Viewing page 28 of 73

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

We were pulled out of bed to take refuge under the roof of my grandparents in Clifton Arizona. Our trip began first through Tempe then over the bridge and the Salt River down below. During most of the months the river was dry. People would live under the bridge and make their way out during the day looking for work. Then came Mesa, which was the last town were you could stay before the desert was laid out on both sides of the road. You could rent a motel room in Mesa at the Motor Lodge. Your car would be parked and protected right next to your room. It was as if both you and your car were given a place to stay and given a bed. By the time we left our carport and drove through Mesa the No Vacancy signs were turned on. All the rooms and spaces were taken. I always wanted to know what kind of vacation other people were taking as they pulled into the motor lodges. Were the children pulled out of their beds with pillows and stuffed animals in the car driven my a mother wrapped in self-disctruction?

As we would all claim our spaces in the back seat our bodies would overlap. We tried to keep our spaces for sleeping. The beginning was the easy part of the trip. The highway along the desert was flat, giving us the security that we were safe. The saguaro cactus would be lit from the headlights and let us know they were there to guide our car and point the way. Highway 60 would start to climb and it was no longer a straight line. The turns started to pack us all up against each other. Any touching while awake resulted in hitting and kickick to regain the lost space. We became seals maintaining our fought after space on our rock, the back seat of the car. Now instead of seeing the desert I was aware that the asphalt dropped dangerously below. There was only a few guardrails. This road was to be driven in daylight on the way to a vacation, not at night in anger.

We were entering the Salt River Canyon. Whether we were awake or not we were all issued a warning that this was the first part of the dangerous drive. We were to be absolutely quiet and still. The little seals would have to find their place on the rock and stay. There were roadside shrines and crosses where others had died because they had not paid close attention to the highway as it disappeared into the red rock formation.There was another danger my mother did not know about. This is where Indians had lived. I kept my head down away from the window because there might be an Indian ready to claim back his canyon. An arrow might be pointed our way. This was the kind of area where they filmed westerns. This fit, Indians were out there waiting for a fleeing car. My mother never watched westerns.

During this part of the trip my mother never smoked. Her cigarette was smashed in the ashtray leaving a trail of smoke drifting to the back seat. She never lit another one until we were in the mining towns of Superior,Miami and the last one Globe. She needed all her attention and angry fuel to drive us through the canyon. The thought of becoming a highway marker in the shape of a cross was mare than even she wanted to imagine.