Farmers Markets are popular.
This market, on a Wednesday, opens at nine and features a smattering of produce, vendors selling chili rellenos and rice bowls, massage therapy in a chair, potions and ointments made from cactus and other desert plants, jewelry and yard ornaments,information on real estate and medical insurance.
This morning, happening at the same time and place as the market, is a Rincon Club Photo Session for the Geneology and Pickelball Clubs.
With over a thousand spaces in this park, there are lots of over 55 folks looking to while away spare time. There is a railroad club, metal shop, sewing and quilting hen house. There is ballroom dancing, square dancing, jewelry making, hiking, bird watching. There are clubs for golfers and bridge players and a poker room. You can spend your time in genealogy, archeology, mixology or any theology you like.
Vendors wait for business to pick up today. Many follow a circuit and this is one of many venues where they show their wares during the week.Yard ornaments are well priced with bright colors drawing people like bright flowers attracting pollinating insects.
” The peacock is very nice, ” I comment as an older woman walks gingerly on the grass past me to look at its price tag.
” i know, ” she says wistfully, ” but I’m on a fixed income. ”
This retirement paradise gives me a feeling of loss.
Watching a generation with experience and knowledge and wealth consigning themselves to walks and shuffleboard seems oddly wasteful.
Even old people can’t always afford what they want, or pay dearly for what they think they need.
I should have bought her the peacock but her husband wouldn’t have been too happy about it.
Cactus and the desert work together in Arizona like salt and pepper.
Inside the row after row of RV’s, park model homes, clubhouses and accessory buildings, swimming pool and hot tub, pickle ball and tennis courts, are varieties of cactus. There are upwards of 2000 varieties of the prickly plant spread over the world. Most all of them have shallow root systems, the ability to gulp up water quickly and hold it for future use, and all withstand dry harsh hot climates.
These cactus have been planted, like the palm trees, at strategic locations in this RV resort. Many residents have additionally planted their own little cactus gardens in front of their park model homes also adding ceramic lizards, fountains and colorful potted plants. The largest cactus in this area is the Saquaro that can live 150 years and grow to 15 feet tall and there are many in this park. Saquaro are such special cactus that they are protected by the state government.
If you dig up a saquaro in Arizona you are looking at a fine and jail time. Cactus rustling is now on the books but they won’t hang you for it,yet.
Rustling cactus, on face value, looks like a pretty easy crime, except for the needles. The downside is that selling a stolen cactus to a buyer, in a place they are already plentiful, seems like a bit too much work to make the theft have an upside.
Most people love trains.
Just to the southeast of the main office at Rincon West RV Resort,in Tucson, runs the Rincon Railroad.
Sitting on a little hill, train conductors sit in lawn chairs with wireless controllers and run their trains through their make believe town. A train schedule is posted at the station, and, on this day, an engineer is trying to figure out why his train loses power in the turns. His wife is adding little plastic people to displays of Old West scenes in the miniature town, scenes that are now mostly found in kid’s books.
Trains helped settle the west and in early morning hours, in South Tucson, you hear real train whistles as big boy trains speed through pulling box cars of coal, shipping containers, and empty cattle cars.
In receding light this evening, this choo choo is not running much longer. The conductor and his wife need to fix dinner, sit around their front porch with neighbors talking about old days, listening to Glenn Miller on an old radio prized by antique hounds.
At the Rincon West Railroad Club you take a stroll back in time,
Playing with trains is something little kids and big kids have in common.
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