Thursday Dec. 6th Big Bug Station….the old Mayer, Arizona dancehall a part of a 1902 ghost town building. It is a gathering place of storytellers and lively personalities, and an important part of my new home. Yesterday, I moseyed in (I live in a historic western town now so I mosey instead of walk) and sat my tush on one of the stools that line the antique barroom bar. I mused on the tameness of this “bellying up to the bar” compared to a hundred years ago. Susan my landlord, was killing some time till her friend called to meet her out in the scrub further up Big Bug Creek for a hike in the hidden wilds. Mike Connors, her husband and our host, grinned his welcome and pointed to the fiddle lying on a table nearby. “The Judge is gonna play for my wife in a minute,” he stated with a jaunty nod. John Kennedy presides in his courtroom several buildings over and takes breaks from his day’s work that occasionally lead to a serenade of the lucky few who happen to be here. Just then our fiddler was talking to two international visitors by the big window that overlooks Big Bug Creek out back. He was giving them directions to other historical stops in “them thar hills” around the Prescott area. Don sat down next to me. Susan received her phone call that the hike was on and Kennedy picked up his fiddle and played Away in the Manger for us all. What a lovely Christmas season morning.. Conversation filled the space left by the Germans and Susan. What kind of pet does a de-scented skunk make and how to de-scent it was one topic along with the intelligence of Queensland Blue Heelers and my new acquaintance Don got up and did a pantomime of the movements and hyperactivity of ferrets. I also learned that morning that one of our area’s business men who owns three Liquor Barns calls himself The Beer Whisperer! As I was leaving to begin moving boxes into my new apartment two doors down, a couple of locals, Joe and Jan bustled in proudly waving an antique old flannel bathrobe they found next door and bought. I didn’t get away without a mention of the ghosts in my apartment, three of them. This stopped me in my tracks. I was told they were friendly and one had a peg leg. Sure, they tell me this after I had signed the lease. I left talking myself into thinking they were just kidding me about the ghosts. My new home promises to be interesting.
