3

3-14-04

I took a shower this morning and headed over the hill to Globe and then south headed for Safford. I didn’t make it very far as there is a big casino ‘Apache Gold’ not far down that road which is on the San Carlos Indian reservation. I remembered that one of the guys at windspirit said that he was going to the big pow wow that was happening this weekend. There is a big covered rodeo arena that I could see some activity around. I pulled in and walked on up. There is nothing happening here now at 9 in the morning but I talked with a group of sheriff deputies that said it would start around noon and it was well worth sticking around for. They said it is one of the bigger pow wows and dancers come from all over the country and Canada to compete. There will be a lot of vendors as well so I have decided to stick around and check it out. Might even get a good photo or two.. I took a walk over to the casino and went in and took a quick look. It smelled absolutely horrible and after I used the restroom I am sure it was worse.

Outside there is a rather large carnival set up and there wasn’t any one around so I had a leisurely walk around checking out the rides. There is some major power usage going on with these rides and the huge power cables snake across the ground. It was really interesting to check out the mechanical parts of the rides as well as just being there when I was the only one. Usually they are so crowded and noisy it is hard to see what is there.

I am parked out in the parking lot reading a couple of pages that I downloaded before I left. A very interesting Indian guy came by and saw me sitting here and came over to ask if I was with the pow wow people. Aaah, no, how he would consider a large white guy is with the pow wow is hard to believe. He then tried to sell me a bag of turkey feathers and a disposable camera. I really don’t need feathers and I have my digital camera now so he said that he was going over to the pow wow grounds and see if he could sell them over there. He also said that maybe he would go look at the squaws since his girlfriend was at church. It is interesting that he used the term squaw. There has been a big to do about renaming Squaw Peak and Park in Phoenix and they had several Indians complaining about the use of the word squaw. Oh, as I write this he just came back empty handed and stopped to chat. He said he sold the bag for $40 to some guy from Montana. (Attention there hunters!!! Is it legal to sell wild turkey feathers? If it is, 40 for a dead turkey feathers might almost pay the fuel to go get one) The MT guy sells furs, horns and stuff. He said that there is someone over there selling peridot gems and he is going home to get a large nugget of peridot to take back and sell it to her. He said that it is mined here on the Res and it is the only place you can get it. He said that it was really hard work. I’m not sure it is the only place, but I have seen a lot of it for sale in Tucson at the gem show. It is very light green and one of the girls at windspirit had a really cool little felted bag on one day and I asked her about it. The bag came from Colorado and it looked like it was made from Icelandic in natural colors. She said she had it filled with Peritot beads that were supposed to help heal her hart. Well, I had to ask, “you have hart problems?”. She said it wasn’t physical, just healing of her spiritual needs. There has been a big discussion on my jewelry list about the healing properties of crystals and gems. One person said that maybe we could run a test like a little 6^th grade girl did on people who claimed to be able to “feel the energy field of other people. Some kind of non-touching therapy uses supposed energy fields from a healer. The little girl set up an experiment to test if these people who said that they could feel energy, really could. There is a website she has detailing her experiment and the bottom line is that, they could not. The guy on the jewelry list was trying to get someone to initiate something similar for crystals/ gems. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it. The people who ‘believe’ in it claim wonders. It is hard for this mind to see how it could possibly have any effect, but I am willing to let them have at it.

Two couples just came by to check out the pod. They are ‘airstreamers’ they said and are down here from Wisconsin. We all decided that it was better down here even though it has been one of the coldest on record. It has been way better than MT or Wisconsin.

Late evening

Well, it was quite a show that was put on. The sheriff guys said that it was going to be loud in the covered stadium and they were right. There were several big drums set up in the arena with chairs all around. One circle at a time would take their turn beating their drum and singing. I really was clueless as to what was going on until I talked with a guy from Canada who was selling drums. The deal is that there was competition going on between the drummers and the winners would receive $3,000 for northern and three for southern style. He explained the different styles and even I could tell after listing to them for a while. At first it just sounds all the same. He said that the northern guys sing way high and the southern ones sing much lower. There is a difference between how they dance too but there are so many different styles I couldn’t tell other than the girls from the northern tribes swoop around in circles and the southern ones do more bobbing up and down. This was really a family affair and there were lots of kids there to watch as well as participating. One thing I that was really cool was when they had all the tiny tots out to dance. Most of them were dressed in costume and even the toddlers were out there with their moms and or their dads. Some of the kids were too little to even toddle so their parents took them out and carried them around, I think their earliest memories will be of participating in the dances.

