Diners, Dangers, and Deserts (Part One)

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.

From the Mountains to the Barrio (part 1) Fugitive Recovery

Just over a year since my exile, and I found myself living at one of my favorite places on the whole planet. Big Cat Mountain was the place I had climbed with Lucky Tailor, passing the crosses of those who did not make it along the way. It's the place where The Professor and I saw the Woolly Saber Toothed Coyote. It was also the stomping grounds of the famous bandit El Gato and his legendary treasure. On the map of places sacred to me, this one is prominent.

My wife and I had traced the travels of Casteneda to this desert, and believed we had found the restaurant where he and Gorda worked, losing their personal importance. Losing one's personal importance isn't very good for a marriage. We were thinking about doing something different. She had already had to spend a few months in Key West to escape my folly. Then I had an encounter that brought me on board to her desire to move into town and leave my beautiful desert.



We lived in a trailer behind the restaurant, along with about four other trailers, all housing employees of the restaurant and other associated businesses like the general store and video rental. There was one wealthy retiree in the very back. I was Robert then, and the trailer behind us housed a guy named Robert as well and his wife. He washed dishes at a steakhouse down the road. His wife was a waitress with my wife at the Greek place where I cooked breakfast.



I was working stone on the side back then, as a lapidary, and incorporating the stone in sculpture and jewelry. On Tuesdays, I would hike through the lower Tucson Mountains along an old stage coach route into Tucson, where I would ply my wares. I had a route through the downtown where I left things on consignment and picked up money and custom orders each week. On my way home, I would cut through the town of South Tucson and purchase my grass for the week. I would return by hitch hiking the old Ajo Highway, rather than cross the remote mountain trails, populated by all manner of rattlesnake and large cat, at night. I would have my sales cases with me, and occasionally drummed up additional business from the people who gave me rides.



One of my best accounts in town was a new age shop. I had a place near the Mexican border where I was mining Selenite crystals with muddy inclusions. I worked these into wands and stone blades with cactus wood handles and leather trim.



On a fateful Monday, My wife was working, and I took Robert for a hike up Big Cat Mountain and told him about my history there and about El Gato. To my surprise, although he had lived behind the restaurant for over a year, he had not explored the area or hiked the desert at all. He had a banner day, and expressed that to me before he went to work that night. I went in to my house and smoked a joint and watched a couple of episodes of Doug on Nick at Night.



After resting from the morning's climb, and having lunch with the wife, I strapped my machete on and headed out to find some Cholla Cactus wood for the order I had to fill for the new age shop this week. I was maybe five steps from my front door when a white pickup came thundering into the lot and stopped nearest my trailer.



At first I assumed it was somebody I had hitched a ride with, coming to check out my stock. Maybe I was going to make a sale. Neither the wife or I socialized of even had any contact with people outside of the restaurant and the five trailers behind it. Then the door opened and had an insignia on it and the words “Fugitive Recovery”. Before I could even think a dude rolled out in a crazy movie sideways somersault and came up with a big freaking gun pointed at me. “Drop the weapon!” he shouted. He was maybe fifty feet away.



This was the early days of my fugitivity, when I never went to sleep without an escape plan. I was hyper paranoid anyway, and expecting something like this. Subsequently, I never carried weapons, for fear of going down in a hail of gunfire from some overzealous bounty hunter. I was confused. I said “I don't have any weapons!”.



He told me to lose the machete. I told him it was a tool, not a weapon, as I lowered it carefully to the ground. He charged me, and with his gun to my head he rushed me the twenty feet or so to my trailer and sandwiched my head between his pistol and the front door. He said “Robert Mortimer, you are under arrest for evading prosecution (so far so good, but Mortimer? I was Robert Weaver) in Kansas on a charge of burglarizing a pharmacy.”



Well shit, I have only just passed through Kansas. I delivered a few pounds of grass and mushrooms to a motel in Topeka, but certainly had not burglarized a pharmacy. I told him this, with his gun in my temple, leaving out the part about Topeka. “And who the hell is Mortimer? I am Robert Weaver!” “You better have ID”, he replied.



