A Visit to Tombstone

the decision to hit tombstone was an easy one.  i'd only been back a week and was still settling down back to life, and not prepared whatsoever for any further extensive travels just yet.  but a day trip down to the town “too tough to die” would be a good chance to stretch my legs, get a little taste of the road again, and try to polish up my skill set for travels to come.

besides, i had a client down there to talk with, and had already been there a couple of times so knew what to expect, more or less.  Tombstone is the most iconic of the old West towns, and as such has become almost exclusively reliant on tourist dollars, so it's an easy place for any traveler to go and spend some time and feel welcomed and catered to.

and easy was a perfect fit for my headspace at the time.  so when I hit the road at mid-morning there was a sense of lightness and buoyancy to the air.  it would be good to get away from the desk and the grind of things for a while.  it felt a little like playing hooky, and even though the season was still too warm out to drive with the windows down i had the radio on high and allowed myself to get mesmerized by the road and let my mind drift, as the rhythmic white lines of the highway and the yellow and green of the wildflowers and yucca and mesquite trees swept past me.

in joyous moments of driving like that i notice that the old rattle box i drive has just the right amount of play and lightness to it to be the perfect vehicle for these sort of road trips.  you can feel the bumps and roughness of the road without it adding up to much more than background noise, and there's a looseness to the way it handles that allows for some light dancing with the steering wheel without it much effecting too much.  in 2001 this forerunner was likely billed out as the top-of-the-line model in its class, but now it's just another sun beat vintage truck in a growing sea of newer, sleeker, fancier and more complex but somehow more generic vehicles.  cars these days are built for a maximum level of ease, comfort and smoothness, with every piece of modern technology installed to ensure safety and entertainment, and to relive the occupants as much as possible from the discomforts and boredom of the road.  but being on the open road has never bored me, and given the choice on a road trip like this i'd take the rattle box any day of the week.

so it was not without disappointment when i saw my exit approaching – i could have used another hour or so of highway time.  but there was still plenty of two lane desert road to go, and i was in no rush.  and after a little while of taking that narrow strand of asphalt south and drifting through the middle of nowhere something caught my eye that made me turn around and pull off the road.  painted on the side of a building was the name Gallery of Dreams. there were no other cars in the dirt parking lot, and when i pulled the door to go inside i hardly knew what to expect.  i walked in to a long, one room art gallery, filled with colorful paintings and sculptures.  there was a window to a room in the back where an older woman left her computer to come out and talk with me.

she told me her name was Karen, but made a joke about it to make sure i knew that she wasn't the kind of Karen who yells at the refs.  i liked her immediately.  the gallery was filled with her husband's work, who was a sculptor, and she led me to a back area where i could see some of the plaster casts he had done.  one was the founder of Tombstone and she filled me in with a little history.

“he set out to strike it rich,” she said. “but St. David was the original town and the only place anywhere close with water.  and they told him all he'd find out there was his own tombstone.  so when he struck silver he decided to name it Tombstone.”

she went on to tell me a little about her life, and how long her husband and her had lived next-door, what the gallery was all about and how she sold stuff on eBay on the side.  the collection of work was all from local artists, some of which in particular really caught my eye.  i made a mental note of the artist’s name and some of the pieces i wanted, and how i’d return when i had more money and wall space someday.

but i couldn’t afford anything more than a postcard with a couple of prints on them at the moment, however, so after a really pleasant conversation where she let me wander around and look at all the art, i made my purchase and said goodbye.  as i pulled out of the driveway i waved to the man who had been weed whacking around the side of the building, and who i took to be her husband. he either didn't see me or didn't care, and since neither did i for that matter i pulled back out to that strip of asphalt drifted away.