Competition went on all day with different categories and there are lots of different styles of costumes and dancing. The guys with the feather bustles would dance bent over and circle around and I couldn’t help but think they look just like sage grouse all puffed up and doing their dance. Some of the costumes are more traditional style and others were made of florescent feathers and ribbons. I have one photo of a guy and his feathers that I talked with. I wish I had a photo of him with it on and with his headpiece on. You will notice that the eagle feathers are dyed pink in the center. He said that that was his family style, which meant that they had killed many enemies. The pink signifies blood. His head piece had two feathers that were not dyed and evidently they can’t be dyed pink or red unless he had killed. This guy was outstanding and completely scary with his outfit on. This guy is BIG and with the feathers and club he carried I certainly wouldn’t screw with him. I can certainly see how having a Henry repeating rifle could come in handy if there were a bunch (or even one) of those big dudes after you hair.

I pulled out and headed toward Safford and made it probably ten miles or so shy of there. After you leave the Reservation there is farming along the river valley floor. There were some fields abandoned but the closer I get to Safford the fields seem to be all in production. I saw a field of oats that had headed out and a few grass fields that needed fertilizer real bad. Most of the fields have just been put in (?) and I don’t see anything up yet. They are irrigating now and they are using siphon tubes and open concrete lined ditches. I haven’t seen any sprinkler setups or pivots. I have been hearing that there is a major drought here and they are saying that they will be short of water. I wonder why they don’t use sprinklers.

3-15-04

I was listening to the radio this morning where they were talking about building a doggie park. The proposal is for 1.75 acres and the council people thought it was supposed to be bigger. It was explained that the budget was $200,000 and that the estimate for a larger one was $800,000 which they didn’t have. the projected cost of taking care of the park is $10,000 per acre per year. At one time Tova wanted to start/own a doggie park and I have never seen one, but find it hard to imagine how they could cost so much. I thought the owners of the dogs were responsible for cleaning up after their dogs so other than mowing the lawn what expenses can there be?

My camp last night was not too far out of Pima AZ famous for its pima cotton. I could see quite a bit of irrigation water running and I finally saw a guy with a hook cleaning out a ditch. I stopped to ask him a few questions about what was going on. I had seen a sign selling 62 acres at $5,900/ac and I had to ask if that is the price. He said that that was for subdivision land and the farm land sold for $2,000-2500 /ac. He said that they don’t grow pima cotton there much anymore, they grow the short staple type now. The pima cotton is grown now in California where the growing conditions are better. He said that their water cost $50/contract acre from the ditch. The little storm that came through dropped enough in the river shed to fill the ditches. They are pre-irrigating their fields now. They have them hilled up like they are growing potatoes and are running with siphon stubs. I forgot to ask about sprinklers but I would imagine cotton doesn’t like sprinklers, I seem to remember how a cotton crop got ruined with rain. The farmers also have pumps and they have to pump if the ditch goes dry. They are in a serious drought situation here as well. The ground water was severely depleted last year from pumping. He said that land is dropped out of production when it looks like drought but the farmers have become encouraged by this last rain. He said that their watershed was fairly small.

I am in the next town now called Thatcher. The fruit trees are in full bloom and the cottonwoods are in full new leaf. Some of the big trees still do not have leaves yet. The alfalfa fields are several weeks from their first cutting. The sign said that it was established in 1888 and is just shy of 3,000ft. The farmer said that it is better growing conditions here than Phoenix because it doesn’t get so hot.

I drove on into Safford and thought I’d check out the library. It didn’t open for another hour so I took a stroll downtown. Down town is hurting for sure. I might have reported that before when I wrote about Safford. Coming into town is a huge Wal-Mart and all the other associated stores and fast food joints. Downtown is almost deserted. About the only store there of any consequence is a outdoor store which is really nice. I went in looking for one of the solar shower bags but they were out. They had a cool propane heated shower setup but it was way more high tech than I want. It is getting to be summer so maybe I’ll just wait and dip in the rivers.

