Life in a Small Village: Errors of Youth and Age

“It’s a public street! Anyone can park there all day, and it's not illegal!” 

 

True, but parking in front of someone else’s business all day, rather than parking in one of the several lots around the village, can be a serious inconvenience to the business owner and to his or her customers or clients. Actions can be inconsiderate without being illegal.

 

Many errors of youth result from inexperience. The young, after all, have never been old! On the other hand, errors of age can easily result from forgetting what it was like to be young. 

 

If we explain calmly and gently, in a friendly manner, to a young person why something they’re doing is working against us, aren’t we more likely to find a receptive audience? All too often, though, an offended old person simply launches instead into a tirade about the inconsiderateness of youth. (A perennial topic throughout human history!)

 

Will a gentle correction really work? Not always, of course. It seems to be human nature that most of us -- at any age -- are embarrassed to be wrong about anything or to hurt someone unwittingly, and embarrassment easily gives rise to defensiveness that comes out in anger. But isn’t the angry “correction” much more likely to be met with defensive anger? 

 

In a small village, pretty much everything becomes personal after a while, and just as happens in a family, daily proximity alone can sometimes be an irritant. Consideration for each other can be a soothing ointment and keep us all happier if we apply it more often. 

Back to the Ghost Town

Return to the West, VI: Back to the Ghost Town

How often this past winter I have returned in memory and imagination to last winter in Dos Cabezas! It would not be everyone’s dream getaway, as it was, quite literally, a ghost town: we had to drive fourteen miles (to a real town) to find so much as a cup of coffee, let alone library, post office, and stores; we only met four neighbors during our entire three months’ residence; we had no cell phone signal; and traffic on the two-lane highway past the cabin was limited to other inhabitants of ghost town and neighboring ranches; travelers between Willcox and the Chiricahua National Monument; U.S. Border Patrol vehicles; and cows.

“Cows,” the generic Western label for adult cattle, regardless of sex, and whether natural or “fixed.” Cows and calves. Beyond the area of scattered houses and adobe ruins the land was fenced to keep cattle in, but Dos Cabezas itself, paradoxically, was open range, with cattle guards across the highway at both ends of town. Anyone who wanted to keep cows out of their yards or gardens had to put up their own fences.

The cabin we rented sat high off the highway. It looked down on the highway in front and off through the wash to the mountains in back. In front were two big metal livestock gates, painted green, but no fence surrounding the property. Cows could, and therefore did, come right up to the door. Cow patties could, and did, appear anywhere the cows went.

Javelinas, locally known as “pigs,” were a different matter. Classified as a game animal, javelinas could not be killed except by hunters with a proper license, and permitted numbers were limited, which was a problem because the pigs were notorious garden raiders and despoilers. Coyotes, on the other hand, not classified as game, could be killed without a license in unlimited numbers by various means. No doubt there was a logic to the distinction, but it escaped me.

Our neighbors had gardens and so were pestered by javelinas. We never saw evidence of them around the cabin. Coyotes we heard in the distance regularly, but we were used to that from northern Michigan. Birds, lizards, once a rock squirrel – those were the wildlife we saw. Since we were there in winter, we were not troubled by rattlesnakes or scorpions.

The ghost town, at any rate, was open range to animals wild and domestic.

Once laid out in a grid, with streets and house plats, the ghost town had once had its own school and post office and stores. In its early days, it was on the stage line; later a railroad served the area. Mining was responsible for the boom years, but no great amounts of gold or silver or copper were ever taken, and at last hopeful prospectors went elsewhere, leaving the town to wither and die. Old railroad ties used as fenceposts were one sign of the past, coils of barbed wire another, but the most obvious and picturesque were the ruins of adobe houses and stores. Crumbling adobe walls we looked to as a landmark stood at the bottom of our driveway. Elsewhere nearby, rotted wooden sills marked places where buildings had stood, craters (some fenced to keep cattle from falling in, others unfenced) all that was left of old dug wells. Antique automobile carcasses begged to be photographed, so as not to be forgotten.

