G & C Summer 2017
Blogpost 017
July 20th-21st, 2017
The Oasis of
Arizona & The Haunted Mountain
The Oasis of
Arizona
The initial plan for our lodging
arrangements following our endeavors of the cacti fields of Saguaro National
Park was camping nearby Jerome, AZ; a famous ghost town and halfway point to
Bryce Canyon National Park. However, some ominous rainclouds traveling overhead
was giving us grievances. We were set to arrive at camp just after dark and
nobody (my fiancé included) wants to pitch a tent for two in the rain and in
the dark, so we settled for the cheapest hotel in a foothills town just outside
of Jerome. We’d never heard of Cottonwood, AZ before now, but as we road along
its streets we had discovered that this was not some dingy local of languish
like so many others we’d driven straight through; there were numerous
restaurants of unique names and styling free of any franchised infringements,
art galleries, cafes, antique shops, and there was even an independent bookshop
with a hyper-realistic 1950’s grey alien statue displayed behind the storefront
window. Purely by accident we stumbled into a place more reminiscent of an
upscale coastal providence, a long awaited oasis of this American desert.
Our
loggings were further proof of this fact. We stayed at a little place called The
Iron Horse Inn, which had (on our arrival) one available room with two twin
beds but through courtesy and charm my fiancé managed to talk the management
into giving us their very best room for an additional ten dollars which
included a deluxe king-sized cloud of unimaginable pampering softness and all
the bells and whistles that come with a room fit for a tsar. I’m always so
surprised by how fascinated people can be when introduced to a traveling
entomologist, I suppose they might feel in their hearts that by offering us
their best space for rejuvenation they’re aiding us in our scientific exploits.
Either way my fiancé and I treated ourselves with hands-down the best shower
we’d had in weeks and in the morning felt as if we’d been asleep for days.
The
following morning was spent strolling through the downtown district of
Cottonwood, helped ourselves to a lovely brunch that even the most snobbish
Californian would call “acceptable,” and visited the various shops and
galleries that lined the streets. Eventually we made out way to the independent
bookshop adorably named, Adventures Unlimited Books. It was a quaint
establishment comprised of two tinny spaces that had once been separate stores but
were now conjoined at the center like a cell in perpetual mitosis. The
left-half of Adventures Unlimited was just like any other indie
booksellers in that it had a limited selection of genres and titles but all the
classics were there and marked down to favorable prices. The other half was
dedicated to the books and genres favored by the stores owner who was the son
of the guy responsible for the entirety that is Ancient Aliens.
Brunch in Cottonwood, AZ
For those blissfully unaware of what Ancient Aliens is all
about, it is a sub-genre of conspiracy literature (later turned into an series
of televised shows and “documentaries” on the “History” Channel)
arguing that all of primitive mankind's accomplishments such as the great
pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, and the Petroglyphs of Saguaro AZ are all the
product of direct extraterrestrial intervention. To put simply, if there’s an
“unexplained” atavistic mystery aliens did it, no further questions. This half
of the bookshop was exactly as you would imagine it to be, knowing whom it belonged
too; there were DVD racks stuffed with low-budget paranormal investigation
projects, idiographic texts relating to all manors of conspiracy
misapprehensions from Bigfoot to who really assassinated JFK. There was even an
entire bookcase dedicated to “alternative science.” Charlotte and I wandered
through this section with our sides splitting from internal laughter and our
eyes just as protuberant as the little martian statue in there with us. In the
end I bought two books; The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut and The
Princess Bride by William Goldman from the “normal” half of Adventures
Unlimited. Amused and satisfied my fiancé and I set forth on the winding
uphill road to the mountainous ghost town of Jerome.
The Haunted
Mountain
Our venture to the ghost city of
Mingus Mountain was especially momentous for my fiancé and I ever since our
ephemeral trip to the ghost town of
Garnet, which (if memory serves me right) lasted a grand total of 14-minutes.