******

Tombstone is just a short distance from St. David – in western mileage, anyways - so getting there would take basically no time.  but along the way there was construction on a bridge, which took the road down to one lane, and ground everything to a stop.   it felt aggravating at first, waiting in line and looking far up ahead for when the man in the orange vest would turn the sign he was holding from stop to slow.  but i quieted those instincts and even turned off the radio and rolled down the windows a bit.  far too often we're so eager to get where we're looking to go we fail to take in where we're at, and i didn't want to start off this trip by taking that kind of mindset along with me.

not that there was anything pressing for me in Tombstone, anyways.  this was a drift, a simple wayward wander from the normal mainstream of regular life – as i knew it – and so by definition there really wasn't much of a plan.  i was interested in getting there just to see which way the wind blew, and that was about it.

and the town seemed pretty quiet when i got there as well.  it was a Friday, around lunchtime, so i didn't expect much, but there was a heck of a lot of empty parking spots in the lot when i pulled up.  so i tucked away whatever i wasn't going to bring with me out of sight – purely out of habit – and walked over to Allen Street to see what was going on.

the answer was not too much.  there were a smattering of tourists walking up and down the plank board sidewalks, window shopping in the shade of the old buildings, and a few of the actors dressed up in the garb of the old west gunslingers meandering down the dusty main drag.  but overall it struck me as a pretty low-key day in a town that is kind of like the Disneyland of the old west.

which was fine with me – i was in no need of crowds and commotion, and i probably would have diverted elsewhere had there been one.  but even though i’ve always preferred taking these sort of travel solo, i found myself feeling oddly conspicuous drifting in and out of gift shops alone, and suddenly found myself wishing i had someone else along for the trip.

it didn't take long before i made my way into my client’s saloon.  it was pretty busy, considering the quiet state of the tourist stream at the moment, but there was an opening at the bar so i sat down and ordered myself a beer.  i texted my client to let her know I was around, but she replied that she’d just left it wouldn't be back for another 45 minutes.  so i ordered lunch from the pretty bartender in the old showgirl costume, and smiled politely and tried to make a little small talk in between bouts of her serving some of the locals and posing with tourists behind the bar, as they donned feather boas and fake pistols for their Facebook posts to share with their friends back home.

when my client showed up i wasn't sure if i would recognize her, and the feeling was obviously mutual.  we’d only met in person once before, very briefly and a couple years back.  she tapped me on the shoulder and said my name - but in that quizzical kind of way that is not quite sure – and once i confirmed she sat on the stool next to me and we began a conversation that would last the better part of an hour and a half.

i had no idea where it was going, and i barely remember how it got started.  we touched on the hot summer, the quiet of the season, and general business stuff, of course.  but there are some people who you just launch in with and keep diving down, way past the surface level chitchat, day-to-day bullshit of every day polite small talk.  these are the type of people who show up to the fishing boat with the scuba gear on, and in short order it became clear that this was someone who not only wouldn't mind at all digging around in the muck for some answers, but was happy to lead the expedition.

what struck me right off about the moment was that she never once asked the most obvious and typical question - which would have been, what the fuck was I doing out there?  instead she seem to instinctively know the answer to the question without asking it, and politely waved off any explanation during the course of our conversation.  dipping out, getting away, cutting out from the grind - there’s a lot of ways to word it, and she didn’t need any of them to get it.  this was a very busy woman, who juggled a lot and managed to travel a ton.  she clearly had her priorities, and even though I didn't know her enough to be entirely sure what they were, she obviously kept them straight.

and then, as the conversation turned to my more general wandering ways, we struck upon it. not immediately, and not that she ever sensed it – as far as i could tell.  i had not come looking for anything that i knew of, but as we spoke the light started to shine on something anyway. here was a woman – about my age – leading a very different life, with very different experiences and everything that comes with that, who is settling down at the bar for a moment, trying to look ahead into the cosmos and map out the future, not just for me but for her as well, for both of us, for everything, with the underlying subtext being summed up perfectly when she said “when you're at this stage in life you've really got to budget your time for the future.”

