Notorious and Fascinating?

Today I'll  talk a bit about another semi-hero/mentor and inspiration from long ago. Going through my humongous photo archive to attempt organizing--for it is a mess on several different media!--I came across a few pictures and that reminded me.

Back in the day, a major part of the last century, say 1920-1960 or so, guest (or 'dude')  ranches were a big deal here in the southwest. People came from all over the world to enjoy the southwestern sunshine, dabble in cowboy activities and sometimes have more active and even extreme adventures. Different facilities offered everything from lounging by the pool with a chuck wagon 'cowboy' dinner to going on actual hunting or photography expeditions. I used this setting for one of my Deirdre O'Dare explicit novellas, Dude Ranch Nights, which takes place in the 1950s. At that point, "dude" was a slightly derogatory descriptive term for an easterner or one not learned in the western ways that cowboys and other western folks used.

By the time I was old enough to be observing and
interested, this trend was losing steam but a good bit of

Leo and lion hounds

romance and cachet clung to the phenomenon. In the Verde Valley there was at least one such place, one of the more active and adventurous type. Spring Creek Ranch, off highway 89A between Cottonwood and Sedona,  mainly offered rough expeditions into the wilderness areas often with a lion hunt involved. The proprietor was a chap called Leo Greenough. Mr Greenough was the scion of a well known Montana family who had gained fame and fortune with mining and ranching interests. Apparently he chose to go his own way rather than continue with family enterprises as Spring Creek was at least the second guest ranch he had created and both in Arizona.

After a hunt

At that time my father was immersing himself in the western and outdoor scene, writing and photographing on trips with a range of characters he'd collected. Of course he started going on some treks with Leo. I began to hear the tales he came home with and soon was old enough to also start hearing some of the gossip about this notorious chap who was apparently quite the ladies' man and held in both awe and sometimes disdain by various sources around the area. As an impressionable 'tween, I was very much taken by all this. Here was a living person to fit into my imagined thrilling adult world built from novels and operetta lyrics! It was not quite a crush perhaps, since he was then over 60 to my 12-14 but I was certainly fascinated.

By odd chance, one of my best girlfriends at that time had an older sister who had been working at Spring Creek for several years. We speculated whether or not she was a girlfriend or mistress of the notorious and much older gentleman. I never really knew and now do not care but we were impressionable and curious. I am sure I was far from subtle in my interest and borderline stalking of the "Dude Rancher." I expect he was mildly amused.  Anyway, I always had an ear out for any tattle that might be going around. By that time I was sure I should and would write a saga type novel setting forth my version of this very unusual character and his exploits, kind of a John Jakes and James Michner type of work! I still may; I have a big folder of partial chapters and vignettes and such, most going back a very long time.

I never actually visited the ranch until the early 1960s at which time Leo was no longer well. I think he had cancer surgery and passed away a couple of years later. At any rate, dad and then I had learned a lot about using mules for wilderness expeditions, actually hunting lions with hounds and other matters that we wove into our 1960s business of training and selling trail mules and some suitable horses, taking people out on trips etc. So, in a much more subtle but perhaps as influential way, Leo Greenough was a mentor as was Charley Bryant of whom I have written in the past. Although almost total opposites, they were basically contemporaries and both had actually lived the later part of the real Wild West times. May they both rest in peace and perhaps now share coffee and tales with a bunch of horses, mules and dogs clustered around them in "Fiddler's Green." Thanks to them for being who and what they were.

Stock truck and camp van

Leo, Shirley and George Rice, a guest

The Wheel of the Year

As most of you know, I tend to follow the ancient calendar of my Celtic ancestors as far as seasons and holidays go. The Celts were very fond of dividing things into twos, then fours, then eights... So besides the "light' and "dark" halves of the solar year, there are the quarters, marked by the equinoxes which are major festivals as are the two solstices. Then we cut each of those 90 day blocks in half and get Imbolc, Beltain, Lughnasa and Samhain. Two of those are more noted in modern times--as "May Day" and Halloween.

I have two favorite blocks of those eight, the one from Imbolc to the Spring Equinox and the one from Lughnasa  until the Fall Equinox or Mabon. To me Imbolc is the start of spring. Yes, at first only a hint off and on and a shy peak around the trailing cloak of winter but those glimpses are encouraging. Here in the sun belt, we do get nice days--highs in the 70s and a rare 80 and few to no hard frost mornings. Life begins to stir with the early weeds and birds hunting for nest sites and beginning their courtship rituals.