Across the road from our cabin was a B&B, but that house, like our cabin, was set far back from the road, and we never saw anyone we could identify positively as B&B guests. Next door to the B&B, also a long way off the highway, was the home of a young couple; the husband was a mechanic, but his shop was in the town of Willcox. As it happened, our 2000 Toyota needed work more than once, and that mechanic was a lifesaver. Once I walked across the highway and up the drive to their house, hoping to meet the mechanic’s wife, but no one came to the gate when I called. Oddly, their dog, lying silently in the shade of the house, did not bark once at my presence. I call that odd because that dog barked every morning about 5 a.m. and at other irregular intervals through the day and night. He barked long before the rooster crowed the sun up. But when a stranger came to the gate? Silence.

Not far past the B&B and the mechanic’s house was the home of the French-Canadian handyman and his wife. Monsieur Jean, as we called him, was another of our Arizona lifesavers. It was Monsieur Jean who replaced the nonworking refrigerator in the cabin for us and loaned us a television and hooked up the antenna to bring in, without cable or dish, as many as twenty stations, including PBS. We owed much of our knowledge of the neighborhood to Monsieur Jean and his wife, a very cordial couple.

Another neighbor, who had inherited from his father property that met, at the corners, the property where our rented cabin sat, was Señor Dan. Some days I would be outdoors talking with Dan while David was deep in conversation indoors with Jean, and later we would compare notes and share what we had learned. It was all “Dan says” and “Jean says,” and I tried to make notes so as not to forget it all.

Those were the neighbors we knew to greet by name, neighbors with whom we conversed: Jean and Cheryl, Dan, and Jared. Others we knew only through stories those four shared with us.

Dan told me people in Dos Cabezas pretty much left each other alone except for the annual cemetery cleanup, an event that included a potluck meal. The cemetery and annual cleanup and potluck seemed to be the community life, from what we gathered, but maybe the ranchers had their own social life. We heard there were some arts and crafts people, and perhaps they got together now and then. But there was no gathering place in the ghost town – no church, no community center, no fire hall.

Still, it was a place, with an identity distinct from Willcox and the rest of Cochise County. People with history in the ghost town felt the ties keenly, particularly those with relatives buried in the old cemetery.

It was a mile from our cabin to the cemetery. One day I suggested to a friend visiting from Michigan that we walk that mile and back. The wind was strong and piercing, and by the time we got back to the cabin the air was filled with horizontal snow, the only snow we saw in Arizona except for what remained high on mountain peaks.

From either direction, approaching either from the north-northwest, from Willcox, or from the Chiricahuas to the south-southwest, entry into Dos Cabezas was clearly delineated by a cattle guard across the highway, a sign announcing Dos Cabezas, and another sign saying “Go Slow – Save a Cow.” From Willcox, the road climbed, and from Chiricahua one wound down into lower elevations, but either way, the cattle guard and signs clearly marked the edge of the ghost town. Whether ascending or descending, from wherever else we had spent the day, when we reached the signs and the cattle guard I felt, happily, that we were home again, but the feeling was most intense when we came from the Chiricahuas, late in the evening, and the scattered lights of houses and ranches sparkled quietly on the darkling desert below us while the stars twinkled in the blackness above. Dear little ghost town!

That feeling lasted three months, until the morning came for us to say good-by to the high desert and make our way across the Great Plains and the Midwest and around the Great Lakes to our home in northern Michigan, there to take up, once again, our well-established life, rich in friends and meaningful work. For months, the ghost town felt almost unreal. And then our Michigan winter came upon us, and my heart began to look back West.

