California Desert Redux- April 2007

Another old favorite, published in the April 2007 issue of The Noise...

California Desert Redux
April 2007- The Outs
Ellen Jo Roberts


Joshua Tree. It was our very first Karmann Ghia road trip, 8 years ago, and now it was looking like it would also be our last. Driving such an old car you must always be prepared for anything.

I don’t really know how we ended up sitting on the ground in front of French’s Vintage Volkswagen Parts & Repair in Yucca Valley, California. Thank God such a place existed, with its racks full of Volkswagen parts and back-lot graveyard of VW ghosts.



We sat there for five hours while a brash young feller worked on our car so we could get back on the road home. Electrical problems. Faulty ignition. Intermittent sputtering. Five hundred miles done, 325 left to go. The sky fluctuated between sun and rain. The grove of Joshua Trees in the distance added to the surreal scene. Sometimes we’d go inside and chat with the old hippies and greasers at the front counter as they took long drags on their cigs.



When you own a vintage Volkswagen you are instantly member of a tribe, a subculture of sorts. Somehow the idea that we might be truly stranded in this blasted stretch of Mojave Desert didn’t even upset me. I had miraculously transcended the anxiety caused by an ill-running automobile. (Note: years of practice had led up to this moment). A strange sort of calm. This was an authentic experience, and we were meeting real people. We were getting down and dirty, down to the nitty gritty.
Those people in their modern minivans, with their air conditioning and DVD players didn’t know what they were missing. They drove past us on Hwy 62 like we didn’t even exist.



Last time we went to Joshua Tree National Park was 1999, an inaugural road trip taken in a recently purchased 1973 Karmann Ghia. Now many miles and many road trips since, we had been hankering to return. Joshua Tree National Park is a jewel in the crown of the National Park Service - a vast forest of Joshua Trees (a member of the lily family, closely related to the yucca) and gigantic granite boulders covering the landscape in big molten lumps. It was a favorite spot and we were going back to it.
The Ghia, with its new tires, new clutch, fresh oil seemed the most sturdy choice from our stable of vintage junkola. But I don’t ever kid myself. It’s always risky. We packed it full of camping gear, clothing, picnic items, dogs, and shoehorned 6’4’’ Chad into the passenger seat for the nearly 400-mile trip to Twenty-Nine Palms, California.

Mapquest advised taking the interstates, but we disregarded the Internet and headed through Jerome and over Mingus on 89A, Hwy. 89 out of Prescott through Yarnell, towards Salome. A gorgeous drive, smooth and lovely, dropping in elevation in big lazy curves. A lady at a Yarnell gas station came out and asked if were on a “road tour,” barely containing her fascination with our strange looking yellow car. She suggested we hook into nearby Hwy 71, to Hwy 60 to 72 and up to 62 across the Colorado River into California.
“To 29 Palms that’s the fastest way. Sure is.” And it sure was. It lopped about 90 miles off of those stupid Mapquest directions, though didn’t cut down too much on time, as the roads were all paced at a historic 50-55 mph. The roads less traveled.



Sailing along in the sunshine and dry desert breezes, we were starring in our very own movie, some hipster adventure on grainy film, only difference being we weren’t on a killing spree nor on the lam from the law. Listening to the Devotchka soundtrack of “Little Miss Sunshine” and following old railroad tracks, the windows down, the dogs asleep, the engine purring like a sewing machine.
Crossing into California onto Hwy 62, we noticed names and phrases written with rocks along the edges of the railroad embankment. Hundreds of names all created with rocks lined up into letters. Some were created with brightly painted rocks, but most were just the dark brown color of the ballast below the tracks. It went on for miles, sometimes stopping for stretches and starting back up again later.
The road was a lullaby, a roller coaster up and down through dips and vados.
What a glorious day. “I think this is my new favorite highway.”
We were the only ones out there.
Watching the gas tank dip below, we suddenly realized the road less traveled also had no gas stations. The needle dropped past “Reserve” and slowly crept far to the left, the farthest I’d ever seen it go. One hundred twenty miles with no service stations. The last 50 miles were spent with knuckles white and sphincters clamped tight in fear we’d sputter out alongside the road before reaching any civilization.
Thinking of a plan, how we’d do it, who’d we wave down. No cell phone. But we breezed into 29 Palms on fumes and a stiff tailwind, all the way from Clarkdale, Ariz. to 29 Palms, Calif. on just one 11-gallon tank of gas.
“This will have residual problems,” I said, as we exhaled deeply and filled the tank up, “I’m sure we sucked up lots of crud from the bottom of that old tank. Never had that tank so low.” We also wondered why our 1973 model car gets better gas mileage than most other cars on the road today. Seems pretty backwards. Seems we could be driving solar powered hovercrafts by now.

Joshua Tree National Park wears a loose necklace of towns, ranging clockwise from Palm Springs, to Cabazon, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and 29 Palms. The entire area is engulfed in a postmodern cloak of “Googie” style architecture, so predominant in mid-century California. Motels and liquor stores feature “Populuxe” signs full of starbursts and arrows and wonderful fonts. Gas stations with outrageous cantilevered roofs swing out towards the heavens in extreme geometry.
First off, we headed west to Cabazon to visit some old friends. Two giant dinosaurs, “Dinny" (1964) and “Mr. Rex” (c.1981) famously watch over the “Wheel Inn” restaurant and from time to time appear in rock videos or Pee Wee Herman films. Guarding the windy entrance to the Coachella Valley, the Cabazon dinos are pop culture superstars and always worth a stop. The bodies of the beasts hold a gift shop and museum respectively. If you happen to go there tell ‘em “Large Marge” sent you.



