Big Bear Valley and city looks slightly different

Two years ago I had the opportunity to drive the winding mountain rode up to Big Bear Valley and Big Bear city. I heard there is an alternate, much straighter road behind the Big Bear mountain but if you're coming from Los Angeles, you'd have to go out of your way to take the straighter route. All I can say is, if you're one of those people who become car sick easily, think twice about taking the winding mountain road. You also need to stay alert on the main mountain road into Big Bear. Some of those road turns are like hairpin turns. Become careless and you'll find out real fast that your car lacks flying ability like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I was a little excited to see what Big Bear City looked like after thirty years since I first saw the mountain community on Andy Griffith's WINTERKILL. The early 1970s were the golden age of made-for-television movies that proved a low-budget didn't not mean low-quality. Television movies were typically low-budget and the real term should be, 'economically budgeted' because low-budget still has the connotation of low quality. The television movies featured great filming locations, good lighting-which meant technically proficient crews, often good plots, and more, almost every Hollywood actor and actress of repute could be seen on these television movies. That meant starring in one of these good quality low budget tv movies was not detrimental to their acting careers. When you watched these 1.5 hour movies, back in say, 1972 or 1974, you didn't miss any fancy special effects, explosions, or expensive sets and props. The movie's suspenseful plot, competent drama acting skills, sometimes an atmospheric or gothic type eerie background feeling, and a good pace to the storyline, kept your attention.

Big Bear City in 2005 could still be recognized from the 1974 WINTERKILL, but even thirty years of slow development and glacial economic growth can still change a community's looks. I could tell there were significant urban changes but overall small town community feel squeezed into a small urban city geographic was still there. For years I had romanticized about living up in the mountains in Big Bear City. But my short tour disabused me of any romantic notions. Don't get me wrong. Big Bear City is a nice place to visit if you're into the winter sports scene. I visited the place in September before the snow so it just looked like a mountain top big town community to me. There's really nothing of economic import to keep me there unless I own a business associated with tourism or mountain winter sports.

THE TOYOTA CAR COMMERICAL (1970). For anyone over age 45, if you can remember the highly picturesque Toyota car commercial of circa 1970-1971, showing a young couple in a red? Toyota subcompact driving on a road that circled a lake during autumn plush with scenery filled with trees of orange, yellow, and red colors.....background muzak of a Ray Coniff-like choral group singing, "Come run with meeee. Come chase the everlasting sun with meeeee. The winds of autumn are but one with theeeee....run with me run with me runnnn....."
All these decades I assumed the commercial was filmed somewhere in one of the New England states. When I circled Big Bear Lake in my jeep, the lake, the trees, the scenery, the landscape...was too obvious. Toyota Corporation commissioned some Hollywood studio to film their car commercial. There was no reason to fly a film crew all the way east to the Northeast. Big Bear Valley and Lake provide an exactly northern and northeastern climate, geography, and near identical landscape as somewhere in autumn New England. The trees in Big Bear are the type that change colors with autumn and winter, but you don't find down the mountain in semi-arid Los Angeles County and even hotter San Bernadino County.
Last trivia. That muzak background song, which I admit I liked, "Come Run With Me", was not an actual, complete song originally. It was a short singing piece created specifically for the Toyota car commercial. But years later, a Hawaiian music group, "Copper Nickel", actually recorded a complete version of the song. And they sound almost exactly like the original car commercial.