As children we often visited our
grandparents in southern Arizona where they worked a ranch about 25 miles
southeast of Tucson. The trips always started with an announcement posed as a
question. How would we like to go visit Nana and Grandpa? At that point our
excitement would burst as we raced about the house shrieking in our joy. There
was nothing grander in our young lives. The day of departure we would each be
given a bucket filled with crayons, paper and toys. Wise and useful were the
gifts giving us means to wile away the hours…and a place in which to barf when
motion sickness overwhelmed us.
After what seemed an
eternity we would finally pull off the two lane highway onto a straight dirt
track and travel the 2 1/2 miles to the ranch house. The road was straight on a
map but the ground was not level for it followed the contours carved out by cloud
bursts. These torrents of debris and muddy water rolled in a ball of fury off
the flanks of the Coyote Mountains that rose dramatically out of the desert
floor to the west. The best part of our drive was Dad gunning the old truck
over the rolling hills leaving our stomachs to float into the desert sky as we
plummeted shrieking down the other side.
Their house was not
ordinary. It was simple, small but magical. The front was framed with Saguaro
cactus, but the side door, the boot and mud room, served as the main entrance.
In the back was hard swept ground framed by an ocateo fence. The dwelling was
wood framed and plain, smelling of wood smoke, leather, and the delicious
aromas from the kitchen. The kitchen table was on a slight platform off of the
main room which to our joy had a TV. We watched the original Maverick and many
other westerns on this flickering black and white smugly knowing that we lived
in the land they were trying to depict. To us we had landed in that very time
as well. Marty Robins sang about the Big Iron on His Hip and the west Texas
Town of El Paso on the scratchy phonograph in that same room. This house was
heaven.
Of particular joy was being
invited to go with Grandpa for the mail. You didn't just go with him, you had
to be invited. This was a daily ritual as important as the chores, the feeding
of livestock and the eventual breakfast for us. So about 9 in the morning I
would clamber into the pickup and us men would head for the highway. Over the
roller coaster road we went, Grandpa smoking and me just pleased to be alive.
Upon arrival at the pavement we would pull off and gather what mail there might
be. We would sit in the truck while he read through it and we waited. And then
it would happen. The startling ringing sound would break out over the silent
desert as the phone announced the incoming call. The routine was known to those
who knew my grandparents. Anyone needing to talk with them knew Grandpa would
be getting his mail about 9:30 in the morning. A phone line paralleled the
highway and attached to this line was an old timey phone placed in a wooden box
at the base of a giant Saguaro. What a thrill it gave me to hear its ring
and to watch Grandpa go squat and open this box, putting a receiver to his ear talking
to someone over there in Tucson.
Many years later I was
working for the Forest Service in Boulder County. Available to me for a large
sum of money was a cellular Motorola phone that was made to mount on the dash
of a pickup. I didn't bother with the dash mount but placed the phone in my
pack. It was as large as a shoe box and that phone was more powerful than any I
have had since. I kept it there so that when I topped out on high ridges I
could catch the phone signal and make a call, or maybe more importantly,
receive one. I let people know that they could try to call me in the late
evening of those summer days and would climb high in the hills while the sun
set to see if any would call. Strolling about on a ridge top one evening, I
thought back to those days at the ranch, and Grandpa and his cactus phone.
At the ranch with Joe
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