After a campout and a brief jaunt through Palm Springs (no famous people were spotted, though we did see the intersection of Bob Hope & Frank Sinatra Boulevards) we began heading back east. An afternoon in the national park, followed by a night spent at a sleazy dive in the town of Joshua Tree: some old highway motel which looked far better on the Internet than it did in real life.
The car began acting up. Sputtering, cutting in and out, and finally not starting at all. Crud in the carburetor was of course the first suspect, but no, plenty of gas was flowing … it was more electrical. It was a mystery and we were in trouble, far from home. Joshua Tree, Calif. was dusty and windswept and slightly ominous. It was as if we’d been slapped hard across the face! We were not going to make it home as breezily as we had blown into town!

“Pee Wee Herman was here and so wuz Floyd. No sign of U2 or Gram Parsons’ ghost. Beautiful drive in on old Hwys 71,60, 72, 62. Like we were in a movie” — postcard I sent.

Original “alt-country” rocker and former Flying Burrito Brother, Gram Parsons, died of a morphine overdose in Joshua Tree, Calif. in September of 1973. Supposedly his ghost can be seen at some local motel in the form of a spooky white cat. A white cat dressed in a fantastic sequined western jumpsuit!

Last day there we got an early start — a push start to be exact — and headed back west to Yucca Valley. A local had informed us we could find a top-notch dune buggy/vintage VW shop to diagnose our issues.
Five hours and $570 later we began our 8-hour return drive home, estimating we’d pull in the driveway (if we were lucky) just shy of 10pm that night, back to work the next day. As I looked at the receipt from the mechanics and the bag of old parts they’d removed, I thought about printing up a t-shirt that said: “I went to California and all I got was this stinking bill for $570 and a bag full of electrical parts!”
The Cali boy had the machine timed and tuned to run best at full throttle, like a jet, about 80 mph, so we opted to return a different route, up to connect with the old 66 in Amboy and over to Interstate 40 East. Amboy, California is a postmodern ghost-town, famous for its iconic Rt. 66 “Roy’s Café and Motel” sign, created at the height of Googie style, circa 1959. The town is actually one of California’s oldest cities, dating from 1858, due to the valuable salt lake chloride beds that line the region, and thriving until the early 1970s when Interstate 40 completely bypassed the town.



Nowadays, it sits smack dab in the middle of nowhere, a remote Retro-Future relic and a curiosity for nostalgia hounds and Rt. 66 buffs. Amboy is about 60 miles worth of remote highway north of 29 Palms and another 40 miles until I-40. Roy’s Café and Motel dates from the 1930s and closed in 1995, though word is that it was purchased by the owner of a California restaurant franchise a couple of years ago, and plans are in the works to preserve, restore and reopen the place. Perhaps next time we pass through (in another 8 years) we’ll be able to check into Roy’s and rest our road-weary bones in Populuxe-style splendor.



The rest of the trip was a blur, boring interstate, setting sun, and snow. When you drive an aged, air-cooled Volkswagen 900 miles, every single mile makes its impact on you — the loud hum of the highway and the noisy engine, the windows down, the wind in your ears and dust in your eyes. No hermetically-sealed modernity for us. We felt every bit of that road, we breathed every germ, we smelled every stink, and every sweetness.
We finally pulled into the driveway about 10pm, just as we suspected. Even though we had only been gone 3 days, it had seemed like an eternity. The house looked, and smelled wonderful. After a crazy trip like that, full of such trials and tribulations, nothing ever feels as good as your own bed. Completely exhausted, we fell into a slumber and dreamt of Joshua Trees, old motels and ghosts of Gram Parsons and Volkswagens past.

Ellen Jo Roberts lives in Clarkdale, Ariz. and likes to drive her Karmann Ghia to assorted far away places. All this hassle just so that she can take funny photos of her dogs. Read about it at www.ellenjo.com

Greatest Hits on Cassette

Here's a story I wrote for our local writers group about 5 years ago. Just found it again while searching for something else, and thought it was worth sharing...

"Greatest Hits On Cassette"
By Ellen JD Roberts c.2006


“keep feeling fascination, passion burning, love so strong” – human league 1983

It arrived in a box of detritus cast away from mother’s house in Milwaukee. Junk she’d left in the basement for many years and many miles past. Martha received the box on a Tuesday and by Wednesday morning the contents were spread all over her meager apartment. Martha was new to Seattle, starting fresh on a different coast. Mother had died the November before and her sisters and brother had finally gotten through the house, emptied it and sold it. This was all that was left of Martha’s in that house and though it seemingly had no rhyme or reason it was all linked by fragrant memory. Old yearbooks, square photos taken with 110 film, scuffed 45s records, tiny rubber figurines given by the dentist as rewards for good check ups, mash notes from grade school crushes. The smell of the box was initially the potently musty smell of mother’s basement, but once the box was discarded and the items stood on their own for a bit the smell of her childhood returned. There were several forgotten cassette tapes in the box, most had been left behind because she simply hadn’t wanted them anymore. One from an old boyfriend was sure to be sweet and she pushed it to the side for later. And tucked into the broken binding of an over-packed green diary was a white plastic cassette tape. Written on the white plastic in her 12 year old hand was “My Hits” on one side and “Tape of All Tapes!” on the other, in frayed magic marker.

Something about this made her laugh a little bit out loud, thinking of Iraq and the “Mother of All Wars” or “Mother of All Bombs” , some outrageous political hyperbole. She knew that this cassette tape in her hand was a fantastic time capsule that was going to transport her back 20 years the moment she played it. She held it a moment. Martha was certain she’d still know it by heart even though she hadn’t listened to it in decades. She closed her eyes and saw images of childhood changing behind a rolling foreground of the highlights in words, just like on the old k-Tel commercials…
Featuring these all time classics! ....

