La Posada Cinta Roja

Every once in a while a reader will ask me "where do you get your ideas?” I politely inform them that everything I write is true. I can no more write fiction than I can speak Swahili, bwana.

Our adobe is in a small but sprawling town in the middle of the desert southwest. The thermometer hits 90 degrees in May and just gets hotter from there. As we were buying the property, one of the minions of town officials, that drive around all day in a fleet of brand new, air conditioned Ford trucks, informed us that, according to regulation, 234-gh22-b, (I did make that part up), our house reverted back to commercial zoning status, when the last occupants moved out. In order for us to actually live on the property, we require a zoning change.

Across the arcing summer, we have to travel out there three separate times for three separate meetings in case any questions crop up during the three scheduled public hearings.

Our new home town has a population of 21,769. 82.8 percent of the population is male. Single ladies, before you pack your trousseaus, please be advised that much of that imbalance is related to the fact that the eastern edge of town is the location of a humongous prison.

Because of this, the dwindling share of state aid allotted to our new home town, is greatly skewed by the additional inmate population. The result of this boon is that the city always has more money than it can prudently handle. In other words, expenditure-wise, if it is related to infrastructure, we got it. This proves to be ripe with irony. The town itself, at least the main drag, seems to have stopped in time, as if Alan Ladd is about to walk out of one of the colorful saloons, jingle his spurs into the middle of the street and draw a blazing six-shooter on a menacing Jack Palance. It is that quaint and cowboy. Chances are good, however, if Mr. Ladd were to attempt such a feat today, he'd risk being mowed down by a retiree on a motorized wheelchair.

One of our town's charms is the ancient adobe homes that pepper the dusty lots. With the stream of hot and cold running cash running through the municipal coffers, you' think the new civic architecture projects might replicate, or at least compliment, the old style that has been so lovingly mummified by the hot sun. Instead they are more inspired by the design of the temple of Dendur than the time-tested thick walled and rough timbered adobes. The county courthouse, a majestic, turreted symbol of Roger's and Hammerstein's American back country has been abandoned in favor of a complex of looming, brown, air-conditioned cubes. The town government, which seems to be the second largest employer in the area, is housed in a characterless, earth-toned, gunnite-encrusted town hall at the dead end of Main Street, a location ripe with metaphor.

It is through the pneumatic doors of this building that the Planning and Zoning meeting was assembling. The huge main meeting room, the grandest of grand ballrooms, spread out for miles around. The vastness is so large as to require microphones be wired onto all the participants in order that their voices reach the maximum potential audience. On this occasion I was one of five members of the assembled crowd.

It appeared, at first that the meeting was not going to happen at all. After a long, expensive flight, and the rental fee for a giant Japanese luxury desert yacht, The one commissioner necessary to make up a quorum had not showed, and bylaws only allowed for so much wait time. As the minutes ticked by, I could see my presentation in tiny pictures on a distant laptop that was wired to a projector to better describe my plans to the open meeting.

The missing commissioner arrived at the last possible minute and the two presentations in front of mine were delivered to the board. I assumed that the other four citizens were (literally) locked and loaded and ready to clamor at the dais when a public forum was opened to complain about my requested zoning change. No hands were raised. The board asked only that I describe the location of the property, by which each member had driven on the way in that night.

The P and Z unanimously recommended that the mayor and town council accept my request and off in the distance I could hear, with the aid of a modern PA system, the sound of a gavel hitting the simulated wood grain podium in front of the chairperson.

I called Mellisa with the good news from the parking lot. We'll have to show up in person at two more meetings over the summer. We are taking turns.

As I drove back to the air-conditioned safety of my father's cozy guest cottage, I went by the old adobe and basked in the evening heat as the sunset dyed the horizon an almost unnatural combination of orange and purple. The possibility of transplanting our lives to this place had moved one step further along. The possibilities were as endless as the pile of money it would undoubtedly take for us to bring it back to its nascent glory. The vision was so real I could almost see Alan Ladd lurking in the lengthening shadows.

Smile when you say that.

The Gavel

It appears to have finally stopped snowing. In fact one day, not too long ago, I got out of bed, put on a pair of wool socks and a sweater, prepared for a traverse over the tundra, only to discover it was at last Spring out on Rusty Hinge Road. Hallelujah!

