PART 1
NOGALES TO BISBEE
20,21 MARCH 1996
You can now drive 75 miles per hour down I-19 in southern Arizona. I-19 is also the only highway in the US currently signed only in metric. Well, this is partially true, the speed limit signs are still in MPH. If they told people they could go 120 there would be hell to pay. So you're constantly doing math. The distance signs are all metric. So you're thinking, "Okay, I'm going 75, which is about 120 kmh and it's 80 kmh there so..."
Due to my late flights I was making the I-19 drive between Tucson and Nogales at about 7 p.m.. I had eaten nothing all day and was starving. This necessitated a stop at a suburb of the middle of nowhere -- a strip mall serving no visible population -- for a soda and some snack food to tide me over until I got to Nogales. I went to the huge supermarket, magically busy with residents of the mythic nearby city, and looked for an ATM. There wasn't one. I checked my pockets and was lucky to find about $2 in change. On my way through the check out I asked if they had an ATM, the man pointed at the POS terminal.
"It is an ATM, too!" he proudly proclaimed. "Do you want to use it?"
"No," I replied. I really needed to get on the road and would be able to hit an ATM in Nogey.
I left the strip mall and checked again, outside lay only miles of barren desert and I-19 with cars whizzing by and death taunting speeds. I was simultaneously amazed at the huge strip mall supporting and supported by nothing and the ridiculousness of states making Interstate Highways have virtually no speed limits. Then, like everyone else, I got in my car and drove to Nogales at 75 miles per hour.
Nogales, Arizona, used to be a one-horse
town on the border of the US and Mexico. Today it is a one WalMart and seventy-six Circle
K town. The major industry of the town is the facilitation of the border crossing.
Nogales, Sonora, is the other half of the town, south of the border. There are two
crossings, one for cars and pedestrians and another for commercial vehicles and cars. Kim
Kuykendall has written a glib, but information packed piece on Nogales reflecting her several
decades of experience with the area.
I will define Nogales in a minute. My first evening in Nogales, I checked into the hotel and went to meet my companions at Las Vigas Steak Ranch, a restaurant down the street where we often hang out. We discussed a bit of work, but mostly movies were the topic that night.
21 March 96
Bisbee Arizona
21:05
Today I awoke in Nogales. When in Nogales I stay at the Americana Hotel. Each time the stay is a little more annoying. Today I awoke about 35 minutes before my wake up call came through. I laid there and wondered what my day would be like, the meetings I had to attend, the leading people around and showing them things. I was going over the particulars of the Nogales project in my head when my wakeup call rang with a mind-numbing ring. I cursed and smacked the phone. Not the best way to start a day, cursing.
I woke up and hurriedly showered. I had to be downstairs at 7:30. At 7:25 I was rushing to get out the door when one of my colleagues called and told me that they had decided to meet at 8:00 instead. So I had a half hour of nothing to do in my very very comfortable room at the Americana. I tried to watch the news, but all there was were Network Morning Shows that left me with fluff and crap and garbage. Today is was Bryant Gumbel earning his almost seven figure, or maybe it is seven figure, salary asking about the sex life of Marsha Clark. In case you are reading this more than five months from now, Marsha Clark is the now forgotten prosecuting attorney in the long winded O.J. Simpson Trial. In case you are reading this after 1997, O.J. Simpson was involved in a murder trial and was acquitted to the delight of some and the dismay of others. At any rate, I sat around for a half hour.
After the half hour it was on to a full day of working and running around Nogales. I will write a full accounting of the work at a later date -- after the project is completed. But for now suffice it to say that I worked a full day and then, magically and unprecedentedly, the meetings ended ahead of schedule. I had planned to stay tonight in Nogales, but here is was -- 16:00 and I was all done for the day. So I answered my voice mail, finished a bit of business and checked out of the hotel.
My next task was to find a map. I asked at the front desk for a map of Arizona and they said, "We don't have them, try Circle K." Circle K is southwest for 7-11. Now, you can also read Kim Kuykendall's pieces on Nogales and read up on the character of the place. Even though I have been to Nogey several times myself, I have not written about it until now. Here is my assessment, after driving all over Nogey and seeing it from a variety of perspectives.
Nogales has some very pleasant and
interesting sections of town that are mostly residential. Single story single family
detached housing with small yards of stone and desert plants -- all fenced in with
southwest style fencing. No white pickets here -- they'd rot in a second. Brick and iron
fencing. You are much more likely to see children playing in these neighborhoods than you
are in Seattle or many other cities I've been in. They seem much less likely to be in
abusing the Nintendo. When I see them running around I can see myself in Omaha many years
ago.
