There are soldiers in the faded green computer generated camo wandering around.

I ended up parking and driving and driving and parking.  I still need to talk a few more pictures but it was great to see this part of Lancaster in person.

On the way back down the otherside, I got caught up in an accident.  It was about 3 cars in front of me and suddenly the guy in front of me, in an old, beat-up 1930’s ford, stopped in the middle of the road and all the people inside, the driver and his two sons, got out.

I thought, what the fuck?

But they ran to the intersection and there, just off to the side, one small car had been hit by one large truck.  The truck had glass on its bumper.  The car has its front smashed in.

How clueless am I that I didn’t see this earlier?  I was all focused on the buildings to my left and right.  But how cool is it that the guy in the old car and his sons rushed to help?  Seriously, that’s cool.

Both drivers were fine, or at least I couldn’t see any injuries and traffic was stalled until the sheriff’s deputies came.  Which, incidentally, took longer than it should have since it occurred to me that the patrol vehicles might not actually be at the station but on, you know, patrol.

I eventually got going again, and did one more tour of the main street, Lancaster Blvd in case anyone is interested, and parked near the sheriff station.  I got out and went inside.  It was cool inside, AC iceberg cool and the inside did not match the outside.  Outside was new, bright, gleaming.  Inside was dull, wore-looking and filled with a HUGE line-up of people who seemed to be in a very pissed off mood.

I stood in line for about 5 min and realized that no one was at the counter.  I thought someone would be coming back at some point but nope, it must have been someone’s lunchbreak.

Geeeez, no wonder everyone was grumpy.

So I left and went to my hotel to see if I could find out a way to see that C-46 and phone the police to see if I could make an appointment.