On my daily walks I am seeing flowers now. This morning I spied a few orange-gold blooms. I think

they may be the Arizona version of California poppies. They were in some dirt pushed up into rows where someone had bladed off sand that ran into the road in some of our rains so they were a bit crumpled and half buried! At times the hills over to the east around Wilcox and up toward Safford and down to Duncan, the last place my parents lived, are covered with the blazing carpet of  'sun drops' to where they simply glow fire-gold. I am not sure if this will be a good spring flower year in the desert or not. Much depends on the exact timing of winter rains. They were spread out fairly well this season so I am sure at least some areas will be gorgeous.

Around here the ubiquitous mustard weed is in bloom, small unobtrusive yellow flowers but the bees find and enjoy them. We also have the filaree, an early weed that spreads deep green 'doilies' of fern like leaves and then sends up small purple or lavender blooms. It's too early for the mesquites to start leafing out but the bumpy pre-leaf buds are  beginning to appear.  You would never recognize them if you were not familiar with them since they do not resemble new green at all. So for me, it is spring. The desert, even the high desert, is said to only have two seasons, summer and not-summer but there is both spring and fall. You just have to be alert and look for their signs!

Of course the Lughnasa to Mabon period is the gradual phase down of summer and edge into fall which h as always been my most favorite time of the year. The next block from Mabon to Samhain is a favorite too but when I lived in Colorado and dreaded the coming of real winter with zero temps and s**w and all that, I was already seeing signs of its approach and felt the beginning of that dread and SAD creeping up. Here not so much as fall often lingers into November--another great benefit of the sun belt high desert, so I'd call that the sub-favorite!

So for 2020, Imbolc has come and gone and the Equinox approaches in a few more weeks, less than half of that 45 day block. By then it will be spring although we will have wind and possibly even a storm or two but it will be time for planting and enjoying the outdoors. This new home is a perfect place for that as we will see early green in the valley to the north and watch our local flora don its spring finery. Yuccas will shoot up their stalks to fill with the lily-white blooms, mesquites will spread their spring-green leaves and then their fuzzy yellow 'cat tail' blooms and grass and weeds will spring up everywhere. "Spring up"--isn't that a neat double meaning sort of description? Autumn may fall but spring does spring out/up in a burst of enthusiasm! Of course I love it!

Most of these pix were from NM but the plants are much the same here; I have just not been able to capture them yet!

Filaree

Mesquite budding

Mesquite in bloom

Yucca in bloom

Ocotillo in bloom

Desert Willow--there is
one in my courtyard

Circling Around to Home Again

I posted on Facebook a week ago about a trip I had taken, just a day trip  around the county where I toured basically all the places I have lived in the area since I arrived on July 18, 1970 straight from Flagstaff and completion of my graduate studies at NAU. (Northern Arizona University--there are a couple of other institutions that use that name I have found.) I even shared photos so I will put them up here too and add more to the brief comments I made on FB. This post will be both a spin off and a partial continuation of my home and houses thread.

On a Saturday morning, July 18,  I loaded a Ryder Ford Econoline van and headed south to my new job at Fort Huachuca, AZ. I think my sponsor had already arranged an apartment for me for at least a temporary landing pad. My Flagstaff roomie went with me and she drove the van back to Flag since I had done a local rental.

My residence in the Cortez apartments was a one bedroom on the second floor. On the basis of my standards and experiences at the time it seemed pretty ritzy! I did some decorating and the curtains in the window along with the stickers there were part of that effort. There was even a big collage of Marlboro men clipped from magazines and glued on a sheet of brown wrapping paper hung over my bed! I had a living room with a dining area, a small kitchen, a good sized bedroom with a closet and a full bath all to myself! I think I actually stayed there until late September when I had to move to more economical digs. In the interim I acquired my very first automobile. Payments for it were taking a large bite out of my salary.

Cold reality set in and I knew I had to live cheaper. The next brief home was in El Corral Trailer Park. I think it was on Seventh Street but I am no longer sure. The town was much smaller then and a great deal has changed. I cannot even find where it was now since so many houses and apartments have been built in nearly fifty years! Oddly when the park was closed a decade or so late, my parents were at Duncan and had gotten a disaster FEMA mobile after one of the area's drastic floods. They needed more room and bought a trailer from the park which was very similar to the one I'd rented but a three bedroom plan instead of two.

