Busy as a Bee in Bisbee

By some stroke of luck, when I got out of work the snow had only just begun falling on Rusty Hinge Road. It was a lovely Wednesday morning and the world looked like the handiwork of a mad pastry chef with a ham-handed flour sifter.
The world was surreal as I crept along the back streets in my red truck, all four wheels carrying me over the powdery roads.

The problem was, Melissa and I were due to hop on an airplane Thursday morning. We had long ago planned to visit my father and his wife, Dixie out in Arizona. I was worried that the airports might be jammed up in the snow.

By the time I arose from my post night-shift coma, the sun was back in the sky, and working on the asphalt outside the window. The airline had called, offering us a later flight in light of the back up of travelers, stacked up like cord wood, who had wisely checked their airlines on the previous day and stayed home.

Nope, we were going, but there was the small matter of the buried cars, buried walk ways and the buried streets that needed to be shoveled out before we headed off.

At the crack of dawn, cracked because the temperature had dropped like the GNP, we were headed down a dry highway. And by some other stroke of luck, parked the car, got through security and made it to the gate with plenty of time left to do a crossword puzzle, where applicable.

The plane took off on time and the flight was smooth and after some snoozing and a crossword puzzle or two, where applicable, we arrived in Phoenix's Sky Harbor Air Port and within a few short minutes we were in the rental car and out on the sun bleached highway. My wool cap, vest and gloves were of no use to me now; the temperature was nicely ensconced in the 70s and I was getting my money's worth out of my sunglasses.

My dad is the third generation of our family to live in the little town of Florence, Arizona. Florence is noted for its huge prison complex, as the filming location of "Murphy's Romance," and for one of the noisiest bars ever to be built right across the street from my father's guest house.

My great-great-grandfather, Warner, built an adobe house down near the end of Warner Street. If you stand on the sidewalk in front of my father's house and look to the left, you can see the house in which my uncle was born. If you look to the right, you can see what's left of the hotel where my great grandmother died of peritonitis. My grandfather, age 13, spent his first night as an orphan under a tree where there is now a condominium complex. I could go on like this for a whole column.

Family history lesson notwithstanding, it was good to be plunked on the old man's veranda, munching tasty snacks while he had his evening tequila cordial. The four of us got to talking and by the time we had finished eating the first of many of Dixie’s delicious dinners, we had decided to take an overnight trip to Bisbee.

Bisbee is an old copper mining town near the Mexican border. The mine has long since shut down. Now all that's left is a monstrous, man-made pit, surrounded by a chainlink fence. The old town itself sits on a hillside that is garlanded with the former shacks of the miners. The period banks and shops of downtown now hold art galleries and restaurants. A drive up the twisting, ascending roads provides a spectacular view of the surrounding desert and hills, all the way south, to Mexico.

Dad and Dixie insisted that we stay at their favorite hotel. It's called the "Shady Dell," and it is actually a series of vintage RVs that have been fixed up, given utilities and decorated with period chochkes. Dad and Dixie stayed in their favorite chromium motor home c. 1950, while Melissa and I stayed in a 38-foot cabin cruiser that hadn't been afloat for a long, long time. “The Yacht” was very cozy, although there wasn't really enough room for two people to get dressed at the same time, but the decorator did provide sailor hats for us to wear as we sat on the poop deck with our feet propped up on the railing.

We enjoyed our overnight stay in Bisbee and recommend the trip and the Shady Dell to anyone who is tired of the same old deluxe accommodations provided in the bigger cities.
I kept an eye on my Droid, enjoying the many bars of 3G service that the nearness of Bisbee provided and yet another stroke of dumb luck we missed another snow storm and a unpleasant-sounding ice storm that, according to the tiny screen, had pretty much crippled the old east coast.

My largest weather problem was trying to choose just the right T-shirt to wear as we tooled through the desert in my over-sized rental car, the thermometer happily resting near the business end of 80 degrees. I thought briefly about the shoveling hoards back in New England, but was soon lulled back into bliss by the balmy breeze at twilight and sunset among the Saguaros.

The week went by quick as a thirsty lizard on a hot black rock, and before we could believe it, we were being goosed and radiated by the TSA at Sun Harbor Airport's departure gate. Like the trip out there, the trip back was without incident except about fifteen minutes into our Eastward trajectory Melissa looked out of the window and saw reality 30,000 feet under our wings. Snow, ice, cold, winter.

The cats were huffy when we got in that night, they didn't appreciate us leaving them in the creaky old house at Rusty Hinge Road under the care of strangers. It was cold in the house and by noon the next day, by a final stroke of bad luck, I was shoveling a fresh foot of snow off the cars and the walkway and everything else.

And as I paused, wrapped in wool, shovel in hand, I stopped to contemplate the newly forming concept of adding a fourth generation of my family to walk the wooden sidewalks of Main, Street, Florence, Arizona. You know what? I have had a lot worse ideas.

What will I do with all my sweaters?