3-9-05

I made a run for the border this afternoon and made it across without too much of a hassle. They did have to take a look inside lil Red but I was clean as a whistle, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I think the girl finally quit, as it was so disgusting. As it was, I had to go through twice as I had to go back into MX to get the cars import permit verified that I taken the car back out of MX. I find that if you don’t do that, next time you go down, they take your car.

This guy had a fairly nice display of  the copper pots that they make somewhere in MX. I have seen these displays several places but never did make it to the town where they are done. They are pricey as hell. The middle row in the back is the 600 peso row and  I think the top was 1200. They really aren’t that good as they are all turned and then hammered to look hand made. They do look good but what use are they?

I drove on up to Bisbee and looked up the friend I made last year there. He is Terry Hanson’s friend and we met in the street by chance.

 His name is Tom Suby. Here he is with his beer carton trash from the van. This was especially posed for Terry Hanson who is the person who corrupted his morals BIG time when they were in school together in Fargo, ND.

This is his dog Yeti. He is sort of a string dog but he loves pets and is a true desert dog. He is rough clipped with a pair of scissors it looks. Most of these little dogs I just want to stomp on, but Yeti is an ok dog I like him. He can be very ferocious as I found when I came to his place last year but out on the street where we were this day, he was friendly but not pushy. He just nosed around and stayed close but was always ready for a few pets if you wanted to give them out.
 
Me with Bisbee, the Lavender Pit and Mexico in the background.

 Last year I didn’t have much of a chance to visit with him but I liked him right away. When I pulled in this time he was loading up his van for a trip to Mx in the morning. Tom is a wood carver and he was going down to get a large piece of red mesquite that he needed for a commission project.  It just seems like we have bad timing. He had lots of company that night and told me to go to the senior center where  they serve a community meal every Wednesday night. I got  there just as they had put away the food. It looks like I  would have fit in well as  I saw several men with long gray beards lounging around  the place. 

I had this urge to have a big greasy pizza so I took the north road out of town and went through Tombstone (you would think you could find a Tombstone Pizza there) and finally made it to Benson where I saw a restaurant that was surrounded by cars and trucks. The place was crowded but I caught this cowboys eye and asked if he minded company. It turns out that he is from Cut Bank, Montana and has a little place here where he feeds a few cows and trains roping horses. He said that land here sells for fifteen thousand an acre. He bought a backhoe and does foundations and waterlines. He said that land is appreciating two percent a month or twenty percent last year. When that real estate bubble finally pops, it is going to be interesting.

I had me a big ground round steak as was recommended by my new friend there and it was great!!! A big pizza would have been good too, but the ground up cow wasn’t bad at all. The black eye pea and ham soup gave me a good running start. Two big rolls with lots of real butter. Yumm, yumm. Back in the good old USA with ‘real’ grub. As I was parked along the  road in a little town in Mexico where there was a hot spot, I snapped these photos of what might be on the menu at this little stand.
 

 
I think turtles are not supposed to be caught and eaten, but this is Mexico. I remember someone saying that during lent if you gave up meat/fish, it was considered ok to eat turtle eggs.

3-10-05

I camped on a back street in Benson not too far from the railroad tracks. By now I can sleep through anything. I think I heard the first two go by and have no idea if they came through in the night, but I did hear one in the morning. In the morning instead of making myself a hot cup of tea I drove down to the seven eleven and got a hot cup of water, and didn’t even have to consider that it might give me the runs. I next stopped at the Safeway store. What culture shock!!! The shelves were filled with things I recognized and could read about if in doubt. The place was spotless. The store personnel were friendly and the clerk that sold me the pint of fresh milk was blonde, smiled at me and I could understand the amount I needed to pay. We take this sort of thing for granted. I stopped at the gas station and paid with credit card. Everything in Mexico is CASH only. I remember when Tova came back from Guinea Bissau she went through major culture shock. She stayed at the farm for a month it seemed before she ventured into town. She had just spent two years in the Peace Corps in a tiny village. I can see now what a radical shift that must have been to come home.

It took me a couple of tries but I finally made it onto the road that heads out north of Benson that follows the San Pedro River. It was a beautiful drive. The desert is very green and the cottonwoods along the river had their new light green leaves. I even saw a few flowers along the way that I just had to take for my flower friends. This was a nice little patch of California Poppies just starting to open in the morning sun.

I don’t remember what these purple ones are called but they were putting on a good display too. lupine maybe?

The brown stuff in the back is wild mustard that was finished blooming and gone to seed.

The road starts out as paved but after a while turns into a wonderful freshly graded road. Arizona has some of the best dirt/gravel roads that I have ever traveled on. After a rain they hop right on them with a blade and they know how to make a great road. I came to some activity and had to stop and see what the heck was going on.

It was a wagon train just packing up and ready to head out. I think those were poppy fields in the background hills. It is a good spring down here. It has rained all winter they say.

