A Few Places in Arizona I’ve lived in and been to

Dear Readers,

Sahuarita

I grew up there. They have copper mines and a big pecan orchard that have been there for a long time. Now Sahuarita has a SuperWalmart and a movie theatre.

Nogales

I went down there to get some penicillin and amoxicillin and some other prescription drugs. They also sell big jugs of vanilla for really cheap. I’m scared of that town, and the people who live there. I feel like a foreigner, even when I’m on the American side.

Tombstone

Tourist place. Old West stuff happened there. Was it there that I looked through the wooden fence at the O.K. Corrall shoot-out reenactment with Grandad, or was that somewhere else?

Tumacacori

When I was in fifth grade, our school had a campout at Tumacacori. It was cold in the morning, and I drank watery hot chocolate. There are old ruins there. Small town. Southern Arizona.

Gila Bend

Lots of trucks go through there. I drove through there, and saw lots of big trucks. It’s at the junction of Highway 85 and Interstate 8. Truckers on the Interstate 10 go through there if they want to bypass Phoenix.

Where The 95 meets the 40

Stopped a few times at the Pilot truck stop there on my way from Flagstaff to California, and on my way from California to Flagstaff. Northwestern Arizona. Really really hot. Even when I was there at night, it was hot. But it was the Wild West. There’s no town there- it’s just a truck stop, and a Burger King or something. It’s adventurous. Everybody there is either a trucker, a worker at the truck stop, or an adventurer.

Jacob’s Lake

Had a family reunion there. It was strange to see BYU (Brigham Young University) students doing the manual labor around the hotel- landscaping, working in the restaurants. Usually in Arizona Hispanic people do most of the manual labor. I’m not trying to be racist, but that’s the way I see things. I had a good shake in a restaurant there. The hotel rooms were pretty expensive, but I wasn’t the one paying for them.

Globe

My wife went to high school in Globe. They have good Mexican food. They have big hills there. Mining town. Drug town.

Roosevelt

I spent a lot of relaxing time staying in a lakeside apartment building built for the Forest Service workers. My father in law is a Forest Protection Officer at Lake Roosevelt. Beautiful place, and he stayed in one of those apartments for about a year. There were lots of scorpions there, though. I remember walking to the lake in the dark a time or two, removing my flip-flops, and sticking my toes in the muddy shore. I also remember watching a Project Runway marathon on TV for most of a day, and feeling groggy-headed.

Page

I remember driving around Lake Powell, on Highway 89, on the way to Salt Lake City, and I thought about getting out and looking at the Glen Canyon dam there, but I didn’t. Beautiful sunny country. I have a foggy memory from my early childhood of spending the night in a hotel room, and I think it was in Page, and maybe it was the Fourth of July, because people were setting off fireworks from their houseboats on the lake. I watched an old black and white episode of the Twilight Zone in that hotel room. And maybe Godzilla vs. Mothra. There’s a road there, in Page, or somewhere, with seven different churches all in a row. I never saw it, but I think I heard my Mom and Dad talk about it.

The Navajo Nation

I didn’t get out to look, while I was driving on Highway 89 between Flagstaff and Page, but I saw lots of Navajo people selling jewelry, pots, and rugs on the side of the road in ragged wooden booths. The Navajos parked their pickup trucks next to the booths. I saw the beautiful land there. The plains, the harsh desert, the miles and miles of emptiness, the hills jutting out of the red earth. And I was judgmental, too, of the drunken Navajo I saw on the side of the road.

The Grand Canyon

I saw thousands of tourists there. A group of German girls in their twenties, speaking in their foreign tongue. Asian families. Busses full of tourists. An elderly English couple, who asked me if I ever thought about going to London. People from all over. The Grand Canyon certainly is a magical, inspirational, and sleepy place. How did all those people get there?

Snowflake

I’ve been there just a few times to go to the temple. I’ve never seen the town at night. But there are lots of old looking houses there, and lots of trailers there, and there’s a Circle K where I got gas a few times. Lots of farms. A train going through. I remember seeing a sign there saying “Fresh Corn For Sale,” and somebody told me that was really good corn.

Holbrook

I stopped at the Love’s truck stop one time to get gas. Or maybe that was Joseph City. There’s a store that has giant bright-colored stone dinosaurs outside. I remember the green T-Rex. There are giant concrete teepee hotel rooms. The few folks I’ve met from Holbrook have been, uh… well… the people from Snowflake and Eager and Pinetop and Showlow and Holbrook and Joesph City all kind of blend together for me. They like guns and the outdoors and trucks and they don’t go to college very much. Good people.

Anthem by Del Webb

(I’m talking about the one on the Interstate 17. I hear there a few Anthem by Del Webbs around.) Anthem by Del Webb tries to market itself as a relaxing suburban paradise, but everybody there is stressed out. Probably because most of them are upside down on their mortgages and stuck in traffic for about 2 hours a day, because they drive down the 17 to Phoenix to work. The billboards advertising the town show pictures of white kids playing at parks and well-to-do smiling couples sipping wine on their back patios. I hear the Home-Owner’s Associations there fly around in helicopters and look in people’s backyards. I’ve got gas there a few times, and sunflower seeds at a Chevron.

Black Canyon City

There was a very nice lady standing behind the counter at the deli station in a grocery store.

Payson

I’ve walked around the town and saw some ducks at a park. Beautiful. Relaxing town. Lots of retired people. Lots of hunting and fishing and camping there.

Flagstaff

I lived there for four years while I attended NAU. Gorgeous place. Kind of a crossroads town. The 40, the 89, the 17, Route 66… People coming and going. Lots of hiking. Flagstaff was founded by rough men who cut down trees and put the lumber on railroad cars. Lots of bike lanes. Lots of friendly, wonderful liberals. Hippies, too. Cool hippies. People making music in the streets at night. Snow in the winter. Erratic weather. Coffee shops, poets. There’s a KOA campground I always wanted to stay at for a while. I remember riding my bike on Shultz Pass Road one time. It was a Saturday. I took my shirt off when nobody was around and rode my bike. And it felt wonderful to be outside with my shirt off, going on an adventure, feeling aware of my surroundings. It almost felt like a dream it was so good. Very sensual. Earthy.

Sedona

Red rocks. An abandoned van in the desert. Desert, hills. Tourist place. Getaway for rich folks from Phoenix. Crystal healing. The kids there are normal kids, though. They watch a lot of TV and they wish there was a big mall in their small town. Hotels. Off-roading. Working artists. Arts and crafts. Turquoise. Driftwood. Chakra balancing. Follow a nice winding road to get there.

Camp Raymond and surrounding wilderness

I lived there for three summers. Two summers in an RV and one in a tent. The last summer I was there, I rode my bike a lot, wandering around. I took a dump in the woods once, and I wiped with a page out of a book. It was one of those useless blank pages they put in the back of books. You know, squirrels, forest. You get wanting to be in town, though, sometimes. Or at least I do. And now I’m in a town.

But I really haven't seen that much of Arizona. Mostly I've just seen the land on the sides of the roads.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa