Toyland

I can only guess what my mom or dad thought when they ventured out of the hallway past the threshold of our room, but I can tell you what the kid's eye view was from flat on the blue hooked rug.  On one wall were our bunk beds and the toy box and opposite were our two dressers and a bookcase. Our desks stood against the far wall while the wall nearest the doorway consisted primarily of murderous bifold metal closet doors..  The general effect, from ground level, was that of a box canyon, cliffs overhanging the chasm and detritus piled high against the canyon walls.

Hole in the Wall, Wyoming

It made for a narrow twisty path from door to the plateau of my top bunk. Once up the ladder I was like a character in a Western, safe behind my ramparts of stuffed animal friends, with a birds’ eye view of the goings on down below.  Winnie the Pooh, sewn by my mom in honey hued velveteen, Raggedy Ann with her black button eyes and replacement knees of hand-colored felt, Silver the tall gray poodle dog, and Charlie Brown, the understuffed floppy eared puppy, were just a few of the critters that I lined up every night so they could all watch me sleep.  

The narrow confines of our room became a fantasy land for the Breyer model horses we collected, or the menagerie of pipe cleaner and yarn animals Laura and I made.  We created camels and lions, deer and even a Pushmi-Pullyu...the herd we constructed included the equine protagonist of every horse story by Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry as well as Smoky the cow horse and Black Beauty. The artificial flowers my mom had yet to “antique” and her out-of-fashion head scarves were fair game for making our room the garden of Eden in our eyes.

Laura and I benefited from the talents and hobbies of our family: our Barbie doll dresses were trimmed in rick rack with darts, collars, even tulle and pleats.  My grandmother’s imagination led her to sew lovely glass buttons on tops as brooches or to hem a matching satiny scrap of fabric into a scarf for the swing back coat and dress ensemble.  I would say our Barbies were better dressed than any other little girls’....if not for the fact we instantly lost the shoes and earrings so our dolls were always barefooted.

The wagon load of homemade blocks my grandfather made more than sixty years ago show but little wear from the three generations of children who have built roads and castles and walls and fences from them. We drove our Matchbox cars over them and even made sixties style furniture...Scandinavian, I guess, for the Barbies to lounge on.

I remember our dollhouse.  It was a two story Colonial...metal….with plastic furniture that was all the same color.  We played with it lots….until the day my mom decided we were old enough...and careful enough...to be trusted with her dollhouse furniture. What an upgrade! Instead of molded monochromatic plastic, her childhood couch and chairs were padded and upholstered; the dressing table had a mirror and a skirted stool.  The radio had cathedral windows.  The single door refrigerator looked just like the one in our kitchen, but there was also an icebox.  The china family with their rosebud lips and their “nurse” were quaintly old fashioned, but also fragile, so we rarely used them in our play, spending most of our time rearranging the furniture as was our prerogative as females.

When we traveled, our ditty bags of prized possessions came along.  “Super balls and “creepy crawlers” , baseball cards and Matchbox cars: looking back, I now realize how much of what we prized cost less than a dollar bill.

The Matchbox display was right on front of the cashier at the local dime store, but we bought our baseball cards at the Walgreens next door. A quarter bought a toy, but a big gumball from the machine was still just a dime. As kids whose earning power was measured in pennies(for dandelions) or dimes per hour, our desires were constrained by our pocket change.

But not all our toys were “Made in Japan”. (In case you don’t remember, in the ‘60s that was code for “cheap”!)  Every Christmas our stockings would yield treasures like the wooden apple with a tiny tea set inside, or a bag of polished stones, a two toned ball with faceted sides that bounced in crazy directions or a sliding puzzle with a smiling frog and tiles numbered 1 through 31.  Looking back, I’m betting my mom found prizes like these in the Miles Kimball catalog, which ranked with the Christmas catalogs distributed by Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck as the subject matter for wishful thinking.

This New Year’s Day, the parades are over and football rules the big screen.  It’s way too cold to play outside.  How many kids are spending this afternoon playing with Barbies...or blocks...or puzzles?

Under the Tree

Down in the basement under a gray crust of grit and beetle carapaces, stacked in crumbling styrofoam, Snow Village waits like Brigadoon for  the magic day among 365 when someone ventures into the room past the washing machine.  This year there's a trio of happy elves to unpack the boxes  and carry each beloved piece up the stairs to the world of light above. 

 Every one has a story: a Hershey store and truck for the chocolate lovers with its marquee of tasty treats and trio of evergreens on the roof.  The chocolate store is even bigger than the bank, the building presented in honor of two weddings in one year.  Of course there is a Starbucks; what is the Christmas season without the warming cheer of mochas and lattes and the boost of caffeine grande'  Downtown is bracketed by a Krispy Kreme on one end of the buffet and the local greenhouse on the other.  The Schlueters made sure happy holiday memories live in this part of Snow Village....Ralphie's house is just off the main drag and the Von Trapp's elegant mansion can be glimpsed in the hills behind the greenhouse.