Late in November I decided on yet another move and my roommate, a former pen pal who had just come over from California, went with me to hunt places in Bisbee. We found a quaint spot in the old Warren district and rented it for $30 a month! That move proved very significant as I have probably said before. This unit had two bedrooms, a living room, an eat-in kitchen and a bath. Not as spiffy as the Sierra Vista one but the fact it looked outwardly like a set from a Spaghetti Western got my attention. We moved in over the Thanksgiving weekend. I took a photo of it as it is today last week.  It's right below for contrast.
You can see it has not changed a lot. The second door is gone and there is new plaster color but otherwise, same-o same-o!

Anyway by late spring I got acquainted with my next door neighbor, now a single dad who was a sergeant on the Bisbee Police Department and had a six year old daughter I'd already met since she came to greet Judy and me wearing her cat as we were moving in.  He and I started keeping company that summer and decided it was practical to combine forces and stop paying double rent. The move was easy, simply across a single car space been the apartment row and the similar detached house. Over a week or so boxes were transferred, some stored in the basement area underneath the house and the vows and a ring happened to make it legal. That was the last time I moved by myself--Judy had gone to other quarters--and the last time with virtually no furniture to be concerned with. By the time we left this home in the fall of 1973 when we moved to Colorado, I had meshed into a very different life as a wife and mother, albeit a 'wicked' step mother!

Civil service gypsies for a bit,  we lived in Falcon, CO--the little house on the prairie . Olivehurst, CA--at the edge of the rice fields. a brief stop on Sylvosa Street in Tucson and finally back to almost the start, Whetstone, AZ at the crossroads of highways 90 and 82 in the spring of 1984.


 We lived on Old Church Rd and our house was the old church which had never been sanctified and was eventually made into a rather unique home. These photos show it as we looked before buying and as some change happened over the next twenty plus years. To date I  have never lived anyplace longer.

I had planted roses and such wherever I lived and of course each time left them. I really planned to stay on Old Church Road 'forever' but sometimes fate intervenes. I left much I work had done there when I moved out in August 2008 and was semi-homeless for awhile.

My old adobe hacienda has greatly changed since then and I no longer identify with it at all. The spirit of my home may still be in there somewhere but I cannot see it now. The old saying "you can't go  home again," surely holds true there. I am so thankful I have a new and easy-to-love home just up the highway about 30 miles that I was able to come home to after my trip down memory lane.  As spring comes new roses and other pretties will be planted and it already feels like a true home.

Those good old Celtic Knots

I was going to go with the homes and moves narrative but realize that for many years almost all my photos were slides. They have not been scanned yet. Talking about old homes with no photos to bring them to life seems rather pointless so that will wait for awhile.

Instead I will jump into a favorite topic: all those non-coincidences and really astounding patterns that, at least in my life, have kept cropping up. Maybe everyone has them and just does not think anything of it?  Maybe I am seeing things that are really not significant at all? ~ One Latina single shoulder shrug. Quien sabe!

When I met my future husband, who happened to live next door, shortly after his first wife had passed in a rather tragic chain of events, we very soon found how many people we knew in common or had at least a passing connection with. I admit that back in the 30s and 40s when we were growing up in Arizona it was a thinly populated new state but I lived and grew in the Verde Valley, almost exactly the geographic center of the state and very seldom went south of Phoenix while Jim grew up in Bisbee, short miles from the Mexican border and in the far southeastern corner of the state. and considered Tucson far north! His dad was in the mining industry, then part of the Phelps Dodge empire which also operated the Jerome and Clarkdale facilities but my family had almost nothing to do with that except for few neighbors so employed and the fact we rented a home from the company. Both the Waltons and the Morgans were avid outdoors folks but mostly in different parts of the state.

When I was hardly more than a toddler, Dad had an occasional visitor he had met through some contacts with the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, a young man named George Daniels. I had close to a crush on him for a bit! A few months later, he joined the Marines for the Korean War as did Jim Walton and they crossed paths being stationed at El Toro in California in the MPs. Later George was working in Yuma, back for the game folks and he and Jim were friends. A bit later, we got acquainted with a game ranger stationed in the Verde area named Don Smith. My mom and his wife Lucy were friends and Charlie, then about six, became friends with Grady Smith and they were in Cub Scouts together.  Ten years later the Smith family was in Yuma and Grady was in a Scout troop Jim led as Scout Master; Malcolm Walton , just a year younger, knew Grady too. Jim and Don shot together and worked an occasional law enforcement issue since Jim was then on the Yuma PD.
Kind of bland stuff. eh?