Downtown Nogey is sort of painful. You can see the remnants of character in it. Several buildings have been torn down to make way for all-American parking lots -- only $4 a day, so that you can drive in, park there and then go buy trinkets from street vendors in Nogales, Sonora. The exceptions to this rule are the huge Rite Aid and Safeway on the US side of the border where the Sonorans come to get their food and toothpaste.
Nogales exists to be a border town. The people there facilitate the movement of people and goods across the border. This is no small feat and the process employs a lot of people. These people all shop at the WalMart, which in its own WalMart way has effectively stripmallized the northern edge of Nogales along Mariposa road.
Nogales is hard to find good food in and indeed I was unsuccessful. I have gone several times to Las Vigas, which is supposed to be the high point in Nogalian cuisine and have had boring food there. My companions who eat meat have often complained or outright worried about the quality of the substance. Tonight I may have found good food in Nogey, but I won't know first hand until my next trip.
So I figured that I could go to Circle K,
get a map, use the ATM and make my way to New Mexico. I drove and drove and drove and
finally came to the Circle K. It had no ATM. I figured I could charge my map and just take
care of it later. So I get some maps and approach the counter. "You don't have an
ATM," I said. "No." he replied. "Hmm, I'd like this map."
"Oh, well, if this is a debit card I can take it and give you cash back. It's an ATM
too!" he said with glee similar to the man in the previous night's supermarket
"Okay," I said, thinking that this person had a brain. But, unfortunately, he
seemed to have graduated from the Rufus School of Mental Acuity and ran the card through
about 40 times. "The magnetic strip is fried," I said. He kept running it
through. "You'll have to enter the number manually," I said. He ran it through
40 more times. "The stripe is not responding, the card is old, you'll have to enter
the number in," he ran it through another 40 times. "Here," I said. He
looked at me dumbly, "Hand ... me .. the .... card...." I said. He did and I
left.
I drove all the way back into Nogales and went to a grocery store. No ATM. "Do you have an ATM," I asked the manager. "No," he replied -- obviously not wanting to reveal the secret locations of the city's ATMs. "Do you know where I might find one?" I asked. He pondered this for a moment, as if had asked him an actually difficult question -- or one that even remotely required thought. "Well," he said tentatively, "there's a bank on the other side of Mariposa Road."
I didn't see the bank on the way in because it shared a sign with McDonalds and I pretty much tune out McDonald's signs the way that one attempts to tune out screaming babies on airplanes. So the sign said "McDonald's US Bank" So I went and got some McMoney and went to another gas station and bought two maps. "You want both maps?" the attendant asked. I felt like saying, "Gee, no, they both look so good -- you decide." But I avoided this, noted my growing propensity to rudeness, and said, "Yes."
In minutes me and my maps were beyond Mariposa and cruising down US-82 going east from Nogey. US-82 is stunningly gorgeous and I was amazed. The desert mountains are uniquely beautiful, there is nothing like them. I was so moved my eyes teared up. I pondered the tearing up of my eyes for a bit and Stereo Ray, the Mexican Radio Station, started playing Roxy Music's "Avalon." Kim and I had a long conversation about Avalon once. I started thinking about the things that she had said about the desert and what it meant to her and the spirituality of it. It made me miss her profoundly.
Stereo Ray is the ultimate compilation
tape. It equaled or perhaps surpassed tapes I would make for my friends when I was bored
in Nebraska -- taking things from weird disparate genres and somehow making them all work.
Before Avalon they played Kool and the Gang and a very obscure Kool and the Gang as well.
From there the set went Captain and Tennielle, Manic Monday, some crazy house music using
Saturday Night Fever as the background (almost the whole song - this would not stand up in
court), Sade, then half an Aimee Mann song. Stereo Ray never announced a song, before or
after playing it. It was just there. The half of the Aimee Mann song was the best, she
played half of her song and was brutally cut in by the news music which was a sample of
Frankie Goes to Hollywood slightly altered to have that typical radio news be ba dah ba
dah ba dah sound. Their promos and ads were randomly in English or Spanish. Stereo Ray
kept me company for a long time.
Then he was sucked into the void and I didn't hear him again. So I switched to NPR. Linda Wirtheimer reassuringly spoke to me. Then my phone rang. "Buenos?" I answered. It was Floris from the office. Asking me questions about this report we have to get out. I answered the questions and he hung up. For the next several miles I watched the beauty of the desert while I listened the NPR's Remorse, a documentary done by two high school students in Chicago regarding a five year old boy who was dropped out of a window in the projects about two years ago. It was a bizarre juxtaposition, listening to this real world tale of being trapped in the projects of Chicago, surrounded by urban blight and hopelessness, and driving through this vast open space. After about a half hour I had to turn it off because I was experiencing strong feelings of displacement. My mind wandering back to my, albeit short, time in Chicago's projects. I never lived there, mind you, but I did spend several days there and the memories never leave you. The blight of the midwest is as unique as the mountains of the desert.
