This is the place where we earn our bread, sleep our sleep, and do our work. This is the place where some make a living, some find a living, and some, like me, are just passing through. This is a place where your work isn't for yourself, but it is.
This is a gathering place.
Dr. Wilson started the ranch with only animals in mind, in heart, in thoughts. She started with a few horses and several dogs and a self-righteousness and a belief to carry her through. The ranch grew, and grew, and expanded til it housed hundreds of animals. And people from all corners of the country arrived to fill a need.
Many have come before me, passing through, though perhaps with more intent to stay. Their stories linger, told mostly in tales of singular ineptitude, scoffed at by those who remain. Cheryl has been here for over two years. This is her life. She is the permanent one, the record keeper, who holds the pedigrees of the dog managers, who have all come and gone more quickly. But now there are three more besides her living on the ranch, and making of it a home.
It's easy to hold the thought in one's head, that people are more than they seem, with a whole story to tell. It's daunting to learn pieces, stories like gifts. Because with so many years behind them, there are more pieces to a fifty year old than a twenty-year-old can comprehend.
Sixteen years, 10 months, and 23 days ago, Cheryl's partner Barbara received a lung transplant on Christmas Eve. Without it, Barbara would have died before New Years from the emphysema that took her life 19 years later. She was sick for a long time before she died, at age forty-three. Her sister died the night Barbara went in to her first hospital evaluation for her lungs, from cirrhosis of the liver. Her sister was thirty four. Cheryl said, she always thought she got the “cream of the cop,” in that family. Their father died of emphysema in his fifties. Barbara's brother was a coke addict.
Cheryl grew up in Catholic school, product of a classic, Long Island Italian family. She was a coke user, reckless drinker and Harley driver, tried school and got good grades, but had more success in her first job in an airplane machinery. She's been here two years. Doesn't go to church anymore. Calls the ranch her temple. Would die for her animals.
Three years ago, old-Kim's son committed suicide. “The little shithead,” she said. “He could have done anything else. Like ask for help. Instead the little shit killed himself.” The doctors told her two years ago, after she went in the hospital for pneumonia, that she'd die if she kept smoking. She quit, for ten months, but then she moved here, to Prescott from Milwaukee, WI. “It was smoke, or kill myself,” she said. I closed my mouth at the irony. Two days ago, she dared Dan, Young-Kim's boyfriend, to a smoking ultimatum—starting the second of January, the first to smoke owed the other a hundred dollars. Dan hasn't taken her up on it yet.
Kim comes from Missouri. Don't know too much about her, still, other than she hates vegetables of any, any sort, and eats pasta, cheese, chicken, Mountain Dew, and potatoes. She's 22. She met Dan a week after I arrived. Last month, he moved in with her. Dan is a city employee, does jobs for the county and outside work in the parks. He's been married before, and has a couple kids. He's thirty one. He doesn't get along with his family. His mother's from England and he lived there til he was nine, and then did the rest of his growing up in Prescott. He's the only Arizona native on the ranch. When Dan was eighteen he tried to do a trick on a scooter on a wall. He fell off and smashed some vertebrae in. They've apparently hurt him ever since.
Brie is the last and newest resident of the ranch. She moved here from Iowa. She used to be a professional runner, for Nike. Had qualifying times for the Olympics, in steeple chase. But then something happened. Something happened to her side, so that when she runs, she gets a sharp shooting pain up her side and if she keeps going, she can't even breathe. They tried a 25,000 dollar operation to put a stint in an artery in her side. They tried exercises. They even tried Viagra (to increase the blood flow). Nothing worked. There went Olympic trials. There went the Olympics. Now she's here. She's tall and dark haired, green eyed and gorgeous, and she lives with over thirty dogs, and just became a permanent resident of the state.
Chris was a worker who left this week, going to a better-paid job at a hotel where his wife works. He'll miss the animals, he says, but he won't miss the winter, or being out in all weathers. He's fifty eight. He's British, came over here years ago to marry his American wife. He was a member of Harsher Reality, a rock band who had an album break the top 25 in the UK around 1970. Spent three years touring the world with his band. Played with the Rolling Stones, the Styx, the Kinks, met the Beatles. He had a lazy eye, was a drummer for his band.
It's a strange sort of family here, though it has to be. Last night, I ate a Thanksgiving dinner with the dog-people . We all helped cook. We ate the day before Thanksgiving so Dr. Wilson wouldn't be offended by our turkey—our sources said she'd be here today. But she wasn't. And so I awoke to a fresh-turkey-less Thanksgiving, perhaps the most surreal Thanksgiving I've had. Around 2am last night, I woke up to Lady, a dog we've nicknamed Gargoyle for her looks, scrambling into my room. After kicking her out, and wedging my door re-shut, I lay and listened to the thunder and lightning storm, the pounding rain from outside, hoping it would be gone in the next four hours. When my alarm went off at 5, the rain had stopped. I dressed for cold, looked over the news, had tea, everything I always do, and then headed outside. Bleating goats drowned out even the sporadic barking of the dogs, and as I reached the end of the backyard, I saw only Cheryl's huge Diesel truck, rumbling with its lights on pointed towards the goat pens. Hurrying forward, I looked around for Cheryl, not seeing the tractor she usually had already loaded and started feeding with by then. Instead, as I reached the barn, I saw Cheryl coming through, the automatic lights going on as she came through the breezeway, with a herd of goats in front of her. “What happened?” I asked, running forward, thinking all the goats had gotten out. “Their pens flooded,” she said.
And so it was. We waded through inches of water, getting the goats re-situated in dry pens with other goats, that were on higher ground. Then we navigated small lakes in the tractor and got the horses their alfalfa. And then I scraped wet hay out of the goat pens and we got it into the tractor and tried to drain out the hay barn. All the while, my feet were wet.
Finally the day was over and it was time for stuffing and warmth and relaxing. Because I've learned, here, that eight hours isn't that long, especially when it all starts at six in the morning, and you look up and see orion for an hour before you see the sun, and then, if you're lucky (or unlucky—red skies take warning...) there's a beautiful sunrise that lights up the bowl of the valley. Today, no sunrise, but instead clouds wreathed the valley, covering various parts of the mountains—first the base, so the peaks floated in the clouds—and then the tops so only patches peaked through. The clouds drifted throughout the day, sometimes opening, so that a random distant mountain shone suddenly gold in a fickle beam of sunlight, under a patch of blue sky, before the clouds closed again and flowed gray over the sky.
Other observations:
On windy days, the pipes of the fences sing like an asthmatic organ, or really bad harmonica player.
Whoever made up that song “Drifting along with the tumbleweed” has a very romantic idea of tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is prickly, with little spiny spikes that break off and get all into your clothes and skin and burn like acid. No one except a turtle hiding in its shell, or maybe a scorpion, could painlessly drift with tumbleweed, or think it was a good idea.
Dogs snarl. And yes, I knew this before, but it's one thing to see the start of a snarl, and another to see one with full lips back, teeth bared, and realize that a dog can quickly forget it's a dog and man's best friend and all that, because its instincts are to bite and rip and kill. Not that most here rip and kill. Although there definitely are some who try. Mostly to other dogs, although Rory's had his share of bites.
Eventually, one can make friends even with a couple, once one has proved oneself "harmless." And not a total ditz. And willing to work. And can share laughs with the guy and the girl together and apart. Hi Deb and Rory. Glad I have you guys as friends.
There's a guy here who delivers our hay. His grandpa is his uncle is his grandpa. His sister is a Mormon. Or maybe it's not his real sister. The last time he came, he leaned into his truck, with a full beard on his face, while saying, "I have to learn how to shave better, I keep cutting up my phone." I laughed so hard I cried. While hiding behind the woodchip pile.
There's more to say, and more to think about, but those are the things that have been running through my mind lately. And the fact that, although I'm excited to leave, I'm going to miss this place.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Rants, and other stories
At first sight, the new worker looked like at most a volunteer. She was standing at the backdoor of the big house, bulging through her big cotton red tshirt, her short, bright white hair in vague disarray. Turns out, however, she was a temp worker. A few days later, she was hired. Now, I have a housemate.
I write this not in the best of moods. One, most immediately, is that the Prescott library is far from the haven I wish it were. I guess I’m spoiled by Dartmouth. Needless to say, I have suffered, so far, through a small children Halloween parade, where small children screaming thronged through the library in outfits while the oh-so tolerant librarians smiled at them while the other patrons glared. Then an old man sat himself down to do some sort of figuring, chomping away so furiously at his gum that I could hear every chew ten feet away. Finally, he left. Except he was replaced, in an even closer-proximity, by a man with a bag of crunchy snacks he’s assiduously working his way through while listening to a book on tape. And I forgot my headphones.
Crankiness of the moment aside, I have decided that, despite everything, the moving-in of my new housemate is quite possibly contributing to my inability to shake a bad mood for the last week and a half. Her presence is unavoidable. Her cheerfulness and pragmatism are evident. Her stories have already become old.
Kim—old Kim, as we call her, since young Kim is the current dog manager—is a large, ebullient woman in her sixties. She is from the Milwaukee area, a combination of outer-city roughness and Midwestern forwardness that is friendly and assertive. The first story she told me, as she sat at the kitchen table while pushing the dogs away with her feet, was how she lost the two teeth on her upper left jaw from taking a rough shot of Tequila in Mexico. Slammed the glass right into her teeth. (The cabinet above the now broken fridge was designated as her alcohol closet). She is an ex-Harley biker. Tatoos everywhere. Has a daughter and a husband. His name is tattooed on her hip, but she wants to make it so it says, “In Memory Of ______”—“Not that he’s dead,” she assured me—“but he’d be better off that way.”
Man to my left is now ripping foil off of more food.
The whole process of gaining a housemate was a little sketchy, considering I wasn’t told she was moving in until they hired her. But, young Kim assured me, she’s “like everyone’s grandma,” and it wouldn’t be a problem. I guess, not like everyone’s grandmother, although acquiescent in the best ways—respectful about personal space and everything. But she is innocently self-centered, and this is where the problem lies. I used to be here in isolation. I used to wish for people. And I still do, of a sort. But old Kim has no problem with plopping herself down, even if I’m obviously doing work, and she’s on the clock, and talking about the dogs, or telling some story that goes on for minutes. She doesn’t have any world opinions, and here I go being a snob, but I’m sorry. If my space is going to be invaded, I’d rather be enlightened by it. Then again, if you count meeting a “character” as enlightenment, this is it. This whole experience would count towards that, if you look at it in the best humor. I miss my solitude, however.
