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father. The markers along the side of the road told me we were getting closer to the New Mexico border. I could see every mile pass, the distances were not a guess. The Arizona roadway gave accurate information. The signs set the rhythm as they came into view outside the car window 197, 196, 195; we were moving closer to the mining tow of Clifton.

When we reached Safford we had been traveling about four hours. The night is when you move a carload of kids. The day meant you had to listen to their voices. In the night you could deny that they were in the car. You didn't have to listen because they slept.

Safford was a Mormon town. The cotton fields surrounded the town as shopping malls do the cities. You could see down just one row and know that one point perspective was here in Safford. All the rows of cotton converged at the vanishing point and met on the horizon. The Mormon farmers practiced the laws of visual perspective right here in Safford. The cotton fields gave me my first lesson in perspective. At art school, train tracks were always used to illustrate the convergence of lines but I knew it was the rows of cotton that came together at the horizon. Row after row never missing the lesson of the vanishing point. Art was not abstract; it existed in Safford on highway 60. I looked outside the car window, studying to become an artist.

My mother would take her green metal thermos out from under the car seat and my sister would pour her the last hit of coffee. It was no longer hot because it had been

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