A week later it was summer. Go figure.

The verdant foliage and colorful flowers had Melissa and me longing for a visit to Vermont. We have been regular visitors at my sister's house up there most spring times, but with all the hullabaloo of work and real estate speculation of late, we'd barely had time to think straight, let alone contact our cat wranglers, pack up our skivvies and roar up the interstate.

Last Thursday night after I emptied my bank account into my truck’s gas tank and off we went. The main highways were at a standstill, so we took the scenic route. Less scenic in the dark, but less traffic.

The next morning we did our usual retail therapy in the nearby town, ogling the residual, aging hippies and Subarus that crowded the otherwise sleepy streets. Is it the air? The water? What makes it all so darn soothing in Vermont?

Later, we "previewed" an auction in my sister's tiny town. While there isn't much going on there, save for a whole lot of maple syrup production, there is a formidable auctioneering concern right on the main drag. The proprietors, a couple of real Vermonters, empty out old houses and auction off the contents.

The auction inventory can range from Tupperware to antique cars, there tends to be something for everyone.

My brother-in-law, Charles, is a morning person and while we snoozed through breakfast, he was off mowing a lawn or delivering “Meals on Wheels.” By the time we were out of our pajamas, he had perused the auction and was off in the hills.

We found a few things we planned to bid on if the price was right, so the next morning we got a number from the lady at the desk and stood on the sidelines as the auctioneer started moving his wares.

I had my eyes on an old trombone and a couple of Hudson Bay blankets, but first, we had to sit through a bunch of other stuff.

The auctioneer, a portly fellow with a bad tie and a scruffy beard, described each piece as if it had fallen off a truck on its way to the Metropolitan Museum.

"Look at the fine work on this lamp," he'd say, with the aid of a chin mounted microphone, "look how the naked lady's head is where you screw in the light bulb. You'd have to pay a thousand dollars for this on EBay!”

And a thousand dollars was pretty much the minimum value he imposed on every item in the place. One of his crew members would hold up the lamp, plug it in, and switch it on and off.

"How about a hundred dollars? Do I hear fifty? Ten dollar bid?"

Someone might raise a paddle and get things going, but if no one seemed interested, he'd complain to his partner, who ran the schlepping end of the auction, and save the item for another time.

"I can't believe nobody wants this lamp. They have no idea what we've got here. This is ridiculous!" He could be heard throughout the barn, since his microphone was on full blast. Maybe he thought that guilt would make the bids start coming in. Unfortunately everything he had wasn't all that wonderful. If someone did go in for a dollar, he clicked into full, manic auctioneer mode. "Dollah, dollah, how about two? Two Dollah, Three? Anybody, Four?" And so on, at a hundred miles an hour, coiled like a spring, able to catch a nod or a wink from a bidder across the room, as the dollars flowed into his till.

This went on for hours, and it was intoxicating. My sister, Babbs bought two tables and tiny Mexican chair. Melissa bought a Persian carpet, I nearly got a nice Stickley table. So it goes.

There were several seriously interesting items, like a genuine 600-pound roll top desk, but the idea of transporting some of these pieces was daunting, and once transported, where to put them? In the clogged, cluttered corners of our abode on Rusty Hinge Road? No, don't. Please.

All in all, it was a bit like eating peanuts. Each tray of glass baubles, every hotel quality painting called out with potential. Every art deco, rococo, curlicue, thing-a-ma-bob was the unappreciated Duncan Phyffe, hand-carved, one-of-a-kind, Antiques Roadshow, heart-stopping retirement plan, and for only a few dollars more than the guy on the other side of the room, it could be ours.

I was outbid on the trombone. I set a limit for myself. I wanted it for my daughter, Hannah, as back up for her more expensive trombone that is safely locked-up and unplayed at her mother's house. I figured I could afford to risk having it stolen if it was gotten cheaply enough. She'd have to play it, of course.

I got the Hudson Bay blankets for a pretty good price. There's only a moth hole or two in them and you can never have enough blankets. I am pretty sure we can find a place to store them for the summer, which should be over any minute now.

Going going gone!