I looked all over down town for a Penney’s or other store where I could get a sheet and maybe a comforter cover. I finally asked a gray haired lady where I could get them and she said Wal-Mart. Yuk, but I want a nice one. She said that they have different qualities and to go look. She said that there was another store that had outlet stuff but she had never been in it. She said they call it the Mexican store. I went to the Mexican store but they didn’t have anything so I reluctantly went over to the frigging Wal-Mart. Is it happening in this country that you HAVE to shop there? It looks like that is they way it is going to be unless you go to a big city. The lady I talked to says that she goes to Phoenix to shop. I ended up buying a bottom sheet and wonder of wonders a comforter cover in 100% cotton. Made in china. Shit, right here in cotton country, made in china cotton. this country is going down the tubes…. Bitch, bitch, but it fit and looks surprisingly good.

I hit the road and headed for Clifton. As soon as I left the valley the desert thinned out and went to creosote bushes and other smaller shrubs. The draws still have some small mesquite but this is dry desert. As the road went up to the hills I noticed the hills are covered in gold California poppies. I should have stopped but there was really no good place to stop. The road was new and a pretty good grade. When they abandoned part of the old road they used it as a means of catching water and piped the runoff into huge tanks that fed small stock tanks. There is a place between miles and billings that did that and it just makes so much sense.

As you come into Clifton you can see the result of over a hundred years of mining. There are a lot of abandoned mine tailings and old rusted stuff. The town has a lot of rundown shacks (hey, my kind of town!) and abandoned buildings. There are very few trailers here. The PO didn’t have my mail yet so I decided to have a look around. There is a narrow street that at one time was the main street but it is now bypassed by the highway which is a good thing since I don’t think you could get a truck and a car to pass at the same time. ( I looked it over again later and I think they would fit just barely) It is really narrow with high sidewalks in spots like in the old days when they were that way so you could load and unload your wagon easily. There were a few of the old buildings that have had some work done on them but most are in tough shape. There was an old guy sitting on the sidewalk on a cushion drinking a beer when I went by and we said hi. On the way back down I decided to take the alley behind the main street to see the backs of the buildings which can be more fun than the front side for sure. I met the guy that was on the street sitting on the cushion and he acted kind of funny but then settled down and we had a good visit. He bought one of the buildings about ten years ago and has been fixing it up since. He had a long way to go for sure but he had some good ideas and I think he just likes fooling around on it. He said that there is a lot of interest in the old building recently and the price is going way up. He bought his ten years ago for six thousand. The street will be really cool when the buildings are all fixed up. They are really nice style from the turn of the century. We went in his building that is 24’ by 48’ and has a second story. The front and sidewalls are three brick thick and the back wall is maybe 16” stone. The really cool part is that out the back door of the building is the mountain and in it someone has blasted out a room in the rock. Even cooler is that there is a barred window to the next room that belongs to the next-door building. he said that it was a bakery but didn’t know what it was when it was new. The cave room would make a nice wine cellar or goat cheese curing room he said. It would be a nice place to take a nap in the summer when it got hot is what I thought. It may not get that hot as it is around 3500 ft here.

An interesting thing he pointed out, when we were looking at a big crack in the wall that he has been repairing, is that it was caused by several floods that roared down the canyon. The buildings are in the near bottom of a wash and during major floods the water would fill the wash and he said that the water had come up about four feet inside this building. The corner where the crack is, is not on bedrock like the rest of the building so it slumped outwards he thinks. I think there could be other reasons like a damn doorway that they built right at the corner (bricked in now), which is about the worst place to damage the structural integrity of a building. Anyway, the interesting thing is that he said that the building was now out of the flood plain. He watched me chew on that mentally ‘how could it now be out of the flood plain when the building hadn’t been moved?’ I had to ask what? He told me that further up the canyon the mine had taken over the canyon and had filled it with tailings and they now have the wash diverted way up and only let a tiny bit of water down the wash. He said it is the second largest open pit in the world (the Morenci mine). As you get close to Clifton you can see a series of huge mountains that have been bridged with tailings and others that are carved in stair steps. They have actually moved mountains and built others.

