I feel like I’ve fallen a bit down on the job of keeping up with you, Dear Diary and Dear Hypothetical Reader, but I’ve been oscillating between working late and not having internet access all week. In the former case, all I felt up for at the end of the day was working out, eating a bit, then reading myself to sleep with Tenant of Wildfell Hall (ooooh, that dastardly Arthur, oooooh!). If I broke out the computer, it was for chat, not typing. Did enough of that during the day rolleyes But now I’m back and ready to chat your electronic ear off about my week.
After the whirl and excitement of my Romantic Weekend, I was on a plane bound for parts unknown once again. Well, that’s what I do, as loyal Hypothetical Readers of this journal know, so it wasn’t too much of a shock. I wasn’t planning on going to the middle of the Arizona desert, though. Perhaps it was Providence’s way of ensuring that I stopped complaining about the heat at home. If so, Providence could have simply sent me a warning letter. I would have preferred it to a temperature of 42 C and a dewpoint nigh unto that. The cabbie on the way in told me that it was usually quite dry and “comfortable” (by local standards), but it had been raining. Actually, out there, it was so hot the rain didn’t reach the ground, evaporating in mid-air (it’s called virga, I learned). As interesting as this is, it turned the whole town into a steam bath. I hadn’t been this hot and muggy since I visited a friend of mine in Taipei during monsoon season sweatdrop
Yuma is an odd town. I was prepared to like it tremendously, despite the heat. It’s roots are in the Old West. It was originally a prison colony (the above picture is from the actual prison), set up on the banks of the Colorado River (which is pretty skinny by the time it reaches Yuma). Peering out my glazed window as I flew in, I felt like I was landing on a Victorian vision of Mars, with green irrigated fields butted up to desolate swaths that stretched forever. To the west is a fabulous land of sand dunes cut through with canals.
To the north and east are craggy desert mountains and monoliths. It looked like a huge, alien oasis.
Now it is a senior resort town, a fact my garrulous cabbie lamented to no end. He regaled me with multiple accounts of the driving habits of the retired “snow birds”, and longed for the days when the tumbleweeds outnumbered the people.
At the time, I ignored this sentiment. After all, the one near fender-bender we got into was the fault of a not more than 30 year old driver who’d left his car in reverse at a stoplight. The light changed, and he squealed backwards towards us eek , stopping at the last minute. My driver shrugged at this and told me, “Everyone is crazy in this town.”
I found myself thrown into work, with little time to go see the mountains, or even experience the excitement of the roads. In a fit of drama, I found myself sympathizing with the prisoners before me: like them, I was condemned inside. Of course, unlike them, I had air-conditioning and regular breaks for tea, but that just spoils my self-pitying analogy, doesn’t it? wink
I finally got some time off on Wendsday and went exploring. Thunder boomed in the distance, and I was hoping to find some sort of western style culture. I admit to naivety, but I honestly thought that the town would be filled with little wooden storefronts, and perhaps a cool saloon or two where an alcoholic piano player played rag-time like nobody’s business. Yuma had little need for my romanticism, however. Instead of a Wild West town, it is filled with strip mall after strip mall. They are very proud of a huge outdoor mall next to my hotel, with its acres of asphalt and piped in outdoor Muzak. I could see lightning and craggy hills in the distance, but in the foreground I saw yet another slice of Generic America. Best Buy, PetCo, Old Navy, and, of course Starbucks (which, like my hotel, still had no wireless internet. But that’s another rant). I kept looking for a local place, but found none. Ten miles from the Mexican border, I ate lunch at a Del Taco. Bleh. I’d forgotten how much I hated faux-Mexican food, and only got so far as one taco and half a cup of iced “tea” before I pitched the lot into the trash. Later, I made it up to my stomach with a chicken sandwich from Subway, which sat better, but was hardly the Western experience I wanted.
I’m probably not being fair. Why shouldn’t they want the same things the rest of the country gets? They want their Starbucks, too. I can’t expect them not to cater to the rest of the country. The rest of the country, in the form of snowbird tourists, is how these people eat. And maybe they themselves like Applebees better than Bad Bart’s saloon. Certainly, my notions of the Old West are undoubtedly over-romanticized. I have to admit, if I time traveled back to the days of the Prison, I doubt I really would have set foot in a seedy whisky bar. I don’t go to seedy bars in today’s world. I’m not exactly Wyatt Earp, or even Annie Oakley.
But I still felt regret as I left the town. Maybe if I visit again, it will be cool enough for me to hike the nearby wilderness. I’d like that. The prison and the cowboys left years ago. But the desert remains. There are still some things that people can’t change, and that’s probably for the best.
Slinging her keyboard along the Dusty Roads,
V.
