Elton might not approve, but a cheap radio, playing one of his yesteryear hits, provides music at the Rincon RV Resort Farmer’s Market.
Having the same feeling as watching a John Wayne movie on a TNT movie night, I listen to Elton belt out his early ancient hit to whomever is listening. Once a song goes out on the air, it has more lives than a cat.
Now, rumors of his lifestyle are far more interesting than his music, but good songs seem to outlast their composers and resonate across generational borders.
Ghosts stick around, but music residuals go on forever.
Shuffleboard is more cut throat than it appears.
Before these players take a shot, they consult, put chalk on their hands,look at the weather, visualize their stride.
You are the one responsible for propelling your disc down a slick, treacherous court. You live or die by your own hand.
In this game, strength is not needed, but steady nerves, strategy, and touch are critical. Your only uniform is a good pair of tennis shoes, loose fitting clothes and a cap.
There is no crying here because these are grownups who know the odds, and the score.
The only thing harder than playing shuffleboard here is playing shuffleboard on a cruise ship, with rough waves.
I wouldn’t play shuffleboard against any of these old people, man or woman.
I know sharks when I see them and old sharks are particularly dangerous.
The Rincon Railroad is for kids at heart.
Around the corner from the front office, the railroad town of Rincon has been created. On certain days of the week, on a strict schedule, railroad caps are donned, engine whistles toot, and trains roll around five different sets of tracks.
Frosty’s Diner is a favorite fifties stop on this line, and, if a visitor pushes a red button by the side of the tracks, jukebox music takes you back to when these railroad men were kids.
Inside, chocolate shakes are thick, hamburgers are bigger than the buns, a waitress named Flo tells her annoying customers to ” Kiss My Grits. ”
I would love to eat here but I am too big to fit inside the car.
We have borders.
Our skin is our closest border, a barrier that keeps bacteria and viruses out, gives us our particular shape and size, allows us to be flexible and move with agility.
Our minds have borders that allow us to go as far as we think we can.
Countries also have borders that keep them independent and sovereign.
This border check, on Arizona Highway 19, is between Nogales and Tucson.
Cars going north, further into Arizona and the United States, come to a standstill as border agents stop us and ask – ” Are you American citizens?
German shepherd dogs, on leashes, walk around our vehicle with their specially trained noses looking for drugs and contraband. A uniformed Border Patrol agent peers through the car window at us as we go through his check and answer his questions till he gives us a quick visual once over and waves us through.
Open borders is a compassionate political theory, but, at night, do we leave our front doors open and hang a Welcome sign on our refrigerator?
Why does migration seem to be always going in the same direction, from less economically viable countries to places with more opportunity?
For better and worse, at some point, people always vote against borders with their feet.
Art flourishes in the desert.
At the Tubac Art Festival, streets are closed to traffic, excepting horse drawn wagons, and tents are being set up while parking attendants put on their lime colored jackets and sunscreen.
Two of the parking lots are already full of cars by ten thirty, and, in the third lot, sightseers are getting their shoes dusty walking across dirt fields towards the Art Festival. Tubac is festive and shows us old and new restaurants, galleries, gift shops, restaurants, bars, white tents sheltering festival exhibitors.
Tubac is off Highway 19, between Tucson and Nogales, and, according to my brother Alan, who was here some years ago, looks different than it was.
” None of that was here, ” he remarks and points at a cluster of shops, each one trying to attract buyers with signs and special sales.
February is a prime time of the year for retailers here and a proprietor shows us his hand woven rugs from around the world as we zip into his shop to look at western artifacts.
” Is it hard to make it here in the summer, ” I ask?
The man squints a bit as if he were outside in a spotlight sun.
” We do the best we can, ” he says, ” you have to be adaptable. ”
This annual festival will draw thousands and some will buy. Most will look, socialize, eat, deal with parking and logistics, take pictures and enjoy the event.
Art, for me, is always a festival.
I buy something small by a Chinese man who does watercolors of goldfish and I bet the ones he drew, and filled in with color, were part of his dinner last night.
Art, in the East, is as far from cowboys and Indians as you can get.
After Spanish explorers conquered Central and South America, they scoured the present states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Utah and Nevada searching for lost cities of gold. Motivated by faith, Spanish priests established missions for the conversion of natives to Catholicism. These missions, outposts of European civilization, still operate, draw modern men seeking their ancient roots.
The Mission San Xavier is south of Tucson and it’s construction was finished in 1797. One of the mission’s two towers has recently been restored and funds are currently being saved to restore the second one to it’s original condition.
The church interior, though small, is intimate and shows icons of the Catholic church, carved saints, candles, Holy Water, wood carvings, high ceilings and stained glass.
Early morning, these church courtyards are in shadows, bells are silent, doors are ajar and tourists snuggle in warm coats as they file into the small church to say their prayers.
Churches built by hand, with wooden dowels, seem more trustworthy than those built with power drills, metal studs, with huge HVAC systems.
