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I was on the last part of my night watch. We were gong to make it. My mother had safely fueled her anger to our grandparent's house. Forty more miles to go. The child sentry could doze. I could bring my attention onto the cars glass window, see my reflected  face and watch my eyes close. The mirror of glass was always there to check on myself.

The sign greeted us, Welcome to Clifton, Where the Trail Begins. Welcome to Clifton. It worked like a large Hallmark card. It became my hallmark to safety. We passed over the San Francisco River where there were no lights, no benches, and only the concrete span to take us to Clifton. On the right was a walk-in theater, on the left a gas station. This is where we turned. The road up Shannon Hill was steep and narrow with a guardrail two feet high made out of rocks cemented together. If you walked up the hill during the day you could sit and look over the valley into the river. The car was at an angle and we all fell back against the prickly upholstery. This is the way our car told us to wake up, to sit up and know we are no longer in Phoenix. The car had become our flying carpet. We all knew we could fly and move as we slept. We had proof. Our carpet had landed in front of our granny's house.

I was never sure if our granny knew we were coming. Did my mother phone her before she left for Phoenix? Before her rage pushed us all into the car? Or did my grandmother expect us because she knew my mother would need to drive tonight? Drive so she could give life to her anger, give it movement. My granny meet us as if a travel agent had made all the arrangements. Our beds were made on the floor, a pallet; a quilt made out of scraps, pieced together by my grandmother covered us. A place ready to sleep, she was waiting for us.

My grandmother's house was on top of Shannon Hill. Today the name Shannon Hill could mean a beautiful gated community overlooking a city but back then Clifton was a mining town owned by the Phelps-Dodge Mining Company and it is where you rented a house while you worked for the company. It is one of the oldest settlements in Arizona and a hotbed of labor activism. Clifton was where the Apache Indian Geronimo was born. As kids we played cowboys and Indians and when we were ready to attack each other with Arizona mud clods you always gave the warning call GEERONNIMMOOO. This was his land and you called out the name of this great Indian warrior while fighting. 

Clifton was going nowhere. It was out of the way and not on the way to anywhere. It was a mining town and it didn't have location, location, location. Clifton was not to become anything else but a town where its assets were underneath. You didn't look at the red ochre rocks; canyon, river and think subdivide. It was underneath that brought the town money and that was owned by the mining company. In Clifton a developer was a miner.