The Cow Town Itself

Return to the West, IV: The Cow Town Itself

Our cabin in the ghost town of Dos Cabezas was fourteen miles from the town of Willcox, an almost daily destination because all the amenities of life were there: post office, library, laundromat, restaurants, a small bookshop run by the local Friends of the Library (the bookshop also sold local honey and jam), and a handful of little museums -- the Sulphur Valley Historical Museum, Chiricahua Regional Museum, a train museum at the old depot building (now City Hall), and two cowboy star museums, one for Rex Allen, the other Marty Robbins.

At the library I was able to send and receive e-mail daily, but the post office was equally important. I loved having our own p.o. box, our own keys, and since I sent nearly as much mail as we received, mailing letters to friends back in Michigan (and elsewhere) on a regular basis, the employees at the counter came to know me by name, as well as by sight. While our exchanges were never long or intimate, their friendly greetings gave me a sense of belonging to the area. Also, when I first arranged for the p.o. box I had to show our rental agreement, so the postal employees knew we were staying out in Dos Cabezas, not right in Willcox, and I liked that, too, especially the Mexican way they pronounced “Dos Cabezas.” Everywhere in town, it seemed, people flipped back and forth easily between English and Spanish, and that was another delight of the cow town for me.

So we visited library, post office, and bookstore every day but Sunday, when all were closed, and if we were returning to the cabin afterward, rather than setting off to explore farther afield, our last regular stop in town was Beverly’s. If we’d gone up to Safford or over to Benson, we might stop at Beverly’s on the way home, too. The business wasn’t called Beverly’s. A sign on the front of the building read “Motherlode Espresso,” and signs painted on the side seemed to call it something else -- maybe two somethings else -- it was always a little confusing, to tell the truth. But Beverly was in charge, it was her place, and if she didn’t get there (as happened once or twice), the place might not open at all. Beverly offered coffee, ice cream, magazines, books, and souvenirs. She had a cat named Sarah, and she always remembered that our dog’s name was Sarah, too. We usually took our coffee outside and sat at one of the shaded tables facing City Hall, with our Sarah at our feet.

It was exciting when a train came speeding through on the tracks the other side of City Hall (formerly the train depot), its whistle and rushing clatter deafening. Even better -- because this didn’t happen every day – was when a big pickup truck pulling a livestock trailer would park either directly in front of the shaded porch or across the street. Sometimes the trailer held cattle, sometimes saddled horses. On the best day there would be both cows and horses and a couple of cow dogs, to boot. I considered every inhaled breath a gift from the gods.

Even the obituaries in the weekly newspaper were different from those at home. Of one Arizona man it was written, tenderly, that he had “ridden trains all over the country” and “worked wherever he was needed.” Read between the lines on that one! A woman who had lived to a ripe old age had loved “quilting and working cows.”

Willcox boasts a weekly livestock auction, and it’s no small affair. Hour after hour, cowboys and cowgirls on horseback move cattle through pens and chutes into the auction ring to be bid up and sold by the hundredweight. It’s a serious, workaday scene. Big business. Ranchers and cowboys and families with little children cluster around the doorways or take seats on wooden bleachers that rise up from the auction floor so everyone has a good sight line. And the livestock pours through, in one side, out the other.

We were looking over the calf pens one morning, David in originally expensive but somewhat dusty and slightly scuffed old boots he’d found at a thrift store in Benson. He was wearing one of his most handsome cowboy hats. An older man holding a little grandson by the hand asked us, “You folks buyin’ today?” We were happy to feel we didn’t stand out conspicuously in the crowd as the outsiders we were.

Had my life been different, I could have loved running cattle (“working cows”). As it is, I have loved horses since babyhood. Two or three horses in roomy, shaded pens, saddled and ready for their turn to work, called me to them with their irresistible perfume. If a horse is shy, the trick is not to approach it, so I turned away and leaned my back against the fence. Sure enough, the horse stepped curiously over to nibble my shoulder. I was in heaven.

