An Arizona Day's Outing

Summer 1999

A short time ago I decided to go on a day-trip and finally get out and see some of Arizona. Since my transfer from Edmonton to Phoenix in the winter of 1997, most of my time had been spent cooped up inside the house or stuck in a narrow corridor of heavy traffic between home and work. However, I was indecisive about what I should see.

Arizona is full of scenic locales: the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, snow-capped mountains, lush valleys, clear blue lakes. All of these can be found within the confines of the 48th state. Yet, just as I was deciding not to be indecisive and to decide on where to go, I decided Tombstone was just the place. I decided this from a pamphlet, which I decided to leave in the decidedly grime covered gutter where I found it. "Tombstone!" the grubby bit of paper advertised. "The town too tough to die."

Certainly Tombstone was tougher than the pigeon which thumped into my windshield at 75 miles per hour on the first leg of my journey. With mild interest I glanced in the rear-view as the unfortunate creature sailed to its untimely demise at the side of the road. Boot Hill for pigeons. My gaze returned to the map I held in front of me, my knees doing the steering. I was taking the back route out of town. The more rural the drive the better. My path would lead me out of metro-Phoenix, through Florence and on into Tucson. From there, it was but an hour’s drive to Tombstone and the O.K. Corral where the Earps, Clantons and McLaurys made the showdown a seminal part of American history. Along the way I would do something I had rarely ever taken the time to do before. I would stop at points of interest.

I travelled first along the western edge of the Superstition Mountains, where, local legend has it, a lost gold mine awaits rediscovery. And gold can actually be found in the Superstitions as there is an active mine - more of a giant slit trench really - just outside a ghost town called Goldfield. Several gentlemen old enough to remember the O.K. Corral shootout still work the mine and by all appearances they make a reasonable living at it. The advent of modern devices like backhoes and pressure hoses alleviate some of the physical problems of advanced age in miners, like 'rheumatiz'. Unfortunately, they do nothing to stem the tide of advanced neuroses as evidenced by the proliferation of "No Trespassing" and "Trespassers will be shot" signs that decorate much of the perimeter fence. Attempts at conversation with the gentlemen inside the compound were met first with silence and then with comments not fit for print. However, I thought I caught something about travelling eastbound and meeting up with a westbound shot of lead. Har har. An oldie and not even a goodie. Goldfield itself I gave a miss. A helicopter carrying a load of tourists rose from its interior in a cloud of dust, betraying the initial attraction that the town was chock full of ghosts.

From Goldfield, I turned southwest onto Route 79 and at high speed headed for Florence. One can race merrily along this road in full confidence that one is unlikely to receive a speeding ticket. There are no doughnut shops within a thirty-mile radius, and therefore, no police.

Saguaro cacti growing along the side of the road flashed by. Some were in bloom, pretty white and yellow flowers perched on their tops like the ubiquitous sombreros of so many Mexicans enjoying a siesta. The skin of the Saguaro, or perhaps it is more properly called bark as this particular species of cactus is classified as a tree, possesses a rather waxy texture and thus it shares at least one characteristic in common with Pamela Anderson Lee. One might also argue with some justification that the saguaro has had nearly as many photos taken in its natural state. Like the spines of the cactus, which are actually classified as leaves, the skin assists the saguaro in the retention of water during the hot summer months. Saguaros don’t grow their first arm until they have reached about sixty years of age and from that point on they become very photogenic. I doubt a one-armed sixty-year old Pamela Lee would be as lucky.

In amongst the saguaros, mesquite trees spread their blackened branches, providing shade to the occasional jackrabbit. I didn’t notice any rattlesnakes flattened on the tarmac as I sped along, though I nearly squashed a roadrunner that darted in front of the car. Perhaps it had been frightened by a coyote. All in all, the scenery was stunning and as I drank it all in I began to get thirsty. I remembered I had packed a water bottle in my picnic hamper, but this was stowed out of reach in the back seat and Florence beckoned in the distance.