His name is Paul and after we went back out and sat on the sidewalk he confessed that he had been out back smoking some pot and didn’t want me to catch him. This guy must be in his late 70’s with stone white hair and beard. He is nice once he settles down and doesn’t think you might turn him in. he said that he worked for Cambridge University and was a computer systems programmer, but after talking with him a little he doesn’t have any computer savvy at all. It could be, especially if he quit it twenty years ago, but it makes no difference especially in Clifton. This is a town that has died and it looks like it may come back. I don’t think it is too late to recover these historic buildings. It will take a lot of money to rebuild some of them. He says that Morenci is a fast paced go for it kind of town with all the building occupied. I will have to go up tomorrow and look around.

He told me how to get across the river, go past the new RV Park and head up the river where there are a lot of good spots to camp. He said that there are places where you can go down to the river and there is hot water and he lived up here before he bought his place. He said that he took baths in the hot water along the river. So, I am camped up the river at a really nice spot that is high enough in case of flash flood but close enough so e dog can go take a dip, which she did right away. I was getting my camp arranged when I noticed that I was getting a flat on the pod. Yikes! I thought I was over that problem. I dug out the spare and got it on and will have to search out a tire shop tomorrow. Bummer…

3-16-04

well, it has been a very interesting day so far. I just woke from my nap and thought I’d get something written down. I made it down to the PO this morning way too early to get my mail, so I jumped on the bike and took a little cruise around the residential part of town. This town is really laid back and quiet. I did see a guy walking around the catholic church and stopped to ask him about the cool little chapel that they have carved out of the mountain. He said it is open after lent and they go in there an have services. I don’t understand all the finer points here but somehow it is different than the big church right next door. It turns out this guy does the maintenance on the churches in Duncan where he lives as well as the one here in Clifton and the one in Morenci. I asked how he got to Duncan when he happened to mention that he was from Colorado. He had a ranch along with his dad and they droughted out and sold out, then he managed a ranch but that droughted out and sold out and he didn’t get along with the new owner. It turns out he is trained in Holistic Resource Management (intensive grazing management) and has a lot of expertise in cattle ranching. He even took on a ranch management job down on the border but only stayed 9 months. He said it was truly a war zone down there. I agreed with him from what I saw. He said it wasn’t the migrants he was afraid of but the drug smugglers, coyotes (people smugglers) and the border patrol. He said he and everyone else down there carried a pistol and when he almost got between a huge fire fight with helicopters and humvees he quit. Life is too short. Yup!. He is just a super nice guy with a iron hard handshake. He would like to move back up north but his wife will not go back where it is cold, so he is thinking of going to north western Oklahoma in blue stem grass country. Flint hills?? Maybe. He went back to Tennessee to help the guy he was working for move his operation back there, but he said he didn’t like the people, the land and especially the humidity. Yah, I know what yo mean. He said that Oklahoma was going to be similar humidity wise but the people were better and it was grass land. He actually grew up in that country but left when he was 16 for Colorado. I told him all about our grazing experiences and the farm, water situation, selling the farm, etc. we must have talked for more than an hour and I apologized for taking up so much of his time. He said it was a pleasure and that is all he had was time. He would like to get into a small farm where he could sell a few extra veggies at the farmers market but mostly just provide for themselves. It sounds like he may have a problem on his hands, called a ‘wife’ who doesn’t. It sounds like she is a spoiled rich bitch. He said an interesting thing about the area and that is at one time there were 10,000 hair goats in the hills around here. Those would be Angora goats.

I finally made it to the PO and still no mail. I think the PO in Miles takes this forwarding my mail with very little interest in doing it in a timely manner. There is no reason that if it was mailed on Friday that it shouldn’t be here. Well, it is a nice place to hang and the people are cool.