So let me detour to a name. Among the mentors, very close male friends and partners/lovers in my life--of which there actually hasn't been an enormous number!!--five are named Jim! James McLarney was my high school English teacher in my Junior and Senior years and very much an influence in encouraging me to write. He also helped arrange things when I finally went off to college and we dated casually for a couple of years at that time. A funny aside, the other main English teacher at Mingus with whom I also worked on the annual and newspaper staffs and he and Mr. M kind of co-taught some, was Ernest Gabrielson. Turns out he and Jim Walton were also in the marines together and had been serious buddies at Bisbee High School where both graduated in 1948.

Moving on, in college I signed up for a course called Asian Studies in my last senior semester and did not get the section I had wanted but one that met earlier in the day. I went to the first class, mildly miffed. But the prof was James Revard, and I was quickly fascinated by this dynamic and charismatic man who became a mentor and adviser, a very close friend and almost a spirit guide in many ways.  Our friendship did not end until his death to lung cancer in 1996.

Then in November 1970 after I graduated and started working, I moved from Sierra Vista to Bisbee, farther from Fort Huachuca but where the rents were much more economical. I found my next door neighbor was a policeman and met his daughter who introduced herself to my then roommate and me wearing her cat like a fur stole. In January '71 I was gone for two weeks to a class in San Francisco and when I was paying my rent upon my return the landlord said the lady next door had just passed away. I made polite comments but did not know who she was.

In May I began to get acquainted with the widower cop-next-door and we started keeping company. His name was James Walton and I acquired that name when we married in September, to the consternation of the more conservative folks in Bisbee, but he had two young kids and they needed a mom substitute. Ours was always a practical and friendship-based relationship although the love was there and strong enough to last for thirty two years.

Then in 2007 as I described in a recent post, I met yet another man named James. Jim Lee and I were never strangers from the first time we spoke on the phone to the first time we met face to face and on until after several years with no contact save a few calls and texts, we still share a surprisingly strong, lasting and  intense bond. We were not destined to be a couple this time but are sure we have shard other lives and relationships

Finally in 2014 after I'd lived in Alamogordo for awhile, my brother's lady at the time engineered a meeting between me and a guy she had dated a time or two before she took up with Charlie. He was a big man, talkative and outgoing, blue-gray eyes and again, not a stranger although he often felt to me like a slightly blurred carbon copy of Jim Walton. Jim Smejkal  and I continued to date casually for the next five plus years. We never quite became a couple due to a number of influences and intervening matters but I certainly count him a very close friend and someone I respect and hold in deep affection.

So five Jims.... There was a Charles and a Bobby who were also very important and a number of lesser memories and "boy friends" over the years but somehow five out of seven really significant men in my life seems beyond the purview of mere chance. Next time I will touch on some odd parallels and links of sorts among the seven.

Sorry, no pictures. I do not have one of each of them so will skip that for now.

Energy--the Most Powerful Medicine

I'll take a detour from my talk of houses, homes and moving to share some thoughts that arise mostly from my weekend trip over to my brief home locale of Grant County, NM. The story is perhaps very much a slice of my life--one who leads with her heart, not her head, a romanticist to the core and also an Irish/Taurus person whose loyalties and connections tend to run very deep. I try very hard not to hate and have managed to shed most of my antipathies and forgive even where I sometimes cannot forget. Conversely, my loves stick like embedded burrs and are almost impossible to dislodge.

The tale begins in mid December of 2007. I'd been a widow for four years and had lost my baby brother two years earlier. I was doing my best to manage a half acre lot that grew lots of weeds, two dogs that were having more and more fights, an invasion of ticks, a septic system going bad and a few other 'little' issues. Life was not much fun. For spits and giggles I signed on to a match site called Adult Friend Finders. It was an X-rated one and many of the profiles showed folks flaunting their "junk" in all its splendor. Even as an erotic romance writer I was kind of like, "Whoa!" Then one guy contacted me--at least his profile pic was a headless torso with a pair of tighty whities for a bit of modesty. I replied.

