Again, Painted Walls

As readers know already, I'm quite taken by walls that are painted with more than the usual can't-see-me colors. I like R.E.D. and I go for pictures on walls. Like these below:

Location, Marler's Square -- sounds big and important but in reality, a very small strip mall over on West Sheldon. What should I spot but a low wall sporting white daisies and tropical leaves in green and R.E.D. Plus those tiki thimgamabobs (right?)

OK, that explains it -- a small restaurant shouting for attention. Hawaiian, yet. In the pricey range (for Prescott -- I know that $20 for an entree is considered "moderate family" pricing in the Big City.) But yum -- ahi tuna and similar delights. I will try it for sure one of these days.

Back to that wall: see the building across the way? It also sports pictures... no, a Big Picture. A Mural.

A closer look reveals that the current tennant is a recording studio. Wonder how long that mural will last? Consider it now saved for posterity!

Local Links of the Day

I have an affection for those old WPA guides to various states written in the 30s as make-work projects during the Depression. They are great! Specifically, on my shelves you will find both the Califoria and the Arizona volumes; they describe the world of my childhood. Both were reprinted in the aught-80s and I figured that I might just buy a couple of copies, used, from Amazon as gifts. The result was enlightening -- and scary. Let's start with California. The Amazon list for California +WPA popped up 93 titles, of which 16 were the original or reprinted WPA work. Prices started at $2.70 and ranged up to $12.00. Next, the Arizona +WPA list which Amazon put at 16 (it wasn't), with prices ranging from $7.50 up to $45.88. Oops! Is this a sign that it's time to move to Nebraska or West Virginia?

Come Away With Me In My Merry...Buick?

A vehicle that predated me by a good decade or more disappeared up the hill on a little road. Knowing the road deadended, I dashed back. A photo op, maybe. Yep. And then some. The shiny antique car was headed back downhill. And it was R.E.D. at that.

The driver turned left and parked in the midst of a couple of trucks.

He was joined by the resident who took a picture of the innards after the driver lifted the hood.

After which the vehicle operator drove away and I continued on my walk.

Note that this venerable car does not have those silly wee wheels that are all the rage on most restorations nowadays. Can anyone explain why antique car buffs do all that work and then ruin their product with undersized wheels that do not match the lines and proportions of the original??? It's weird.

Swamp or Cienega? Cienega or Swamp?

You pays your money and you takes your choice. We have one pretty close to the Square. Not quite what you'd expect in this dry country! When I got there to take pictures Tuesday, the summer's cattails had been cut down. Too bad. I had to make do with this unappetizing picture at the sidewalk right behind Hastings. It's where one of the springs empties into the swamp, bog, or cienega over at Four Points, next YRMC's heliport. Let's use the Spanish word, cienega. It's a lot classier -- smacks of that boulevard in LA, named no doubt, for a swamp, bog or cienega over in Lala land.

Most drivers motoring down Willow Creek Road probably aren't even aware that there's a swamp just to the South of that chopper. Believe you me, the boat tailed grackles know. It's one of their favorite hangouts -- in season, of course. They've already gone south.

Take your life in your hands, cross the boulevard, and...

...read the inscription on that stone. You will realize that the corner has been dolled up. I even noted a watering system to take care of the non-indigenous pampas grass and shrubs.

But get close up and there's a surprising amount of water at the lower level. It doesn't show here because it's covered by autumn leaves.

At the right are some of the dried cattails.

The hospital parking lot is visible just beyond this end of the cienega. I recall when contractors were redoing the parking lot a few years ago; they had one Big Problem. Springs. Paving would proceed; next thing they knew, Oops! A spring would pop through the asphalt.

Old-timers will explain that the north side of town, between Granite Creek and the heights, not only is full of springs, but that it used to be called Spring Valley. There is rumored to be a structure, once a neighborhood grocer, that had its spring house cooler inside the main building. And I've heard other tales about springs and seeps that surprised builders of major projects.

The Four Points cienega is on both north and south sides of the Whipple Street Cross Town. The south section isn't as pretty -- no trees to speak of.

Amusingly enough, many of the plants visible on the corners are desert dwellers, including this California poppy still in bloom in mid-November.

Link of the Day

Here's a link to those places that may haunt your dreams or, perhaps, entice you as you drive through an old Rust Belt city. Abandoned factories. Worn-out, empty 3-flats. Tunnels that appear to go nowhere. Sewers and drains. I'm referring to not-so-licit amateur urban "archeology", which appears to have more than a bit of a following in this country and elsewhere. Wikipedia has a good article on the subject.