A Trip to the Dump

Shortly after buying my new red truck, I purchased a ladder rack at the nearby truck accessory store. I justified the purchase because I knew, at some point, I would need to carry longer items like the occasional ladder or the long piece of lumber overdue for the side of the garage. I dug out my ratchet set and carefully mounted the new rack on my rig.

The rack was not particularly sexy, and went virtually unused, but it stayed on the truck until last week. I was in the house, minding my own business when I heard a loud “thump” on the street. Since there is a speed bump pretty near the front door, loud thumps are fairly regular music on Rusty Hinge Road.

I got up and looked out the window and saw a fellow rearranging the tools and ladders in the back of his truck. I assumed he had hit the speed bump hard and something had jumped out. Later when I went out, I saw that the rear section of my still-shiny truck rack had been sheared clean off. It had landed in the bed without damage to the truck itself.

Whatever hit the rack was pretty solid because it cracked the half inch thick aluminum mounting as if it was balsa wood.

Every car we have ever owned since we moved to Rusty Hinge Road has been damaged at least once while parked on the street. Only once, because our neighbor was out washing his car, did the culprit own up to his crimes.

Things have been tough at work, so I was glad to have my schedule rearranged so I could take few days off in the middle of the week. After the most extended and miserable winter of my recollection, today took us by surprise, delivering a sparkling spring day, full of blossoms, robins and feathering trees. I dug out a t-shirt, and decided to take the rest of the rack off the truck and take it to the dump.

I had been meaning to go down there anyway. Our blue recycling bin, issued to us as fresh homemoaners, ten years ago, had been all but smashed to smithereens by the ensuing weekly curbside garbage pickup. For a nominal fee, I could get a shiny new one at the “transfer station.” I don’t know how much it costs to get the garbage men to stop throwing my containers around.

So I set about finding my ratchet set, ironically, it was last used to install my truck rack. After checking all the obvious places, including the garage, which made the most sense, I found it up in the attic of all places. Maybe the cats lugged it up there. The culprits won’t own up.

The job was far less arduous than expected and in a few short minutes I dismounted the rack and put it in the bed for disposal.

I had a full hour until the dumped closed, so I jumped in the truck and headed across town. The city was bustling with traffic jams and blocked streets. Drivers on cell phones, windows darkly tinted, ignored all available traffic laws as well as the social contract, effectively trimming any extra leisure time I had built into this excursion.

In order to utilize the garbage dumping facilities, citizens of my current home town have to go down to City Hall with their car registration to obtain a sticker. Last time I was at the dump (sticker affixed) I was informed by man at the scales that I had to fill out some forms because I had a pickup truck. Disgruntled, I filled out the papers and the little man handed me a card.

Today, the guy at the scale took my card and plugged my number into the computer.

“I can’t find you,” he said.

“Here I am,” said I, pointing to myself.

He was perplexed and looked in a few files and tried to dial a phone number that did not get answered. Finally, he asked me if I could remember (back to November) who had issued me the card. Since I hadn’t been at the dump since, er, November, I told him I couldn’t. Nor, I thought to myself, should I have to.

While I threw the rack remnants into the aluminum pile and the crumbled bin into the plastic pile, the man at the scale straightened things out and, after waiting in line again, I received my card back with the promise it would work next time.

I took the back roads home, my now streamlined truck dodging potholes along the route. The sun had opened the buds and the long closed front doors, and brought out blossoms, lawn rakes and kids with over-sized t-shirts. Flattened Sprite cans glistened at curbside, while Walmart plastic bags loop-de-looped in the gentle breeze.

The truck now crouches like a soldier in front of the house, fearful of incoming artillery, always lurking around the corner. Over by the porch, gleaming in its shiny plastic blueness, stands a brand-new recycling bin with a solitary empty can of cat food in its optimistic emptiness.

Next nice day, I am going to go buy a long piece of lumber for the side of the garage. How am I going to transport it?

Maybe I’ll have it delivered?

A Trip to the Dump

Shortly after buying my new red truck, I purchased a ladder rack at the nearby truck accessory store. I justified the purchase because I knew, at some point, I would need to carry longer items like the occasional ladder or the long piece of lumber overdue for the side of the garage. I dug out my ratchet set and carefully mounted the new rack on my rig.