Anyways, for all my insistence at being coherent, I’m apparently struggling at it myself. Either way, I haven’t had any time to myself. The wireless works in the kitchen, but then, here comes Kim, plopping herself down and then young Kim comes in and all of a sudden, all the dogs are barking and chaos reigns. Then another dog person comes in, sees a “gathering” and all of a sudden they’re rehashing the last week and the stories have all been told before (no one really likes to work, not that I blame them for a break, but does it really have to happen in MY kitchen?)
I guess I’m just miffed that I have been reminded forcefully how little space is actually mine. Everything’s dedicated to the animals, but it’s that whole vegan mindset that turns this place into chaos. I guess that’s been on my mind too, so here goes.
Vegans believe that animals should never be “used.” This means, they are considered complete equals. This extends from pets to farm animals to wild animals to silk worms. True vegans won’t wear wool or silk because you’ve “used” an animal to get it. Look how far society has come. If you ask me, that’s pretty stuck up in regards to our roots, but hey. They think they’re doing the right thing. You can go off and have an argument about animals and souls, I don’t care. But sticking to the facts, animals are animals, and get confused when they don’t know their place(this will be repeated by anyone who knows animals, any professional trainer, anything). Meet the animals on the ranch. Deb the owner, the vegan, couldn’t care less if any animal is adopted out, as long as it’s being fed and thus is “happy.” And here is the fundamental flaw. Horses and dogs each respond to owners in their own ways. What is true for both of them at the ranch is that they are afforded hardly any individual attention, because there just isn’t time. They are kept in some sort of enclosure and fed, and watered, and petted when they’re near to whatever job is at hand. Horses that were once perfectly manageable now don’t allow humans near them. And sure, it’d be one thing if they were turned totally loose and allowed to establish, in lieu of human interaction, their own packs. But instead, they are kept in a charade of “care,” where they are given their way, their every ‘need’ attended to, and let go without any sort of discipline.
This man has an incredible amount of foil-covered food.
The newest development is that Deb is considering making the ranch part of things—horses and goats, etc, into a complete sanctuary. As in, absolutely no horse would be adopted out. This comes on the heels of three horses being returned in the last few weeks. The policy, not being-no-return, had a few people taking advantage of the fact this is a rescue. One person took their horse out on a trail immediately after adopting it, where he pulled a tendon. When it showed no signs of improvement in a week, they insisted the horse was permanently lame and said they needed to return it. Another was returned because it would bite other horses, and the woman had a business giving trail rides and didn’t want that, and then another one was lame as well. So fine. People took advantage of it and were ignorant—of course you can’t take a horse who hasn’t been exercised in months, and expect it to perform like any other horse. How would you like it, if you had hung out in your house for months being fed, and then told to hike a mountain with a kid on piggyback, just because you were stronger than the kid? So, Cheryl decided this just wouldn’t do. She talked to Deb, who sided immediately with the animals, thinking maybe it would be better not to adopt any horses out at all. This is incredibly ignorant and selfish. So many other horses have been adopted out and have gotten love and rehabilitation by owners who were willing to work with them. Take Roy.
Roy was a beautiful young Arabian gelding who’d been a show horse and then been abused. When we had him, he wouldn’t let you approach his sides, although he was curious and wanted to be better and would come up to you and let you pet him on his face. A woman came and fell in love with him, and within a month after adopting him was able to ride him. Roy was obviously in such a better place, than kept in his stall on the ranch, given food but living in fear. And then there was Señor, an old horse who was brought home by a family with twin 12 year old girls who loved him and are taking care of him, riding him some and making sure he’s got a good home, and is kept groomed. The horses here don’t even get grooming! And baths only occasionally, and never when Cheryl is around. Cheryl, really, is the greatest boon and bane to the horse side of the ranch.
Cheryl from Long Island apparently wore her western style clothing even back on the East coast. (And by western style, think Roper shirts, bandanas, cowboy boots, and a Stetson in the summer). She got her first horse when she moved out here. Saw goats for the first time, too. Now, she claims, even though she has no money, she “couldn’t be happier,” because she’s here, being a “servant to the animals.” And loving her goats. She is dedicated. She is persevering. She is stubborn. She is blind (metaphorically). I believe she never knew enough about animals to understand them completely, and is totally happy seeing them as perfection. She loves them indiscriminately and, while she would do anything for them, believes herself to be doing that. So they get overfed, get grain as extra treats, and they are fat and spoiled and cranky. She made friends with Bellatrix, a goat who is over 7 feet high when he stands on his hind legs, who is scared of other goats but is also moody and obnoxious. Bellatrix is kept in a stall with Hank, an old thoroughbred, and he believes, because she allows him to do so, that he rules the place. This means that entries to his stall are intrusion. Which means he rears up at you and butts you. We took off his horns, thank god, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have a knee. And yet, as I go to scoop up manure, getting manhandled by Bellatrix, Cheryl couldn’t care less. My shouts of pain go unheard, but at his first Maa-aaa when he hears the sound of grain poured out, she’s talking to him, “Bellatrix, my Bellatrix, who loves you? Who loves you, baby? I missed you Baby, I love you love you love you.”
It’s all I can do not to take the rake I was previously wielding in self-defense against the goat, and fling it at her.
So. She loves the animals. She puts in 12 hour days 5 days a week. But she doesn’t think about them. She doesn’t think that maybe, instead of harrowing the fields cause it’s on the schedule (dragging around what’s essentially a large rake attached to the tractor, to spread out manure and improve appearances, and in the summer keep the flies down), she should maybe go into the pens and handle some of the horses, so when they get into trouble and need the vet, they aren’t impossible to catch. She doesn’t think of putting that on the schedule at all, claiming there’s just too much of other work to be done. And in her mind, there is. That is the ranch’s problem—its mindset that if everything is functioning properly, animals are happy. That’s the way Dr. Deb runs it. Whereas a real animal person would think about the animals welfare, and understand them a little more. Deb, Rory, Deb’s friend who’s lived with horses, Deb’s friend who worked on a dude ranch, and some of the other people who have interviewed here, have all shared that view. Read up on animals, and it’s clear that other people would too.
So I don’t know if it’s completely the vegan attitude, or also just ignorance, but probably a large combination of both (I’ve talked to a reformed Vegan, Kat who came and interviewed for a position with the dogs, who said that’s how she viewed animals when she was a vegan, but since ‘reforming’ has seen her own animals become much happier, once she gave them a place instead of letting them have their own way).
So this isn’t just me bitching. It’s frustration at seeing such a good thing have so many easily correctable problems, but problems that will never be fixed because in the eyes of Dr. Deb, self-righteous animal fanatic, they aren’t problems. Not that she isn’t doing something incredible here, putting all her money into her cause, and it’s probably only that single-minded devotion that lets her do it—but like everything else, such a great belief can cause so much blindness.
I write this not in the best of moods. One, most immediately, is that the Prescott library is far from the haven I wish it were. I guess I’m spoiled by Dartmouth. Needless to say, I have suffered, so far, through a small children Halloween parade, where small children screaming thronged through the library in outfits while the oh-so tolerant librarians smiled at them while the other patrons glared. Then an old man sat himself down to do some sort of figuring, chomping away so furiously at his gum that I could hear every chew ten feet away. Finally, he left. Except he was replaced, in an even closer-proximity, by a man with a bag of crunchy snacks he’s assiduously working his way through while listening to a book on tape. And I forgot my headphones.
Crankiness of the moment aside, I have decided that, despite everything, the moving-in of my new housemate is quite possibly contributing to my inability to shake a bad mood for the last week and a half. Her presence is unavoidable. Her cheerfulness and pragmatism are evident. Her stories have already become old.
Kim—old Kim, as we call her, since young Kim is the current dog manager—is a large, ebullient woman in her sixties. She is from the Milwaukee area, a combination of outer-city roughness and Midwestern forwardness that is friendly and assertive. The first story she told me, as she sat at the kitchen table while pushing the dogs away with her feet, was how she lost the two teeth on her upper left jaw from taking a rough shot of Tequila in Mexico. Slammed the glass right into her teeth. (The cabinet above the now broken fridge was designated as her alcohol closet). She is an ex-Harley biker. Tatoos everywhere. Has a daughter and a husband. His name is tattooed on her hip, but she wants to make it so it says, “In Memory Of ______”—“Not that he’s dead,” she assured me—“but he’d be better off that way.”
Man to my left is now ripping foil off of more food.
The whole process of gaining a housemate was a little sketchy, considering I wasn’t told she was moving in until they hired her. But, young Kim assured me, she’s “like everyone’s grandma,” and it wouldn’t be a problem. I guess, not like everyone’s grandmother, although acquiescent in the best ways—respectful about personal space and everything. But she is innocently self-centered, and this is where the problem lies. I used to be here in isolation. I used to wish for people. And I still do, of a sort. But old Kim has no problem with plopping herself down, even if I’m obviously doing work, and she’s on the clock, and talking about the dogs, or telling some story that goes on for minutes. She doesn’t have any world opinions, and here I go being a snob, but I’m sorry. If my space is going to be invaded, I’d rather be enlightened by it. Then again, if you count meeting a “character” as enlightenment, this is it. This whole experience would count towards that, if you look at it in the best humor. I miss my solitude, however.
Anyways, for all my insistence at being coherent, I’m apparently struggling at it myself. Either way, I haven’t had any time to myself. The wireless works in the kitchen, but then, here comes Kim, plopping herself down and then young Kim comes in and all of a sudden, all the dogs are barking and chaos reigns. Then another dog person comes in, sees a “gathering” and all of a sudden they’re rehashing the last week and the stories have all been told before (no one really likes to work, not that I blame them for a break, but does it really have to happen in MY kitchen?)
I guess I’m just miffed that I have been reminded forcefully how little space is actually mine. Everything’s dedicated to the animals, but it’s that whole vegan mindset that turns this place into chaos. I guess that’s been on my mind too, so here goes.
Vegans believe that animals should never be “used.” This means, they are considered complete equals. This extends from pets to farm animals to wild animals to silk worms. True vegans won’t wear wool or silk because you’ve “used” an animal to get it. Look how far society has come. If you ask me, that’s pretty stuck up in regards to our roots, but hey. They think they’re doing the right thing. You can go off and have an argument about animals and souls, I don’t care. But sticking to the facts, animals are animals, and get confused when they don’t know their place(this will be repeated by anyone who knows animals, any professional trainer, anything). Meet the animals on the ranch. Deb the owner, the vegan, couldn’t care less if any animal is adopted out, as long as it’s being fed and thus is “happy.” And here is the fundamental flaw. Horses and dogs each respond to owners in their own ways. What is true for both of them at the ranch is that they are afforded hardly any individual attention, because there just isn’t time. They are kept in some sort of enclosure and fed, and watered, and petted when they’re near to whatever job is at hand. Horses that were once perfectly manageable now don’t allow humans near them. And sure, it’d be one thing if they were turned totally loose and allowed to establish, in lieu of human interaction, their own packs. But instead, they are kept in a charade of “care,” where they are given their way, their every ‘need’ attended to, and let go without any sort of discipline.