The outskirts of Florence appear so suddenly that one is already on the other side of town before one notices the ramshackle mobile homes strewn along the northern side of the main thoroughfare. Normally this would be a blessing, but today I wanted to stop. The sign welcoming visitors to Florence states that the elevation of the town is slightly less than 1500 feet above sea level. Interestingly, it doesn’t mention the population. Possibly this is because it is difficult to keep up with the number of residents, for Florence is where the State of Arizona executes prisoners under sentence of death. The architecture gracing the south side of the road may best be described as government institution modern.

Last year was a banner year for Florence. No less than six inmates were moved closer to God in 1998, a record number for Arizona which showed the voting populace that the government recognized public concerns about housing inmates at taxpayer expense. One such unfortunate, nicknamed Bonzai Bob by the newspapers, had misspelled the English version of the Japanese word when he carved it into the chest of his murder victim. One wonders if Bob would have gone further in life had he paid attention to spelling lessons in school.

Certainly one of the witnesses to Bob’s execution had paid attention, for this woman had been chosen from a number of essay writers to travel to Florence for a once in a lifetime event. Yes, that’s right. If you wish to witness an execution in Arizona, all you need is a carefully written, grammatically correct essay stating your reasons why you’d like to see someone die. From all coherent and concise entries received, the Department of Corrections will choose up to two winners for an all expenses paid bus trip to sunny Florence for each performance.

In a second essay after the fact, the woman wrote to the newspapers to say execution by lethal injection was ‘anti-climactic’. Not for Bob it wasn’t. I’m quite certain of that. I’m not sure what the woman expected. Maybe she thought it would be like going to a movie and watching a cartoon before the main attraction. A public flogging first might have cheered her up.

One needs to question the motives of this woman to see an execution she had no connection with. She didn’t know Bob, the victim, or anyone or anything else even remotely associated with the case. Maybe Bob got what he deserved for his barbaric acts, but the essay writer’s desire to watch a live execution seems to me rather barbaric as well. Civilization ,it seems, is still only skin deep.

One other execution last year is worth mentioning. The second of two German brothers sentenced to death for murder chose to die in the gas chamber instead of nominating himself for the more popular method of lethal injection. (Death row inmates are allowed a Hobson’s choice here in Arizona) There was a specific reason for this. He argued that to die in the gas chamber would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. As cruel and unusual punishment is contrary to the Constitution of the United States in matters of Justice, though not in taxation, he believed that if his arguments were successful his sentence would instead be commuted to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court of the State of Arizona agreed to consider his application for a hearing on the argument. After much deliberation, they handed down a verdict rife with unintelligible legalese, which amounted to a confirmation of the original sentence and choice of punishment. Sins of the father? Perhaps dear old Dad had been gainfully employed at Auschwitz. If so, shame about the son. Germans have only recently been re-admitted to the human race, speaking of civilization’s thin veneer.

I pulled into a dusty parking lot with the intention of rooting around inside the picnic hamper for my bottle of water. Instead, I ended up rooting around the inside of the car for the picnic hamper. I had forgotten it at home. Luck was with me though! As I sat parched and cursing,, a sign nailed carelessly to the side of a wooden shack proclaimed that "Eats" were available a few short feet away. I climbed out and addressed a slovenly woman smoking a cigarette as she leaned across a dirty counter chatting to an equally slovenly man masticating an enormous hamburger.

"Could I trouble you for a bottle of water?" I asked. "Or a coke. Anything cold really."

"Sure hon. Hang on.." She smiled as she produced a cold and sparkling bottle of Evian. "Course you have to pay for it though". This was a rustic attempt at humour.

I paid for the bottle, spun off the top and choked back several healthy gulps of the life saving fluid.

"Thirsty, huh?" This from the hamburger man. Not a rustic attempt at witticism. A rustic attempt at conversation.

"Yep. Sure am." When in Rome….

"Good eats here". A simple rustic statement containing no subordinate clauses whatsoever.