(In the case of Chicago, there's that narrow gage railroad that runs throughout the Loop connecting with the 3rd basement level down in most major buildings; Sarah Paretsky featured it several years ago in one of her V.I. Warshawski detective novels. It's right up there with Floor 3-1/2 in the City-County Building where the Board of Election Commissioners used to store their records.)

Back to SW Basics: Native Seeds Search

Today's occasion was a book signing and lecture -- not the usual way I spend an afternoon. However, it was over at Prescott College's Crossroads Center, a not-too-strenuous walk from my house. The author in question is Kevin Dahl, executive director of Native Seeds Search in Tucson. Good reasons for the PC venue: Dahl is an alumnus and the subject is one near and dear to hearts at the college. Namely, rescuing Southwestern and Mexican native food plants from oblivion and possibly making a dent in the high incidence of diabetes in the process. Can't say that my sometimes cynical heart disagrees with that objective.

Before the serious business, there were the product displays to check out. The packaging was bright, cheerful and enticing. Native Seeds Search has fostered lines of mixes for everything from pancakes made with amaranth or blue corn flour to spicy hot chocolate, all using products of its seed farm. To name a few. Unfortunately, I hadn't worn my backpack to carry stuff home -- I'll have to make any purchases from their web site.

The chiltepin peppers above are basically the wild progenitor of all chilis.

While that habenero hot chocolate mix is a perfect gift for one of my friends who is in the big leagues when it comes to hot sauce macho.

Before the lecture, Dahl answers questions from students.

Then is faced with the latest in modern technology at the podium. His lecture covered the "three sisters" -- corn, beans and squash in their hundreds of varieties -- plus other native food/fiber plants, including amaranth, cotton, devil's claw and several cacti.

And he had a storehouse of fascinating facts for the trivia fan, like me. For instance, while the devil's claw pod is edible when young, tender and green, it is the source of the toughest of fibers when it is mature. Another: humans are the only mammal to eat capsaicin bearing chilis; apparently, birds do not have capsaicin receptors and so devour the little red berry-like chilis and spread the seeds. Yet another: watermelons were introduced to Mexico by the Conquistidores; they proved so popular that seeds spread via trade routes throughout America and watermelons were already cultivated in the Midwest by the time the English and French explorers arrived.

Of course, corn was the staple for Native Americans. Above, one of the oldest lines of corn, next to teosinte, the wild grass from which corn was derived. Today, noted Dahl, corn is totally domesticated -- none, including the native varieties, survives without man to cultivate it. Fascinating side notes about corn: there was, long ago, a period of over a thousand years when corn was grown by natives, not for food, but for the beer made from sugar-rich stalks! And there's good reason Hopi corn is planted on those sandy fields: about a foot down, there's a layer of clay that holds the necessary moisture.

Fascinating stuff. Too bad I'm too old and set in my ways to start farming traditional corn, beans and squash. I'll stick to a couple of pots of tomatoes (another of those wonderful native crop derivatives) and my very native wildflowers.

PostSecrets Prescott

I entered our new-fangled, up-to-date library this evening to attend a meeting. Not enough time to take pictures for a proper blog posting. However, one of the first items to greet my eyes is directly above; I just had to get out the trusty Sony CyberShot. A student at Prescott College has this idea for a paper, taking off from that fabulously successful PostSecrets blog, which has been turned into a fabulously successful book, currently #146 at Amazon.

According to Wikipedia: "Since Frank Warren created the site on January 1, 2005, PostSecret has collected and displayed upwards of 75,000 original pieces of art from people across the United States and some parts of the world (international readers have also been known to send in postcards). The idea of the project is simple: completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they have never before revealed. There is no restriction on what the content of the secret must be, only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before. Entries range from admissions of sexual misconduct and criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, and hopes and dreams."

The Prescott College student is asking for "confessions ... thoughts ... ideas ... truths." Wonder what he will find out about us. Wonder if there's a book in the offing -- or whether the idea has run its course, as happens so often these days of instant communication, instant publishing, instant everything.

