March 6th, 2010 | 
Author: The Sound Of Bakersfield
I am quite intrigued by the idea that is Bakersfield. The first time I ever heard of that place it was back when I was much younger and my father was trying to share with me the joys of horror novels specifically horror novels by Stephen King. For some bizarre reason Bakersfield as was mentioned in the King novel Misery suddenly struck me as a rather frightening place. Perhaps it was because it sounds so harmless innocent and boring that you would never expect someone like creepy number one fan Annie Wilkes to grow up in it. Bakersfield sounds like a small little town where everyone knows everyone else. The idea that someone who can abduct a person and hold him captive because she rather liked his writing would come from such a place caused me to lose much sleep for over a week. Obviously my father was forbidden to read me those books again until I was older. And for a while I thought that I would never like to go to a place that has a name that sounds as plain as Bakersfield lest I meet someone like Annie Wilkes.
The next time I heard the name Bakersfield it would be around 1995 when I hear one of my cousins playing the music of Korn. At the time I had not developed much interest in metal rock and as such I merely asked him why he was listening to all that noise. I remember my cousin trying to get me into it by telling me about the band their beginnings in Bakersfield and the like. At the time the mention of Bakersfield terrified me I was so sure that Korn worshiped the devil then and for a girl who rather liked more classic rock like the Beatles the Who and Pink Floyd it seemed to me that Korn sounded very much like they came from hell as well. It would not be until a few years later when I become a teenager who believed in the raw anger and sound of being young that I would come to appreciate the music of Korn as something that has changed the landscape of music and at that point I decided that a boring name with notsoboring people coming out of it may not be so bad.
So the sound of Bakersfield didn’t quite scare me by the time I was fully swinging in high school although I wasn’t enough of a Korn fan to actually try and research everything about them and where they came from I am not at all ashamed to say that I am THAT MUCH OF A NERD. I DID get into more Stephen King novels at that point having suddenly decided that I would be goth and would thus immerse myself in more scary things it didn’t work; I was far too perky to be a goth chick for long. And thus I got to read two other Stephen King novels wherein Bakersfield was mentioned Rose Madder and Desperation. This time however the connection did not frighten me as much as it fascinated me: what is it about Bakersfield that it would have such connections with bonechilling things in the mind of Stephen King?
At first I thought that it may be because the actual NAME of Bakersfield is rather mundane and the fact that it is quite normal makes the association with such strange and creepy stories makes the tales all the more disturbing. No one would expect a stalker to be born and raised in a place whose name sounds like an old English cottage. But now I’m starting to think that perhaps there is more to Bakersfield than a dull name
And it is for this very reason that I have been thinking that I should perhaps go and visit Bakersfield to see what makes the city the Korn was founded in the place where Annie Wilkes was raised. I find it intriguing that it has been used and mentioned in popular culture often in oblique and sometimes disturbing ways but has nevertheless failed to affect the kind of fame that other American cities have. As I understand it Bakersfield is supposed to be a rather large place and is referenced not only in literature but in music and movies as well. So I’d like to know: why is Bakersfield so queerly known and yet so very unknown?
About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Elea Almazora contributor to Bakersfield.Com.Mx
Elea Almazora currently works as a contributor to many informationbased websites writing about many subjects ranging from culture to sciences.
For more information related to this article please visit Bakersfield.Com.Mx
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