"Really?", I doubted this greatly, but humoured him. "Burger’s good?" I knew he was enjoying it from the trail of grease that dribbled down his chin onto his shirt.

He wiped his chin with his sleeve. "Yep. ‘The Special.’ It’s the best. Better even than McDonalds. Everything on it."

A glance at the menu board tacked to the shack showed it allowed the choice of several hamburgers, the most expensive being ‘The 'Special’.

"Yep, if them on the Row over there knew how good Ruth’s burgers were over here, hell they’d die trying to get out and get one." The hamburger man chuckled. This was another rustic attempt at humour. He waived in the general direction of the penitentiary across the road. "I go to see my brother there once a month and bring him one of these ‘burgers. ‘Course he ain’t on the Row. They don’t allow that there I wouldn’t think."

I was confused and admitted as much.

"Oh. My brother’s in there, but he ain’t on death row. He’s just a regular felon. Thirty years for the removal of other people’s property without their prior consent or some such."

That seemed a bit stiff. "Do tell."

"Yeah, well he had a gun and all, plus a mask on and that got him worse time. Plus he pissed off the judge too. My brother ain’t none too smart. Pissin’ off a judge. Geez, what a fool. He got the max, sentence-wise anyway."

"And you visit him every month?", I asked.

"Yessir. Each and every month at visiting time. We’re the only family we got. I retired and moved here so’s the drive wouldn’t be as long from Bisbee. That’s where I’m from. ‘Course I don’t drive now." He looked wistful as though he missed driving. Perhaps Bisbee had a good burger hut too. He offered no elaboration and I didn’t enquire further. Bisbee was close to Tombstone and I told him that was where I was headed.

"Well, last time I was in Tombstone it was gettin’ pretty touristy. ‘Course that’s bin a long while now, but I ‘spect there’s still lots of the history left. Man, there was some colourful characters there back in the day. Whole lot more colourful than my brother. But then I suppose back then they’d have strung him up for what he did, forget about pissin’ off the judge. Well, have a safe trip, son. Drive careful now."

The next stop on my itinerary was the Tom Mix Monument twenty miles outside Florence in the direction of Tucson. My guidebook said the Monument was nothing more than a picnic area with a few benches and shade trees off to the side of the road and surrounded by the desert and all it could offer. It mentioned further that a statue of Tom Mix graced the monument and a small plaque gave a brief explanation of his life. Tom Mix, apparently, was one of the good-guy, cowboy-movie heroes who graced the silver screen way back in its golden days. He had been killed in a car accident at this site many years before when a metal-braced suitcase resting on the rear window sill of his 1937 Cord transformed itself into a missile at the time of impact and struck Tom a lethal blow to the back of his good-guy, white-cowboy-hatted head.

Such was his fame that this Monument had been erected in remembrance of him. Tom had starred in more than 300 films, mostly in the silent era, but most have now been lost as they had been filmed on combustible nitrate stock, not the most stable of film material. What I found to be an interesting side-note to Tom Mix’s life was that he was one of the pallbearers at Wyatt Earp’s funeral in 1929. Tom was a clearly defined good-guy hero in Hollywood productions. Wyatt Earp, in real life, could not quite make that claim. Hmm. Maybe Tom wasn’t such a good guy after all; hanging out with lawmen of questionable character and all that. Well, I suppose it could be argued that Tom’s hero image wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny in real life and perhaps Wyatt Earp’s reputation wasn’t as bad as some made it out to be.

I rounded a bend and immediately saw the statue. I also took immediate evasive manoeuvres to avoid hitting an obstruction lodged in the entrance to the Monument. Like a north-going Zax and a south-going Zax, two cars vying for first right of entry to the Monument had refused to yield to one another and had collided. Dr. Seuss would have been proud. "Never budge, that’s my rule. Not an inch to the west, not an inch to the east. For that’s what I learned as a boy in south-going school." The occupants had exited their respective vehicles and were busily engaged in resolving the issue. It appeared they were pacing off the requisite ten steps. I didn’t see any seconds. Not quite civilized if one doesn’t have seconds, but this was a spur of the moment thing and one does what one can here in the Prairie of Prax. Interestingly, both drivers were wearing black ball caps. Tom’s statue seemed to frown.