The next stop was the tire shop which is a rundown gas station. Just as I pulled in a guy came out and said that he had a website and he sold cattle and blah, blah, I didn’t understand all but that the kid would take care of the tire for me, and he left. Well, the kid tried to put the rim on the tire machine, no, it is a split rim I told him. next he put it on the ground and tried to take the ring off without breaking the bead. So, I had to do the tire myself. There was a fold in the tube and it ended up having three holes that the kid patched two and I did one since he was always talking on the phone or pumping gas. Anyway I got it all put back together and was just about to air it up when the owner guy came back. I didn’t rat on the kid but I think the owner understood I did the tire work. He gave me a good deal on the patch job and I was just about to leave when he started talking about the website and cattle thing again. He wrote down three web addresses for me to look at. He said that he paid some guy $3400 to build this website. I checked it out later at the library and he got took big time, but I guess he is happy. It is www.arizonasbeefinc.com you can look it up, it won’t take long. Very simple. It turns out that he was some sort of cell tower geek who programs them and ???? He went all over the country from Alaska to back east getting them working. He said that he wasn’t one with a hard hat, he was the one in sandals and a laptop. There must be a heck of a lot of the cell tower guys out there as I seem to meet a lot of them. The guy who bought the farm is the head cell phone tower guy in LA for AT&T. I told this guy about my trials with being on the road with the computer and not being able to hook up. His recommendation was to get an air-card (pick one up on ebay for $50 or so) and take the SIM chip out of your cell phone (get one with web access) and put it in the air card. Then it acts just like you were using a cell phone and some of the connections are up to 1000kbs. I think I got the speed right, but it is fast, at least in places, probably big cities. The only expense would be the cell phone and cell phone minutes. That sounds like it might work for me. He is from the Safford area and his dad has a ranch between here and Duncan which is interesting to meet two ranchers from the same area in a row. He has all kinds of ideas and another one of his websites is going to feature being a cowboy on the internet. He has a camera mounted on his cowboy hat and will be taking photos of him ridding the ranch, roping, bulldogging, fixing fence, etc and all for only $10/month. What a deal. Gee, I wonder if my friend Randy could do the same thing with his job as a newspaper reporter. He would probably have to put a piece of tape over the lens when he visited the bookstore and maybe turn off the mike. Gee, a virtual hot shot news reporter, there could be millions in that idea…(got your ears on Randy?)

I think I’ll take a little cruise on the bike and see what I come up with next…

There isn’t much going on in town. I stopped and visited with a gal who has an antique junk shop. She and her sister run it and it is owned by her mother. I cant imagine anyone buying much in there. She said that the miners from up in Morenci don’t come down to Clifton, which makes sense, as there is nothing here.

I finally went up to Morenci and it is just all new houses and a shopping mall type thing. It says it is the Phelps Dodge Mercantile Company and the gal I talked to said it was the company store up until a couple of years ago when it was sold to a grocery store. This was a real company store were she said when you hired on they would give you a number and you could go to the store and start charging. “I owed my soul to the company store.”

The mine owned the land under the town and evidently they own the land under Clifton as well. In Clifton they at least sold surface rights, but in Morenci they rented the lot your house sat on. One old guy that I met said they charged his dad ten dollars a year rent. When the pit over took the town they just bulldozed the houses and the town is completely gone now. Everything is new and it really looks like a sucky place to live. The guys and gals are making big money and they don’t care. They have new cars and pickups and boats and trailers and motorcycles and quads and everything else that goes with debt. ‘I owed my soul to the company”.

They do have a library there and I was allowed to use the one and only computer for a half hour. The mine built and owns the town and I would think they could afford more than one outdated computer. I bought diesel at the station up there for $1.859. there was little food trailer across the street advertising Mexican food so I went over and had the special. It was nowhere near Roberto’s in Globe but it filled the belly and it is sticking with me.