This man has an incredible amount of foil-covered food.
The newest development is that Deb is considering making the ranch part of things—horses and goats, etc, into a complete sanctuary. As in, absolutely no horse would be adopted out. This comes on the heels of three horses being returned in the last few weeks. The policy, not being-no-return, had a few people taking advantage of the fact this is a rescue. One person took their horse out on a trail immediately after adopting it, where he pulled a tendon. When it showed no signs of improvement in a week, they insisted the horse was permanently lame and said they needed to return it. Another was returned because it would bite other horses, and the woman had a business giving trail rides and didn’t want that, and then another one was lame as well. So fine. People took advantage of it and were ignorant—of course you can’t take a horse who hasn’t been exercised in months, and expect it to perform like any other horse. How would you like it, if you had hung out in your house for months being fed, and then told to hike a mountain with a kid on piggyback, just because you were stronger than the kid? So, Cheryl decided this just wouldn’t do. She talked to Deb, who sided immediately with the animals, thinking maybe it would be better not to adopt any horses out at all. This is incredibly ignorant and selfish. So many other horses have been adopted out and have gotten love and rehabilitation by owners who were willing to work with them. Take Roy.
Roy was a beautiful young Arabian gelding who’d been a show horse and then been abused. When we had him, he wouldn’t let you approach his sides, although he was curious and wanted to be better and would come up to you and let you pet him on his face. A woman came and fell in love with him, and within a month after adopting him was able to ride him. Roy was obviously in such a better place, than kept in his stall on the ranch, given food but living in fear. And then there was Señor, an old horse who was brought home by a family with twin 12 year old girls who loved him and are taking care of him, riding him some and making sure he’s got a good home, and is kept groomed. The horses here don’t even get grooming! And baths only occasionally, and never when Cheryl is around. Cheryl, really, is the greatest boon and bane to the horse side of the ranch.
Cheryl from Long Island apparently wore her western style clothing even back on the East coast. (And by western style, think Roper shirts, bandanas, cowboy boots, and a Stetson in the summer). She got her first horse when she moved out here. Saw goats for the first time, too. Now, she claims, even though she has no money, she “couldn’t be happier,” because she’s here, being a “servant to the animals.” And loving her goats. She is dedicated. She is persevering. She is stubborn. She is blind (metaphorically). I believe she never knew enough about animals to understand them completely, and is totally happy seeing them as perfection. She loves them indiscriminately and, while she would do anything for them, believes herself to be doing that. So they get overfed, get grain as extra treats, and they are fat and spoiled and cranky. She made friends with Bellatrix, a goat who is over 7 feet high when he stands on his hind legs, who is scared of other goats but is also moody and obnoxious. Bellatrix is kept in a stall with Hank, an old thoroughbred, and he believes, because she allows him to do so, that he rules the place. This means that entries to his stall are intrusion. Which means he rears up at you and butts you. We took off his horns, thank god, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have a knee. And yet, as I go to scoop up manure, getting manhandled by Bellatrix, Cheryl couldn’t care less. My shouts of pain go unheard, but at his first Maa-aaa when he hears the sound of grain poured out, she’s talking to him, “Bellatrix, my Bellatrix, who loves you? Who loves you, baby? I missed you Baby, I love you love you love you.”
It’s all I can do not to take the rake I was previously wielding in self-defense against the goat, and fling it at her.
So. She loves the animals. She puts in 12 hour days 5 days a week. But she doesn’t think about them. She doesn’t think that maybe, instead of harrowing the fields cause it’s on the schedule (dragging around what’s essentially a large rake attached to the tractor, to spread out manure and improve appearances, and in the summer keep the flies down), she should maybe go into the pens and handle some of the horses, so when they get into trouble and need the vet, they aren’t impossible to catch. She doesn’t think of putting that on the schedule at all, claiming there’s just too much of other work to be done. And in her mind, there is. That is the ranch’s problem—its mindset that if everything is functioning properly, animals are happy. That’s the way Dr. Deb runs it. Whereas a real animal person would think about the animals welfare, and understand them a little more. Deb, Rory, Deb’s friend who’s lived with horses, Deb’s friend who worked on a dude ranch, and some of the other people who have interviewed here, have all shared that view. Read up on animals, and it’s clear that other people would too.
So I don’t know if it’s completely the vegan attitude, or also just ignorance, but probably a large combination of both (I’ve talked to a reformed Vegan, Kat who came and interviewed for a position with the dogs, who said that’s how she viewed animals when she was a vegan, but since ‘reforming’ has seen her own animals become much happier, once she gave them a place instead of letting them have their own way).
So this isn’t just me bitching. It’s frustration at seeing such a good thing have so many easily correctable problems, but problems that will never be fixed because in the eyes of Dr. Deb, self-righteous animal fanatic, they aren’t problems. Not that she isn’t doing something incredible here, putting all her money into her cause, and it’s probably only that single-minded devotion that lets her do it—but like everything else, such a great belief can cause so much blindness.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Dog Days, minus the Nostalgia
I live in a doghouse. While this is an aforementioned fact, it’s worth revisiting, for the fact that, most people don’t really understand what it’s like to live in a dog house. It holds thirty-plus dogs. The reason it is able to do this is because it was once a real house, for people. It’s one story, spread out in the southwestern way, where the floor plan goes horizontal instead of vertical. Now that the previous owners—Deb and Steve who finance the place—have moved out, the house, minus my bedroom and bathroom—is completely devoted to them. The old furniture is adorned with fluffy blankets to make their recline in them more comfortable. Dog beds fill the area of the living room, previous master bedroom, study, and back porch, so the dogs can congregate with ease. Dog bowls—the dogs are fed via free feed, which means the bowls have a container above them filled with more food to keep them fat and happy whenever they might desire to have food—are sprinkled against the walls everywhere. The dogs live mostly in the front yard or the backyard, as the doors between those yards are the only thing barring them—although they’re free to saunter through whenever a human scampers through for one reason or another. The house is open to the dogs who live in the front yard, and the backyard dogs get the back porch. That is the territory mostly of the younger dogs, who are staying on this side of the road either for space reasons, or because they get along better here. I am the trespasser, apparently, which is reinforced each morning as I wake up to barking dogs—if all goes well not earlier than 5am, when my alarm is set. I stumble from the bedroom, careful to put on shoes with soles, and peer down the dark hallway. I can then generally avoid the piles of dog poop, but the pee puddles are far more tricky. Often I look back, once I have the light on (it’s at the other end of the hallway) only to see glistening puddles that I have to assume I trekked through, unknowingly.
Breakfast occurs amidst the dogs who I couldn’t persuade to run out in the general rush that I herd out when I get to the kitchen and the back door. The dogs who stay are either too old to bother getting up when I turn on the lights, or are far more interested in the prospect of a dropped crumb than they are in the cool and dark of the backyard. After leaving the house, sometimes the chaos, sometimes sleepy dogs, I go to work, where the work with goats, sheep, and horses (thank god for the horses) commences. At lunch, the next dog encounter begins.
In the middle of the day, most dogs are passed out. My entrance, however, heralds another slim possibility of scraps for them (yes, their feed bowls are all still very full, and no, I don’t feed them because that = dogfights). The dogs get up and crowd around in their pecking order, sometimes barking, sometimes just looking. If Deb and Rory come in with me we sit at the table, where the bigger dogs like to stick their noses up, just to see if they can get to our plates. When we ignore most of them, they eventually pass back out, stirring only if they hear the sound of something drop or if I get up, which apparently is enough of a signal of “more food!”
I come in sometime, done with work for the day, between two and four. Often most are still passed out, but this changes if I a) get a snack, b) open something, c) walk to the sink, d) heaven forbid, turn on the microwave. Whenever it’s time that I eat, the hordes are back again. And thus they remain wakeful until feeding time for them, for which I attempt to already be hiding in my room, to avoid the barking and squeals and chaos that is “medicine time”—given to them in much-coveted canned dog food. Hopefully none get into my room, which is another story, as Zeke especially likes to ransack and pee in it. More on that later.
Because now, it’s time for dog specifics. These are the dogs who have some sort of relatively sizeable impact on my life, ones who either have a constant present inside the house, or have done notable things while on this side. I couldn’t decide what order to describe them in. I was thinking, in order of most-homicidal-impulses-I-experience-towards-them, level of annoyance (this is almost the same though not quite), noise-level-of-bark, relative age, although so many of them are just “old” that I couldn’t do it. So I suppose I’ll go with the most democratic and do by order of size.
That means Curly comes first:
Curly is a giant black dog with somewhat curly hair. Apart from his tussled appearance, he is most noticeable by virtue of being huge. Not terribly tall, although probably the tallest on the “old dog side”, but his breadth is most impressive. He’s wide and really fat and solid. And old. So fat and old he sometimes can barely get up and he has sores on his elbows from using them to struggle to his feet. He has an asthmatic bark/whine that is fairly loud, although this could be because most often, it is magnified by the fact he is vocalizing directly outside my bedroom door. He loves to wedge himself there between my bedroom and the bathroom. This means that often times, in the mornings, there is pee there because he probably didn’t bother getting up, at least not all the way. This morning there was barf. Occasionally he gets confused and barks, usually around 3am, until I walk outside my bedroom, and if he can get up, I let him out the backyard. Though he is annoying and huge, he is not as high up on the homicidal-urges list, simply because he’s too old to do much and he looks really cute when he’s carrying around a stuffed animal in his mouth, as he likes to do (picture a giant, cumbersome, senile old man, in dog-form, and that’s Curly)
The next biggest, and really not too much smaller than Curly, is Norman. While I am not too resentful towards him, as he has yet to wake me up, he is the picture of the problem of free-feeding here. (that’s another issue. Fifty dollar, 20lb bags of premium, vegetarian dog food liberally dispensed, and there’s just one of the financial ‘puzzlers’ of the ranch.) But anyways. Norman is a giant dog who probably has some kind of yellow lab in him. But something gave him a roman nose and big wide googly eyes, and his love for weating has made him fat to the point of danger—this is a dog who begins to pant if he walks ten feet around the kitchen—usually this is done to circle to another food bowl. Once he has reached his objective, which is always food, he collapses, panting, in front of the bowl. He proceeds to gorge himself from this lying down position. Eventually, when the bowl is empty or he is sated, he moves himself a few feet to pass out. His biggest crime, in my book, is the fact he is so fat, he generally moves only by rolling a little bit. And this, one day, caused him to knock over my computer as he burrowed further into the space between the counter and my stool, wedging himself there to get at the bowl on the side of the counter, and pulling the cord out of the socket as he did so. He is ridiculous, does not have many cute moments, and would be the fat person in sweats—because normal clothes are no longer an option—sitting at McDonalds with a full tray, double fisting burgers and fries and maybe, just maybe, switching his over-sized Coke to Diet.