I was becoming hungry. It was almost 1:00 o’clock and with Tucson hidden just behind the Santa Catalina Mountains a short distance ahead, I decided to stop for lunch. I turned off Route 79 and onto Oracle Road where I saw a doughnut shop. I slowed my pace accordingly and admired a rare dusting of light snow coating the mountaintops. A few miles further and I was in Tucson proper where I spied a Schlotsky’s deli. I pulled in and ordered a sandwich and a Coke and stared wistfully out of the window, the Coke dribbling down my chin onto my shirt.
Shaped like a dog’s leg and nestled in a scenic valley, Tucson is home to roughly 500,000 of the world’s worst drivers. Earlier this year, Rex Allen, the last of the silver screen cowboys left alive, was killed when his caretaker drove over him by accident in the driveway of his upscale home. I doubt a statue will be raised for him there. It would de-value the neighbouring properties.

Tucson was also home to the residents of Biosphere 2. This was a self-contained, self-sustaining habitat into which eight ‘bionauts’ entered in 1991. The idea behind Biosphere 2 was something to do with researching space station prototypes. The bionauts emerged two years later, much thinner, but otherwise intact. No doubt this was due to the sign posted at the door to the three-acre complex which advised that no weapons of any kind are permitted inside. This was a far cry from the days when guns were not usually banned from anywhere in Arizona. Come to think of it, guns in Arizona are still not usually banned from most places, given the advent of the concealed weapons permit allowed under state law. An open-carry law also permits people to display their guns openly without benefit of a concealed weapons permit. Most people don’t though, considering such a display to be crass and contrary to good taste.

Tucson offers other attractions like the world’s largest gem and mineral show each spring, Sabino Canyon and a wide variety of museums and botanical gardens. Human attractions include a large posse of backpackers and pan-handlers who occupy the centre medians of all main roads at traffic lights. One can buy almost anything from these hucksters: Indian jewelry, newspapers, fruit, windshield washes and so on. Linda McCartney died just outside Tucson giving new life to Beatles conspiracy theorists when her death was officially reported, initially at least, as occurring somewhere in California.

Apart from some rolling hills just south of Tucson, there isn’t much to see on the way to Tombstone. The Sonoran Desert, which encompasses much of the territory between Phoenix and Tombstone, seems unvarying in its flora. If one were to explore the desert more thoroughly, no doubt one would find subtle differences, but at high speed from the tarmac, the wonders of the desert eventually blend from stunning into a rather mind-numbing panorama of uniformity.

At 2:30 I reached Tombstone and an unexpected surprise awaited. Boot Hill! I had believed Boot Hill to be in another state. Perhaps it was, but who says there can’t be two of them? I paid my five bucks and sauntered through the obligatory gift shop selling rattler fangs and Indian blankets and emerged into the sunlit graveyard on the other side. A roll of thunder greeted me and a humid wind swept down the Dragoon Mountains in the distance and across the valley floor. Throngs of tourists meandered amongst the headstones taking photographs and littering the hallowed ground with pop cans and cardboard film packages. The living outnumbered the dead two to one at least.

I wandered about myself, reading the pamphlet given to me at the turnstile by a woman looking very much like Cerberus might have done. The pamphlet gave a brief explanation of the deceased under each headstone. In some cases this was simply "Unknown" or "Stabbed in a fight in Toughnut Street." Others were more interesting. One poor soul had died from typhoid and as no one had wanted to go near him, a Good Samaritan had lassoed his leg and, from horseback, dragged him to Boot Hill for burial. Here lay a Chinese cook. There lay a Madam from one of the town’s brothels. Some inscriptions were humorous. "Here lies Lester Moore. Shot three times with a ’44. No Les. No Moore." And in the corner of the graveyard under a mound of heavy stone blocks lay the Clantons and McLaurys.

