It was not, however, barren of radio frequencies. For a change of pace, I tuned to some very conservative Christian radio and listened to their arguements for awhile. They also had a few massive way stations- small complexes of gas stations which included dairy queens, subways, tourist stores selling Mexican pottery and blankets, leather goods, cheap jewellery, cacti, decorative knives, rattlesnake head keychains,… and fireworks.
I was tasked actually, with sourcing some sparklers for mom’s wedding, so I was able to pick up a few packs. I’ve never bought fireworks before, let alone LIT fireworks, so I guessed on what to buy. “Sparklers” is kind of a dead giveaway. And dirt cheap.
My grandma Case arranged my accommodation in Albuquerque. Apparently, her cousin Richard has lived there and had a house there for many years, so she called him up to see if I could crash his couch for the night. He agreed to the idea and I spoke to him on the phone and arranged to meet him around six. I found his house with the free wifi at gas station on the road, so when I called him, I was already on his street to confirm I had the right address.
Richard’s dad came out west with the army in the 1950s, and he built his own small house of cinderblock and stucco. It’s a small place, only two bedroom, without central air conditioning or a showerhead. The wood floor was raised above a crawlspace, and the house was heated by a floor furnace. A floor furnace, the first time I’ve ever seen one actually, is a basically a gas powered furnace that blows air straight up through a metal grille. I guess if your house is small enough, you can heat it well enough. Not a fan of the big grille in the middle of the living room though.
Richard was a lean, white haired, septugenarian, whose fair skin, face, and piercing pale blue eyes really resembled my grandma Betty, his cousin. Richard lived with his little buddy, a rather cute little dog which was a crossbreed of a chihuaha and a spaniel, named Buster. I liked his oversized fuzzy ears.
For dinner, we went out for burritos at a local Taco Cabana. Not bad, really. Good barbacoa. We talked about this and that, mostly Richard talking. He talked about my grandpa Case and his cars and his fast boats on the lake. When we got back we got to talking about his gold prospecting. Grandma had mentioned that he prospected for gold as a hobby- so I imaged him out in the river, panning, but it turns out he’s a lot more involved than that.
Richard actually has a degree in chemical engineering, and he’s worked for the US Geological service, so he is actually pretty well prepared to dig, slice, and analyize. I was pretty impressed- out propecting near town, he found some rock that looked promising, and then had samples cut, polished, and sent to two labs for analysis- one in Canada which belonged to a Canadian metal mining outfit and the other was sent to a New Mexico mineral laboratory, where it was analyized with a mass spectrometer and electron microscope to identifty the various metals in the rock. He showed me a tiny fleck of gold visible to the eye in one of the chunks of rock, which he admitted was really rare. Most metal extraction, actually, consists of grinding up rock to the size of the flecks of metal, and then leaching it out with solvents. Not quite the portly bearded mountain man with the pickaxe.
I did actually get to see the “constellation” of gold via a 20x loupe in the tiny slice of sample he sent to the New Mexico lab, so that was pretty cool. We turned on his TV and adjusted the rabbit ears to catch the next day’s forecast for my drive into Phoenix. I’d kind of been thinking about coming by way of Tucson, since I wanted to visit with Cassie while I was in town, and the strong potential for snowstorms up along the rim and north clinched the deal.
Without a showerhead, I didn’t really feel like a tub bath, so I opted to just wash my face and head to bed. And by bed, I mean “couch.” Hard to fall asleep- and I didn’t sleep well. Richard did what he could to make me comfortable though. I did end up getting a few hours of sleep.
Richard got up by 6:30 and I rose with him. He offered me some juice and cereal, but I declined and decided to just hit the road to see if I could get some breakfast where I could get a side order of WiFi. Stopped into a McD on the way south. Rode along the Camino Real, the old Spanish road which connected the regional capital of Santa Fe with other cities in northern Mexico. Santa Fe, as it turned out, is the oldest capital in the US, founded by the Spanish conquistadors in the time where the east coast settlers hadn’t even arrived.
The drive to Tucson was windy, really gusty. Got terrible milage and the wind blew me around all over the place. I always have mixed feelings about Tucson. On the one hand, it feels like the authentic soul of Arizona. On the other hand, its such a podunk town. Stuck behind a woman driving twenty miles an hour in the left hand lane, all I could think was “What Happens in Tucson, Happens Slowly.”
Got to Tucson around 3, and met up with Cassie at her new place. She shares a cute house with her boyfriend- the interior is filled with saltillo tile floors, and there’s bright Mexican painted tile everywhere, It’s a very cheerful place. We walked to a nearby coffee shop and talked for an hour or two, just catching up with each other’s lives.
Left Tucson in the early evening, as the sun was beginning to go down. The drive from Phoenix was some of the worst driving of the trip- downpouring of rain, low visibility, darkness. Thankfully, it did finally clear in the last half-hour, so I was able to finish the last leg of my car journey with clearer skies, blasting Vitalic on my speakers.
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