Five hours in the air felt like the cycles of a laundry machine. Lisa, Lisa’s mom Janet and I rented a car at the Phoenix Airport. Or rather we ended up, to our surprise, with a 2000 Oldsmobile Bravada, an s.u.v. (dad calls them s.o.b.s). Not since driving Brian and Lata’s Pathfinder, had I driven anything so high off the ground. Famished, we headed over to Denny’s (my first time) before leaving the capital city. In the booth, Janet sat across from me. We thumbed through the menus. Over my shoulder, she saw something: “Oh my God. You left the front door open!” I whipped around and, sure enough, it was open. In my jetlagged state, I started to run blindly for the door, picturing some knucklehead poking around our precious junk. Our waitress looks concerned. “Wait,” yelled Lisa. “It’s not our car.” And she was right. It was someone else’s s.u.v. with the same color (dark green). Now I was drained. Janet laughed with tears in her eyes.
We arrived in Tucson later that evening to drop off my overzealous mother-in-law at the Arizona Inn, a beautiful hotel that’s been around since the 1930s. Emily and her boyfriend Jason met us there and we were “kickin’ it” in Janet’s room (Tucsonian slang for hanging out). Later that night Emily and Jason took us to a “fire show”--a short walk from Emily’s four room apartment. But we got there too late. It’s a performance art show put on by some locals every now and then, I imagined like Blue Man Group but with fire rather than paint and drums. The performance was finished by the time we got there. We met up with the other Brooklyn Pizza owner, Tony. Lis and I hadn’t seen him since the last time we visited, January 1997. There were a lot of young locals there, some dressed in costume. Tony said this was a belated “All Saints Day” parade and had ended here. I asked him how come--three days after All Saint’s? “They all have to work,” he said. Since Tucson is not the most thriving metropolis, there’s not much except the (food) service industry which pays around minimum wage. And that’s not too bad considering the cost of living is quite low. You can buy a bungalow starting at $85,000.
The museum, mostly outdoors, and calls itself a world-renowned zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden. Two-miles of looping walking trails. Enjoyed vistas of distant mountain ranges that I now forget, the nearby Avra Valley and the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. There were plenty of cacti but the real excitement was the wildlife: coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, prairie dogs, a black bear, a Mexican wolf and javelinas (first syllable prounounced “ha”). All but the latter critters were caged. Javelinas are dark gray and near-sighted and depend on their sense of smell to detect danger. They move around in herds and there were plenty of educational reading stations to warn, inform and coax us to keep an eye out for them. We saw a few sniffing around, scratching each other’s backs, and ignoring the small crowd watching them. Needless to say with all these animals, I went a tad “hog-wild” with my camera.
Once we had the new car, Lis and I went to where we wanted to go that day: Katchner Caves. 50 miles southeast of Tucson. Since it opened a year ago, 140,000 people have visited. You were encouraged to make reservations for a tour well in advance. Months, they said. If you didn’t, you were told to get there early for an opening or cancellation. It cost $10 to get into the parking lot and additional fee for a tour, running us up to $40 and a two hour wait that wouldn’t guarantee us a spot in a tour. Not worth it.
Instead, we drove to the nearest town, Benson, a 20-minute drive. Home of the Chute-Out Steakhouse & Saloon and Zeek’s Barbershop. Founded in 1880. Had lunch at the Horseshoe Cafe and had Cow-in-the-Mud (mocha) at the Cow-puccino Ice Cream and Coffeehouse. Fun menu picks: Hot Moostrami, Udderly Dagwood, The Grazer (vegetatarian) and From The Pond (tuna). Spoke with the only one working here, Barbara, born in Benson and lived here all her life. She thought Tucson to be “just too much” for her and preferred her small town of 5,000 where 90% of the Bensonians were over 30. While we chatted about NY and AZ, a Union Pacific train rumbled down main street, taking more than 10 minutes to slither through. Afterwards, we stopped off at a music store. The rental came with a CD player. The owner boasted she usually carries a .380 on her. The sign on the back of the door read: Shoplifting Can Be Deadly!
Later, back in Tucson, in the pouring rain, the three Weinbergs and I drove to Bookmart. A nice, big used bookstore to drool over, near where Emily used to live when we had visited her in ‘97. Couldn’t find much of what I really wanted but succumbed to a handful: Moby Dick (my next read), World According to Garp, In Cold Blood, Home by the Sea (May Sarton), and Roth’s Ghost Writer. In the last minute, grabbed a collection of essays: Why I Write. Good question.
Ugly weather on Tuesday. Spitting clouds. Actually most of the days we were in Tucson the weather turned cold on us. It was supposed to be in the mid-70s rather than the 50s and low 60s. Visited the Center for Creative Photography at U. of A. Home of the Ansel Adams archives. Visited here in ‘97 too. This time we saw one entitled, “Couples” by Mariana Cook. She’s the photographer who came out with coffee-table books on portraits of mothers and daughters as well as sisters or something like that. For each big black & white portrait of a couple, either well-known or unknown, there would be a short essay from the both of them describing the other and their relationship. Great to read the contrasting ones. Liked the essays of the architect Philip Johnson and his partner David Whitney the best for that reason.
Went back into the desert later w/ Emily, Janet and Lisa so Janet could see the desert and the saguaro soldiers. Lis and I scrambled up some rocky hills and explored other nooks and crannies to get down. Got bit by a cactus. Brushed my calf. No big deal.
Our parting meal the following morning was at the hotel by the steaming pool in the rare sunshine. Birds with moxie perched on the empty chair at our table, (b)egging for a bite. They even posed for food.
At dusk, while heading towards the exit, we heard a wooden flute and followed the sound to a building. Weeks before there had been a wedding service here. But now, a Native American in costumed garb nodded at us while playing for a funeral service about to begin.
