"As cold waters to thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country."

• Apr. 5, 2006 - Tombstone or Bust!

Well, I know I said I wouldn't post anything, but I figured, why not? I just wrote and sent out this email about our "vacation" to Tombstone....

Well, well. What a trip! I’ll try to start from the beginning.

Thursday, March 30th
We got most of the stuff ready for the trip on Thursday. We had the car worked on in the earlier part of the day, and in the evening Jay and I were home alone with the kids, so we worked on vacuuming out the van, cleaning up everything, and then eventually loading the van. When we were done we all watched Roy Rogers. :D It was a great time for Jay and I to have with just the kids (Daniel, Mally). Plus, it was good to have the van loaded and all ready to go.

Friday, March 31st
We woke up at “normal time” (5:00) on Friday morning and did our typical routine, packing a few last-minute things as we went. Dad and Jay had to run over to do an inspection, and they picked up Grandma on the way home. By 7:40 we were pulling out. Funny things started happening right away. We were listening to “The Mark” on tape as we went, so that kept everyone amused. Also, along the way we did some weird things; for instance, we would all sing “Jesus Loves Me” every time we saw a cow while on the road. We were also looking for some funny things, like a dinosaur-shaped cloud and broken windows. A few quotes from this stretch of our trip:

Daniel: Okay, everybody! Sing! I saw one!
Jay: Danny, that’s an ostrich farm.

Dad: We’ll just have to find a restaurant named Dinos.
Grandma: I’m so embarrassed, guys. Sorry.

Dad: It’s lunchtime in the city of Blythe. Whoops….maybe it’s not. This crowd is huge.

Jay: Those people just crossed the road and came back.
Me: Twice.

Jay: There are….stains on my ice. This can’t be good.

Dad: Whoa, buddy! You’re going to run into us! Oh, that explains it: he has an Arizona license plate.

We went to Del-Taco for lunch, in Blythe, spotting several interesting things. One of them was a guy with his head in a trashcan. No kidding. Once we ate, we started driving again and finally got over into Arizona. We pretty soon saw, “Quartsite City Limits” and we started talking about the Sherburnes (who live there). All at once, Jay said, “Hey! There’s Mr. Sherburne!” He was unmistakable; military fatigues and putting up a huge sign on the Freeway: “Seek The Lord While He May Be Found”. It was interesting to see him.
We drove on for awhile, and had to stop for about an hour because of an accident which turned out to be really bad. Two helicopters were there to airlift and everything. Everyone was out of their cars, stopped on the highway.

Dad: Whoa, there’s a guy jogging up to the front to see what’s up.
Me: He looks weird.
Jay: Why?
Me: I don’t know.
Jay: here he comes back.
Me: He still looks weird.
Jay: Why?
Me: Um…..he’s young, and he’s….just….weird looking.
Jay: Nicole, it is not weird to jog when you’re young.
Me: Oh. Well I still think he’s weird.

We stopped for dinner at a Wendy’s about a half-hour outside of Uncle Steve’s.

Uncle Steve: Well, well. It’s The Mighty Hearns!

We crammed all seven of us into their motor home. Don’t ask how many it’s normally supposed to sleep, but we got us all in there. It was really funny. But I slept soundly, so I was grateful for that. We slept in (until 6) on account of our late night spent talking, etc. In the morning, we all woke up and I remember seeing the huge table set and thinking, ‘There’s no way that we can use up that many chairs’. Turns out, it was just enough for everybody. I have to start thinking like I’m in a big family!

Saturday, April 1st
We visited Tombstone Saturday morning. It was very interesting. The people there are strange: they’re about a hundred years behind everything in some respects. It’s really funny. There are no grocery stores closer than 16 miles away. There are two little snack shops. And lots of bars. The women were all really loud and sometimes obnoxious. Jay and I have a particular aversion for people like that, so we didn’t really enjoy the female company. But all the men are just like they walked straight out of a history book. They wear period clothing to town, all the men (or most of them) carry loaded sidearms, etc. The “O.K. Corral” (which provides the city’s most infamous historical period) and the gunfight there with Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday lasted for only 30 seconds, we found out. It was really an interesting and fascinating study of the gunfight, what led up to it, and what its principle characters did afterwards. We visited the graveyard where the men killed in the gunfight are buried. Did you know that one of the three was only thirteen years old?