Soon we were exchanging emails and then phone numbers. The first time I head his voice I 'knew' him. It took a few weeks but we agreed to meet midway between where we lived and chose a small town in Cochise County. The date was January 17, 2008. Again we were not strangers in any way and it felt as if we had known each other half our lives. There was an almost audible click as two kindred spirits re-met. and connected.

I ended up moving that summer over to Hurley. NM which was about 15 miles south and east of Silver City. It was time for me to get away from Whetstone. I rented my house for a year and then deeded it over to my middle stepson but that is another tale, mostly told in the past. About the same time, my new friend who I will just call Jim changed jobs and ended up over at Carlsbad instead of in Arizona. His base camp was in Grant County but he worked elsewhere a lot of the time. We stayed in contact and got together now and then but it became increasingly clear we were simply not meant to be a couple in this lifetime.

It was not a lack of compatibility, but what brother Charlie calls romantic relational integration. Middle aged people have a lot of life behind and often still entrapping them; kids, other family, work, debts, obligations and so on.  We realized our very powerful friendship was too precious to jeopardize by trying to build a permanent romantic partnership which would likely fail with hurt and hard feelings despite our best intentions. There had always been a very fraternal or familial aspect to our bond. We both have a lot of Irish ancestry; we both lean toward an ancient pagan view of life and spirituality; we are both Taurus folks, Jim being five years and five days my junior--the first younger man I'd ever had a serious relationship with. We are also both eldest children with that overwhelming sense of responsibility and need to take care, make right, do what is asked or expected. That was part of the issues too. Neither of us can say "No" very well even to unreasonable demands and wind up pulled in too many directions.

The next spring I moved to Colorado and began to share a home with Charlie. In two years, he retired and we moved south, landing in Alamogordo which turned out not to be a good place for us. All through that Jim and I would call or text off and on, sometimes not for weeks or even months but never letting the tie part; it seemed very elastic. I did make it over to Silver City  a few times after he retired and came home to be there for  his two youngest kids. However long it had been, there always was an instant picking up and continuity.

Then I started having the bad eye issues at about the point where Charlie began a two year relationship with a woman who just hit me wrong as I clearly did her. In every sly and subtle way she kept trying to move me out and somehow make me go away. Charlie had a hard time seeing or understanding that aspect for a long time. I can spell depression and it hit me like a two mile train at track speed. From about 2014 on, I would almost have welcomed death but never quite got to the suicidal point. I still kept a-few-texts-a-year contact  and a call or two with Jim but even that almost took more energy than I had. I never told him 90% of my woes, just mentioning the eyes as why I never came over there anymore. I had promised myself there would never be any drama from me for him as goodness knows he had enough elsewhere.

Finally the woman and Charlie came to the ultimate break and I made the trips to Alaska, a nearly desperate effort to find something to give me a purpose and a reason to exist. That did help. Then the idea to come 'home' to Arizona began to take shape and that process completely took over my life for most of two years. I still sent Celtic holiday texts to Jim and let him know of the plans as it took shape but little more. Finally we were here and I told him near Christmas that I really wanted to come over to see him and he said he looked forward to it. He is still working part time, doing flea market stuff and taking care of everyone although the two younger kids are doing fantastic out on their own. I was so happy about that because most of the earlier ones had not and caused him much grief.

And so, I picked a day, not sure it would work and we set up to meet. Yes, it was the 12th anniversary of that initial meeting. I got to the chosen meeting spot a few minutes ahead. He pulled his truck in on the right side of RHM. I got out and circled behind my truck as he got out. I was not all the way there when his arms reached and I walked at once into the 'coming home' hug I have missed for several years. We talked for two hours or more until he got a call and had to go. No drama--I knew what to expect and accepted that. He walked me to my truck and we parted with another hug and a promise to keep in touch better if possible as he thanked me for never failing to do so all this time

No, there is not a proverbial happy ending to this story, at least not in this lifetime, but the friendship lives, thrives and goes on. It will go with me to the veil and probably out on the far side. We have shared other lives and in time will do so again. The resonance of our two energies match so well and the two inner selves fit in so many incredible ways. As in Yolanda Martinez' beautiful song, Forever and Always, "I will always know you." or Glenn Frey's Part of  Me, Part of You. that melding is real and I know I am never totally alone. A man and a woman can be platonic fraternal friends because what is friendship but a very sacred and special form of Divine Energy or Love? I am greatly blessed to have that precious incredible gift.