Wellington is the next biggest. He’s a pit-lab mix, who’s friendly. He amuses me, because he plays “big dog on campus,” and I took him for a walk once. He got the 4 minutes down to the bigger street, crossed it, freaked out, and demanded to be taken back. Once back inside the house, he once again put on his swagger, as though he’d just climbed a mountain, and strutted for days especially when I came by.
Louie is the next biggest dog who unfortunately plays a role in daily life here. He is tan and white and shaggy, with cataracts in each eye. He is the bane of the kitchen. No one likes him—dogs, people, probably mice. The most obvious reason is his heinous, high-pitched bark. One sounding off and you raise your eyebrows, thinking—really? The next time he barks, you think someone needs to put a muzzle on him. As the sound continues, it is no longer possible to stand. And so, the nearest person inevitably grabs him by his collar and drags him unceremoniously out to the back porch, where he sometimes tries to beg for re-admittance, or sometimes, hopefully, gets distracted by some shiny object, or something. He is also a jerk. He terrorizes dogs, going up to a select few and barking and barking, when he knows they won’t respond in kind. He likes to stick close to whoever is in the kitchen and growl and show his teeth if other dogs come too close. He is the only dog, say the dog-people, who has never been bitten. They say, they don’t know if that’s because his bark is too annoying for other dogs to mess with them, or, more likely, the other dogs know he’s just crazy, so senile they shouldn’t bother because he will do something worse(who knows what) than bark, and they shouldn’t test him.
There are two other dogs who I like, who almost go together—Sasha and Maggie. They didn’t come together, aren’t related, but look alike, some sort of Doberman mix, except smaller. The biggest difference is that Maggie has a bobbed tail, who knows why. Maggie likes to jump through windows. In fact, she likes to so much that she knocked out or destroyed all the screens in the house. Therefore, no windows can be opened, and the only circulation in this place are the few ceiling fans. Sasha is the one with the tail, and she’s sweet. She is probably my favorite older dog. Doesn’t bark, always comes say hi, and is even good on a walk.
Shakespeare is notable only because his name fits him so well. He is a black dog with long wavy hair, who, when sitting, somehow manages to convey an Old-English playwright just by his distinguished presence. He also has the most sonorous bark. This is often a nice change of pace, but can quickly grow old as he is the most likely to start a ‘howling session,’ which is interesting to hear once, as there will be about seven or so dogs all harmoniously howling at different pitches, low voices weaving in and out and higher ones crooning a counterpoint. Then again, this also is not always welcome, chiefly when it begins at three am. At this point I’d like to cut the stage out beneath them, wouldn’t feel so bad if it was kind of a long drop…
Fanny is one of the last who’s around really often. She’s a small, white dog, probably some sort of lab mix. She’s incontinent, responsible for not the piles of dog-shit, but the occasional turd that spread liberally throughout the interior of the house. However, she’s not to blame for this—the dog-people believe that before Fanny came here, her previous “owner” was involved in some sort of bestiality cult, and therefore her incontinence is a result of muscles that no longer have the strength to do what they should. She is also extremely sweet. She loves to lick dogs, often going to dogs who are barking, or laying down, and gives them kisses until they shuttup or nuzzle her back.
So I saved the one I hate the most for last. That would be Zeke, the elderly beagle. He is fat, bow-legged, and the most obsessed thing I have ever seen about food. He goes beyond obsession. If a person were this obsessed, they would probably be put in the mental hospital. If I walk into the house, he is immediately present, looking up at me wide-eyed though he knows full well my dislike. And then, he proceeds to walk around me, sniffing, grunting, waiting hopefully for any sort of crumb that might pass through my fingers to fall on the floor. And then, the bow-legs become an obvious disguise, that the other dogs might be fooled for a second that he is some sort of docile. But no—when something drops, he darts with unbelievable speed to the scrap, getting there, eating it, and rooting around for more before most dogs even reacted to the sound of the drop. Then again, no matter their size, the other dogs give him space. This is because Zeke has absolutely no fear. If a dog comes too close merely when he’s sitting near, hoping for a scrap, Zeke doesn’t hesitate to bite, snarl, growl, snap, and show his many yellowed teeth. Inevitably this causes the other dog to snarl, and then some other dog misunderstands, and before you know it, there’s a fight going on. Why not just lock him out of the kitchen, you ask? Well. Put Zeke on the porch and in a minute he is howling, baying, wailing at the door to get back in. He is the loudest dog of all of them, and he probably also is the most persistent. No matter how many times you tell him you hate him, he doesn’t care. Because sometime, maybe, somehow, you’ll drop a crumb of a cracker. And then, the time is worthwhile. Apparently.
Zeke has also desecrated my room. My room, the one room with carpeting, the one thing that is free of dogs, is no longer free of dog smell. This is because, the door occasionally jams not-quite-shut. Zeke-the-monster has learned to check for this, apparently more stringently than I have. When he gets into my room, he rips apart my trash, tracks pee in, and then, as his crowning moment of glee, deposits puddles of pee into the thick shag carpet. These I generally identify first by smell, and finally by stepping in them, which is when I realize to what extent he has once again decided to ruin my night. My bottle of Febreeze (pet febreeze, the “strongest yet”) is almost gone, applied liberally but not quite successfully to quell the smells of the pee. No carpet cleaner can get to the far reaches of this shag. And so my room is a strange mixture of ammonia, weird “fresh” Frebreeze scent, and sometimes Tide, which I employ after the carpet cleaner in a vain attempt to scrub the excrement out. It is possibly the most depressing smell on the ranch, and keep in mind I spend most of my day around shit of various origins.
Yesterday I decided I’d try and kill him by food (he also has heart failure. Did I forget to mention this fact? I try to forget it because all of a sudden I’m feeling sorry for him. I hate when I feel sorry for him, because I am certain he has no feelings. But then he has a coughing fit, and there it goes, I can’t help it, I feel sorry for the ugly beast.) As for killing him, I decided that no one will know, if I just feed him all the stale donuts some guy brought by, he’ll probably keel over from heart failure. Ooh, right, his already-existing condition. Which is much easier to explain than the shoe marks he’d receive, otherwise, when I can’t stand the fact he’s once more drooled over my food in the refrigerator, which he unfailingly tries to climb into.
This is a secret plan. Shhhh, I’d probably be fired for even thinking the thought.
Okay, I’m done with my rant. The last dog I’d talk about would be Lucy, but it’s too soon. The dog I’d adopt if I possibly could. I don’t even LIKE dogs that much, they smell and they drool, etc. Except, I’m pretty sure Lucy’s fur smells like roses and she gives the driest kisses of a dog, ever. As in, she keeps her mouth shut. She is the only dog I have ever kissed. Okay, I promise, I’m not going insane. I’m just upset my favorite dog was adopted out, and they didn’t even tell me (as promised) so I could say goodbye.
That’s all on the dogs for now. They’re barking. They say hi.
Breakfast occurs amidst the dogs who I couldn’t persuade to run out in the general rush that I herd out when I get to the kitchen and the back door. The dogs who stay are either too old to bother getting up when I turn on the lights, or are far more interested in the prospect of a dropped crumb than they are in the cool and dark of the backyard. After leaving the house, sometimes the chaos, sometimes sleepy dogs, I go to work, where the work with goats, sheep, and horses (thank god for the horses) commences. At lunch, the next dog encounter begins.
In the middle of the day, most dogs are passed out. My entrance, however, heralds another slim possibility of scraps for them (yes, their feed bowls are all still very full, and no, I don’t feed them because that = dogfights). The dogs get up and crowd around in their pecking order, sometimes barking, sometimes just looking. If Deb and Rory come in with me we sit at the table, where the bigger dogs like to stick their noses up, just to see if they can get to our plates. When we ignore most of them, they eventually pass back out, stirring only if they hear the sound of something drop or if I get up, which apparently is enough of a signal of “more food!”
I come in sometime, done with work for the day, between two and four. Often most are still passed out, but this changes if I a) get a snack, b) open something, c) walk to the sink, d) heaven forbid, turn on the microwave. Whenever it’s time that I eat, the hordes are back again. And thus they remain wakeful until feeding time for them, for which I attempt to already be hiding in my room, to avoid the barking and squeals and chaos that is “medicine time”—given to them in much-coveted canned dog food. Hopefully none get into my room, which is another story, as Zeke especially likes to ransack and pee in it. More on that later.
Because now, it’s time for dog specifics. These are the dogs who have some sort of relatively sizeable impact on my life, ones who either have a constant present inside the house, or have done notable things while on this side. I couldn’t decide what order to describe them in. I was thinking, in order of most-homicidal-impulses-I-experience-towards-them, level of annoyance (this is almost the same though not quite), noise-level-of-bark, relative age, although so many of them are just “old” that I couldn’t do it. So I suppose I’ll go with the most democratic and do by order of size.
That means Curly comes first:
Curly is a giant black dog with somewhat curly hair. Apart from his tussled appearance, he is most noticeable by virtue of being huge. Not terribly tall, although probably the tallest on the “old dog side”, but his breadth is most impressive. He’s wide and really fat and solid. And old. So fat and old he sometimes can barely get up and he has sores on his elbows from using them to struggle to his feet. He has an asthmatic bark/whine that is fairly loud, although this could be because most often, it is magnified by the fact he is vocalizing directly outside my bedroom door. He loves to wedge himself there between my bedroom and the bathroom. This means that often times, in the mornings, there is pee there because he probably didn’t bother getting up, at least not all the way. This morning there was barf. Occasionally he gets confused and barks, usually around 3am, until I walk outside my bedroom, and if he can get up, I let him out the backyard. Though he is annoying and huge, he is not as high up on the homicidal-urges list, simply because he’s too old to do much and he looks really cute when he’s carrying around a stuffed animal in his mouth, as he likes to do (picture a giant, cumbersome, senile old man, in dog-form, and that’s Curly)
The next biggest, and really not too much smaller than Curly, is Norman. While I am not too resentful towards him, as he has yet to wake me up, he is the picture of the problem of free-feeding here. (that’s another issue. Fifty dollar, 20lb bags of premium, vegetarian dog food liberally dispensed, and there’s just one of the financial ‘puzzlers’ of the ranch.) But anyways. Norman is a giant dog who probably has some kind of yellow lab in him. But something gave him a roman nose and big wide googly eyes, and his love for weating has made him fat to the point of danger—this is a dog who begins to pant if he walks ten feet around the kitchen—usually this is done to circle to another food bowl. Once he has reached his objective, which is always food, he collapses, panting, in front of the bowl. He proceeds to gorge himself from this lying down position. Eventually, when the bowl is empty or he is sated, he moves himself a few feet to pass out. His biggest crime, in my book, is the fact he is so fat, he generally moves only by rolling a little bit. And this, one day, caused him to knock over my computer as he burrowed further into the space between the counter and my stool, wedging himself there to get at the bowl on the side of the counter, and pulling the cord out of the socket as he did so. He is ridiculous, does not have many cute moments, and would be the fat person in sweats—because normal clothes are no longer an option—sitting at McDonalds with a full tray, double fisting burgers and fries and maybe, just maybe, switching his over-sized Coke to Diet.