We also toured the building of the Tombstone Epitaph (the newspaper for the town, appropriately named). I took some pictures. While we were in there, we remembered that there was a wedding at 4:00 that afternoon. It was just about 4 on the money. Since there are only two main streets there (population 1800) we trotted down, arriving just as the wedding was starting. It was so interesting. I wasn’t at all used to an open-air, anybody-who-wants-to,-show-up type wedding. The groom was about 60-something. The bride was probably in her 50’s. They were being married in a 2-acre city park. I saw guys fumbling with their weapons and I didn’t know what was going on. Then, as soon as, “May I be the first to introduce to you, Mr. And Mrs. Traewick!” --all of the sudden, tons of men in the crowds began firing off their guns! They all had blanks, but it was deafening. People kept shooting, and reloading and shooting.

Quote:
Uncle Steve: *looks at his gun* I….just committed a Class-3 Felony in the State of Arizona by brandishing my weapon in a public place. Whoops.
Grandma: Well, I saw policemen in the crowd, and they didn’t seem to care! In fact, that one guy who was handing out blanks to people was actually law enforcement, didn’t you say? They didn’t seem to mind!
Uncle Steve: That’s why I said whoops.

It was the most interesting wedding I’ve ever witnessed. Afterwards, they went to cut the cake, and then called everybody over for the cake. In line, as we were waiting, they had a little bluegrass group that came up and started playing. When they played “Can I have this dance for the rest of my life?” my Uncle Steve and Aunt Karen started dancing (on the grass, in line, waiting for cake). Such is Tombstone. When my dad went to get his punch, it came out as syrup. My dad mentioned it, and the guy attending us said, taking off the lid of the big insulated punch jug, “Oh, well, just pour it back.” Dad did, and then started to take some more. “Nah, just take some from the top,” the man said. My dad looked at him dubiously for a moment, then dipped his cup, punch getting all over his hands (and, by extension, everyone else’s punch). They didn’t seem to mind a lick. It was hilarious. We ate our cake on a park bench, listening to bluegrass music, laughing and having an uproarious time.

That evening we had enchiladas for dinner, and then before we went to bed we watched two Roy Rogers movies (trust me, we don’t get to do it often, although twice in one week must make it look like a habit). One of the movies was “The Sheriff Of Tombstone”. Interesting. I didn’t like either of the ones we watched very much. My uncle, who had had a bit to drink during the movies, and was in a slightly giddy mood afterwards, and my dad, who is always in a slightly giddy mood, started to regale us by repeating lines from the movies. My dad was crooning one of the songs from the movie…. “Don’t gamble…with romance…you must not win…you will lose….learn from a gambler and choose…not to gamble with romance.” I knew at that junction that it was time for bed. :D Unfortunately, it was really late again on that night. We all went to bed and slept soundly.

Sunday, April 2nd

We ate breakfast Sunday morning in an interesting fashion. We burned--burned to a CRISP--all of our bagels for breakfast. We burned the second batch. We swallowed our pride and ate burned bagels for breakfast. We laughed so much that we almost couldn’t taste the “burned-ness”. We smelled smoke all day.