I'll go into some of the non-coincidences and strange Celtic knots in this and other related matters soon. This is already way too long!! Sue-Ellen, (another spirit connected friend!) I agree--there are NO coincidences. There are patterns and fate and Divine intervention and much else!

Moving--Houses and Homes

This will be a re-post from almost a year ago. I do want to share all the moves I have made over the many years and highlight the homes and residences I have been found in. I also have picked up a detail or two as I went through old family memorabilia and documents as I work on being the family matriarch/historian so if you've already read, just hit skip or delete or whatever!! Also refer back to Houses and Homes, Part 1, Dec 3,  2018 for related information, again if you did not read or have forgotten.

****

As the idea of another and I hope very final move begins to take shape, my thoughts are drawn back to the whole notion of ‘moving house’ and the disruption, adventure, excitement and exhaustion that such events create.  So far the end point of this move remains unknown but there will be one and I’ll probably be living there by the end of this calendar year.

Some families, mostly those associated with the military or similar transient professions, move every few years.  My moves have always come in fits and starts. The first big one I do not recall—that was from Missouri to Arizona in early 1946. Actually I’d already lived in three different homes by then and had moved to and from the Boston area and back to Missouri in those few short months. I was not quite three, about 32 months old, when my parents moved to central Arizona. I do not remember that one. We camped in a motel for a few weeks and then found a rental in Jerome.

By my third birthday we were living in a little house on “Sunshine Hill” in Jerome, an old mining town near the geographical center of Arizona.  I am sure the household goods came in a moving van for Dad had driven the little black Ford coupe to get there as I have a few photos to verify. There were still some wooden boxes years later which I am sure had made the journey. That was the first home I remember and we stayed there for about seven years. (OMG—about the same time I have lived in my current home!)

Where it had been...

In the late fall of 1953, we moved from there down into the Verde Valley and settled in two little square brick ‘company’ houses in Clarkdale. I have vague recollections of that move but not a lot of specifics. I was ten and of course had to help pack boxes and such but somehow it did not seem too significant. We used the gray Jeep pickup and a couple of trailers Dad had built or redone to haul the household goods. It took quite a few trips.  Within a few years the little cottage on the hill in Jerome had been lifted from its foundation and hauled away along with most of the neighborhood. I’m not sure where they ended up. We were in the new house by Thanksgiving and had the job completely done a short while before Christmas. Charlie probably celebrated his second birthday in Clarkdale though I am sure he does not recall!

Clarkdale Home years later

That was home for what seemed like a very long time. Years feel so much bigger when you are a tween or teen. I left in early September 1966 to start college at Flagstaff and from then on the family home was really no longer mine. They left, due to some unexpected issues, in the late summer of 1967, bouncing around to several temporary camps and then a time in Sacramento, CA before moving to New Mexico in the early fall of 1968. They lived a number of places from then on, most of which I visited, but never considered home for many reasons.

In Flagstaff, I had several “homes”, five dormitory rooms and then an apartment in a big old house on Agassiz Street, just a block from the Santa Fe mainline tracks. From that time on, I have always enjoyed hearing trains, even at close range.  I did not have a car any of the four year period when I got two degrees by going to all but one summer session as well as the regular semesters. I simply carried my plunder between rooms in two of the dorms and enlisted help of friends with cars to move my stuff across campus for the first summer session and then when I left the third dorm for the apartment.

In three of the dorm rooms I had roommates and lucked out there to get people I could tolerate who could also put up with me! No roomie-from-hell stories to share. My second full year I had solo rooms, which was both good and bad. I tend to be a bit reclusive in many ways and not sharing a room made it harder to get out and do things. That ended when I moved off campus as I had three roommates in that apartment the next two years. Two of them became long term friends as did one from the dorms.

Leaving 17 S Agassiz

Finally my student days were over and I had a job to go to! There was only a weekend between the completion of my graduate studies and my reporting to Fort Huachuca as a brand new civil service employee. I had to jump! I borrowed my roommate’s new car to go take the driving test (until then I had never had a license though permits several times) and the next day rented an Econoline sized van from Ryder to move.  By then I had acquired more than a few boxes and a suitcase of "stuff’ and I wanted to keep it all. Roomie Carol and I drove from Flagstaff to Sierra Vista and I moved into El Cortez apartments, a one-bedroom unit on the second floor. She took the van back to Flagstaff and I was again afoot for several weeks. 