Charlotte organized the day around our visitation to the ghost town Jerome by
signing us up for a ghost-tour. Which, (for those too peevish to seek out the
occult and supernatural) is much like any other quotidian history tour in which
a guide shepherds a flock of tourist through the more atavistic parts of town
and goes through the particularly juicy bits of history the precinct has to
offer. A ghost tour has all of this, but with the additive element of
significant tales of violence, murder, and death. The kind of stories most
towns try to forget ever happened, but Jerome is not like most towns. Jerome
was a township built on the ashes of morbidity and has since taken it’s dark
history with pride, transforming it from a copper mining town into a tourism
hotspot for those drawn into the darkness; like my fiancé and I.
The
road one takes to get to Jerome is very much like the Sidewinder Jack Torrance
had to take to transport him and his family to the Overlook Hotel at the start
of Steven King’s chilling novel and Stanley Kubrick’s opus to horror cinema, The
Shining, with steep inclines and winding switchbacks. It’d been raining for
days all over Arizona so the clouds overhead were gray and gloomy and one
couldn’t help but hear the reverberative wails of a phantom choir echoing
inside our skulls are we scaled up the mountain.
Protuberant
homes and retaining walls made of stone blocks became more and more prevalent
the higher we drove until we’d reached the township proper of thin, monolithic
buildings decked out in fake skeletons and other off seasoned Halloween props. The
current economy of Jerome had been shaped by its old citizens gone from this
earth like the snows of yesteryear, but only in spirit.
We
arrived an hour early for the tour which was set to begin at half-past noon so
we mulled around the shops in the area. Jerome was definitely doing fine,
financially speaking, as there were many artful boutiques and galleries
including a store that specialized in glassworks and kaleidoscopes. Another
business we procured was called Puscifer and was the official store of a
band by the same name. Neither of us had ever heard of it which was not that
surprising as neither my fiancé nor I are particularly tuned to independent
metal-punk or whatever the specific music genre was. Inside were a variety of
alternative novelty items, posters, and clothing that primarily focused on the
band’s mascot of a monumentally voluptuous woman with the head of an alien,
horns or a demon, and naked body with a middle finger raised to whomever graced
her with eyes. Charlotte ended up purchasing a gothic parasol in the fashion of
Morticia Addams, which was more than overdue as her skin is remarkably
transparent and thin. A purchase was necessary.
Our
shopping concluded with ten-minutes to spare but we decided to arrive early at
the starting hub of the ghost tour which was inside a rustic sepulcher in the
wall of a century-old block of stone that was probably as old as the town.
Inside we were overawed with the abundance of sugar-skull incense burners and
framed antique prostitution licenses.
Yes, they were a
thing.
An
American thing.
Technically
American territory at the time, sadly not any longer, but like your
grandparent’s at Woodstock, Jerome had too gone “with the times.” Among these
was a license for one, Tea-Cup Sallie whose stock-photo was an old-timey
polaroid (no doubt taken with a little fellow hunched under a tarp and a giant
flashbulb over his head) of a voluptuous mature lady wearing a corset that
elevated her assets to such an extent they doubled as shelves.
Tea-Cup Sallie
That’s
not a euphemism; Sallie had positioned herself in such a way that a pair of
porcelain teacups where shelved; had saucers and everything. These licenses
were everywhere for Jerome had three theaters (for opera, stage, and screen),
18 saloons, and 24 brothels. It was the Las Vegas of the west before Bugsy
Siegel and before Las Vegas (by six years exactly). You know you’re in for
a good ghost tour when the first lesson out of the guide’s mouth reveals that
you’ve been standing in a old sanctuary of wild-west hedonistic; basically
Django’s Tortuga, at least that’s what the current town was selling. I’m sure
if Tea-Cup Sallie were alive today that same picture would be on
Facebook right at this moment and she would be proud and empowered!
With
that our guide (and a shadowing trainee) took us outside to Jerome’s original
bank vault that had a horse & buggy loading station constructed out of
stone and iron (for brigand protection) and handed us a pocket-sized
ghost-meter. There was one for everyone in the tour, which was seven including
the guide and trainee. In truth they were just electricity readers but we were
told that ghosts conjure electricity spikes in places devoid of any electrical
energy. Then the tour officially began:
Ghost
Stories to come J
No comments:
Post a Comment