Local Link of the Day

About six weeks ago, I had an email from my daughter, telling me about the absolutely yummy apples she had picked up from ground under some trees while heading on a hike up the West Fork of Oak Creek. She reported that the apple tasted like apples are supposed to taste, full of flavor instead of fluff. Tonight she sent me a link to a NAU site concerned with preserving the long-gone varieties of apples and nuts still growing in the orchard at Slide Rock. Students have even started saplings from cuttings. All I can say is three cheers for NAU.

Are These the Last Leaves of Autumn?

I thought I could be done with autumn in Prescott tonight. No such luck. Too many beautiful red leaves remain (and you know how I groove on R.E.D.) Too many piles of leaves on the ground to crunch underfoot. Bare limbs beckon the photographer!

How could anyone resist a last-leaf-on-the-tree picture! I surely couldn't.

And attention Valley folk: The final blast of color is now in action. Namely, the Arizona sycamores. Big leaves. Big trees. Big color (although not R.E.D.)

Links of the Day

Fireworks-plus. That's the offering tonight. First, a site with 165 pix from Burning Man, the counter-culture arts festival on the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Second act: the infernal machines that star in the Most Dangerous Show on Earth (their claim). Created and operated by Survival Research Labs.

Streets of Confusion

How come street names are always changing in Prescott, huh? Like our most famous chameleon street, Grove-Miller Valley- Willow Creek. My presumption is that the city grew by accretion and that each of these streets was already so well established in its home turf that change would have been impossible. So we have street signs like the one above, at the corner of Gurley and Grove/Miller Valley.

OK, here's the spot where it changes -- the street bends toward the northwest right (sorry, left) at the Lincoln Street crossing (above.) The next change occurs up at Formerly Five Points, where Iron Springs Road takes off northwest and Miller Valley segues into Willow Creek. Too much dangerous traffic to try to document that switch!

Here's the other favorite point of changing streets. Right at the Fry's corner on Miller Valley where Fair turns into Hillside and vice-versa. A street map certainly helps when you're trying to navigate our fair city!

Local Link of the Day

Read it and weep! Sunday's AZ Republic featured an article predicting/saying/warning that Phoenix is on the march north and south, to finally stretch from the Mexican border through Tucson and on up toward Prescott. No mention of Ashfork. Maybe it's time to invest in one of those el cheapo 40-acre parcels with no water up in Juniper Woods! Sell it to several Californians.

Visualize Radio???

Well, of course. Radio is all about visualization. Your very own visualization. Whether it's a private mental picture of that cozy little house with the stuffed closet at 79 Wistful Vista or Martians invading New Jersey or making Lake Michigan into a jello mold or following the current adventures of Guy Noir P.I., you take the clues from the sound and use your own imagination to create the picture. None of that literalism that is the sorry heritage of The Tube.

See those mikes in the picture above? Put players in front of them and anything can happen anywhere any time, no fuss, no muss. Outer space. Center of the earth. The Crucifixion. The landing at Plymouth. Whatever. Already one good reason to support Prescott's own Coyote Radio Theater.

Another good reason: an excellent haute Mexican meal (missing only mole), prepared by the chefs from The Raven. The occasion was the annual Day of the Dead Dinner Show to support Coyote Radio. You may recognize the decor -- the party was over at the Smoki Museum.

Impressario for the occasion, for the troupe, and for a possible low-power FM radio station -- Andrew Johnson-Schmit (left) here talking to photographer Bruce Colbert.

Act I: After dinner poetry by Dan Seaman. (Sorry -- I didn't get a picture of singer Pat Beary who performed a powerful Mordida or "song of the dead" for the occasion.)

All followed by radio comedy: "Apocalypse Now", "The War of the Squirrels" and "Komedy Katt". Tho the troupe is slightly costumed, they could just as well have been sitting around a table in their pyjamas or bathing suits. Radio, remember.

Major players in radio drama: the sound effects team, with their miscellany of noise making devices. (Garrison Keillor 's Prairie Home Companion has raised the sound effects man into stardom.) It was all great fun.

Oh, yes. To remember the event, there's an official T-shirt; wander over to the Coyote Radio website to find out how to order one.

Local Link of the Day

I promised the cab driver that I would post this URL some time today; it is such a choice site that any local reader who doesn't visit these historic pictures of Prescott National Forest is missing Very Fascinating Material. The early White Spar Road ... building the Perkinsville to Williams road ... what the forest looked like after clear-cut logging and before the Preserve was created. Answer: very sad. (Note: the Preserve was created by Teddy Roosevelt, before the national forests were legislated.) There are 100 photos in the collection, plus links to all the national forests in Arizona.