The Holy Water is in a metal container, on a chair, in a hallway, with little paper cups to drink from instead of a long heavy ladle.
This water has been blessed, and, in a torrid desert landscape like this, water is always Holy, whether it is blessed or not.
Outside Hanger One at the Pima Aircraft Museum, in a dirt field, helicopters, prehistoric looking birds with rotating wings, are on display.
This Sikorski Utility helicopter was used at U.S. Coast Guard search and rescue stations in the seventies.
On night duty in U.S. Coast Guard Air Station radio rooms, part of my watch was relaying messages from aircraft to the Officer of the Day, answering calls from fishing widows wondering why their hubby wasn’t back in his easy chair with a beer in one hand and the channel changer in the other looking for football games.
Weather is always a consideration, and, in the gulf, squalls come up unexpectedly.. Hurricanes shut down oil rigs and personnel are routinely evacuated. Around water, you can always become a grisly statistic.
In those Vietnam years, us six foot sailors wore dress blues for ceremonies – dungarees, denim shirts, and white Dixie Cup hats for daily work.There were angry protests on the nightly news, signs in the streets, and burned American flags.
Now, decades after the tragic war, Vietnam is a thriving country instead of a place Americans had to lose a war in order to win it.
Some obligations can’t be run from, no matter how odious.
Countries, just like people, are not always smart about what they choose to do, or not to do.
The Pima Air Museum is an equal opportunity museum.
It has fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, experimental dreams, cargo planes, There are hangers filled with donated airplanes of every vintage, staffed with volunteers, and a large open field where aircraft have been retired from service. There are early primitive planes, and then more modern sleek riveted birds made out of metal, plastic and fiberglass that fly higher, faster, quieter.
From the bomber’s seat in the nose of a museum B-52, tattooed with buxom women, the bomber squinted through his viewfinder at the enemy target below. In his gun sights were manufacturing plants, bridges, military bases, railroad tracks, airstrips – strategic targets.
With the gentle push of a button, the bomber dropped his death packages, watched his bombs spiral towards Earth like wounded birds.Airmen, long after their missions were complete, could still hear screams in their mind as metal and stone ripped into people and pieces of cities fell like a child’s blocks knocked over by a careless hand.
Most planes on display in the museum have curved lines and their angles are sharp. Rivets on the older planes were done by hand by women in California factories and a volunteer tells Alan and I how Los Angeles plants, in WW11, were turning out one B-52 bomber a day that were immediately put into the war’s service and turned the war effort around.
Old dreams of flying like birds have come true and old dreams of conquering the world haven’t gone away.
The next Caesar, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Hitler is just around time’s bend, and, when they arrive, there will be plenty of firepower at their disposal.
Making weapons is a human obsession.
We spend lots of time waiting in our lives.
We wait to be born and wait to be buried, wait to graduate, wait to raise kids, pay off a mortgage, retire, serve and be served,break par, get money back on our taxes.
If we are lucky the line keeps moving and we have more people behind us, than ahead.
This line started forty five minutes before six, the scheduled time for the chili fundraiser for the Lapidary Club. In the auditorium, attendees visit old friends and make new ones. You would think that with less time left in their hourglass old people would be in a bigger hurry.
The Chili Fundraiser is a success.
The chili isn’t spicy enough for some but we’ll wait till next time to see if the chefs get bolder. The older we get the more bland our food has to be.
Raising funds is always a challenge, but tonight they SOLD all their tickets.
People watching beats television any time.
Interstate 10 runs through Tucson and angles northwest to Phoenix.
Once you leave Tucson, the first spot of interest, higher than rabbit’s ears, is Picacho Peak. This peak is actually a group of peaks ringed by saquaros. For miles surrounding this congregation of peaks,there is nothing but dead flat dirt, mesquite, cactus.
At the exit to the Picacho Peak RV Resort, and an Arizona state campground, is Picacho Peak Plaza – a Shell gas station and curio shop. These knick knack shops scratch out an existence throughout the west and if you can get in and out without buying something that will forever gather dust on a shelf at home, you are far too disciplined.
Near the front entrance, I am confronted by a stuffed Jackalope, a mythical American West animal that is part rabbit and part antelope.
According to Wikipedia, the Jackalope prefers whiskey as a drink, can cause a lot of damage to one’s shins. There is a man in the Dakotas who still makes them and sells in bulk to Cabela’s for around $150.00 apiece. It is said that Jackalopes are good mimics, and, at night, cowboys singing around a fire under the stars, can hear them harmonizing.
My T or C friend, Kirk, buys himself a candy bar for sugar energy and we hit the road again for Tucson, on an expedition to a camera shop to look at a new lens for Kirk’s camera. He photographs homes for sale, for Green Valley real estate agents.
I think I see a Jackalope waving at us as we pull back onto the freeway, but Kirk says I am mistaken.
The human mind, our real-unreal world keeps reminding me, is more frail than some people want to admit.
Getting out of this tourist trap without spending a dime tells me I’m tougher than I thought I was.
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