· The sounds of static and the spinning radio dial!
· Leftover bits of mother’s Simon & Garfunkel and Neil Diamond bleeding through between portions of Enrico Morricone’s “the Good the Bad and the Ugly” soundtrack on vinyl.
· Billy Preston and the Beatles on 45.
· 30 seconds of “Abracadabra” by the Steve Miller Band recorded by holding the tape recorder up to the speaker!
· The famous 1970s baby talk: “dank you fo’ letting me play wiff your toys” jibber jabber leftover from a recording made to send to Aunt, Uncle and cousins in rural Ohio
· Trashy 80s tunes! (Heady flashes of first kiss in Donny Griffin’s garage)
· Various interruptions by (now-retired) Wisconsin disk jockeys
· Commercials for cancelled TV shows and the auto-body repair shop
· Cackles, laughs, belches and the sound of breathing.
· Interview with Duran Duran and Def Leppard, acted out by you and your neighbor!
· The brief ill-advised fascination with reggae in high school
· An unabashed fondness for the Andrews Sisters that left all peers shaking their heads in disbelief.
· The disorder and cacophony that somehow became the soundtrack of your childhood.
· Order now and get the complete set of grainy snapshots of 8th grade!

She recalls having taken this particular tape with her on several school trips, and family vacations, tuned into the greatest hits via headphones while the world went by outside the window.

Wednesday night Martha lay on the floor for 45 minutes straight, in a trance, completely transported back to another time and place. The orangey red sculpted carpeting of her childhood living room, the basement full of records and the old shopping cart they used to collect the dirty laundry, the sound of the water cooler in the pantry gulped and belched big bubbles of air, her brother’s and sisters’ attempt to host a neighborhood circus one summer which mainly amounted to the brats of the block taking over and throwing the whipped-cream pies at everyone. “This tape is like a recording of my life,” she realized as she got up to flip it over to “Tape of All Tapes”, side B. Songs that were favorites were suddenly interrupted when they grew tiresome and smothered with a dose of some newer favorite. She listened to the entire cassette twice and realized it captured roughly a 20 year span, from 1975 through 1995. The next day en route to her job at the diner she popped into an electronics shop and asked for a portable cassette player, something with headset like the one she once had, but the greasy-faced boy shuffling on the carpet tried to persuade her towards an ipod or mp3 player.
“They quit making cassettes”, he said in a way that made her feel completely dumb, like a caveman awakening from a frozen block of ice. They quit making cassettes back in the stone age, you dumb lady! Stupid dumb-dumb head! She wandered away from the boy who she began calling “Pimples” in her mind, and did indeed find a cassette recorder, not one intended for playback of music really, but would do just fine—it was more for recording business meetings or a professor’s speeches.

On break from the diner Martha sat in the grass near the carwash fumbling with batteries for her new cassette player. She checked in on Boyfriend 1988. Listening to Echo & the Bunnymen, Love and Rockets, and John Lennon -- she could smell the nagchampa incense, clove cigarettes and the greasy engine of his ‘69 Buick, the sticky feel of the vinyl upholstery beneath her bare summer thighs. The sensation was nearly overwhelming, washing over her in waves, thinking of him hovering nearby with his shell necklace jangling. She had to turn it off. Turn it off. That f*cker, he was an a$$hole anyway. But, oh what a lover. Real hot stuff. Time was up, back to work. Standing at the coffee maker Martha felt her knees going weak. She couldn’t shake Zeppelin’s “Who Lotta Love”.

Boyfriend 1988 was shelved after that, but “the Tape of All Tapes” sat right with her, didn’t make her feel queasy or lonely—it was from an innocent time of optimism and hope—it was a comfort and she studied it in great detail. Rewinding to make note of background sounds and things she may have missed over the years listening to the surface noises--- Grandpa laughing at Christmas opens side A.
“What do you want for Christmas, Grandpa?,” asks Martha at age 9, clutching the new tape recorder that was under the tree for her that year.
“All I want for Christmas is my two front teeeeeth!”, sings Gramps, whistling as he pops his dentures out. The kids all squeal with delight. Quick cut into the Beach Boys recorded from WMLW, summer 1985.
Midway through side A and Kenny the annoying cousin butts into “Tears of a Clown” to do his best “Miss Piggy” impersonation. Lots of clicking and scuffling as young Martha tries to get the recorder back from him.
“Kermy!!! Ohhh I love you ! Kerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmie!” Smooching sounds and laughter from the background. Cut into Mike and the Mechanics and Eddie Grant “Rock down to Electric Avenue”. Was that Aunt Lucy back there? Who was that murmuring low at the dining room table, Great Uncle Jack?
The Tape of All Tapes embraced Martha in cloak of tranquility, despite its jarring edit job and scrambled playlist. Long dead relatives, long lost friends, and forgotten favorites washed back up to shore.

She came across something at the end of side B she didn’t remember-- she rewound and listened again, turning up the volume. It was Manny at the diner asking if she’d heard anything from Bill, the new line cook. He was late for work and nobody had heard from him. “Has he already quit?,” asked Manny, somewhat frustrated. She heard it clear as a bell, the sizzle of the griddle, some old-timers at the counter griping about the relentless fog. It was last Tuesday. She rewound it and played it again. ”How in the hell?...,“she asked herself, and fussed with the tape player, and in scrutinizing it she realized how easy it would have been to mistakenly press “record” instead of “stop” when she returned from break on Tuesday. Sure enough. There were about 40 seconds of current-day diner time on top of some snippet of high school era dancehall reggae. Luckily the cassette was near the end, and soon clicked off with Manny getting the final word in, as usual, “Damn it to hell!”

Strangely, Martha was not upset by the mishap. Only briefly she considered breaking the tabs off of the old cassette, rendering the recording safe from future accidental interruptions. Thinking of the cold, painted concrete floor of her childhood basement, the double-paned windows frosting up in the winter, the annoying clamor of the Milwaukee DJ known as Petie “Super” Powers. Martha looked around her small but cleverly furnished apartment, out to the scenic view from her small kitchen window and then closed her eyes.

This is a continuing story, she thought to herself. That was not the past, it is the same as the now. It is all connected like the tape spooling in this cassette.

That night Martha got the best sleep she’d had in years.