Wellington is the next biggest. He’s a pit-lab mix, who’s friendly. He amuses me, because he plays “big dog on campus,” and I took him for a walk once. He got the 4 minutes down to the bigger street, crossed it, freaked out, and demanded to be taken back. Once back inside the house, he once again put on his swagger, as though he’d just climbed a mountain, and strutted for days especially when I came by.
Louie is the next biggest dog who unfortunately plays a role in daily life here. He is tan and white and shaggy, with cataracts in each eye. He is the bane of the kitchen. No one likes him—dogs, people, probably mice. The most obvious reason is his heinous, high-pitched bark. One sounding off and you raise your eyebrows, thinking—really? The next time he barks, you think someone needs to put a muzzle on him. As the sound continues, it is no longer possible to stand. And so, the nearest person inevitably grabs him by his collar and drags him unceremoniously out to the back porch, where he sometimes tries to beg for re-admittance, or sometimes, hopefully, gets distracted by some shiny object, or something. He is also a jerk. He terrorizes dogs, going up to a select few and barking and barking, when he knows they won’t respond in kind. He likes to stick close to whoever is in the kitchen and growl and show his teeth if other dogs come too close. He is the only dog, say the dog-people, who has never been bitten. They say, they don’t know if that’s because his bark is too annoying for other dogs to mess with them, or, more likely, the other dogs know he’s just crazy, so senile they shouldn’t bother because he will do something worse(who knows what) than bark, and they shouldn’t test him.
There are two other dogs who I like, who almost go together—Sasha and Maggie. They didn’t come together, aren’t related, but look alike, some sort of Doberman mix, except smaller. The biggest difference is that Maggie has a bobbed tail, who knows why. Maggie likes to jump through windows. In fact, she likes to so much that she knocked out or destroyed all the screens in the house. Therefore, no windows can be opened, and the only circulation in this place are the few ceiling fans. Sasha is the one with the tail, and she’s sweet. She is probably my favorite older dog. Doesn’t bark, always comes say hi, and is even good on a walk.
Shakespeare is notable only because his name fits him so well. He is a black dog with long wavy hair, who, when sitting, somehow manages to convey an Old-English playwright just by his distinguished presence. He also has the most sonorous bark. This is often a nice change of pace, but can quickly grow old as he is the most likely to start a ‘howling session,’ which is interesting to hear once, as there will be about seven or so dogs all harmoniously howling at different pitches, low voices weaving in and out and higher ones crooning a counterpoint. Then again, this also is not always welcome, chiefly when it begins at three am. At this point I’d like to cut the stage out beneath them, wouldn’t feel so bad if it was kind of a long drop…
Fanny is one of the last who’s around really often. She’s a small, white dog, probably some sort of lab mix. She’s incontinent, responsible for not the piles of dog-shit, but the occasional turd that spread liberally throughout the interior of the house. However, she’s not to blame for this—the dog-people believe that before Fanny came here, her previous “owner” was involved in some sort of bestiality cult, and therefore her incontinence is a result of muscles that no longer have the strength to do what they should. She is also extremely sweet. She loves to lick dogs, often going to dogs who are barking, or laying down, and gives them kisses until they shuttup or nuzzle her back.
So I saved the one I hate the most for last. That would be Zeke, the elderly beagle. He is fat, bow-legged, and the most obsessed thing I have ever seen about food. He goes beyond obsession. If a person were this obsessed, they would probably be put in the mental hospital. If I walk into the house, he is immediately present, looking up at me wide-eyed though he knows full well my dislike. And then, he proceeds to walk around me, sniffing, grunting, waiting hopefully for any sort of crumb that might pass through my fingers to fall on the floor. And then, the bow-legs become an obvious disguise, that the other dogs might be fooled for a second that he is some sort of docile. But no—when something drops, he darts with unbelievable speed to the scrap, getting there, eating it, and rooting around for more before most dogs even reacted to the sound of the drop. Then again, no matter their size, the other dogs give him space. This is because Zeke has absolutely no fear. If a dog comes too close merely when he’s sitting near, hoping for a scrap, Zeke doesn’t hesitate to bite, snarl, growl, snap, and show his many yellowed teeth. Inevitably this causes the other dog to snarl, and then some other dog misunderstands, and before you know it, there’s a fight going on. Why not just lock him out of the kitchen, you ask? Well. Put Zeke on the porch and in a minute he is howling, baying, wailing at the door to get back in. He is the loudest dog of all of them, and he probably also is the most persistent. No matter how many times you tell him you hate him, he doesn’t care. Because sometime, maybe, somehow, you’ll drop a crumb of a cracker. And then, the time is worthwhile. Apparently.
Zeke has also desecrated my room. My room, the one room with carpeting, the one thing that is free of dogs, is no longer free of dog smell. This is because, the door occasionally jams not-quite-shut. Zeke-the-monster has learned to check for this, apparently more stringently than I have. When he gets into my room, he rips apart my trash, tracks pee in, and then, as his crowning moment of glee, deposits puddles of pee into the thick shag carpet. These I generally identify first by smell, and finally by stepping in them, which is when I realize to what extent he has once again decided to ruin my night. My bottle of Febreeze (pet febreeze, the “strongest yet”) is almost gone, applied liberally but not quite successfully to quell the smells of the pee. No carpet cleaner can get to the far reaches of this shag. And so my room is a strange mixture of ammonia, weird “fresh” Frebreeze scent, and sometimes Tide, which I employ after the carpet cleaner in a vain attempt to scrub the excrement out. It is possibly the most depressing smell on the ranch, and keep in mind I spend most of my day around shit of various origins.
Yesterday I decided I’d try and kill him by food (he also has heart failure. Did I forget to mention this fact? I try to forget it because all of a sudden I’m feeling sorry for him. I hate when I feel sorry for him, because I am certain he has no feelings. But then he has a coughing fit, and there it goes, I can’t help it, I feel sorry for the ugly beast.) As for killing him, I decided that no one will know, if I just feed him all the stale donuts some guy brought by, he’ll probably keel over from heart failure. Ooh, right, his already-existing condition. Which is much easier to explain than the shoe marks he’d receive, otherwise, when I can’t stand the fact he’s once more drooled over my food in the refrigerator, which he unfailingly tries to climb into.
This is a secret plan. Shhhh, I’d probably be fired for even thinking the thought.
Okay, I’m done with my rant. The last dog I’d talk about would be Lucy, but it’s too soon. The dog I’d adopt if I possibly could. I don’t even LIKE dogs that much, they smell and they drool, etc. Except, I’m pretty sure Lucy’s fur smells like roses and she gives the driest kisses of a dog, ever. As in, she keeps her mouth shut. She is the only dog I have ever kissed. Okay, I promise, I’m not going insane. I’m just upset my favorite dog was adopted out, and they didn’t even tell me (as promised) so I could say goodbye.
That’s all on the dogs for now. They’re barking. They say hi.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
AM conversations
I’m sitting, waiting for the library to open, down at the magistrate office. The library doesn’t open until 10, and I misjudged and got here at 9:15. People are here begging to see judges about speeding tickets, about anything they might need a judge for. Turns out this is more interesting anyways, than sitting in that tiny “library.” So I’m eavesdropping on their lives. (The library is in the town hall type building. Apparently they don't value their libraries enough to give them full buildings, just a small amount of floor space in order to say it exists. The magistrate's office is 2 floors down, on the first floor. It's the only place with a lot of chairs, so I can sit almost unnoticed here.)
There’s a woman here begging to get a charge dismissed. She is middle aged, slim, with combed back blond, dyed-looking hair, but in a classy way. Glasses. Jeans and a neat black tshirt. A polished, well-spoken voice.
She says, politely, after being denied on something once—“Let me tell you why I’m here. I’ve spent the last two years of my life in college, trying to improve my life. I lost my job because of a downturn in business, and now I can’t even get a job at Home Depot. I don’t want to end up in Walmart. But I’m having a hard time because of this. I can’t get a job because of this and I just want to go on with my life.”
The woman at the counter says, here’s what you can do—she explains something, and then says that the charge, if compartmentalized a certain way, will come up as “judgment set aside”
So the woman says, she has another charge dismissed because of her completion of a program. And conversation goes back and forth, it’s a little bit lost in the other chatter.
The woman asks what she can put on the job application, until it says, “charges set aside.” She’s told she can’t put “no criminal record” yet, in case they do a check, because as of now it’s still there, until the proceedings go through. She nods her head, says, “okay.” Wishes she had her reading glasses to see the form they pushed through the window for her to sign.
When she walks away, towards me, her hair looks gray, so maybe it was only the light from upstairs hitting it that made it look so blonde. She has more wrinkles than the smooth skin of her arms would have predicted.
Now there’s a woman with a traffic ticket. She’s a little heavier, with baggy light blue pants, and a darker blue shirt. The outfit of lots of past-middle-aged people, cotton and comfortable, but decent looking. Camouflaging in its sameness, and the idea that its age-appropriate, since she’s past wearing form-flattering clothes. She has short, dark gray hair, and dark eyebrows and glasses, and right now her features are all making upside-down triangles on her face, her lips folded in and all her wrinkles pointed down.
—she wants to pay the 190 dollars now and get it over with and not go to court. She’s told she can pay 26 now and get it lowered by going to traffic school. “How much is traffic school?” 103 dollars, apparently. “So ya’ll going to get it one way or the other.” The woman at the counter gives her a form as the lady bangs her wallet down onto the counter. “I haven’t had a ticket in 30 years, and ya’ll—190 dollars.”