The rack was not particularly sexy, and went virtually unused, but it stayed on the truck until last week. I was in the house, minding my own business when I heard a loud “thump” on the street. Since there is a speed bump pretty near the front door, loud thumps are fairly regular music on Rusty Hinge Road.

I got up and looked out the window and saw a fellow rearranging the tools and ladders in the back of his truck. I assumed he had hit the speed bump hard and something had jumped out. Later when I went out, I saw that the rear section of my still-shiny truck rack had been sheared clean off. It had landed in the bed without damage to the truck itself.

Whatever hit the rack was pretty solid because it cracked the half inch thick aluminum mounting as if it was balsa wood.

Every car we have ever owned since we moved to Rusty Hinge Road has been damaged at least once while parked on the street. Only once, because our neighbor was out washing his car, did the culprit own up to his crimes.

Things have been tough at work, so I was glad to have my schedule rearranged so I could take few days off in the middle of the week. After the most extended and miserable winter of my recollection, today took us by surprise, delivering a sparkling spring day, full of blossoms, robins and feathering trees. I dug out a t-shirt, and decided to take the rest of the rack off the truck and take it to the dump.

I had been meaning to go down there anyway. Our blue recycling bin, issued to us as fresh homemoaners, ten years ago, had been all but smashed to smithereens by the ensuing weekly curbside garbage pickup. For a nominal fee, I could get a shiny new one at the “transfer station.” I don’t know how much it costs to get the garbage men to stop throwing my containers around.

So I set about finding my ratchet set, ironically, it was last used to install my truck rack. After checking all the obvious places, including the garage, which made the most sense, I found it up in the attic of all places. Maybe the cats lugged it up there. The culprits won’t own up.

The job was far less arduous than expected and in a few short minutes I dismounted the rack and put it in the bed for disposal.

I had a full hour until the dumped closed, so I jumped in the truck and headed across town. The city was bustling with traffic jams and blocked streets. Drivers on cell phones, windows darkly tinted, ignored all available traffic laws as well as the social contract, effectively trimming any extra leisure time I had built into this excursion.

In order to utilize the garbage dumping facilities, citizens of my current home town have to go down to City Hall with their car registration to obtain a sticker. Last time I was at the dump (sticker affixed) I was informed by man at the scales that I had to fill out some forms because I had a pickup truck. Disgruntled, I filled out the papers and the little man handed me a card.

Today, the guy at the scale took my card and plugged my number into the computer.
“I can’t find you,” he said.
“Here I am,” said I, pointing to myself.

He was perplexed and looked in a few files and tried to dial a phone number that did not get answered. Finally, he asked me if I could remember (back to November) who had issued me the card. Since I hadn’t been at the dump since, er, November, I told him I couldn’t. Nor, I thought to myself, should I have to.

While I threw the rack remnants into the aluminum pile and the crumbled bin into the plastic pile, the man at the scale straightened things out and, after waiting in line again, I received my card back with the promise it would work next time.

I took the back roads home, my now streamlined truck dodging potholes along the route. The sun had opened the buds and the long closed front doors, and brought out blossoms, lawn rakes and kids with over-sized t-shirts. Flattened Sprite cans glistened at curbside, while Walmart plastic bags loop-de-looped in the gentle breeze.

The truck now crouches like a soldier in front of the house, fearful of incoming artillery, always lurking around the corner. Over by the porch, gleaming in its shiny plastic blueness, stands a brand-new recycling bin with a solitary empty can of cat food in its optimistic emptiness.

Next nice day, I am going to go buy a long piece of lumber for the side of the garage. How am I going to transport it?
Maybe I’ll have it delivered?