Seismic Southwest

Seismic Southwest
The Noise
May 2011
The Outs
Ellen Jo Roberts

           The sub-oceanic earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis that struck Japan’s coast this March are a powerful, and terrifying reminder of earth’s forces at work beneath us. Arizonans might feel some semblance of comfort to live in a region free of such dramatic plate tectonics. However, the truth is we are not immune to seismic activity in our state. In fact, there are small tremors occurring all around us all the time. As of press time there have been 19 earthquakes documented in Arizona already this year.
What makes our state’s geology so varied and visually thrilling is also what creates the potential for shocking uplifts, volcanic eruptions, and other dramatic changes to the landscape.
 
                



On January 23rd, and again on March 18th 2011, there were two minor earthquakes reported in the vicinity of Sycamore Canyon’s confluence with the Verde River, northeast of Clarkdale and west of Sedona. With magnitudes of 3.6 and 3.7, respectively, and centered deep underground in an area of wilderness, the quakes went mostly unnoticed, except for an assortment of finely attuned Clarkdale residents.
On the date the January quake occurred, a flurry of local chatter stirred up the neighborhood. “Earthquake! Did you feel an earthquake?” The only thing I felt that day seemed like someone slamming a door in some distant part of the building.
(Note: it may have actually been someone slamming a door.)
“These two quakes were likely located on a branch of the Verde fault,” explains David Brumbaugh. Professor of Geology, specializing in Geophysics, at Northern Arizona University, and Director of the Arizona Earthquake Information Center, “The Verde is the large fault that runs along the eastern front of the Black Hills through Jerome.

               Earthquakes are measured by seismometers and assigned “moment magnitude scale” numbers based on the measuring formula originally created in 1935 by Charles Richter and Beno Gutenburg of California’s Institute of Technology. The intensity of shaking is measured on the “Modified Mercalli Scale”, with shallower earthquakes causing the most damage. “We use the seismogram itself to estimate size, especially for smaller earthquakes,” explains Professor Brumbaugh, “This method is to use the time from the beginning to the end of the wiggles of an earthquake signature, as an estimate of size. This is called the ‘coda magnitude’ and can be related to the Richter Magnitude. Epicenter locations are determined by the travel time of the earthquake waves from several different stations, which can then be converted to distance.”
According to the various measuring scales, any quakes less than 4.0 magnitude are minor, and below 3.0 are scarcely noticeable, except by sensitive scientific equipment. Above 4.0 the tremors become noticeable to the local population. Knick-knacks and bric-a-brac fall from shelves, loose items rattle. Above 5.0 real damage begins to occur.      

               As the numbers increase, the scale of the damage and movement increases.
Magnitudes 6.0 to 7.9 are considered “major”. The Loma Prieta Earthquake in California’s Bay Area that disrupted the 1989 World Series, caused freeways to collapse and killed 63 people was a 6.9.  At 8, things progress from “great” to “massive”. The 1906 earthquake that decimated San Francisco is debated to have measured between 7.7 and 8.0.  Mexico City’s catastrophic 1985 earthquake, which killed 10,000 people, was measured as an 8.1. Its epicenter was in the Pacific Ocean over 200 miles away. The tsunami that hit Indonesia in December 2004 was a result of a 9.3 coastal earthquake. This year’s catastrophic tsunamis devasting Japan resulted from a 9.0 sub-oceanic “Megathrust” earthquake 45 miles off the coast. Megathrust earthquakes generally produce the highest magnitudes, and the most damage, and are caused by converging tectonic plates, as opposed to rumbling fault lines. While the Pacific Coast (and California’s San Andreas Fault running up the state like a zipper) is a well documented as a seismic hot spot, there are frequent minor quakes occurring all the time throughout much of the United States.  The New Madrid Fault Line in the Midwestern U.S. has seismic potential to seriously threaten seven states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi. As a child in Chicago in the 1980s I remember a tremor shaking our neighborhood as a direct result of the New Madrid Fault, hundreds of miles away in Missouri. It felt like our brick bungalow suddenly shuddered, like a dog having a dream. 



              Here in the southwest, earthquake activity is caused by many faults not even visible, hidden deep below the earth under many layers of sedimentary geology, and granite from volcanic flows. Other faults and breaks are more noticeable, and some glorious uplifts are dramatic landmark geographical features. Most seismic activity in Arizona happens on the Colorado Plateau, and along the “Arizona Strip”, our northern border with Utah. The Grand Canyon, perhaps ever in flux and transition, is also a hot spot for shocks and continuing aftershocks. No earthquake in Arizona history has ever caused a single injury or death, though there have been a few that have inspired great fright.

“The cumulative terror produced by a series of 52 earthquakes, from September 10 to 23, 1910, caused a construction crew in the Coconino Forest near Flagstaff to break camp and leave the area. Boulders rolled down on their camp from nearby mountains, and the earth maintained a constant quiver. The shocks grew in intensity until September 23, when a very strong shock raged throughout northern Arizona. It was so severe north of the San Francisco Mountains that Indians fled from the region.”
- “Seismicity of the United States, 1568-1989 (Revised)”, by Carl W. Stover and Jerry L. Coffman, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1527

 “For an earthquake to cause serious damage in Arizona, it would have to be M6.0 or larger,” says Professor Brumbaugh. One of the largest earthquakes ever documented in Arizona registered at a magnitude of 5.6, and occurred at 5:39pm on July 21st, 1959 along the Arizona-Utah Border near the neighboring cities of Fredonia AZ and Kanab UT.



The tremor caused damage to buildings, breaking windows, walls and toppling chimneys. Store merchandise fell off of shelves, and a rockslide occurred at Grand Canyon’s Mather Point.
        The professor also sites three potentially damaging earthquakes in Northern Arizona’s history: an M6.2 in 1906, the same year as San Francisco’s killer quake, an M6.0 in 1910 and an M6.2 in 1912, “Most earthquakes occur in Northern Arizona in a belt extending from Utah to Blue Ridge through Flagstaff known as the ‘Northern Arizona Seismic Belt’,” he explains, “As a worse case scenario, the faults in this seismic belt could generate an earthquake of about M7.0, but this is not very likely. There has not been one this large in historic time.”