boy, didn’t that hit home.  we were surrounded by old mines that had long since closed up, but the deep digging was alive and well on that barstool at that moment.  at least for me it was, and in that moment we hit pay dirt.  the issue of mortality had been upfront and center more than ever in the last few months for me, as it is for everybody at one point or another.  people had passed, people were on their way, or they were destined to be so soon - like some shitty escalator everyone's trying to walk backwards on, and no one can get off of. and there's a certain point, no matter what kind of life you've lived or how much you have, that you have to come to terms with the fact there's starting to be more miles in the rearview than ahead, and that you're on the same damn road as everyone else so you might as well make the best of it.

that’s the most basic bit of reality we all share, and yet also the most difficult to accept.  and for those who feel like they didn't have a guiding hand to help them steer the way this can lead to deep feelings of regret, remorse and loss.  a sense of being cheated, like they’d somehow been relegated to the passenger seat of their own vehicle, being forced to watch helplessly as the scenery rolled by down roads they did not choose, but rather were swept down outside of their control as they simply could not figure out how to get their hands on the wheel.  and every day that passes is one that pushes what once was and what it could have been - and all the possibilities it once held - further and further from grasp.

this can be an absolutely maddening feeling.  but it can be a sobering one too, and i've had far too many nights of waking up in the small hours with my teeth grinding and feeling like i've been struck with an electric current to get caught up in giving it any more of my time.  i’d made a new friend, a colleague, a comrade in arms in the battle to reach out and seize life for all it’s worth, and i was grateful for the moment to connect and commiserate and move on.  i hadn't set out on the day thinking I was really searching for anything, but once i found it i knew it was time to get the hell out of Tombstone.

******

on my way out i bought a hat, and i thought about how it might be fun to rent a room one night and come down to have a proper night out at the bars.  there seemed to be something unseemly about passing by the same saloon doors that Doc Holiday once stumbled out of and not at least peeing in the bushes or something.  but that would have to be for a future adventure.

so i began heading back, and took a slight detour to visit a ghost town along the way.  it had been turned into a museum though, more of a mini – tourist attraction than anything else, and there was just one car in the parking lot, which i imagined belonged to whatever kindly docent was waiting inside the refurbished schoolhouse.  but i didn't want to learn anything or talk to anybody at that point, so i barely stopped long enough to take a photo before i took off to head back towards home.

in Benson, though, i decided to stop for a beer. i still didn't feel much like chatting with anyone, but i'd noticed on the way down a couple of places that might be worth poking into.  one in particular looked like a dark enough hole in the wall to be just my style.  a primary rule for any dive bar - i have always contended - is that if you are not at least a little concerned your physical safety when you first walk in, then it's not a real dive bar.

so whether i was relieved or disappointed as i walked in from the bright sunshine of the afternoon into that dimly lit cowboy bar, i'm not sure.  i bet it has it share of rough figures come in and out of those doors, but as i sat on the stool and asked for a bottle of beer all i could figure is this was just another business trying to make it in the modern west.  the beer list was short and basic, and i didn't imagine the food was damn good.  but i was just a drifter drifting through and if i could support them with a couple of bucks to wet my whistle and get a flavor of the place then i was more than happy to do it.

after a short bit the old timer who was smoking on the street came back in for his beer a couple of stools down for me.  he mumbled something to the bartender, but she paid him no mind.  he had no ill will, but he was obviously a regular and she showed no desire to accommodate him, other than to serve him another beer and move onto other customers at the other end of the bar.

i could tell he was hoping to have a chat with me, but his interaction with the bartender had been enough of a red flag, and i just didn't have the energy to deal with it.  after a marathon deep dive like the one i had with my new friend in Tombstone the idea of any sort of small talk seemed exhausting, so i just put on my defensive airs and let him get the hint.

the poor soul though, i thought as I paid my tab and prepared to leave.  he was just dying for a little validation, a kind smile and maybe a small sense that being here meant something in some way.  and as i got up to go he said to me – even though we hadn't even spoken a word to one another – “i hope you have a good one.”

don't we all, brother.  don't we all.