Those early days, the survival plan
was all about diners and tourist traps. A pretty girl and a skilled
line cook could land anywhere and have money in their pockets. Mrs.
Weaver and I fit the bill. Where possible, I waited tables as well. I
hate the grease. Unfortunately, many establishments had an ovarian
requirement of their wait staff, so it was a good thing I had other
talents.
Before corporatism took over the
restaurant business, the family diner dominated the landscape of a
country that traveled on it's stomach. Anywhere there was an exit
ramp, this gastronomic icon of Americana thrived. Diners were both
home and hearth to the fellowship of the road. Customers drift in,
Employees drift through, nobody asks many questions beyond “Can you
work weekends?” or “Can you cook eggs?”.
Watching all those episodes of
“Alice” back in the 70's and 80's paid off. We had a real sitcom
theme going for a while. Even our names, our earliest pseudonyms: Rob
and Laura, were borrowed from The Dick Van Dyke Show.
We fit right in. Actually we were a
bit clean cut and naïve in comparison. It all worked in our favor.
We played the part of the hard working young couple, seeking their
fortune in the big wide world. Our employers ate that shit up.
Mrs. Weaver (Laura) grew to hate it.
Waitresses can get ugly, especially when you pocket more than they
do. Real ugly. Its also very hard work with little reward. The upside
is, wherever you land, there was a diner job waiting, and cash in
your pocket that night. You never went hungry.
Casteneda said Don Juan taught him the
lesson of losing his self importance by sending him to work at a
diner under the guise of Jose Cordoba: Illegal Alien Dishwasher (and
wife). Don Juan claimed that the most difficult adversary a man
could encounter is that of the “Petty Tyrant”. I located what I
believed to be Jose Cordoba's diner, and engaged his petty tyrant.
It was one of those periods when Laura
had enough of the situation, and split to the Keys for a few months
Her latest gig was waitressing at a diner called “The South Forty”.
It was situated outside of Tucson, on the other side of the
mountains, right at the base of Big Cat Mountain. I made pizza a half
mile further out.
Before she left, we were living at a
run down trailer park on the Benson Highway. A strip of 1950's
Asphalt Americana dotted with motor lodges. It had seen better days.
The kitsch was still visible beneath the dust. The motels had names
like “The Lariat”, “The Desert Edge”, and “Sunbeam”.
There was a ubiquitous “Wagon Wheel Tavern” where membership in
the Sunday Bloody Mary Club earned you dollar drinks and a punch card
for the tenth one free.
Our trailer was behind “The Acadia”.
It was tucked into the corner of the lot behind the motel. Our
nearest neighbors were a biker couple. He was rarely there, and she
wore perpetual bikini and a dog collar with a leash that was just
long enough to reach the clothesline that connected our trailers. I
never knew her name. She wasn't allowed to speak.
They filmed some scenes for “Tin
Cup” at a closed motel up the street, but it was a much more David
Lynch-like atmosphere.
I had to sell the Plymouth to get
Laura to the tropics and that meant I had to find a place to live
closer to work. Her boss owned an empty four room motor court next to
the restaurant that had never opened. Laura persuaded him to rent me
a room, based on her promise to return and work for him. The place
had no air conditioning, heat, or ventilation of any kind. The
windows would not even open.
Did I mention it was early June in the
Desert? And this was my first summer. As the temperature climbed over
110, I needed some respite. The box fan I put in the doorway helped
little. I purchased a wading pool and moved the bed against the wall
to make room.
I worked the dinner shift at the
Italian joint. It was a half mile walk north through some of the most
beautiful desert there is. Tucson was east, on the other side of the
Mountains. A half mile south was the old Ajo highway and a small
market. To the west lay open desert, nearly to California. North was
Saguaro National Monument, Old Tucson Movie Studios, and the Sonoran
Desert Museum. All three were easily reached by foot or bicycle. I
passed my days climbing the mountains, wandering the desert,
exploring old mine sites and visiting with the wildlife.
I saw my first mountain lion and my
first bobcat. The lion did not worry me, but the bobcat stalked me.
(I've posted those stories earlier). The scariest hike I had occurred
on a well traveled highway. It was late at night, after work, and I
walked down to the all night market on Ajo for a soda. There was no
moon, just the light from the stars. I passed dozens of dead juvenile
snakes, squashed in the road. Some were partially mashed on the
blacktop and writhing. I was in the middle of them before I noticed
the extent. Bending down with my lighter as my only illumination, I
saw they were baby Diamondbacks. I had wandered into a minefield of
poisonous reptiles. I was lucky to not have cut off trail through the
desert as I usually did when the moon was out.
I climbed all the peaks from Big Cat
Mountain to Star Pass. The northernmost, and one of the highest, is
Called San Francisco mountain, not to be confused with San Francisco
Peaks in Flagstaff. It would turn out to be my last stupid scary free
climb.
I approached from the southeast, and
had an easy hike up the lower talus to the shelves and ledges that
would take me near the top. There was a higher talus slope, made up
of gravel the size you would see in a driveway, that I had to cross
before making the final ascent of a hundred yards or so. From the
desert below, I had misjudged the angle of the incline making up this
bed of stone, and when I reached it, it appeared uncrossable. It was
only a couple of dozen yards across, but at nearly a vertical pitch.
Even crawling across it created enough force to slide me down several
yards in a small avalanche. I lay sprawled, arms and legs wide,
clinging to the loose rock. Even lifting my head caused a shift in
pressure that threatened to take me down and over the edge.
I stayed there, motionless for a long
time. It could have been minutes or it could have been hours. I was
clean in the middle of the gravel and about twenty feet from skidding
down and over a five hundred foot drop. I slithered, ever so slowly,
like a GI Joe action figure. With each movement, I dropped a few
inches. I was shaking and slick with sweat and thinking I finally met
my match and not so surprised at all.
I made it across to solid ground, but
wasn't out of the woods yet. There really wasn't anywhere to go. I
had cliffs dropping off on three sides and the gravel to my rear. I
sat and caught my breath and smoked a few one hits to gather my wits
and figure out how to get down. The weed helped me realize that there
was no way down, my only hope was to go up and over and find another
way.
Up was a hundred yards vertical, with
crevices, but no steps or ledges. Over was a mystery, I didn't know
what the back of the mountain looked like. Mentally, I picked out a
route where, wedging my arms in the cracks, I should theoretically be
able to walk up the face of the rock. I learned that trick years
before, and used it once or twice, but my confidence was shaken and
that's not a good way to go into a free climb.
I smoked the rest of my weed and ate
my lunch. I drank as much of my water as I could and poured the rest
out to lighten my pack and reconcile my center of gravity. Up and
over I went. My forearms were bloody and abraded. The view was
completely spectacular. I am sure that damn few people have been
stupid enough to see it. The backside proved as difficult as the
front. There were two places where I had to hang and drop a few feet
onto unproven ledges. In the end, I was faced with another talus
slope, but this one was slightly larger stone and ended not in a
cliff but on the glorious, flat, safety of the desert floor.
I knew how to handle this. A friend
and I developed a technique up in Colorado, and sought out such
slopes for the thrill. I leaped into the scree, causing a small
avalanche that began carrying down the side of the mountain. After a
few feet, the sliding rock threatened to overwhelm so I jumped up and
to the side, out of the path of the slide I created and beginning
another one. By repeating this move, its possible to “ski” down a
dry desert mountain. It's both important not to let your feet get
covered by the stones, and to jump wide enough from the slide so as
to not increase it to something too large to control. It's all in the
timing.
I made it down, with just minor
scrapes, and stuck to the lowlands for a while.