When we lived in Jerome, we were often teased that our house might not be there when we got home, that it might “slide down the mountain”, making sport of the town’s steep trajectory, as well as the 88 miles of mining tunnels spidering beneath it. 
     Back in 1976 there was different concern, as a series of light earthquakes struck the area in February and April of that year. The epicenter of these quakes was about 20 miles northwest of Jerome, in Chino Valley, AZ. Current resident Jane Moore first arrived in Jerome in the early 1970s and she remembers the shocks shaking the historic town.
“I distinctly remember the day, and that I was outside doing something with my horses, who were in a corral down below Rich Street. I didn't feel the first shock too much, being out on the ground, but do remember all of sudden people poking their heads out their windows and saying stuff like ‘What the hell? What's going on?’ and that their houses were rattling and shaking,” Ms. Moore recalls, “Then later that afternoon I was back in my house…and felt an aftershock that shook the house... no damage.”



        The Colorado Plateau is home to some of the world’s most amazing landscape, most of it created by violent geological changes such as volcanic activity and shifting plates (the two actions are often times connected). “An active volcanic area like the San Francisco field around Flagstaff is likely to have relatively frequent, but smaller earthquakes,” states Professor Brumbaugh. “But eruptions do not occur very often. Sunset Crater was the most recent, with an eruption about 1,000 years ago. The eruptions in the San Francisco Field have been spaced out every few thousand years so far.”



         Other features have been formed by millions of years of slow moving change, such as sediment-depositing floods, receding floods revealing sedimentary sandstone, carving rivers, and gradual uplifts. Below the Mogollon Rim, ancient lakes, effluvial plains and rifts in earth give us gifts like Sedona, the Verde Valley, and fossilized sea creatures embedded at 7,000 feet above Jerome. The ever-changing planet we call home, despite being bound with wires, pipes, antennae, factories, and roads, will never be harnessed completely. The exact things that make planet earth a living, ever-changing organism capable of sustaining life are the exact things that also make it dangerous to its inhabitants. It’s unpredictable, fiery, quarrelsome, sometimes grumpy and dissatisfied. Like us. We too, are a danger right back, changing the earth to suit us, and seldom considering the impact we may have on its future.

For more information on Arizona’s earthquake activity, visit NAU’s Arizona Earthquake Information Center: http://www4.nau.edu/geology/aeic/aeic.html

Ellen Jo Roberts lives in Clarkdale, Arizona with “Bike Daddy” Chad, “Five Pounds of Fury” Floyd, and “Super Spaz” Ivan, and a fine assortment of 1970s Volkswagens.
Read all about it at Ellenjo.com

Clyde. 2000-2011

Clyde. He arrived about a month after we bought our house in Clarkdale, in February 2001. It was a few months since we'd lost our wild woolly Raoul, in Jerome, where he was killed on the highway in front of our apartment by a fast moving car.


(Raoul,1998, Jerome AZ)

As freshly minted homeowners, with a yard of our own, and finally recovering from our mourning for Raoul, we agreed to take this young cat named Clyde (he came with the name). The Jerome Humane Society said he needed "special owners" as he was getting himself into trouble where he lived, with an elderly lady/Veronica Lake lookalike in leopard print jumpsuit, in Cottonwood's Verde Villages.
He'd been getting into scraps with wild creatures and nearly lost his tail in a battle. We'd made a poster commemorating Raoul and had posted it all over Jerome. The kind folks in Jerome remembered the poster, and tracked us down. Soon this beautiful creamy colored flame-point siamese mix was in our living room. He was just under a year old.



Clyde was kinda wild at first, but soon mellowed into a lovely pet. We kept him indoors because of Raoul's death by car, and also the abundance of coyotes in our edge-of-the-wilderness neighborhood. He came to us with a history of scrapping with wild critters, so we wanted to protect him from future dangerous encounters. Sometimes we'd walk him on his harness and leash, or leave him hooked up on it, on a lead, in the protection of the yard. We kept his harness in a end table drawer by the door, and when we opened the drawer and pulled out the harness Clyde would come running, and hop up in the table, ready to put it on and go outside.



In 2002 the wacky Veronica Lake looking lady came over to visit her Clyde. She was eccentric in a most amusing way. Apparently she had a daschund named "Regis" that Clyde liked to play with. She also said "He likes coffee. See if I say 'coffee-coffee-COFFEE' he looks. Lookat 'im. He's licking his lips!" We repeated that phrase for a year, chuckling. (Footnote: Clyde has never asked for a cup of coffee.)

Sociable and mouthy, Clyde liked other animals, and on the times he escaped the front door we'd nearly always find him on the next block with neighbors who had several cats, dogs, and a pot-bellied pig named "Chuckie". He seemed lonely for some company.

In 2003 I did something crazy and impulsive. I stopped for a sign that said "Chihuahuas 4 Sale". Clyde could have easily killed tiny 24 ounce puppy Floyd, but he didn't. Clyde, with all of his claws in tact, and pointy fangs, could have made a quick end for my rodent-sized puppy. But he didn't. In fact he loved Floyd like he was his very own pet. Always gentle and playful with him, teaching him manners as best he could.

The next year we ended up with another dog, Ivan, and though Clyde was never as fond of Ivan as he is of Floyd (he mainly liked bopping Ivan on the face or batting his butt and waking him up from sleep), he was good with him too. Clyde was indeed the king of the house, and the dogs both answered to him on just about everything.











Clyde was always in the same room with all of us. We would sometimes joke how all 5 creatures of our house, canine, feline, and human, would sometimes be inhabiting the same 5 square foot space, snuggled up together. A very happy lil' arrangement indeed!