We went to Bisbee on Sunday. Wow. If Tombstone was an experience, watch out for Bisbee. After eating breakfast and getting “ready”, we went driving the 30 or so miles to one of the nearest towns, Bisbee. Upon entering, we immediately knew that things were different there than Bisbee. In short, this town--the entire town--was left over from the hippie days. It was crazy! There are no “building codes” there. People do things on every whim….build stairs out of old concrete, put out strange rebar posts and poles, nobody takes care of their houses, etc. I kept marveling, finding the living conditions so similar to that of a third-world country and so different from anything I’ve ever seen in America. The people all looked nice (although a bit misguided) but simply did not care what their property or anything else looked like. The streets looked like an afterthought and included strange ups and downs that are, as far as the “code” would say, completely disallowed. People had houses on different levels, and water drainage was a mess. Then there were the signs. Everywhere. It was as if, literally, the entire town was stuck in the sixties. There were cars with big signs on top: “THINK BEFORE YOU EAT. GO VEGETARIAN.” and “Pro-Choice? Go Vegan.” or, “Drop Bush, not Bombs”. It was disturbing, and sobering, to see a whole city that had lingered too long in the shadow of a hollow era. People had pictures of vehicles that were a little….um….interesting, and even painted signs on their own (dilapidated) brick walls. One guy painted a spray-painted sign of a man relieving himself with a cross through the sign (or, a wordless picture for: don’t urinate on my wall). With thousands of walls in this city, I can’t imagine why anyone would target his wall, or, if they did, why he would care. The town just got more and more bizarre. We were walking in the downtown part….we went into a museum where they had strange perspectives on random things such as World War One (why WWI related to Bisbee, I do not know, but their position was that there was “unnecessary war frenzy” about the war, and that WWI should have never happened). We happened to walk downtown when my aunt mentioned, “Last time I was here, there was a man walking down the street with a dog, who had a cat on his back, who had a mouse on his back.” We all laughed, practically thinking that she was joking. Suddenly, less than 10 seconds later, we rounded a corner, and whaddaya know? Here came a guy walking, with a dog on a leash, and a cat on the dog’s back, and two mice on the cat’s back. Strange.

Grandma: Excuse me, sir. My uncle and aunt just disappeared.

Aunt Karen: The cooks are screaming.

Mom: We’re too close to the kitchen for comfort.

Uncle Steve: How many Pickett ladies does it take to light a candle?

Dad: This town is a big bunch of dope-smoking, left-winger weirdos.
Grandma: Be careful how loudly you say that. We might have slashed tires when we get back.

Uncle Steve: I love that kind of car! Wait! That’s not the kind of car that I love!

Grandma: Is anyone interested in having a palm reading?

Emily: This is a….what?
Aunt Karen: A, um, Chinese wedding cart.
Emily: This doesn’t look decent.

Dad: A bead shop. A bead shop. Um….yeah. I can imagine that going over very well here.

Emily: I thought it was saying that we’re not allowed to spray the weeds!
Aunt Karen: No, it says, you can’t urinate on their block wall!

Dad: Welcome to Bolivia, everybody.

Dad: Breaker, breaker. You’ve got a smoky on your tail. Ten-four, back door.
Me: Trying to impress Uncle Steve over the walkie-talkies, are you?
Dad: Actually, I was trying to impress you. I never pressed the transmit button so only you heard.

Guy: The mouse is rolling in dough.

Dad: If anyone was thinking about relieving themselves on that wall, don’t.

Dad: That lady with the tattoos just gave me a peace sign when I drove by. I haven’t done that since…I was a teenager!

We went into a metal works shop that was strange and somewhat disturbing, although very similar to many of the other Bisbee stores. It had strange shapes, weird pictures, and very pricey pieces of metal (I.e. the back end of a truck, shot about a gazillion times and with a bunch of metal fish glued onto it). In a strange sort of way, the things there were very artful, and done very well. But the undergirding overtones of the entire city were liberal and lazy, to an almost unbelievable degree. People walking on the streets were, almost without exception, misplaced, as though the whole community had been built of vagrants.

There were some pretty spots, such as the Lavender Pit, an old copper field.

Dad: Lavender Pit. I like it.
Mom: Why is it called Lavender Pit?
Me: No. The sign says it’s because a guy named Mr. Henderson Lavender helped with it, and built it.
Dad: Oh. I thought it was probably because of its color. I guess Mr. Yellowstuff probably helped with that hill over there.

We went to bed fairly early that night and I was worried about getting up on time the next morning. So I kept waking up during the night, trying to determine what time of the night it was and whether or not we were waking up on time (I always do that when we have to be up early). Well, there was one slight complication: my watch hands don’t show up in the night, and there were no visible alarm clocks. Once, I woke up, determined that I should probably get up and check the time (isn’t my sense of obligation inspiring?) and then, right before I was going to, I thought I saw the reflection off of a lit alarm clock on my window. It said 15:24. I kept asking myself, how do I figure out what time 15:24 actually is in real life? Needless to say, I’d been dreaming the whole thing up. When I woke up in the morning, the alarm clock read 00:00. It had been unset. It was really funny.