I headed back down the hill and ended up in a shady spot for e dog and went out on the bike again. I cruised the back streets again and went by an old adobe house that I went by before. The roof is almost completely gone. The shingles and rafters are almost a memory. As far as I can see the structure is ok from what I can see from the road. From the down hill road you can see that it is two story and the bottom is all quarried rock and rubble. It is way cool house. I decided that I wanted to find out about the house and talked to a couple of guys working on a car near there. They said that the guy who owns it lives in Phoenix and is going to knock it down. They sent me across the highway to the town offices and I had a couple of the girls help me to try to find out the name of the guy who owns it. It turned out that one of the girls lives next door. They are both Mexican decent and I could tell the girl that lives next door didn’t want me to know anything about it. We looked at the list of names and addresses they had but the house is not listed. Somewhat strange no? Anyway the one girl was really helpful and she wrote the name she thought owned it and told me to go to the courthouse tomorrow and they will know there. When we were looking down the list of houses on the street, all the names are Spanish origin. I have a feeling that a white guy may not be too welcome there. I would like to take a look at it just to see how bad it is and if it is way too cheap I might take a run at it non the less. The gal at the town office said it was two residences, one on top and one below. I’m not sure just what I am looking at but it looks like gang graffiti around town. There are several guys with shaved heads, tattoos and pit bulls on leashes around town. There are white people here but I think the majority are Mexican decent. I have an idea that Morenci is/ was the white town and the mex lived down here. That is the way Globe / Miami is to this day. I talked with one guy that grew up in Globe and he said that when ever they got to feeling good they would just go over to Miami and it was easy to get into a fight. Ah, to be young again…. On second thought it is easier on the teeth to be older and wiser. But then again. there were hot springs and naked girls, way back then….

I guess this river that I am camped on, the San Francisco, has had some major flooding. The most recent back in the 80’s. They built a set of floodgates and diversion levee that is supposed to protect the lower part of town which is out of the old town district. There are two big twenty foot? High doors on massive hinges that will close off the highway and one for the train. I didn’t realize just what they were when I came in but when I was told about them I rode the bike down and checked them out. They guys at the tire shop had photos of the last flood and their shop was flooded maybe six feet or more. If the swing those doors closed they better head for much higher ground. This river drains some major area and when it gets necked down coming into Clifton and all the bridges to collect trash it can be a real destroyer. I guess it wiped out a lot of houses and they ones left standing they made the people move. The people said that they would clean up and rebuild and they wanted to stay, but the gummint said MOVE. And they did, but it really pissed off a bunch of people.

I talked with a young couple that have lived here forever and asked about the hot springs. It turns out that just up the river from where I am camped is the spot. The warm water comes out of the sand and you have to dig a hole out and it is hot. The river is really high and cold now and they didn’t think I could do it now. The river is running kind of brown from all the rain last week but should settle down in a week or so. The tire guy being from Safford knew all about the hot springs around there. They are on both sides of the river and one some construction guys came in and made a pool big enough for a dozen or more he said. That Safford may need a closer look sometime.

There is an old steam engine along the highway and a small rock building along the cliff face that I stopped to look at the engine. The rock building had a bronze plaque out front and it says it is the first jail at Clifton. The story goes that the guy that blasted it out of solid rock (the small rock building is just the entrance) was the first person to be put in it. Serves him right!

I went up to the Catholic Church and went inside. The guy I talked to before said that I could. I kept thinking of Roger having to go in an admit to all his sins. Gosh it must take hours and as I told him before, he should just put them on a CD and he could just drop it off. Well, it was really nice inside. The church isn’t very big and it is made of rock and must be two feet thick. Bullet proof for sure. They had some small stained glass windows and a series of plaques on the wall showing The Passion? I think the movie must be more graphic but those would scare the little kids for sure. It was a little spooky because they had purple drawstring bags on all the statues. It was kind of like the bottles of whisky in the purple bags, crown royal style. Lent is on now I think, so may be they let em out of the bag when it is over.

3-17-04

I thought about the adobe house all night and came to the conclusion that I don’t think I want to take on the challenge. If I fixed it up, I would have a nice house in a barrio and probably the only buyer for it would be someone who couldn’t afford it. If I lived there, it is no place for a dog other than a pit bull, it has a nice porch to piss off of but I don’t think they would let me do that in town. I wouldn’t be able to shoot. An adobe can be really cold if it doesn’t get solar gain and I don’t think this place does. There isn’t anyplace for junk. The place has some serious limitations and I just don’t think I am a town type anyway. There are some very interesting cabins in the hills. I think it could be worth a look around here in the future.