Go West, Old Man (and woman)

Melissa, my daughter Hannah and I flew out to see the adobe house just after the ink had dried on the contracts and it was finally ours. Ours!
There are times in life when big checks are written, that are accompanied by that teeth-gnashing moment when you get that sinking feeling and buyer's remorse kicks in. You know the feeling: you decide to buy the bigger model with the satellite radio with the chromium sidewalls and after the dealer cleans the crumbs out of the glove compartment and you drive it a block down the boulevard, you change your mind.
"What have I done?" you wonder, "why didn't I keep the 1966 rumpled Fiat with the see-through floor boards?"
So, as I drove the rental car off the highway and onto the tawny streets, I was gripped with panic that the property I saw for only a day or two a month before and bought with the last of my ill-gotten gains, would now look, to my eyes, like the crumbled-down, leaky old termite terrarium that everyone else who had pulled my real-estate agent away from her family dinner had seen, and rejected and walked away from in disgust.
I am happy to report this was not to be, and as Fishbee Ranch, the name we have taken to calling it, came into view, our hearts filled with simultaneous anticipation. Not only were we here, we were home.
By lunch we were opening long-closed closets, peering through spider webs and trying to figure out what to do next.
One of my agenda items was to go down to City Hall and get to know the folks. I had to talk to the planning people, the zoning people, the water people, the gas people, the electric people and the tax people. Many of them are intermingled and cross connected.
My first goal was to try and get the electricity turned on, followed by the water, and if the short four days on site were fruitful, the gas.
I knew in order to turn on the electricity I had to hammer a couple of 2 by 4s under the eaves. Since I had no tools, my Realtor and new best friend recommended a local carpenter, called him up, and next thing I knew he was pounding nails into my wobbly rafters.
With that bit behind me, I met up with the building inspector who, a month earlier, wouldn't let the power company flick the switch. Now appeased, the building inspector slapped a green sticker on my meter and told me I had 180 days to get my act together. Between those goalposts, he'd come back and snoop around and if he was happy with the results, he'd give me a "Certificate of Occupancy." Meaning, under normal circumstances, that we'd be able to set up camp inside the house. Except, technically, we'd have to have our current zoning status "commercial" adjusted to "downtown mixed-use," so we could, legally, live there.
Fishbee farm is four buildings on a half acre, one block over from the main street of a fairly sizable, if not exactly bustling, old mining town somewhere in the middle of Arizona. In my lifetime, you could go to this town, chose a place to eat, see a movie, buy a cowboy hat, fill a prescription, kick the tires on a used car, and browse a couple of curio shops.
In the ensuing years, things have changed. Nowadays, if remaining local merchants feel the urge to unlock the doors, you can get drunk in a bar, or buy booze in the drive-through liquor store and get drunk at home. You can have your nails done, get a tank of gas, visit a relative in the state penitentiary or buy a tool at one of the last real hardware stores in existence.
The once-thriving Main Street still stands, it's quaint covered sidewalks shielding pedestrians from the oppressive sun, but store after storefront, up and down the street lies fallow, empty, awaiting new ideas and entrepreneurs to bring life into down town.
Just beyond the dwindling cotton fields that once went on forever once you hit the outskirts of town, are Walmarts, K-marts, Targets and Dollar stores. You can go to giant grocery stores and shoe stores and Home Depots. Like so much of the rest of the country, these behemoths have swallowed up the Mom and Pop stores, hoovered the customers into the suburbs. Because it is easier, because it is cheaper; it doesn't come much sadder.
But our new home town, not wanting to cut off the nose of progress to spite the face of interested pioneers, is making us jump through hoops so we can restore four buildings, all of them within a section of town that is in itself a Registered National Landmark. We are taking the property to zoning, unless we want to install a “Chipotle” on the site, which would, I suspect, confuse the townspeople and upset the fervent historical preservation lobbyist who, I am delighted to report, are strong and vocal.
We'll be taking turns flying out there to make personal appearances in a series of public meetings, answering questions and with any luck, getting rezoned.
We have vowed to start sorting through the mountain of valued junk we have expertly collected over the past ten years here at Rusty Hinge Road, and at the right moment, exchange our collection of overworked snow shovels for bolo ties and head for Fishbee Ranch.
All will be welcome. BYOH (Bring Your Own Hammer).
And sunscreen.

Adobe Acrobat

Pauline Cushman was an actress, who, while treading the boards through the secessionist south of the Civil War, became a spy for the Union side, got caught by the Confederacy and was almost hung. In the nick of time, she was rescued and then decorated for her heroism by President Abraham Lincoln. Her fame got her a stint working with P.T. Barnum.

According to Wikipedia (so it must be true) “Major Cushman,” as she came to be known, eventually died, in poverty, of an opium overdose at age 60, and was buried in San Francisco with the honors befitting the hero she had once been.