As a side note, Prescott Valley is very attentive about their speeding tickets. They park vans all along the roads and hang up cameras, and take pictures of you and send you your tickets. Everyone I’ve met warns me not to speed.
Customers and the lines wander off, and then an older man who’s been hanging around steps forward as a younger man steps out from a door by the window, shaking his head. He grabs the younger man’s arm, and they exchange cautious hello’s. Then they go to sit about five chairs down and talk.
Turns out the younger one is an EMT. He was responding to a call that a woman had died of a heart attack, and crossed an intersection. The conversation isn’t clear at first, why there was an accident, who was at fault, and what happened. From what they say, there’s a video of it (of course) from the intersection, and then they talk in circles until they reconstruct it all in a roundabout, careful way. Emotion is there but it’s held back, and the only way to know they know something, together, is from how familiar they’re being, ready to confess details but each still shaking their heads in some sort of disbelief.
So the EMT is saying, he was driving an ambulance. He went through the intersection and had slowed down, but sped up. And then the truck hit him.
The driver was placed on “unpaid administrative leave” because of the accident and he says it’s not his fault that he was hit when he was crossing the intersection. Turns out he was going 21 when he crossed, then sped up to 35 and so he was faulted for not slowing down enough. But the intersection was apparently hard to see through—with the mountains and other vehicles in the way.
The conversation continues, and it seems that what must have happened was that he took the ambulance through a red light—mentions they don’t have light changing devices here. He went through what looked like an empty intersection, says the video shows him looking “about four times,” but the other guy was coming down through, somehow, and hit the ambulance as he crossed the intersection at the speed limit of 50. The driver of the man in the truck wasn’t charged at all. All that, and the man driving the truck finally says something, referencing the fact that it was him who hit the ambulance, although he never says it directly.
Other guy—“I heard you lost your job and I just wanted to come down and see how you were doing. Worst day of my life too.” Then he goes through the logistics on his side, that he saw the ambulance, but only had a second, and says he thought he tried to avoid it, says he turned the wheel. But his truck wheels were straight when he looked at them afterwards, so he didn’t turn to the left at all. The other guy in the ambulance, the non-driving EMT, was injured. The EMT here says—“I’ll probably never be able to drive any official vehicle again.”
He was young, a little pudgy, wearing a green and brown checked shirt and with blondish hair that was gelled. He told the man, when asked, that he was single, but he hated to borrow money from his parents because that made him “feel like a jerk,” because he couldn’t keep his job and now he had to rely on them.
No one else was in the lobby area. It’s just a row of fairly cushy but basic chairs, dirty, dark red and purple alternating. Some of them were out of sight of the window so I didn’t feel awkward sitting there at first. But then the people who came with their claims were gone, and the noisy background was only intermittent with the starting up and stopping of a generator. Even the pretty girl with a little kid wasn’t there anymore, her daughter having tugged her back upstairs. The mother had a smooth, almost-beautiful face, with darker skin and dark eyes and long dark hair. She was wearing tight navy jeans and a black tanktop, and had a few tattoos on her shoulders. She was waiting for her husband, or at least “Daddy,” as she referenced him to the little girl, Tenisha, who had dusky skin and ringlets of light brown hair. The little girl ran around cutely, screaming occasionally, until she finally got candy, at which point she settled down to clearly be good for the minute, so she could have her peanut m&m’s. I don’t know how old the mom was. Probably early twenties. But she was wearing these black skater sneakers that looked like the kind skater wannabes wear in high school, so maybe she dropped out of high school, never moved on in the fashion department, I don’t know. I didn’t see whether or not she was wearing a ring.
The men’s conversation was continuing but the generator stopped completely. When they started glancing over at me, sitting only a few chairs away, I felt creepy and packed up my computer and left. As I walked away, I heard the man saying to the other, “My wife said it wouldn’t do any good, but I just wanted to see if I could talk to you, and just see how you were doing…”
There’s a woman here begging to get a charge dismissed. She is middle aged, slim, with combed back blond, dyed-looking hair, but in a classy way. Glasses. Jeans and a neat black tshirt. A polished, well-spoken voice.
She says, politely, after being denied on something once—“Let me tell you why I’m here. I’ve spent the last two years of my life in college, trying to improve my life. I lost my job because of a downturn in business, and now I can’t even get a job at Home Depot. I don’t want to end up in Walmart. But I’m having a hard time because of this. I can’t get a job because of this and I just want to go on with my life.”
The woman at the counter says, here’s what you can do—she explains something, and then says that the charge, if compartmentalized a certain way, will come up as “judgment set aside”
So the woman says, she has another charge dismissed because of her completion of a program. And conversation goes back and forth, it’s a little bit lost in the other chatter.
The woman asks what she can put on the job application, until it says, “charges set aside.” She’s told she can’t put “no criminal record” yet, in case they do a check, because as of now it’s still there, until the proceedings go through. She nods her head, says, “okay.” Wishes she had her reading glasses to see the form they pushed through the window for her to sign.
When she walks away, towards me, her hair looks gray, so maybe it was only the light from upstairs hitting it that made it look so blonde. She has more wrinkles than the smooth skin of her arms would have predicted.
Now there’s a woman with a traffic ticket. She’s a little heavier, with baggy light blue pants, and a darker blue shirt. The outfit of lots of past-middle-aged people, cotton and comfortable, but decent looking. Camouflaging in its sameness, and the idea that its age-appropriate, since she’s past wearing form-flattering clothes. She has short, dark gray hair, and dark eyebrows and glasses, and right now her features are all making upside-down triangles on her face, her lips folded in and all her wrinkles pointed down.
—she wants to pay the 190 dollars now and get it over with and not go to court. She’s told she can pay 26 now and get it lowered by going to traffic school. “How much is traffic school?” 103 dollars, apparently. “So ya’ll going to get it one way or the other.” The woman at the counter gives her a form as the lady bangs her wallet down onto the counter. “I haven’t had a ticket in 30 years, and ya’ll—190 dollars.”
As a side note, Prescott Valley is very attentive about their speeding tickets. They park vans all along the roads and hang up cameras, and take pictures of you and send you your tickets. Everyone I’ve met warns me not to speed.
Customers and the lines wander off, and then an older man who’s been hanging around steps forward as a younger man steps out from a door by the window, shaking his head. He grabs the younger man’s arm, and they exchange cautious hello’s. Then they go to sit about five chairs down and talk.
Turns out the younger one is an EMT. He was responding to a call that a woman had died of a heart attack, and crossed an intersection. The conversation isn’t clear at first, why there was an accident, who was at fault, and what happened. From what they say, there’s a video of it (of course) from the intersection, and then they talk in circles until they reconstruct it all in a roundabout, careful way. Emotion is there but it’s held back, and the only way to know they know something, together, is from how familiar they’re being, ready to confess details but each still shaking their heads in some sort of disbelief.
So the EMT is saying, he was driving an ambulance. He went through the intersection and had slowed down, but sped up. And then the truck hit him.
The driver was placed on “unpaid administrative leave” because of the accident and he says it’s not his fault that he was hit when he was crossing the intersection. Turns out he was going 21 when he crossed, then sped up to 35 and so he was faulted for not slowing down enough. But the intersection was apparently hard to see through—with the mountains and other vehicles in the way.
The conversation continues, and it seems that what must have happened was that he took the ambulance through a red light—mentions they don’t have light changing devices here. He went through what looked like an empty intersection, says the video shows him looking “about four times,” but the other guy was coming down through, somehow, and hit the ambulance as he crossed the intersection at the speed limit of 50. The driver of the man in the truck wasn’t charged at all. All that, and the man driving the truck finally says something, referencing the fact that it was him who hit the ambulance, although he never says it directly.
Other guy—“I heard you lost your job and I just wanted to come down and see how you were doing. Worst day of my life too.” Then he goes through the logistics on his side, that he saw the ambulance, but only had a second, and says he thought he tried to avoid it, says he turned the wheel. But his truck wheels were straight when he looked at them afterwards, so he didn’t turn to the left at all. The other guy in the ambulance, the non-driving EMT, was injured. The EMT here says—“I’ll probably never be able to drive any official vehicle again.”
He was young, a little pudgy, wearing a green and brown checked shirt and with blondish hair that was gelled. He told the man, when asked, that he was single, but he hated to borrow money from his parents because that made him “feel like a jerk,” because he couldn’t keep his job and now he had to rely on them.
No one else was in the lobby area. It’s just a row of fairly cushy but basic chairs, dirty, dark red and purple alternating. Some of them were out of sight of the window so I didn’t feel awkward sitting there at first. But then the people who came with their claims were gone, and the noisy background was only intermittent with the starting up and stopping of a generator. Even the pretty girl with a little kid wasn’t there anymore, her daughter having tugged her back upstairs. The mother had a smooth, almost-beautiful face, with darker skin and dark eyes and long dark hair. She was wearing tight navy jeans and a black tanktop, and had a few tattoos on her shoulders. She was waiting for her husband, or at least “Daddy,” as she referenced him to the little girl, Tenisha, who had dusky skin and ringlets of light brown hair. The little girl ran around cutely, screaming occasionally, until she finally got candy, at which point she settled down to clearly be good for the minute, so she could have her peanut m&m’s. I don’t know how old the mom was. Probably early twenties. But she was wearing these black skater sneakers that looked like the kind skater wannabes wear in high school, so maybe she dropped out of high school, never moved on in the fashion department, I don’t know. I didn’t see whether or not she was wearing a ring.
The men’s conversation was continuing but the generator stopped completely. When they started glancing over at me, sitting only a few chairs away, I felt creepy and packed up my computer and left. As I walked away, I heard the man saying to the other, “My wife said it wouldn’t do any good, but I just wanted to see if I could talk to you, and just see how you were doing…”
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Sedona daytrip
Today I journeyed to Sedona. The weather being perfect, the truck being friendly, and the radio station playing good songs, I considered making the 100 more mile trek to the Grand Canyon, since I want to see it so badly. Of course, the truck had none of this. The thing needs a name, cause it definitely has a personality. I get maybe a mile past the Sedona exit, and all of a sudden it downshifts and slows down to about 40 miles an hour. So I pump the gas, which sometimes works, and the vehicle bucked a little, and then I smelled burning rubber. Shit. I got to the shoulder, which fortunately is a heck of a lot wider on 17 than it is on 89A, and puttered there around 35mph, which is all it would go before revving and growling and pissing at me. So I stopped for a moment and let it breathe. Figuring anger wasn’t the best route, I patted it nicely and started it back up again. Gently accelerating, I worked it up to 50—the speed limit was 75, the truck’s given max speed 85—and got to the next exit. Having gotten its way, the truck proceeded to take me very nicely into Sedona.
