Border Folly: Day #2...Tucson

TUCSON, AZ--The TV weatherman was full of warnings about extreme wind in the southern part of New Mexico this morning. We left early and were already near the Arizona border before the winds came up. The winds out here can be dangerous. According to the motel manager, every year someone dies on I-10 while attempting to drive through a dust storm. So, as I said, we took off early. We pulled over at Stein's and MaryAnn took a quick picture through the window. Except for some power poles, this shot could have been taken 100 years ago.

We had intended to camp out at Parker Canyon Lake southwest of Fort Huachuca, but the wind was so bad and the temperature was so cold we decided to drive into Tucson and hit that area on the way home. We got a room at the Tucson Inn, a place I remembered seeing last time we were here. I especially remembered its big, beautiful neon sign. I couldn't wait until dark to take a picture of it.

You have to pay premium prices in a town like Tucson, $40. But with accomodations out of the way we decided to go to the University of Arizona Museum, which was featuring an exhibit of Arizona and New Mexico native life going back to about 1000 A.D. Now, having read Stuart's book the night before, this was outstanding. Actually, Stuart talks about discovered fragments of life in New Mexico going back all the way to roughly 10,000 B.C.! That makes the Hohokam and Anasazi peoples seem recent!

We got back to the motel just before dark. I wasn't feeling too well. It must have been the "Chorizo Mix" I had at Lindy Loo's for lunch. Anyway, it was dark soon enough and I got my picture.

It proved to be something of a disappointment.

Or maybe not so much disappointing as requiring a different aesthetic on the part of the viewer...one that appreciates both the fleeting moment when everything works just like it should, and the more common moments when only about half of everything is perfect. The rest of it is something that Time takes back as payment for having lived long enough to remember how it used to be.