The horses grub.

Plastic shit houses.

The riders all had on crash helmets and some sort of safety high visibility riding gear. It was a bizarre outfit for sure. One guy saw me taking photos and came over to talk. It turns out that it is some sort of outreach program for problem young adults. I guess they get them out of jail and keep them out in the pucker brush for three months. They have lots to do as well as they have to do school work as they go along. They were just moving nine miles today. I asked the guy how the kids did, did they turn themselves around? He said that very few of them changed. He said that they liked it in prison and were more comfortable there. I suppose that they don’t have to work in prison. While I was talking with the guy a black kid came up and started talking with him. It was like in Mexico, I couldn’t understand a word he said, it was like he was speaking a different language. After the kid left the guy said that they get most of the kids from Philadelphia and someplace else back east. He said that over eighty percent end up back in jail right away after this. What a waste of taxpayer money.

The road up the canyon was beautiful, or did I say that already. Very little traffic and what traffic there was waved as they went by. I finally made it back to pavement but still along the river. I saw a canoe and raft as I was going along the river. It looked like fun down there.  I passed two mining towns with one smelter that was shut down I think. This is copper country and with the price of copper skyrocketing it might come back to life. I kept checking for a wifi spot and found one at a little store and gas station. What a treat to find.

I made it to the Dripping Springs road and my old camp from last year. Not much has changed other  than the weeds were way tall and there was some new trash someone had thrown out. I had picked up all the trash last year and I guess I will have to do the same this year. Why do people throw trash in such a beautiful spot?

The leaves are still small on the Palo Verde tree but I got enough shade out of it for a nice nap. After nap I went down to the Windspirit farm and looked around to see if anyone was around that I knew. I met a few new, to me, people and  found that my friend Don was in town for the day and would be back sometime today. I got some clean clothes out and went up and took a shower. I really needed it and it is a really nice shower house.

After shower I went to the computer room and tried to find the hook up for my laptop that I used last year. Don had installed a separate line so all I had to do was plug in and start cranking. I couldn’t find the hookup so either he took it out or they are using it someplace else. There is a huge wad of wires that go everywhere and I have no idea what Don had set up. I will wait and ask him if I can hook up direct tomorrow.

As I was in the computer room several people came in and  introduced themselves. I really like this place, everyone is so open and friendly. One guy came in and said that there is a big thing happing down at the meeting circle and everyone is running around naked. Humm, no need to gross everyone out with an old potbellied geezer.

I went out to get in the lil Red to go up to camp when I spied the guy that lives across the way. His name is Lowell and we were good friends last year. They had just gotten back from town and he invited me over to sit and talk. He is really a nice guy and is heavy duty into the Mormon LDS church. He must be some sort of elder or semi bigwig with the church. He reads a lot of old diaries and other historical information and lets the church know if it is something that they should know about. It seems like he rewrites them up in digital form too. He is always trying to steer me in the way of the church and I keep telling him he shouldn’t believe everything that he is told. He should think for himself. We go round and round and it is all good fun. He thinks that 10% off the top for the church is a good thing, it keeps him committed to the teachings, and it is a rip-off I say. I have another acquaintance that is/was a minister and we were talking about what a nice day it was starting to be. His comment was that he would have to spend the day in prayer, thanking the Lord. My thought was “get out there and go to work you bastard and not live off of others sweated brow.”

Lowell is a bird lover and is always taking their photos with his telephoto lens. He has a large bird water station as well as a feeding station to attract them. Last year I told him that there was a pure white bird up at my camp. He told me that there are NO pure white birds in the area. I told him that there was at least ONE pure white bird. Well, today he told me that after I left here last year, he went up to my camp and saw the bird several times but could never get a photo of it. He did finally get a look at it with binoculars and identified it as a curved bill thrasher that was an albino. They are very rare, something like one in two hundred thousand.
It’s good to be back in this old camp. I do miss not having e dog here to enjoy it with but there are some really nice dogs down at the commune that I will hit on soon. I think they were all at the party as there were none where I was today. I was warned about one of them though that had rolled in something really yucky, but that usually doesn’t bother me now with my nose not working. They say that she is a really nice dog and doesn’t understand why no one wants to pet her and keep telling her to go away. I have learned the hard way that if you just pet them under the chin and on their chest you don’t get any of the yucky stuff on ya.

The Mogmbo
But the housing bubble gets worse than that, as from the DailyReckoning.com we get the news "Friends are teaming up to buy houses - they have become too expensive for a single couple to afford on its own." Fabulous. Now that housing and merely living has gotten so expensive that grown children are still living at home, America's future has two families living in one house, and now there are TWICE as many people screaming at me to please get out of the bathroom, which is stupid because this is the one damn room in the whole house where I can get away from those damn people! Why do they think I am in here, to actually go to the bathroom? When I can just as well go behind those bushes in the backyard as I usually do?