I guess I can’t fault the truck too much, because Sedona was one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen. Dust by the side of the road turns red, and then all of a sudden the tan, green-scrub covered trees show red streaks, and then the trees get sparser, and all of a sudden red rock formations start popping up into the blue sky everywhere. It was amazing. So beautiful, I didn’t even mind that the map didn’t mark the difference between 89S and 89N, so I headed for about 10 miles in the “wrong” direction, thus traversing more of the forested area and seeing gorgeous red rolling mountains spread out from the rather gently (compared to last week) winding road.
But finally I got on path, and drove some down Dry Creek Rd, which takes you back into the barer mountains, where trail heads dot the sides of the road (unmarked, slyly enough) and mountains stand there to be climbed. Perusing the newspaper listing climbs, I found one that was not only recommended, a good distance, and the “strenuous” level, but also on a road I recognized from being on. Bear Mountain. I don’t know how, but somehow I pulled right into the correct trailhead. Score for navigation skills…luck…whatever…
Bear Mountain was a sort of rectangular-looking tower of rock, rising like a rhombus out of a hilly incline. The trails aren’t blazed, you just go where the apparently obvious trail leads. Of course, obvious is relative, given that the mountain is rocky, so it’s not like you’re winding through trees and when the undergrowth gets thicker, you know you may be heading off in the wrong direction. Instead, you avoid the prickly pear and the yucca plants, and hope you’re following the correct bare path of rock. My only major sidetrack was up a wash, where I went straight instead of turning right. After doing some all-four-appendages climbing, ducking under a giant cactus, and turning to find myself clutching a sloping side of the mountain that, while not exactly a prepicice over drop off or anything, looked like it would hurt to slide down, I deduced that I was not on the correct part of the trail. Since “strenuous” hadn’t actually been modified to also mean “dangerous,” I decided there was probably another way to the summit. I crabwalked back down the wash, got back onto the path, and proceeded to the summit, where buzzards cawed and circled, riding the updrafts over the mountains and the valley.
To the right were more tall rock formations, rising past a rock ledge that jutted out like a cliff around some lower winding mountains. To the left were other rock formations, before the whole canyon opened up and it was green valley floor—green being the hardy cactuses, small shrubs, and wiry grass that grew. The floor was traversed by red cracks where the dry earth had opened up, like a giant piece of clay fired too long in the kiln, glazed first with crackly green porcelain color. The sky couldn’t have been more blue. Too bad I’m not a painter, I just wanted to draw and paint as I sat up there and watched the few white clouds move behind the rock towers, darkening the rocks over which they passed from red to maroon and gray.
Then it was time for the descent, less exciting than the climb, but with even more beautiful views. Of course my camera died about ¾ of the way up, but it was enough to just watch the sights change with the descent. An easy, pretty drive home, and then a yummy Arby’s dinner to finish off the day (couldn’t resist their curly fries) and then to find that crazy Chris, co manager of the dog side of things here, was fired and so I should be on the watch for an angry rampage, although that was unlikely and people would be there to prevent it just in case.
Best day off yet
I guess I can’t fault the truck too much, because Sedona was one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen. Dust by the side of the road turns red, and then all of a sudden the tan, green-scrub covered trees show red streaks, and then the trees get sparser, and all of a sudden red rock formations start popping up into the blue sky everywhere. It was amazing. So beautiful, I didn’t even mind that the map didn’t mark the difference between 89S and 89N, so I headed for about 10 miles in the “wrong” direction, thus traversing more of the forested area and seeing gorgeous red rolling mountains spread out from the rather gently (compared to last week) winding road.
But finally I got on path, and drove some down Dry Creek Rd, which takes you back into the barer mountains, where trail heads dot the sides of the road (unmarked, slyly enough) and mountains stand there to be climbed. Perusing the newspaper listing climbs, I found one that was not only recommended, a good distance, and the “strenuous” level, but also on a road I recognized from being on. Bear Mountain. I don’t know how, but somehow I pulled right into the correct trailhead. Score for navigation skills…luck…whatever…
Bear Mountain was a sort of rectangular-looking tower of rock, rising like a rhombus out of a hilly incline. The trails aren’t blazed, you just go where the apparently obvious trail leads. Of course, obvious is relative, given that the mountain is rocky, so it’s not like you’re winding through trees and when the undergrowth gets thicker, you know you may be heading off in the wrong direction. Instead, you avoid the prickly pear and the yucca plants, and hope you’re following the correct bare path of rock. My only major sidetrack was up a wash, where I went straight instead of turning right. After doing some all-four-appendages climbing, ducking under a giant cactus, and turning to find myself clutching a sloping side of the mountain that, while not exactly a prepicice over drop off or anything, looked like it would hurt to slide down, I deduced that I was not on the correct part of the trail. Since “strenuous” hadn’t actually been modified to also mean “dangerous,” I decided there was probably another way to the summit. I crabwalked back down the wash, got back onto the path, and proceeded to the summit, where buzzards cawed and circled, riding the updrafts over the mountains and the valley.
To the right were more tall rock formations, rising past a rock ledge that jutted out like a cliff around some lower winding mountains. To the left were other rock formations, before the whole canyon opened up and it was green valley floor—green being the hardy cactuses, small shrubs, and wiry grass that grew. The floor was traversed by red cracks where the dry earth had opened up, like a giant piece of clay fired too long in the kiln, glazed first with crackly green porcelain color. The sky couldn’t have been more blue. Too bad I’m not a painter, I just wanted to draw and paint as I sat up there and watched the few white clouds move behind the rock towers, darkening the rocks over which they passed from red to maroon and gray.
Then it was time for the descent, less exciting than the climb, but with even more beautiful views. Of course my camera died about ¾ of the way up, but it was enough to just watch the sights change with the descent. An easy, pretty drive home, and then a yummy Arby’s dinner to finish off the day (couldn’t resist their curly fries) and then to find that crazy Chris, co manager of the dog side of things here, was fired and so I should be on the watch for an angry rampage, although that was unlikely and people would be there to prevent it just in case.
Best day off yet
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
First Day Off
So, yesterday being my first day off in seven days at the ranch, I thought it would be nice to sleep in. Funny that the dogs don't agree to cooperate on that one. I dragged out my 5ish wake up time to 6 or 630 before their barking drove me nuts and I got up anyways. I had a relaxing breakfast--read: I had tea and read the news while the dogs went nuts around me--and then decided it was time to head to Jerome.
Jerome is this tiny town a mile above sea level, or, about 2000 feet above Prescott Valley’s 5026 feet. It was once a big mining town, both gold and copper, before they stripped the mines in their response to World War II needs, and everything else before that. In 1957, it was declared a “ghost town,” and, instead of dying off entirely, the remaining residents decided to take advantage of their label, and turn it into a tourist destination. Consequently, Jerome became an “artsy” town, full of pretty art galleries and gift shops, and restaurants. Thinking this a great destination to celebrate my day of freedom from the dogs, I naively set off in the 1983 Chevy Silverado, the ranch vehicle I was also informed I could use for personal use.
The road to Jerome, I89 N, is flat for about 10 miles. And then, it hits the Mingus Mountains, the start of the Prescott State and National forest. Immediately, the road begins to climb. In a mile or so, it becomes a narrow 2 lane road that winds around the mountains. It is literally chiseled into the rock, so that there are at least 8 miles of drop offs on the way—the guard rail the only barrier between you and the rocky fall-offs, so you can look ahead and see parts of the road winding around in front of you, and how much more terrifying terrain you have to cover before it goes around another crazy switchback. It probably wouldn’t have been that bad, had I not been in that stupid truck. Cars lined up behind me as I guided it, shaking (and by shaking, I’m referring to both me AND the truck, the truck probably a little more violently) around those turns.
The cars behind me kept speeding over the double lines to pass me with ease, so, I’m sure the road gets easier with use, although I couldn’t help thinking I’d much rather be driving it in a Mario Kart game, instead of in real life.
Anyways, I get there and proceed to the first tourist trap, the actual “ghost town.” It’s up where the mine used to be, where people would live so they could just start their day right up in the rocky hills, without the extra mile from Jerome. Would have been cool, if the town had provided any direct information about itself. Instead, it was just a bunch of falling down buildings, as well as gutted old cars. The thin old lady at the desk lisped to me, “there’s a lot of history there, and we have a donkey named Pedro, and some chickens you can feed.” Not bothering to tell her it was my day off from feeding animals, I went and walked around, and saw more car parts than I’d ever seen in my life, some chintzy old signs, and came back. “What are those cars from?” I asked her. “Oh, the current owner just dragged them up here. He’s been collecting for a while.”
Minus the strangeness of all the cars perched up there with no one to see them, obscuring the “ghost town” itself (the cars are in no way advertized as part of it) I couldn’t help but think of getting those cars there. “Oh yes,” the lady assured me, patting back her hair. “He drives some of those up.”
Okay. People here are weird. Insane, probably.
After the ‘ghost town,’ I wandered through some of main Jerome, going to the Mining Museum, where finally I learned a little more about the town. It had its sheriffs and its prostitutes and its miners, and apparently at one time was named by the New York Sun as being the “wickedest town in the west.” The biggest thing of note was that, in 1958, when the town decided to make its living off of tourists, it also instituted a stock car race up I89. I’m not sure why there was no more information about this, given that, according to my drive up there, racing cars on that road would make rodeos look tame. But since there wasn’t, I ventured to the gift shops.
After making my obligatory tourist purchases, I got caught in a sudden hail storm. So I took shelter in the Haunted Hamburger (a restaurant located in an old asylum, which is now a hotel) After weathering a power outage, they finally served me up my meat, I mean, lunch. Yay, a hamburger! Don’t tell Dr. Deb, but I’ve decided digestive juices will very nicely keep the meat from actually rotting in my colon. Mmmm, tasty.
I walked around a little more, but when it cleared up I decided to take the road when it was dry, and to check out the local library in Prescott Valley. Apparently, the valley isn’t huge on their books. The library is located on one floor of their small “civic center,” which clearly they spent more money to make it into some wacky glass structure than on its contents, and since I can’t get a card, it doesn’t help me much that they have one full shelf devoted to “westerns” and about 6 shelves of books total, so I can’t even ‘order’ books from nearby libraries. At least there were no dogs there…
I went outside, it being around 5:30, to go home, and turned the key to find no response. Like an idiot I’d left the lights on and the battery had died. I called Rory, who said he’d rescue me, a minute after which the looming storm hit the valley, and so we jumped the truck in a lightning storm.
