Deserts are a Magnet Alaska, Arizona or Australia

I have always been more comfortable where ever there is desert. Even in my years at Prudhoe Bay Alaska I was happier at Prudhoe Bay an arctic desert than in Anchorage. At age thirteen Mom and Dad drove me from Missouri to California, (yup. I am one of those Route 66 kids) to see the grand opening of Disneyland.

I fell in love with the desert then. I went back to Freshmen year in highschool and wrote a composition about the desert and its magic. Also drew a desert landscape that depicted the vastness. I did this in art class and it included saguaros, an arroyo, and part of an old mine entrance with Route 66 stretching on endlessly into the horizon. At thirteen I was hooked. So deserts draw me like a magnet and desert loving people become my friends. The high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico, the frigid desert of the Northslope of Alaska, and of course my passion, my addiction, the arid opal bearing deserts of Outback Australia. Hence the name Parched Earth Opals.
So, as I am not in Mayer for a few days, I write today of why it was natural that I ended up here writing of desert rats and people who wear many hats.

Mayer, AZ Cattle and Goofy Monikers

Ron one of our better story tellers here in Mayer, had us in stitches yesterday morning over coffee at Big Bug Station. It all started when he told us that he was working on installing a new cattle guard. I inquired as to what made cattle guards work. I was informed that cattle as well as horses are very cognizant as to where they put their hooves. It seems cattle shy away from cattle guards because they can see down into the emptiness below the grid and it seems to frighten them off. They cross them like crazy if a bit of snow packs in between the grid and it looks solid. Now I don’t want to steal Ron’s thunder and repeat his story but reckon you ought to ask him when you see him to tell you the story about the cow that did get its ankle stuck in a cattle guard.

You see it involves the antics of a local of many years ago, long since passed, and includes a guy by the name of Bill Spitznickle. Bill was a grown man at that time. I always listen closely to any story that has characters with names like that. Just think back to your school days as a kid. There were always other kids whose names were as memorable as Billy Spitznickle and I just bet they where big in your life somehow or were connected to a most unusual incident. For instance: my first crush was on a young lad about fourth grade whose name was Herby Puchner (pronounced Pookner) and mom paid him to walk her kindergarten daughter, me, the three blocks to school in the mornings. Come on you know you have a story that involves a kid with although not as complicated as Rumpelstiltskin, was still most unusual. Anyway, several other players along with the cow were in this episode in young Ron’s life including the hapless fellow who had to suffer the humiliation which is inherent, it seems, in much of what is funny to those around them. It wasn’t Spitznickle but I needed this story to bring up my wonderment at “where did all the somewhat goofy last names go?” I just can’t spoil Ron’s story without at least getting permission to tell it here first.

Dynamite and Coffee in Mayer, AZ

Wellll, not really dynamite. Just stories about a fellows life working for Hercules Powder. His dad did, too. And they both made it out alive. His dad barely did 'cause one day back in New Jersey when the plant went kaboom and his father, an explosive chemist, dove into a concrete culvert to save his life. Trouble is the culvert was very narrow and Dad got wedged in partway under the road. He really could dive. Not all were so lucky that day. Tim had been a powder monkey and a tester of dynamite batches. Tim was just two years old and was told that the blast blew out windows for miles and at his house, a brass doorknob fleww off and whizzed over his head in his cot, missing him by inches as he slept. tim is way older now and long retired. He wears his dad's great ring with a red Hercules emblem on it. Tim is softspoken but his stories seem to raise the decibels and are easy listenin'. We shared stories and respect for the power and danger while sippin' coffee. Mike Connors, the owner and host, downed a sweet roll. I liked Tim's low cal dynamite stories with coffee better.

This site tells the story of that blast that happened in 1940

http://www.roxburynewjersey.com/hercules.htm

Aprils Fools a Night of Banjos

Banjo, harp, guitar, and concertina along with great talent, superb songwriting and witty story telling was served up the night of April 5th at Big Bug Station. This was the first musical concert that I had been in town and able to attend. Someone had added a large fern to decorate the stage and the banjo artist said “Who would have thunk I’d be playing banjo in a fern bar!” Bill Burke and Fred Coon from Phoenix along with D-Squared with Don and Deb performed. The house was packed with an attentive and appreciative audience from the surrounding area. Whatever ghosts still linger in this old dance hall from 1902 must have been just as thrilled as I to hear such tunes once again filling the room. Mike Connors’ Big Bug Station has great acoustics for such performances complete with a mini stage and spotlights that he manned from the upper alcove that over looks the hall.

Prospectors 3 Men and a Mule

http://3menandamule.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=8

Click on the above to get to an amazing blog that found me. In an earlier post I had referred to Don Pablo, long passed on now. Emmett Dwyer who has a copyright on this photo contacted me. he is writing his blog as a novel and it needs to be read from the oldest post backwards to get the gist of it.

What better way to comment on today's world with its wonders of the West and its problems as history is being made than to have some old desert rats prospecting and observing and commenting from their and Emmett's perspective? I love this blog.

My own father spent time hanging out with Don Pablo in 1956 and 57 down Phoenix way. Check out my Tuesday, January 08, 2008 blog titledMayer, AZ Big Bug Station has a New Website! It covers my Big Bug Station meeting of "Margaret with the Irish Brogue" who was Don Pablo's nurse during a hospital stay he had once.

Mayer, AZ Time Travel Big Bug Station Style

Are those old wooden doors into Big Bug Station a time portal or what? I was hunkered down on the stool and sippin’ one of Mike Connors’ hot cold pressed coffees, when in walks a dude that had seven foot tall charisma made up of tall bull rider type of cowboy hat and an ankle length slicker in the Aussie drysabone tradition with buttoned capelet over the back. He looked so tall and soooo silent as he seemed to stalk into the room and just absorbed the feel of the place. He probably thought that he had stepped back in time if he was of this time. I know, I know, I have an overactive imagination but he really seemed more to have stepped Out of the past rather than into as most of us here at Big Bug Station feel. The old dance hall/gathering place has that sort of fell to it. Guess the tall silent stranger spoke to someone a bit. Enough to find out he is from the East Indies or was it the West Indies? Anyway that and he is a Zen Master. Whoa! I told you we meet truly interesting locals here at The Big Bug Station. This one usually hangs his cowboy hat in the Cottonwood, Cornville area. Hope he comes back. I think he would have a tale or two to share.

Suspicious Minds in Mayer, AZ Big Bug Station

I'm not at Mayer, AZ for few days so ate some bar b que chicken breasts my son fixed for me last night in Phoenix. Holy Cow or should I say Holy Chicken.!! What BIG breasts. What are they doing to our chickens or as Australians say "chooks". The breasts were huge enough I think we need to call it Churkey breasts or Turken breasts. What are they doing to our poultry? Hmmm very suspicious but there ya go, suspicious minds tend to hang out at Big Bug Station in Mayer, AZ.