But even laundry days were pleasantly different in Arizona. The woman who ran the laundromat had grown up in Willcox, gone to live in either Tucson or Phoenix, and came back to raise her kids in her hometown. She was friendly and helpful. The place was clean and well run and never crowded. Out front next to a giant pot of cactus was a bench in the sun, and off to the side, between parking lot and sidewalk, was a food truck selling Sonoran hot dogs – not a Mexican thing but a border thing – piled high with beans and peppers.

A Michigan friend who works in real estate came to visit us in the high desert but remained immune to the allure of the cow town and the ghost town. I tried to impress her with what bargains were to be had, how many houses and other buildings were for sale. “But people would have to want to be here,” she objected, as if there were no attraction whatsoever. We experienced, she and I, mutual incomprehension. In town, I saw all the necessities of life: library, post office, restaurants (not a wide variety, it’s true), school, churches, community center, medical offices, museums, hardware store, feed store, and two large grocery stores. Outside town, not faraway at all, there were horses, cows, rangeland, open spaces, and mountains. No crowds, no heavy traffic. “And it’s the gateway to the Chiricahuas!” I said to clinch my argument. She remained unconvinced, and once again I realized (why does this continue to surprise me, after a lifetime of similar experiences?) that many of the things and places I love seem to lack appeal for most of my fellow Americans, who want what they see as “more.”

It’s true, no one would come to Willcox to shop for clothes or furniture. Most of the various wine-tasting rooms were not open during the time we were there. The old movie theatre only pulled in half a dozen audience members for a showing of a Paris opera, although it pretty nearly filled the house for a concert by the high school jazz band, and we had a fine time at both events. A huge, expansive feed store, the kind of thing I find wonderfully gratifying, is not high on most tourists’ lists of what they’re looking for in a winter getaway.

“It’s just a little cow town,” David would say with a shrug, when I sang the praises of Willcox. He understood how our visiting friend was seeing it.

But that – the “little cow town” -- was what I loved. Willcox is itself, not trying to be a center of fashion or high culture. There are plenty of cities and towns across the U.S. with upscale pretensions, and I would not trade the Willcox Livestock Auction for a Dior showroom or the Junior Rodeo for a dozen Starbucks or sushi restaurants.

Another friend of ours, years before and in another context altogether, commented that in the U.S. today, every place is like every other place. I disagreed then, and I disagree now. Willcox isn’t even like Benson, the next town west on the expressway. Benson doesn’t have a livestock auction or junior rodeo! Benson doesn’t have KT’s Market! Sure, Benson’s library is bigger, as is their library bookstore, but the library and bookstore in Willcox were plenty big enough for me. One day on the porch at Beverly’s we met a woman from Portal, Arizona, over the other side of the Chiricahuas, who bragged of the number of doctorate degrees clustered in that little mountain town in the winter. What do I care? I’ve lived in university towns and have plenty of degreed friends --and I love my friends! -- but do I need that everywhere I go? I don’t.

For the people of Willcox, I could wish for improvement in their local economy, but for myself I would hate to see its essential nature changed. “Cattle Capital of the World” is not a title to trade in for something easily found elsewhere.

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They Just. Don’t. Get It! (Sigh!)

Back a few years ago, our local, county-wide bank was bought by a large, out-of-state bank, and one of the first thing “Corporate” did was to install those chrome stands you see in movie theatres, the kind with thick, velvet-covered ropes or chains, to indicate where customers should line up for tellers at the counter. Cries of outrage greeted the innovation. We are not livestock! We don’t need to be herded through cattle chutes! We know how to wait our turn! Things reverted to the way they were before, and everyone calmed down. This year “Corporate,” guided by “Marketing,” has made many more changes, most of them pointless, some of them downright irritating.