So, basically, that was enough of an adventure for the week. I figure, I’ll hang out here til the dogs drive me crazy. Considering they’ve been barking all night and morning, cause of the thunder in the night, and feeding a few hours ago, I’m impressed I’ve been here so long…then again, they’ve quieted down, and I’m a bit wiped from my first run at 5000 feet elevation here, so who knows, maybe I’ll last the day.
Oh, and see my pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/zephyr0513/20080910RanchAndRodeoAndJerome?authkey=XgvyUEtfpXM#
They'll keep updating too, as I add them
Jerome is this tiny town a mile above sea level, or, about 2000 feet above Prescott Valley’s 5026 feet. It was once a big mining town, both gold and copper, before they stripped the mines in their response to World War II needs, and everything else before that. In 1957, it was declared a “ghost town,” and, instead of dying off entirely, the remaining residents decided to take advantage of their label, and turn it into a tourist destination. Consequently, Jerome became an “artsy” town, full of pretty art galleries and gift shops, and restaurants. Thinking this a great destination to celebrate my day of freedom from the dogs, I naively set off in the 1983 Chevy Silverado, the ranch vehicle I was also informed I could use for personal use.
The road to Jerome, I89 N, is flat for about 10 miles. And then, it hits the Mingus Mountains, the start of the Prescott State and National forest. Immediately, the road begins to climb. In a mile or so, it becomes a narrow 2 lane road that winds around the mountains. It is literally chiseled into the rock, so that there are at least 8 miles of drop offs on the way—the guard rail the only barrier between you and the rocky fall-offs, so you can look ahead and see parts of the road winding around in front of you, and how much more terrifying terrain you have to cover before it goes around another crazy switchback. It probably wouldn’t have been that bad, had I not been in that stupid truck. Cars lined up behind me as I guided it, shaking (and by shaking, I’m referring to both me AND the truck, the truck probably a little more violently) around those turns.
The cars behind me kept speeding over the double lines to pass me with ease, so, I’m sure the road gets easier with use, although I couldn’t help thinking I’d much rather be driving it in a Mario Kart game, instead of in real life.
Anyways, I get there and proceed to the first tourist trap, the actual “ghost town.” It’s up where the mine used to be, where people would live so they could just start their day right up in the rocky hills, without the extra mile from Jerome. Would have been cool, if the town had provided any direct information about itself. Instead, it was just a bunch of falling down buildings, as well as gutted old cars. The thin old lady at the desk lisped to me, “there’s a lot of history there, and we have a donkey named Pedro, and some chickens you can feed.” Not bothering to tell her it was my day off from feeding animals, I went and walked around, and saw more car parts than I’d ever seen in my life, some chintzy old signs, and came back. “What are those cars from?” I asked her. “Oh, the current owner just dragged them up here. He’s been collecting for a while.”
Minus the strangeness of all the cars perched up there with no one to see them, obscuring the “ghost town” itself (the cars are in no way advertized as part of it) I couldn’t help but think of getting those cars there. “Oh yes,” the lady assured me, patting back her hair. “He drives some of those up.”
Okay. People here are weird. Insane, probably.
After the ‘ghost town,’ I wandered through some of main Jerome, going to the Mining Museum, where finally I learned a little more about the town. It had its sheriffs and its prostitutes and its miners, and apparently at one time was named by the New York Sun as being the “wickedest town in the west.” The biggest thing of note was that, in 1958, when the town decided to make its living off of tourists, it also instituted a stock car race up I89. I’m not sure why there was no more information about this, given that, according to my drive up there, racing cars on that road would make rodeos look tame. But since there wasn’t, I ventured to the gift shops.
After making my obligatory tourist purchases, I got caught in a sudden hail storm. So I took shelter in the Haunted Hamburger (a restaurant located in an old asylum, which is now a hotel) After weathering a power outage, they finally served me up my meat, I mean, lunch. Yay, a hamburger! Don’t tell Dr. Deb, but I’ve decided digestive juices will very nicely keep the meat from actually rotting in my colon. Mmmm, tasty.
I walked around a little more, but when it cleared up I decided to take the road when it was dry, and to check out the local library in Prescott Valley. Apparently, the valley isn’t huge on their books. The library is located on one floor of their small “civic center,” which clearly they spent more money to make it into some wacky glass structure than on its contents, and since I can’t get a card, it doesn’t help me much that they have one full shelf devoted to “westerns” and about 6 shelves of books total, so I can’t even ‘order’ books from nearby libraries. At least there were no dogs there…
I went outside, it being around 5:30, to go home, and turned the key to find no response. Like an idiot I’d left the lights on and the battery had died. I called Rory, who said he’d rescue me, a minute after which the looming storm hit the valley, and so we jumped the truck in a lightning storm.
So, basically, that was enough of an adventure for the week. I figure, I’ll hang out here til the dogs drive me crazy. Considering they’ve been barking all night and morning, cause of the thunder in the night, and feeding a few hours ago, I’m impressed I’ve been here so long…then again, they’ve quieted down, and I’m a bit wiped from my first run at 5000 feet elevation here, so who knows, maybe I’ll last the day.
Oh, and see my pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/zephyr0513/20080910RanchAndRodeoAndJerome?authkey=XgvyUEtfpXM#
They'll keep updating too, as I add them
Monday, September 8, 2008
Arizona Politics
Two nights ago, I went to a rodeo. (Shh, don’t tell Dr. Deb, she’d probably fire me for supporting cruelty to animals and all that leather.) There were two major things I learned: 1) Never become a real cowboy/girl so as to hope to live past 30, and 2) do not say anything too loudly about being liberal.
First lesson number one: being a cowboy is practically the most dangerous thing ever. These guys, for a living, get on a horse or giant bull that has never been trained and pretty much hates people, piss it off with their spurs just a little more, and then try and spend 8 seconds on a thing that is bucking it’s legs and back about six feet high in the air atleast. Oh yeah, and then get out of the way if they are thrown, or get off, if they make it for the full 8 seconds.
Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard of cowboys before. But after spending days with fairly tame horses in pens, and having been simply stepped on by a flighty one who we were trying to treat and getting a big black toe, umm, the whole thing becomes a little more real; horses are huge...
One guy stayed on this insane horse for 8 seconds, and then when the guys on horses trained to rescue them came for him, the bucking horse just took off. Three seconds later, he’d bucked up against a fence, throwing the guy into and over it. He got up…it took a while. Then there was the bronco who threw his guy over his head and then jumped over and around him. Somehow the guy’s head wasn’t squashed in, either, but hey, half an inch closer and the guy would have been dead. Good thing the horses don’t want to trip themselves up on the bundle of idiot flailing around beneath them, or those guys wouldn’t have had a chance. The meaner bulls, on the other hand, took off after their riders, apparently holding it against them for trying to get on their back, hold onto a strap that’s squeezing the animal’s testicles, and stay there for a while. There were 18 year olds who looked like they’d probably walk hunched over by the time they were 30. Keep in mind not everyone was so concerned. As I gasped and groaned and covered my eyes, the three little girls in front of me turned around and laughed at me every time. Okay, so, fine. I also can't watch scary movies. But like, people legit die during these things! I mean, I'm assuming they do, I guess cause my thinking is, umm, how could they not? And then my co-worker Rory was like, “Oh, so sweet, I’m totally gonna try riding one of those bareback sometime.”
Okay Rory. Have fun with that…
Lesson number two:
This was given when, to create a diversion, the announcer started making idle chitchat.
“Who’s a Hillary Clinton fan in here?” he asked. There was silence. Not that the crowd was interacting much in general, so we from the ranch just looked at each other and snickered. Then it got serious.
“Who likes Osama’s cousin, Obama?”
Now the crowd started to boo. Umm, what? Did that actually just happen?
And then: “Who likes McCain?”
Crowd goes wild cheering.
“Yeah! Because who loves freedom?”
More cheers.
We stood our ground with a few half-hearted boos…but then we sort skipped to raising our eyebrows…because, umm, yikes. Way too many large strong rednecked people that it is really NOT a good idea to piss off…
So I learned--Liberalism off of Circle L Ranch is apparently not something you should promote?
First lesson number one: being a cowboy is practically the most dangerous thing ever. These guys, for a living, get on a horse or giant bull that has never been trained and pretty much hates people, piss it off with their spurs just a little more, and then try and spend 8 seconds on a thing that is bucking it’s legs and back about six feet high in the air atleast. Oh yeah, and then get out of the way if they are thrown, or get off, if they make it for the full 8 seconds.
Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard of cowboys before. But after spending days with fairly tame horses in pens, and having been simply stepped on by a flighty one who we were trying to treat and getting a big black toe, umm, the whole thing becomes a little more real; horses are huge...
One guy stayed on this insane horse for 8 seconds, and then when the guys on horses trained to rescue them came for him, the bucking horse just took off. Three seconds later, he’d bucked up against a fence, throwing the guy into and over it. He got up…it took a while. Then there was the bronco who threw his guy over his head and then jumped over and around him. Somehow the guy’s head wasn’t squashed in, either, but hey, half an inch closer and the guy would have been dead. Good thing the horses don’t want to trip themselves up on the bundle of idiot flailing around beneath them, or those guys wouldn’t have had a chance. The meaner bulls, on the other hand, took off after their riders, apparently holding it against them for trying to get on their back, hold onto a strap that’s squeezing the animal’s testicles, and stay there for a while. There were 18 year olds who looked like they’d probably walk hunched over by the time they were 30. Keep in mind not everyone was so concerned. As I gasped and groaned and covered my eyes, the three little girls in front of me turned around and laughed at me every time. Okay, so, fine. I also can't watch scary movies. But like, people legit die during these things! I mean, I'm assuming they do, I guess cause my thinking is, umm, how could they not? And then my co-worker Rory was like, “Oh, so sweet, I’m totally gonna try riding one of those bareback sometime.”
Okay Rory. Have fun with that…
Lesson number two:
This was given when, to create a diversion, the announcer started making idle chitchat.
“Who’s a Hillary Clinton fan in here?” he asked. There was silence. Not that the crowd was interacting much in general, so we from the ranch just looked at each other and snickered. Then it got serious.
“Who likes Osama’s cousin, Obama?”
Now the crowd started to boo. Umm, what? Did that actually just happen?
And then: “Who likes McCain?”
Crowd goes wild cheering.
“Yeah! Because who loves freedom?”
More cheers.
We stood our ground with a few half-hearted boos…but then we sort skipped to raising our eyebrows…because, umm, yikes. Way too many large strong rednecked people that it is really NOT a good idea to piss off…
So I learned--Liberalism off of Circle L Ranch is apparently not something you should promote?
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