I yelled in to my wife to find my ID. She, of course, told me to get it myself. Still with a gun to my temple, I explained the situation. She soon appeared with my fake swap meet ID claiming I was Robert Weaver. The officer called in my fake social security number and it came up clean. Then he noticed my trailer number was one and he was looking for trailer two. He said “I need to use your house”, and lowered his gun and hastily entered my living room.



I followed. I had left a half ounce of pot in a baggie on the coffee table. As he walked past it to the opposing window, I reached down and batted it onto the floor. Without even turning around he said “I'm not even worried about that”. Then he noticed the number two on the door of the neighboring trailer and rushed off to terrorize the other Robert's wife. She took him to Robert's job where he was arrested for the pharmacy job in Kansas.



The next day she knocked on my door and told me Robert was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. I went to her trailer and he told me the story of how he was paid to lower himself from the skylight at a Kansas pharmacy and steal Dilautids, and he left fingerprints. He said our hike was the best thing that happened to him since he fled and that ultimately it was his wife who turned him in. “It's always a woman that gets you caught” he warned me (although he didn't know how close to his situation I was). He gave me his reclining heated massage chair. I loved that chair. His wife immediately moved in with a wealthy retiree she had been cleaning house for.



I couldn't live there anymore, of course. The wife would have her way and we would eventually move back to the city.

The Day I Met Mike West

I had been checking out the mountains east of Tucson, just before Big Cat Mountain, and noticed a geological peculiarity. It looked like one of the small mountains had been quarried. The next day, I visited that mountain and met Mike West.

I parked at the bottom of a hill, and hiked up the dirt road that led to the declivity. You couldn't see what was ahead until you crested a hill and I didn't want to drive onto somebodies mine claim.

Once I popped past the incline, I saw a flat area a couple of hundred feet to a side, set at the bottom of a quarry of a black marble looking stone. I later learned the stone was quarried for a large downtown office building.

There was smoke, from the lean remnants of a central camp fire. Dotted around the fire were the coolest huts I had ever seen. They were built of fieldstone, maybe a foot thick. They were about three feet high and then a tarp over saplings made up the roof.

I didn't see any movement and so called "Haloo in camp"! I had never seen any shit so organized before and didn't want to appear the scoundrel. I might like this crew. I wanted to see what it was about.

A wizened older fella came out of the first hooch and squinted at me. The desert sun had eaten a hole in his nose. He had long whiskers and long hair. Some of the original color remained, but you'd be hard pressed to name it. He walked over and I stuck out my hand before I saw him good. "Dave! How the fuck have you been"?

I met Dave in Glenwood Springs Colorado. He was a train tramp. In that town, was a community of travelers. Dave helped show me the ropes. He moved on before I did. People got killed riding the trains back then. Probably a lot more than you know. I had worried about him in the years since we drank good stouts and smoked good ganja while hiding in the tall grass at a siding.

What a small, small, world.

He invited me into his hooch, which was remarkably cool, maybe twenty or thirty degrees, and introduced me to his roomate Mike. Mike had brown hair styled like that of a scarecrow, tufting out from under a flopped down boonie hat. We shook hands and he was just a few inches shorter, a few years older, and a few pounds lighter. He had brown eyes. Of course I wasn't thinking like that at the time
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I bought a sack from Mike that day, and we talked at length about the Arizona Sonora Desert. They said they could get me on as a landscaper with their crew, but I told them I had my own gig. I was glad I parked the Mazda down the hill.

They told me the mountain was owned by an elderly guy in Santa Barbara. He was in a nursing home, and nobody watched his land. They said the cops never came, because it was private property.

I visited every payday, with a sack of hambourguesas, and scored a sack of sexy mexy from Mike. Dave got a hat and his nose got better. They invited me to stay. I blamed my wife for needing an indoor home. A fugitive can't take chances like that. I was jealous. I wanted to live there so bad, but eventually I would not be able to stand to the scrutiny. The mountain was too close to town not to bring prying eyes.

This continued for four or five months. Then one week I finally drove the Protege all the way up and found a scene of devastation. The hooches, down to the stone walls, were rubble. Smoke still rose from the lean remnants of a fire. The pantry was levelled. Canned goods lay stomped and squished. Nothing remained.
I left in tears, that something so beautiful had been destroyed. Were my friends safe? There were children. I had an idea who was behind this. They would pay.