In early 2011, around the 10th anniversary of us buying our house in Clarkdale, Clyde stopped eating. He stopped pooping. He didn't jump on our bed anymore. He got very quiet. We took him the the vet and were crushed to learn that he was going into kidney failure from something called Polycystic Kidney Disease.



The veterinarian said this was something genetic he's had since he was a kitten, and there was nothing we could've really done about it. She also didn't know how much longer he would live. We took him home. It was like "hospice" care, being fed liquified mix of baby food and special kidney care formula in a kitten bottle, being injected every other day with subcutaneous fluid between his shoulderblades to help flush the growing toxins from his blood, groomed with wet washcloths, and brushed by me, as if he were a baby and I was his momma.

We'd always fed Clyde the best most expensive holistic organic meat-based feline diet. He drank filtered water and got premium treats. We even brushed his teeth and got him dental care from the vet. He was kept safely indoors. We did everything right, everything you're supposed to do. We certainly didn't think he'd be dead at age 11.
Losing Clyde was like losing the last 10 years of our life. The foundation of our life in Clarkdale was built on his back, and with him leaving us it was like he was taking 10 years of our lives with him  Like the end of an era. A door forever shut.

After we found out he was dying, we let him outside into the yard every day, because he didn't go much farther than the front porch or the shady grass. He enjoyed basking in the sun, and loved our field trips to the Verde River. First time I'd heard him meow in weeks.



There were a tough few days at first, right after his diagnosis, when we were instructed to flush him with IV fluids twice a day. It was daunting all the needles and the tubes and the medical equipment.We didn't think he'd live through the night. He seemed groggy, drunk, uncoordinated.

Then, we were allowed to cut down the fluids to once a day, then every other day.
He suddenly seemed to get a little bitty bit sparkier, clawing on logs in the yard, and climbing on the couch to sit by the dogs. Some days he almost seemed to show a wee glimpse of his old self.
Taking him to the river was a fantastic time machine. He'd roll in the sand, walk the trail, meow, claw at trunks, almost like his old self.



Vet follow up report said his blood numbers were better, but still terrible. Where they used to be off the charts, higher than the machines could even read, a week later they were merely "very high". He was maintaining, moving, drinking water, peeing in the litter box, looking out the window. And still hanging out in the same room with all of us, maybe hanging in there a little bit longer.
As it was like we'd already mourned his death, any extra day we got with our Clyde was bonus points.

"As long as he wants to be here with us, he can be here with us," we'd say.



On March 14th, 2011, Clyde took his last breath in the sunny tall grass and shade of a yucca in our yard. The vet came to our house and gave him an injection to put him to sleep. I had my hand on his chest as his heart took its last beat. Clyde didn't fight the doctors, or me, he just lay still and quiet. And then he was gone.

Despite a few steady weeks (and even some glimmers of hope he might make a comeback--like a sudden reinterest in eating food in his own), in his final couple of days, Clyde took a turn. He lost all interest in everything, food, water, us. He was suffering it seemed. Crying. Green snot in his eyes and nose. His mouth and tongue were suddenly full of ulcers. He would just hang his chin in the water bowl and not drink. If nothing else bothered him, I was certain that his mouth was bothering him and it was cruel to prolong the inevitable. All the life was fading from him. He even lost enthusiasm for going outdoors, which had been something he had always really enjoyed. Time had come to say a final goodbye and let him go. We were hoping we'd just wake up to find him peacefully curled up dead somewhere in a favorite spot, but this is not the way it went. We had to make the call.



His exit was very peaceful for him, though of course we were bawling our eyes out. We foolishly thought we'd already done all our grieving, when we first found out he was dying. But we were wrong.

Clyde is buried next to our eucalyptus tree, in a grave Chad spent all day digging. Chad made him a custom built coffin out of two shoeboxes. In his coffin: a tiny pillow for his head, Verde River clam shells, Sedona red earth, Mexican beach sand, big basin sage, kitty post cards from his pin up gallery, favorite toys, locks of our hair (including the dogs'), and a polaroid of Floyd and Ivan. Lisa gave me some daffodil bulbs to plant in the grave, and we set them right above him.

After the vet left, we said our last goodbyes to Clyde and Chad positioned him in his cardboard coffin, ready to lower into his grave. We let the dogs out into the yard to pay their last respects. Ivan was kinda clueless, and gave a perfunctory sniff before trotting off elsewhere, but Floyd was very concerned and intense. It was really touching my heart seeing Floyd, sniffing Clyde's head and ears, and watching him so intently as we closed the lid on him. Floyd seemed almost like he knew what was into going on and seemed very affected by Clyde's death.

"Of course," Chad said, "Because Clyde raised him."

Sad day, but peaceful and special.
As we carefully shoveled the earth back over Clyde's grave we joked about the crazy cartwheels and somersaults he used to do. And how he would always fall asleep on his back, legs up, not a care in the world. Clyde, you were the best cat ever.



Beautiful boy, you will be forever loved.
Thank you for the 10 wonderful years of affection, noisy wake up meows, entertainment, humor, and devotion. His memory will live on in paintings, photographs and the tales we tell.

Big Texas! :There's No Basement in the Alamo!

An old favorite, from August 2008...

Big Texas!:There’s No Basement in the Alamo!
By Ellen Jo Roberts
The Outs
August 2008



Texas is a mythical place, larger than life and bigger than all of the original 13 colonies combined. Texas almost seems ridiculous to be so big—like it should’ve been subdivided into North, South, and West subsets like the Virginias, Dakotas, and Carolinas. One side of Texas is western, dry and familiar. Another part is green and fermented, with spanish moss in the trees, plentiful rivers, and hills.
What we did on our summer vacation--What we did was pack up ourselves and the dogs and drive 2,400 miles, round trip, to the gulf coast of Texas, practically Mexico, for a family reunion. On the map it didn’t seem quite so far—a mere 2 states over. But as we finally saw the very first road signs mentioning our specific destination we both were dumbfounded that we’d been so brave and foolish to drive so far. By the end, by the time we’d made it back home, we’d driven for 6 solid days, 8 or 9 hours a day. It was a lot of highway, an amazing range of landscape and ecosystems, and new places never before seen. It also was about $500 in gasoline.