As might be expected, the pamphlet went on in some detail about these particular gravesites. Amongst other things, it said the Clantons and McLaurys were essentially law-abiding citizens fighting for their rights and murdered by corrupt lawmen opposing their views. Really? I had always believed the Earps and Doc Holliday were the good guys in this conflict. It began to rain slightly and so I headed for the car and drove into town.

By the time I arrived two minutes later, the streets were awash with water as well as tourists, all of whom were taking cover underneath the eaves of the wooden nineteenth century buildings. These were the original structures that existed when the shootout at the O.K. Corral took place in 1881. Most of the second stories to the buildings had vanished though; some because of fire, some because of decay. I parked the car and dashed through the torrent and took cover myself. The O.K. Corral lay just across the street, but as it was an open courtyard, and as I didn’t wish to get wet, I decided to take a walk along Toughnut Street before venturing there.

The Birdcage Theatre marked the eastern-most end of the street and inside old posters of plays that took place at the turn of the century graced the walls. Plays? In Tombstone? Oh yeah. No TV back then. Interestingly, I discovered that Lillie Langtry had once played the Birdcage. It was her daughter, Jeanne Marie Langtry, who married my grandfather’s brother, Sir Ian Malcolm in 1902. As I exited the Birdcage, I noticed a small child tugging at the sleeve of a man just outside.

"What are you dressed up as?"
"Why, I’m Virgil Earp," came the response.
"He’s dead," said the small boy.
"Yes he is", said Virgil.
"Why are you dressed like that then?"
"Because I’m acting a part in a play."
"Why?"
"It’s what I do," Virgil explained patiently.
"Is that a real gun?"
"Yes".
"Why? Are you going to shoot someone?"
"No." You could tell he wanted to.
"Then why do you have a gun?"

Despite what promised to be a humorous conversation that could have gone on for hours as an improvisational play in it’s own right, I crossed the street.

I had begun to feel thirsty again and so I popped into a saloon. A faded piece of paper inside the doorway indicated that this was the spot where one of the Earps had been shot while playing pool. I ordered a beer and sat down. Right away one could tell who were locals and who were not. The locals were loud and boisterous, making it clear in a condescending way that they were residents of the Town Too Tough To Die. I suppose if you live in a self-proclaimed ‘tough town’, you must also be tough by definition. Most of the locals wore hoglegs strapped to their thighs. No concealed weapons here. The tourists, on the other hand, settled back in their chairs, rather self-consciously I thought. An obligatory beer just to say they had had one where the Earps had held court and then out the door. It was still raining and so I ordered a second beer. Plenty of time still to see the O.K. Corral. It didn’t close until five o’clock.

At quarter to five the rain stopped. I sallied forth and stopped at the entrance to the O.K. Corral. I turned the knob on the door. Or rather I tried to turn the knob on the door. The O.K. Corral was closed. What! I came all this way for nothing? Come on! I cupped my hands to my face and peered through the glass. A woman who looked very much like the daughter of Cerberus back on Boot Hill counted the day’s take at a desk inside. She gave me the evil eye and followed that up with a gesture using her middle finger. I spat on the pavement to avert evil. This was unbelievable! I wished the Ferryman would come and take her away. I gestured back.

I couldn’t believe it. Loads of tourists milled the streets still. How could the O.K. Corral be closed? Where was the spirit of capitalism? What about a late shift? It never rains in Arizona. Never. It rains in Scotland incessantly, but the sun shines incessantly in Arizona. I walked back to the car. It began to rain again. I didn’t care. My day trip was done, spoiled at the end by some lazy bitch who didn’t want to work her full shift. Yeah, she probably worked a long day catering to sniveling tourists, but that doesn’t justify the finger and the evil eye. Maybe she wanted to join her friends down at the saloon and get loud and boisterous. If I see her in Phoenix, I’ll get loud and boisterous.

And so endeth an enjoyable day’s outing in Arizona. Stymied at the end, but otherwise enjoyable and the first of many such trips I hope to take.