Monday, April 3

Aunt Karen said goodbye to us as she left for work. We then loaded up and pretty soon afterwards were ready to go. Things worked well and we started out (after goodbyes all around). Our day turned out to be a comedy of errors. After stopping multiple times in the morning for gas and restroom stops (our restroom breaks seemed to be never timed right for the 8 of us), we decided to go to Cracker Barrel for lunch. I would advise you all to be prepared to be embarrassed by this story. Really.

We had never been before (well, my grandma had) and so we looked at the menu, and our server turned out to be a little absent. We had to tell him our drink order three times for him actually to get it. The worst part of that was, we wanted all waters except for my grandma, who wanted iced tea. Not exactly a hard order to process. We finally all figured out what we wanted to eat (which was so hard! I’m used to, like, Del-Taco: Burrito or taco?) and right before it came, one member of our family accidentally knocked a cup over. It instantaneously broke. (I won’t mention the guilty party. It wasn’t me). It was so embarrassing. The hoards of people came out to attend to the mess, and the people around us in the crowded restaurant stared. We finished our lunch, and right as the guy was taking our plates, another member of our party (not me), again knocked over a glass (this time it was the iced tea glass, so it was not exactly pretty) and it bounced around and finally hit the floor and shattered. I couldn’t believe it. I was so embarrassed. My grandma was soaking wet. I was a little wet. The crew came out to clean again. Just as the waitress was commenting that there “must be something wrong with this corner” the lady at the table next to us spilled her iced-tea all over the table, too. I think I was at least five shades of red. It was really funny.

In the afternoon we stopped and got some ice cream. It was really good….I got strawberry cheesecake, with little bits of actual graham cracker crust in it. Yum, yum!

We were listening to “Desecration” on the way home, and when we finally pulled in it was on a cliffhanger. We’ll listen to it again on the way to Sacramento, so I can’t wait!!!!!

Uncle Steve called to say they were going through withdrawals, and emailed to say that both he and Aunt Karen were depressed. Ha, ha. He finished by an invitation again for “the Mighty Hearns” to come out whenever we had the urge.

It was quite an experience.

Uncle Steve: When our alarm goes off here, the graveyard awakes.

Uncle Steve: Sheep’s Thymus Gland? Do I want to get out the dictionary?

Aunt Karen: Don’t worry. We can pay for this. We have plastic.
Uncle Steve: And checks.
Mom: And ten people to feed.

Uncle Steve: For some reason, I smell smoke. Does anyone want some bagels?

Grandma: That looks nothing like Vincent Van Gough.
Me: Um, Grandma, that’s not him. That’s a picture he drew. Of a skeleton.
Grandma: Oh.

Me: I am sick.
Grandma: Would you like a French Fry?

Aunt Karen: Are you a good girl, Mallory?
Mally: No.

Grandma: We heard you broke down crying when your grandkids left, Karen. And we were saying, she’ll probably do that when we leave, too.
Aunt Karen: *busts up laughing so hard she can’t talk*
Grandma: Whoops. Looks like we guessed wrong.

Hope y'all enjoyed.

--Nicole

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• Apr. 4, 2006 - The First (and possibly only) Post

I probably won't ever post here, but in case I do, I will. (Profoundness is my weak point).

I basically got this just to respond to the Elliotts on their new blog. Speaking of such, cheers to them for getting one! *gets excited* The entries from the last few days are more than I've heard from them in months. So I am very excited!!!!!

As a disclaimer: I have no idea what is happening in the smiley-face that I just posted. The guy looked excited, so I used him. He also looks a little bit deformed, as well as having a box around him that doesn't look like something any normal person would want to be contained in, and so I hope that his image is not too disturbing for whomever will be reading this.

I must end this post....I have tons of things to be doing. But congrats to the Elliotts on getting a blog, and I'll probably tear up whenever I see it. *goes to search for sad smiley-face* Aha, I found one.