The desert drive takes you. In the Rockies
or the Cascades you see an incredible amount of beauty, it is rugged and jagged. The road
is always twisting and turning. Hiking in the Cascades is great, with high elevation
gains, lots of switchbacks, deep in forest, then sudden spectacular views that make you
feel blessed and humbled. The desert is much different. Mountains just stick up all over
the place, as if they were accidentally dropped there. The ecosystem is also much more
diverse. In the cascades it is a pretty stable and constant set up plants and life. In the
desert you'll be in lifeless scrub one minute and in the middle of huge cactus forests or
large -- like 12 foot -- scrub. Every so often something scurries across the highway, but
you have no idea what it is.
The desert is both subtle and in your face. Very much like the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Very much like Kim Kuykendall (though you probably can't tell this by her writing). Today there was perfect cloud cover that kept columns of light focused on the tops of a distant mountain. So perfectly focused were these columns that it appeared that the mountain was emanating some biblical glow.
At one point, probably due to the NPR story, I was thinking about the highways, these little bands of pollution that we've criss-crossed our continent with. I was thinking about how awful this was. Then I went by a section where the highway had been re-routed. Probably about 20 years ago. The old road was noticeable because of an area with a small culvert, but the road itself had long since broken up from its formidable concrete band into little bits of stone -- like a linear rock garden. Somehow this gave me some hope.
At about 18:30 I entered Bisbee, Arizona.
Last night the sun set around 7:45, so I figured that Bisbee would be a fine place to stop
for the night. Kim and Danny had both told me of Bisbee. There is a fine line between
maintaining your city's character and making it a gaudy tourist village. Bisbee seems to
stand perfectly on that line. I drove into town and looked at the gorgeous old buildings
in downtown Bisbee (with the most consecutive days of beautiful weather on earth, they
say) and out into the neighborhoods. The town appears authentic.
Bisbee instantly made me feel happy and I knew it was the perfect place to stop. I parked my car and walked over to The Bisbee Grande Hotel, a Bed and Breakfast with several rooms. To take a room, one must first go talk to the person who is tending bar at the saloon next door. The rooms are very cheap ($51 to $61 a night) and they are fantastic. Very comfortable, interestingly decorated. I took room #1, the most froofy of the rooms. All done up in pink and roses -- smelled like my grandmother's dressing room when I was a kid. Had a stuffed puppy on the bed and lots of throw pillows, including the obligatory heart shaped pillow. The other rooms were much more stately -- this one appeared to be unique. If you ever go to Arizona, I'd recommend both the drive down and a stay at the Bisbee Grande.
I asked the bartender where a vegetarian could go for a good meal in Bisbee and he directed me to The Roka Cafe. It is very popular and you should get a reservation. I walked in and the place was packed. They gave me a seat at the bar and I started jotting down notes from the day in my notepad. The bartender, Fred, introduced himself. The host also introduced Fred to me. Fred was from San Francisco, only in Bisbee for 2.5 years. I have been asking around, people seem to be "from Bisbee" about the same amount that people are "from Seattle". We're all transplants.
Fred was having an animated discussion with a woman who appeared squeamish at the thought of being widely publicized so I'll call her Rita, though I threatened to call her Fred. The three of us talked about movies and the death penalty and movie-based romances and the predictability of movie-based romances. She ended up knowing a great deal about Nogales and gave me several restaurants to try on my next trip there. This way I don't have to eat at McBank. She was a very charming and attractive woman who also happened, by sheer coincidence to be in a field of work very similar to my own. So I told her about my Nogales dealings and we talked pros and cons for a while.
The conversation was quite a bit of fun, I
always enjoy randomly showing up in a town and meeting random people and then randomly
leaving. At one point she said that Bisbee had no eligible bachelors, at which time I
admirably (at least I think so) avoided the incredible laundry list of pick-up lines I
could have used. She left to go do a series of things. I finished my dinner -- which was a
wonderful lasagna by the way, with artichokes and goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes. The
dinner comes with soup, salad and a small dish of vital Lime Sorbet. It jumps in your
mouth and says, "Lime Dammit, Lime!" Also, I was really happy when the soup was
vegetarian as well. It was also a small bowl of a light soup. The salad was a civilized
amount of salad. In short, I finished my soup and salad and felt very excited about
getting my main course, instead of feeling like I was too full to eat it -- which is often
the case.
Suffice it to say, I enjoy Bisbee over Nogales a great deal. But, who knows, perhaps with so-called Rita's restaurant recommendations I will end up having a better time in Nogey.
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