First of all, the Packheiser Reunion. My husband’s mom has many siblings, more than two hands can count. Do the math and that makes for many spouses, cousins, extended family, and a big reunion every year in a different locale. There are Packheisers from sea to shining sea. Each year they meet up in a different region during the Independence Day holiday week. Three years ago the Packheisers reunited in Arizona’s Verde Valley. You may remember us from our matching Packheiser Reunion t-shirts and our “boom-shaka-laka” routine” in Clarkdale’s 2005 4th of July Parade. Or how they landed on Jerome like a swarm on locusts. Locusts in matching t-shirts. Those wacky Packheisers. This year the destination was South Padre Island, a Spring-Break mecca along Texas’ southernmost stretches, minutes from Mexico.

We started our trip chipper and enthusiastic, in a rental car with air-conditioning and cruise control. Driving local highways through Arizona’s White Mountains on Highway 260, we soon crossed into New Mexico, continuing on small highways through small towns.



Along Highway 60, outside of Magdalena, NM, one may catch a glimpse of the “Very Large Array”–gigantic satellite dishes, tuned to communicate with outer space. Rural New Mexico has a glorious landscape, but most of the towns along the way were ghostly relics. Empty storefronts, vintage signs advertising long-closed businesses, no glimpse of pedestrians or residents. Every time the speed limit dropped indicating we were coming up on the next town I sat up a bit straighter in anticipation, and every time was surprised to find more of the same. Has the American roadside of yore gone extinct?



Our first goal on the map was a lunch-time cheeseburger at the famous Owl Bar & Café in San Antonio, New Mexico. It had been recommended by a friend as a mandatory stop. “The green chile cheeseburger will change your life,” she said.
The Owl Café is a historic roadside dive, dimly lit interior, like a cool dark cave, out of the relentless southwestern sun, and while the cheeseburger didn’t change my life, it was damn good, and the price cheap. By 5:30pm we had arrived in Roswell, our first overnight stop, and the eve of our 13th wedding anniversary. We had been quite excited about Roswell, due to all that alien stuff. In 1947 a UFO crash-landed in the desert about 40 miles west of Roswell. The enigma and the ensuing cover-up has given the city license to a mystique ever since, similar to Nevada’s Area 51, and the Bermuda Triangle. There are dozens of alien–themed gift shops downtown. I cannot say Roswell lived up to our expectations. First off, the city was far bigger than I’d realized, population 50,000 or so, and real seedy. The “vintage motorcourt” I’d found online was nothing more than a standard issue junky motel, nothing special at all, with an IHOP and Home Depot across the street, and construction workers standing outside of their open rooms, drinking cheap beers and wearing no shirts.



The motel, despite being advertised as “completely renovated”, featured shoddy electrical work, loosely installed plumbing, threadbare 1980s office furniture, filthy carpets. We dig funky and old, and can tolerate lots of imperfections if there is something “authentic” about a place, but this was just a dump, dirty and rough. We skedaddled out of Roswell early the next morning, not even waiting for the highly regarded “UFO Research Center and Museum” to open for the day.



Heading south into Texas, a large bullet-spreckled sign welcomed us to the “Proud Home State of President George W. Bush”. Soon we connected with our first patch of interstate road, several hours on the I-10. We stopped to gas up and grab some lunch in a historic and functional town called Ozona. They had a lively old downtown, and a large shady grassy park with gazebo where we stopped to have a picnic. “I thought every town we passed through would be like this one,” I said, as we slurped some cold soda, “Funny though, it’s like only 1 out of every 30 actually is.”



As West Texas turned into the rest of Texas, the familiar high desert scenery had faded into rolling green hills, abundant rivers, live oaks, and limestone cliffs. Our destination for the night was Austin, home of the state capitol and the University of Texas. The Austin Motel, with its famously phallic neon sign, is a much beloved 1930s vintage motel located in the hipster-full “SoCo” (South Congress Street) neighborhood.



The pet-friendly Austin Motel did not disappoint. Our room was appointed with kitschy furnishings and a blue-green color scheme that reminded us of home. The motel is within walking distance to everything cool- lots of clubs, cafes, shops, and interesting neighborhoods, not to mention the “Largest Urban Bat Colony in North America”, 1.5 million bats that roost beneath the Congress Street bridge. Around sunset time, people gather in a designated “bat observation area” below, and line up along the bridge above to witness the bats disembarking into the night. A few moments after the sun settled beneath the horizon the bats began to disburse—from one section of the bridge at a time—in great whirling, squeaking waves, around and up, high into the sky. Folks cheered, hollered, jumped in glee, babies screamed, dogs barked. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. In the distant sky to the east you could see the bats like a long ribbon of black, like cursive handwriting in some unknown language.



Dinner at Sol Y Luna, a Mexican restaurant adjacent to the motel-- we guzzled down a pitcher of mango margaritas, delirious and dehydrated from the long highway hours. By the time we hit South Congress the tequila had hit me, and we joined in with the strolling parade of hipsters, weirdos, tourists, panhandlers, and musicians crowding the sidewalks on a summertime Wednesday night.



A late night swim in the motel’s luxe pool cleared the fuzz ‘n’ buzz from my head. The pool sits along the busy street, so you feel not far from the action, though it is hidden like a secret oasis behind lush landscaping and old shade trees. A good night sleep in Austin helped us push on the final 6 hour sprint south to the reunion.