Yesterday's Bikes

Being as how Prescott is a beautiful little mountain city, it follows that there might be some interesting highways to reach it. And indeed there are. In particular, there's the White Spar (named after either a mine way outback or a great big white quartz outcropping on a mountainside in the Prietas.) Our visitors tried counting the turns in the 12 mile stretch coming into town one time. Two hundred & thirty. I don't remember if that counted those U's going in and out of big folds in the mountain as one or two curves. Anyhow, you can imagine how such a road would appeal to bikers. We get a lot of them.

Not to mention those who live here. This fine chrome was parked over at Hastings. Is the owner in for video, book or game?

Also at Hastings, this brushed metal model. I trust that the owner is named Buren or Dyke or Halen or Helsing. Otherwise, he/she is parked where he/she doesn't belong.

Speaking of what belongs where and to whom, I saw this many-speed real bike for sale over by Albertson's. The signs pleaded for money so a vet could go home. Then I saw the putative vet. I wonder where he ripped off this set of wheels.

Local Link of the Day

This is one really neat resource. If you read the Prescott Courier, you know that it publishes a weekly column called "Days Past". I've come across fascinating historic tidbits reading these articles about the G.O.D. (Good Old Days.) Checking for info for today's feature post on Prescott mass transit, I came across the Sharlot Hall Museum Days Past archive. Go take a look. FYI: there's a good search function.

A Local Secret -- Yes, There Is a Bus Route!

Read recently about another one of those Civic Task Force affairs in the local press. Subject: urban mass transportation. Needed for the Tri-City area. Guess what I didn't see mentioned in that article -- or any other article having to do with [sound trumpets] Mass Transit in the past several years. You're right -- the fact that there is a little bus already serving Prescott.

There it is -- on its way West on Gurley, heading for the old Fry's shopping center. I know that it exists because I took a ride this afternoon. I rode it a month or so back, too. Out to Basha's at the Frontier Village ... all the way up to the Wal-Mart off Iron Springs Road ... and down Miller Valley back to Gurley. Price: one buck.

An enlightening experience, too. For one thing, most of the passengers are regulars. The driver, Nick, knows them by name. Many are Prescott's forgotten people -- low-paid service workers at various businesses, vets going to and from the VA hospital, young women from a group home over on Washington Street with jobs at a fast food place.

Quoting from a map with time table you can get on the bus, "Public transportation got its start in 1922 when Jack Sills founded Prescott Transit Authority to provide a service to soldiers at Ft.Whipple. For just a nickel each way, Sills drove soldiers to and from downtown Prescott in two different vehicles: a Studebaker touring sedan and a Reo sedan. The service was nicknamed 'The Prescott Whipple Stage'.

"The City of Prescott operated two bus routes for a time, then turned them over to Sills, providing local bus service from 1960 to 1975. Jack Silvernale acquired Prescott Transit Authority in 1975, and ran his public transportation business until 1984. That year, son Steve returned from a stint in the military and took over the bus line operations, turning the PTA into a non-profit entity. Today, the Citibus public transportation service is entirely funded by the PTA's other operations: the Greyhound Agency, Dial-A-Ride and the Airport Shuttle service to Sky Harbor."

For the record, there was one earlier public transportation service -- The Prescott and Mt. Union Railway. Ground was broken in May 1903 for tracks for this streetcar to run between Garden Street near Park Avenue and Ft. Whipple, mainly along Gurley Street. A nickel a pop. Didn't last too long; the automobile did it in, of course.

What I want to know is why the silence about that bus route above? I recall (only too vaguely) something about major scratchiness between the PTA owner and city officialdom. But why is the service never mentioned in the Courier? Would somebody please step forward and explain? (For that matter, PTA doesn't really do much to promote the service -- no mention at PTA's web site, for instance.) If I ran the company, I'd stop hiding the bus and instead paint it bright red with polka-dots. Paint the word "BUS" in letters four feet high on the sides, with arrows. And change the name back to Prescott Whipple Stage. Yes, it's hokey -- but damn it, hokey sells in a town not only obsessed with its past, but actively selling yesterday.

Take a look at this picture from my family archives (my Aussie Bro and wife on left, me and late husband on right) to get a reminder of the difference between Citibus and Prescott Whipple Stage. As a tourist, my sister-in-law just had to have this picture!