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.

The Last Time I Saw Mike West

I had probably the worse job of my fugitive career at the time. I was kitchen manager for a pizza outfit with dancing mechanical apes. They knew three songs. People would put tokens in the jukebox and the apes would perform “Achey Brakey Heart” all day long.

It was probably the worse job of my life.

Ensnared in polyester, I stank of chicken grease. The sourness of the fryers associated with newly popular buffalo wings just ruined the pizza business. The singing apes didn't help much either. Old grease replaced the wholesome, bready aroma pizzerias had hitherto been associated with. The boss, one-fifth owner and a refugee from another singing monkey joint, likewise swathed in old poly blends, never swiveled from his office chair to visit my kitchen. I didn't blame him.

Beside me, was a staff of five young Latinos who let me know right away I wouldn't last if I wasn't part of their street crew. I had no idea what they were talking about. I briefly entertained the notion that they were breakdancers, but dismissed it. I still had too much Indiana Boy on me.

They were punks, and I told them that often. Their villainous exploits tormenting the homeless disgusted me. Likewise, they didn't respect my authority, and I rarely knew where to find them. It mattered little. I could better crank out our standard crap for the little Achey Breaky bastards we served without their assistance. They abandoned me to my fate and hid in the prep room and parking lot. I was well stocked, and the lot was clean. Jabba the manager, lights out with his Salem Slim Lights in his rayon office, didn't want to get involved. I didn't either. I was trying to talk the wife into letting me take a flaky art gig I had been offered, so why rock the boat.

When I saw the state of Dave and Mike's hobo camp, I was sure it was these guys.

I seethed, biding my time until I could quit and worrying about Dave and Mike and the others from the hole in the mountain. Before closing time, this kid Diego had told a story about leaning out of his buddies car and beating bums with a bat as they tried to run away.

When I clocked out, he was nowhere to be seen. I left by the back door and found Diego and pals in the shadows around the corner. Diego was leaning on a broom. I asked to see it, and took him out at the knees, continuing to beat the hell out of him as his friends stood there with their mouths open. I dropped the broom and walked to my car without looking back. I fought the urge to run for fear of acting like prey. I made sure nobody followed me home.

For some reason I went to work the next day. I fully expected to get jumped. Diego was a no show. Everybody stayed in the prep room longer than usual without carrying anything out. My nerves were shot. Finally Diego's best bud came out with trays of dough. I had a knife and bowl of flour nearby and wouldn't hesitate to use them. He smiled at me and said “Man, you really fucked old boy up! He won't be messing with you anymore”.

Just when I thought it was all okay, I got the call to go see the boss. He said he heard I hit one of his employees with a mop handle. I told him it was just a broom. He said he had filed a police report. I told him what I thought of Billy Ray Cyrus. We were on the same page regarding my career in mechanical dancing monkey pizza.

I didn't worry about the cops. I used a throwaway name to get the job. One I hadn't used anywhere else. They wouldn't look for me.

I didn't see Mike again for a year or better to learn how their camp was destroyed. By then, the wife and I, baby in tow, were blowing town in the wee hours of the morning. The Social Security people had sent letters informing us that we had ten days to explain why our names and numbers didn't match their records. Thankful for the warning, we collected our next paychecks and got in the wind to find a new town and new identities. I stopped to pick up a hitch hiker north of the city and it turned out to be Mike.

He said it was the cops who smashed their hobo village. He said a few people had gotten arrested but he and Dave lit out and moved to the Days Inn for a while. Apparently the old man in California died and his heirs weren't as tolerant to squatters. I've never felt bad about beating Diego.

Mike said Dave had gone to stay with neglected daughters in Texas and he had been attracting attention so he was moving on. We let him off in Casa Grande, where he had promise of a job. We got as far as Phoenix and the wife and baby were fussy from the car so we decided we were home.

Cleaning up the car at the motel, I found Mike West's flannel on the back seat floor with his social security card and birth certificate. He was just a little shorter than me, a little darker hair, a little older, but he had the necessary brown eyes. I just happened to be in need of a new identity and the Universe provided one. Mike West. My Quest. It was a sign that everything would be okay and I was right where I needed to be. I wondered how long it would last. I wondered how long I would be Mike. I wondered how long the wife would put up with this shit. A week? A month? A year?

We checked in to The Parkview as Mr. and Mrs. West. Within twenty four hours I was managing a downtown pizzeria. We baked our wings and wore cotton shirts and I thrived a while in the ape free atmosphere.

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.