For starters, work by local artists was banished from the walls and replaced by promotional posters for the bank. (Why all the strenuous effort to sell what people are already buying?) All branch offices were painted in tones of beige and green, a new logo appeared on the outside of the bank, and the doors sprouted new green Lucite handles. When I went to the bank in Leland one morning, I was asked, “Do you feel like you’re in Northport? Because that’s the aim.” The aim of all this branding and homogenizing, I guess: make every branch feel like every other branch. Well, let’s get something straight. When I’m in Northport, I want to know I’m in Northport. When I’m in Leland, I want the feeling of being in Leland. And if I’m in Traverse City or Empire, I want to be clear about that, too. Each of these towns is unique, and that’s the way we like it Up North. Big box banks? Not appealing at all, folks!

My husband says that when he goes to the bank these days, he is annoyed the minute he sees the green door handles. Well, I can live with those, and if I were a teller, I’d probably be okay with the new uniforms: they are attractive, and employees have a choice of colors and coordinating articles of clothing. (Less figuring out “what to wear” every morning would have appealed to me back when I worked in offices.) The free pens have been a big hit. I’m told (and this surprised me) that the new 24-hour grace period before overdraft charges netted the bank a nice number of new customers. Twenty-four hours does not seem like a big deal to me before an overdraft charge of over $30 per check is assessed (I do not overdraw and so do not keep current on the penalty figure), and I wouldn’t have guessed that such a short grace period would bring in new customers, but hey—whatever!

What I find most—no, what I found most annoying, until a few days ago, is the new video display on the wall behind the tellers. It’s like a big, wide-screen TV, constantly in motion, and I have to hold a hand up over my eyes to block it from my view. When I’m talking to a teller, I want to be paying attention to the teller, not being distracted by a video display of the bank logo (who cares?) and “products” the bank is trying to sell me. In my case--and I suspect I am not alone in this--the annoyance of the distraction makes me, if anything, less likely to consider deepening my relationship to the corporation.

What makes local banking attractive in the first place? (1) The bank is here. (2) The workers, people we know, are friendly and courteous. (3) The staff knows the bank’s procedures and are helpful to customers. That’s it. That’s all we care about. The free pens are nice, but we lived without them for years and could live without them again. We just want the bank to be here and for the employees to do their jobs and be pleasant. If another bank bought up the current bank, we would switch “allegiance” without hesitation, as long as the bank was here and the employees—our friends and neighbors--pleasant and efficient. “Brand loyalty”? There is no such thing in today’s world. I can’t believe the marketing wonks haven’t heard the news.

And how much has all this “branding” nonsense cost? Because, no, there is one more thing bank customers would appreciate and that would be better interest rates, so instead of wasting customers’ money on such unnecessary and annoying changes, how about if “Corporate” just upped the interest rates a noodge? We would appreciate that!

Ah, but the changes weren’t over yet--and maybe they still aren’t, which is a scary thought—because just the other day, turning my gaze from the offensive video display to the clock on the wall, I saw—the clock was gone! Up there on the wall all alone was a silly double outlet, too high to be useful for anything, nothing plugged into it. Where was the clock? Can you guess? Ah, yes! “Marketing,” those chipper, eager, bright-eyed youngsters down at “Corporate,” decided it would be better not to have a clock in sight. People might time how long they were waiting in line. I’m not kidding. At least, this was the only rationale anyone could come up with.

Corporate, Marketing—get a clue! These branch banks are in small towns! We hardly ever have to wait in line, and when we do, no one minds, because we use the time to visit with one another. It's a break in the day for us! The occasional impatient person, usually a tourist off a yacht in the harbor, doesn’t understand small town life, either, and clearly doesn’t know how to be on vacation, the point of which is to slow down. Please don't gear our life to their ways!

Clearly, the marketing people are city people, and no doubt they’re very young. To their credit, they want to earn their salaries. So they come up with ways to change things. But if we wanted to live at a city pace, in anonymous city surroundings, we wouldn’t be here in Northport. Many of us, however, are still working for a living, and we do need to keep track of the time, so please put the clock back! Is that so much to ask?