Of course there are many interesting details of her life I have omitted in this condensation; her story is here because she once owned the adobe house we bought last Friday.

During the winter, my father and his wife, Dixie, bivouac at an ancient, grand adobe house in the middle of Arizona. Last month, I related my visit with them in a cleverly written column comparing the continuing snowdrifts of home to the cacti-spiked, sun-drunk deserts of the Southwest.

What I may have refrained from mentioning, as part of my colorful travelogue, was a walk we took around the tumbledown, tumbleweed town, and our serendipitous encounter with an old adobe, a bee’s nest and a “for sale” sign.

When Melissa and I discuss the next chapter of our life together, we usually fantasize about moving up to Vermont and growing facial hair. But for some reason, the sleepy, dog-eared streets of this old Arizona town triggered a long dormant, primordial enthusiasm that neither of were expecting on this trip.

I was willing to buy the property immediately based on price alone, but also because the family has deep roots in the hard-packed soil. Melissa passed on the opportunity to talk me out of it. It surprised me that she didn't even try.

Our renovation project on Rusty Hinge Road is just about finished, as is our tolerance of bi-weekly snow dumps and crinkled curbside fenders. Our jobs and history will keep us here for a while but, deep down, the lure of the west has taken hold.

The Cushman adobe abode is located behind the old boarded-up grocery store which is next to the old burned out movie theater. Besides the adobe itself, there are three other buildings on the property. The asking price was not that much different than the sticker price of a fully-loaded Japanese car. The condition of the buildings is disturbing. The report from the building inspection looked like the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan." And in spite of what we old, staid Real Estate moguls babble ad nauseum, this new place has nothing to do with "location, location, location." It is all about "potential, potential, potential."

Because "Fishbee Ranch" has been vacant for more than 6 months, we are unable to turn on the electricity, the water, the gas or –speed bump! - live in the place. Because the property had been grandfathered as residential zoning, it reverted to commercial after the last owners defaulted on their mortgage and moved away.

Small problems all, because we discovered, luckily, that we share a dream of fixing up an old adobe in the middle of the Arizona dessert and living out our lives as artisan, merchant, book-collecting banjo playing, reclusive, cat-farming, gold prospectors.

As I type this, a fellow named Carl, is crawling into the ancient, spider-webbed recesses of the buildings, "remediating" the termites that have been freely and gluttonously devouring much of the wood that holds the structures together. I have contacted a roofer to have a look at the strange foam roofing that adorns each structure.

Of the six bathrooms on the property, the inspector couldn't seem to cobble one functioning unit from the available parts. Hot water heaters are missing and those on site can’t be assessed with no gas, water, or electricity available.

The floors are spongy. The windows need glazing and most of the wood, which hasn't been eaten, has been baked to splinters in the relentless summertime oven that is characteristic of the locale.

Even so, there are far too many reasons to say yes than scream no. The price was right, all cash, and if one wanted to start over, wouldn't it be nice to start over without a mortgage? An adobe house, while capable of melting in the rain like the Wicked Witch of the West, is naturally cool with it's thick, clay walls. When it's 100° in August, which it invariably is, it can be as much as 20 degrees cooler inside (if you stand near an open refrigerator, assuming you have one).

The ranch-style house, built in the 1940's and the newest of the four, has a window made of colorful agate, a carport and a potentially charming kitchen. There is even a Virgin of Guadalupe sculpture protected by an upended and partially submerged bathtub out by the gate.

The smallest of the four buildings is rumored (by the realtor) to have been moved to the site from a nearby army base. The carpets are so frighteningly stained I am surprised there are no chalk outlines of former tenants remaining on the floor. Under your fully clad feet, you can feel the channels chewed along the grain of the hardwood floors, resting on stringers that I fear are held against the ground by nothing more than gravity and termite saliva. There is a very active bee-hive in the wall.

The fourth house is on the busiest corner of the property with a view of the vacant lot across the street and an old hotel that struggles to keep tenants in its newly renovated shops on the ground floor.

Join me dear readers as we start our journey together. We have not only bought ourselves a fascinating, historical property, we have bought an endless supply of material for this column.

And the termites tell me it's delicious!

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?