El Cortez Apt--window in upper floor

My co-workers were generous in giving me rides and things worked out well enough. I was already used to walking since I had walked hundreds of miles in Flagstaff as I adjusted from a very active outdoor life to a more sedentary one and then carried home groceries and really everything I bought to include a sewing machine—heavy haul for several blocks!—a typewriter and a small desk from Goodwill. After I had received a couple of paychecks, I got bold. I did need wheels! I rented a car and drove to Tucson. My first stop was Jim Click Ford.

They had two brand new-that-year Ford Pintos in the lot—one white and one lime green. The personable young salesman saw me coming. I drove home in the white one with his assurance he would see the rental returned. I guess he did since they never came after me!

It was wonderful to have my own wheels—finally—in October 1970. However, I soon found my princely salary did not stretch as far as I might wish when a car payment was added to my expenses. I moved from the apartment to a more economical mobile home park rental for two months. At least I had a car now to move my possessions although cramming larger items into the Pinto could be a challenge.

Then I discovered rent was much cheaper across the hill in Bisbee. By then I had another roommate so we again put the Pinto to work and hauled my things and a few of hers over to Bisbee. Through that move I had always rented at least semi-furnished places so moving was not the huge chore it could be with a full compliment of furniture and household effects. That turned out to be the last move I was to make on my own for well over thirty years.

Pinto at Spaghetti Western!

I rented a two bedroom place in an odd little strip of rentals, the only one vacant at that time. Outside it looked enough like a set for a spaghetti western to make me happy and inside it had all the necessary things except only a tub but no shower in the bath. From Clarkdale on I had grown used to showers and was not terribly fond of tub baths.  Water and I have never been really compatible. Then too, sitting in water where one’s dirty body had been while you bathed and then get out seemed vaguely unsanitary. I am not a bubble bath gal.

The move to Bisbee proved to be one of those fated or life changing decisions that sometimes happen to mark a sudden stop and shift in your route. Within a year, I had begun a brand new adventure -- being a wife and an instant mother! So the next move was a family one and a big relief since it happened at government expense! We will continue with that story soon!

New Home--Part II

I'll add a few more photos in a bit but just want to say a little more about my new home. It is almost uncanny how from the first few days, it felt like home and several favorite places such as on the back patio/courtyard in warm weather and in a sheltered spot in front of the garage now that winter has come hold such a sense of peace and calm. There is a serene aura somehow. It is easier not to worry, fret and agonize over the many 'what ifs' that life can run past you at odd times. I will always be a worry wart but I do not find myself getting totally into a kitty-played yarn ball where I cannot break free these days. I may still borrow that neat trick of writing down a worry I want to shelve for a bit, tying the paper into a roll with a twine or ribbon and sticking it in the freezer! It sounds silly but it really does help--especially if you visualize that issue going dormant in the cold and not haunting you until you are ready to deal with it.

It won't be long until hints of spring begin to appear. There will still be cold, windy and wet or even sn*wy days  but spring will come. I am eager to start planting new shrubs and flowers and perhaps even a few veggies. I was sad to leave those I had grown in NM but will start anew. I brought two little special roses from NM in pots and they are planted on the east side of the courtyard. (story of these in "There were Roses" post about a year ago--11 Dec 18 I see) They seem to have taken hold and more will join them before long as well as lilacs, forsythia and maybe some iris. I'll have to protect them from the deer and the rabbits but that courtyard will be an even better place with such beauty to grace it.

So now, a few more photos, inside and out. I took over the well house for a storage place and we have a lot of stuff in the stable which has four big stall areas and a central lane. The walls are not full height but offer some protection and there is a roof, fairly sound. An adjacent feed barn and tack room has more space to be used also. That's more spring work waiting until the right time!

Charlie is getting anxious to start reassembling his big work benches that we tore down to move and arranging the garage so he can work on many projects there. I am supposed to get one section of wall and its adjacent floor space for my jewelry and rock shop but we'll see. If there is not room enough I may get one of those 'cabin sheds' which have fascinated me for some time. For now all that material is boxed up and stored. All in good time...

Living room first day

 Living room now--I shortened the curtains

Kitchen, dining area

Storage in well house--actually
where only  pressure tank is housed

My special roses

Stable area. Well house on far left.