South Padre Island is a popular destination for Midwestern college students and folks east of the Mississippi. It’s a slim slip of a barrier island along the southeastern-most gulf coast of Texas, and full of souvenir shops, multi-story hotels, and tourist traps. It’s also home to “Sea Turtle Inc.”, a rescue center started in 1977 by “The Turtle Lady”, Ila Loetscher. The center’s primary goal is nurturing injured sea turtles and assisting a variety of young hatchlings towards success in the wild. Guests may visit the center and see the resident animals, as well as witness daily releases of hatchlings heading out to sea. The Gulf of Mexico’s western coast is natural breeding area to many varieties of protected sea turtle species.



South Padre is also renowned and respected for its excellent waves and kite-boarding opportunities, and for its tremendous riptide which repeatedly dragged us far and away from where we started out. Its beach sand is also highly regarded, ranked best for sand-castle building by “professional sand sculpture artists”, due to the fineness of its grain, moisture retention and other qualities essential to really top-grade sand sculpture.



The northern portion of the island is uninhabited and visitors are allowed to drive vehicles onto the sand for miles, finding remote camping, and access to fantastic shell-covered beaches. The tropical humidity and salt air made us feel young again, rehydrating our squinty Arizona wrinkles and giving our hair a glossy curl.





“Cyclone season” officially began on June 1st, and the family reunion was (only slightly) marred by relentless tropical rains which fell day and night, letting up just long enough for some beach time with the kiddos, and a grand fireworks display.





Texas-brewed Shiner Bock beer was consumed and folks stayed up late laughing, telling stories, and enjoying each other’s company. It was good to see parents, aunts, uncles, and meet some new family additions. The 1980s-born cousins united in wearing gigantic sombreros paired with scanty short-shorts for a fashion statement that we’ll all be raving about for years to come. The Packheisers rocked South Padre, stormy weather and all.



After a few days of family fun, it was time to get back on the long road home to Arizona. We left the tropical storms of the coast, with a quick photo stop at the Alamo in San Antonio, then a different route, more northerly, to hook up with good ol’ I-40 and sail along favorite old Route 66 haunts. One overnight stop was Fredericksburg, a lovely Hill Country town founded in the 19th century by German settlers.



The architecture in Fredericksburg is of brawny local stone, solid, traditional and built to last. On a sunny Sunday afternoon Main Street was filled with city slickers buying homestyle jam, and drinking beer on the streets.
They have an open-container law that allows it.



Fredericksburg was a nice bit of something real and solid to chew on, all leafy green shady, and white stone solid, giving us some energy for our voyage home. The next day we continued north, connecting up spidery backroads to Interstate 40, with a special stop planned for the Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo.



The Cadillac Ranch was conceived in 1974, an art project and commentary on consumerism by an artists’ collective known as “Ant Farm”. With farmland donated by a local philanthropist and prankster, Stanley Marsh 3, the Ant Farm planted a series of vintage Cadillacs face first, arranged by year and size of the tailfins. The first, a 1949 model, is modestly tailfin-free, the last, a 1963 model also mild. In between, the tailfins swell to epic stature, before fading away. The installation, visible from I-40, was moved from its original site to a spot further west in 1997.



Graffiti on the Caddies is encouraged and, knowing this in advance, I’d packed a bag full of spray-paint rattle cans, and carved up a stencil to use before we left home. We arrived at the site in late afternoon, during a howling high-plains wind, the air full of manure stink. The wind did not make for optimum spray-painting conditions, and most of the color ended up across the back of my left hand, just before my stencil blew away. The Cadillacs are covered with 30 years worth of paint, all thickened, lumpy and bumpy. I took to just wielding the rattle can, free style, joining the small crowd of others tagging their words and thoughts onto the autos. Our final overnight stop was 2 hours to the west, in Tucumcari, New Mexico, at the famous Route 66 Blue Swallow Motel.



We’d stayed there once, back in 1999, and for years have lived with fond memories of its vintage style rooms, adjoining garages, and glorious neon road sign--always eager to return some day. Back in its mid-century heyday, Tucumcari was a prime spot on 66, boasting plentiful motel rooms, restaurants and encouraging folks to stay with the ubiquitous slogan “Tucumcari Tonight!” The owner greeted us by name when we arrived at the Blue Swallow, showing us to our room. It was just as we’d remembered it, if not better. Clean, comfortable, and obviously well-loved and tended to by the owner and his family. The neon brilliant in the night sky. Tucumcari, however, seemed worse for wear since a decade past, with many motels and restaurants closed down, and plentiful weirdos wandering the Mother Road, some shoeless, shirtless, hopeless, no service.



The motel next door had long ago been abandoned, with thigh-high weeds in the parking lot, a pool full of garbage, and open rooms inhabited by feral cats.



From Tucumcari it was 7 hours to our own bed, a quick shot across 40 into Arizona. As always, the “Welcome to Arizona” sign with the state flag motif, caused me to burst into tears of joy. From that moment on it was easy sailing, almost home, propelled by sheer glee, every mile more familiar and closer to Clarkdale. We pulled into the Verde Valley at sunset, feeling more like ourselves than we had all week. The rental car was full of messy luggage, souvenir t-shirts, many pounds of sea shells, 17 rolls of spent film, and 2 very anxious pups. Rolling into Old Town Cottonwood towards Clarkdale, I finally realized it.. “I guess I thought every town was gonna be like this—lively and happening-- like our towns. Really, this is a good place where we are.”
The American Roadside is alive and well in Arizona.
“Of all the places we saw, this is the best place on the map,” said Chad. It’s always good to go away, but it’s even better to come back.

For more information:
www.austinmotel.com
www.seaturtleinc.com
http://www.libertysoftware.be/cml/cadillacranch/crmain.htm
www.blueswallowmotel.com

Ellen Jo Roberts is a sucker for a roadtrip. She lives in 94 year old house in Clarkdale AZ, with Bike Daddy Chad, and some well-traveled pets and vintage Volkswagens. Read all about it at ellenjo.com