Shuffleboard is more cut throat than it appears.
Before these players take a shot, they consult, put chalk on their hands,look at the weather, visualize their stride.
You are the one responsible for propelling your disc down a slick, treacherous court. You live or die by your own hand.
In this game, strength is not needed, but steady nerves, strategy, and touch are critical. Your only uniform is a good pair of tennis shoes, loose fitting clothes and a cap.
There is no crying here because these are grownups who know the odds, and the score.
The only thing harder than playing shuffleboard here is playing shuffleboard on a cruise ship, with rough waves.
I wouldn’t play shuffleboard against any of these old people, man or woman.
I know sharks when I see them and old sharks are particularly dangerous.
The Rincon Railroad is for kids at heart.
Around the corner from the front office, the railroad town of Rincon has been created. On certain days of the week, on a strict schedule, railroad caps are donned, engine whistles toot, and trains roll around five different sets of tracks.
Frosty’s Diner is a favorite fifties stop on this line, and, if a visitor pushes a red button by the side of the tracks, jukebox music takes you back to when these railroad men were kids.
Inside, chocolate shakes are thick, hamburgers are bigger than the buns, a waitress named Flo tells her annoying customers to ” Kiss My Grits. ”
I would love to eat here but I am too big to fit inside the car.
We have borders.
Our skin is our closest border, a barrier that keeps bacteria and viruses out, gives us our particular shape and size, allows us to be flexible and move with agility.
Our minds have borders that allow us to go as far as we think we can.
Countries also have borders that keep them independent and sovereign.
This border check, on Arizona Highway 19, is between Nogales and Tucson.
Cars going north, further into Arizona and the United States, come to a standstill as border agents stop us and ask – ” Are you American citizens?
German shepherd dogs, on leashes, walk around our vehicle with their specially trained noses looking for drugs and contraband. A uniformed Border Patrol agent peers through the car window at us as we go through his check and answer his questions till he gives us a quick visual once over and waves us through.
Open borders is a compassionate political theory, but, at night, do we leave our front doors open and hang a Welcome sign on our refrigerator?
Why does migration seem to be always going in the same direction, from less economically viable countries to places with more opportunity?
For better and worse, at some point, people always vote against borders with their feet.
Art flourishes in the desert.
At the Tubac Art Festival, streets are closed to traffic, excepting horse drawn wagons, and tents are being set up while parking attendants put on their lime colored jackets and sunscreen.
Two of the parking lots are already full of cars by ten thirty, and, in the third lot, sightseers are getting their shoes dusty walking across dirt fields towards the Art Festival. Tubac is festive and shows us old and new restaurants, galleries, gift shops, restaurants, bars, white tents sheltering festival exhibitors.
Tubac is off Highway 19, between Tucson and Nogales, and, according to my brother Alan, who was here some years ago, looks different than it was.
” None of that was here, ” he remarks and points at a cluster of shops, each one trying to attract buyers with signs and special sales.
February is a prime time of the year for retailers here and a proprietor shows us his hand woven rugs from around the world as we zip into his shop to look at western artifacts.
” Is it hard to make it here in the summer, ” I ask?
The man squints a bit as if he were outside in a spotlight sun.
” We do the best we can, ” he says, ” you have to be adaptable. ”
This annual festival will draw thousands and some will buy. Most will look, socialize, eat, deal with parking and logistics, take pictures and enjoy the event.
Art, for me, is always a festival.
I buy something small by a Chinese man who does watercolors of goldfish and I bet the ones he drew, and filled in with color, were part of his dinner last night.
Art, in the East, is as far from cowboys and Indians as you can get.
After Spanish explorers conquered Central and South America, they scoured the present states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Utah and Nevada searching for lost cities of gold. Motivated by faith, Spanish priests established missions for the conversion of natives to Catholicism. These missions, outposts of European civilization, still operate, draw modern men seeking their ancient roots.
The Mission San Xavier is south of Tucson and it’s construction was finished in 1797. One of the mission’s two towers has recently been restored and funds are currently being saved to restore the second one to it’s original condition.
The church interior, though small, is intimate and shows icons of the Catholic church, carved saints, candles, Holy Water, wood carvings, high ceilings and stained glass.
Early morning, these church courtyards are in shadows, bells are silent, doors are ajar and tourists snuggle in warm coats as they file into the small church to say their prayers.
Churches built by hand, with wooden dowels, seem more trustworthy than those built with power drills, metal studs, with huge HVAC systems.
The Holy Water is in a metal container, on a chair, in a hallway, with little paper cups to drink from instead of a long heavy ladle.
This water has been blessed, and, in a torrid desert landscape like this, water is always Holy, whether it is blessed or not.
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