 The pink sparkly bottle brush tree was chosen especially for me by Aaron; I hope he's not embarrassed by it these days because it's one of my favorite parts of Snow Village. 

Across the dining room is the white church with the tall steeple and the honeymooners who are so entranced with each other, they have never driven off in their vintage auto with the cans trailing behind. Out here in the country is the grain elevator, and a mill, and the lovely stick house with lights in every window.  Kids are building a snowman in front of the log gas station that's nearly drifted in. They would have even more fun if they could join the group in the sleigh, or feeding Santa's reindeer apples or petting the farm animals near the skating pond or roasting marshmallows by the tree house.  Too bad that scene is all the way in the living room where there's no electrical outlet....

As much as I love Snow Village, it has its shortcomings.  The pieces are heavy for little hands and fragile, discouraging the kind of pretend play kids deserve. Most years something crashes and burns and winds up on the kitchen counter awaiting Superglue. The greenhouse separates from its glazing on an annual basis; the overhead light on the elevator wound up on the basement floor and I've given up trying to keep the kitten and its bucket of milk attached to the gas pumps.  Still, to walk through the dark dining room en route to the coffee pot and stop to wake up the golden glow of Snow Village before breakfast is a good way to begin a winter morning.

It must be the kid in me. I've always been drawn to tableau, dollhouses, dioramas, anything that draws the viewer into another scene. When Josh and Gabe ask for the tenth time if they can unpack the potpourri of buildings, trees, figurines and lights that live under our tree, I understand their excitement. 

Years and years ago, when we placed the little paper mache' houses with their cellophane windows and glittered roofs among the cotton batting, I pictured the cozy living rooms of the cottages with "smoke" coming from their chimneys and heard Christmas carols coming from steepled church with the wooden Nativity in its front yard. Three smaller houses nestled under the lowest boughs of our cedar Christmas tree, but the strand of lights didn't reach that far, so we always pretended those folks were out of town. 

 I spend many an evening rearranging the plastic deer, the little Santa in his sleigh, and making up stories about the goings on in whatever was my favorite house at that moment. 

This year, we resurrected the little village for the first time in many years from its ancient cardboard box. Time has not been kind; many of the fragile cellophane windows are peeled from their frames.  Lee and Ann gently set them on the bookcase, weaving a strand of tiny white lights among them and placing the herd of plastic deer in the snowballs around them.  I found one little grinning styrofoam snowman and two little wooden choir folk to carol in front of the houses. 

 Sure enough, the steeple was disconnected from the church.   The town looks rundown compared to shiny Snow Village, but in the glow of nothing but Christmas lights, the magic of my childhood remains.....

(P.S. What a blessing the cool light bulbs are!  Back in the day, we were fortunate the behemoths we put on our live tree and in the paper houses of the village didn't literally catch fire!  Because the bulbs were so hot...and if one went out, they all did, we didn't leave our tree lit for more than an hour at a time...)

Our Arizona Highways

I apologize.

I apologize for every time I've complained about the bumps, the construction, or the congestion of I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis. Why? Because I've driven I-10 southbound out of Phoenix, where our rented Elantra bounces between the ruts like a pinball and there are only two speeds....headwind RV, grind your teeth, can't-get-around-to-pass-speed and white knuckled, bumper to bumper, left lane, blurred landscape, blow-past-the-exit-I-want-speed.

We fly by oh so many exits before I can search out a spot for the lunch we seek. Our 5 am bowl of Cinnamon Chex is naught more than memory. Fortunately, the traffic thins about the time we are nearly fainting with hunger after bypassing the malls of ubiquitous eateries like Texas Roadhouse or Olive Garden, Subway or....well, you get the picture. We pull off at Casa Grande and follow the long strip into downtown, miss our turn, until finally I tell Blake to slow down at a corner where two dozen parked cars face a pink adobe wall. "Are you sure this is a restaurant?" he asks, eyeing the spires of cactus visible over the wall. But indeed it is and we walk through the portal into BeDillon's Restaurant and Cactus Garden.

It's a happenin' place. The host sports a thin gray ponytail, a bejeweled belt buckle and a booming baritone made for the stage. He's the lead in a role of his own choosing, calling back to the kitchen, "Hey, how about these tables?" The tables in question are set with bouquets of roses and marked "reserved". He turns back to us, "My inlaws are coming to eat: they don't like me." And he promptly sweeps one "Reserved" sign away with a flourish and seats us at that table.

Well, I don't know if the margaritas lived up to their billing, and while the decor might be classified as 'museum quality', BeDillon's is certainly not the only restaurant chock full of artifacts. On the other hand, one of the joys of travel is stepping into, and not just stopping by. At BeDillon's most folks don't need the menu.  In the banter of the businessmen talking land prices, the gossip about the guy with a Lamborghini and the universal bass line of all small town conversation...(genealogy, genealogy, genealogy), I feel a kinship with this Arizona town and local diner.  Fellow traveler? Reckon so.

The desert changes in subtle ways between Phoenix and Tucson: purplish peaks appear in the distance and the first spikes of saguaro cacti are harbingers of the garden like abundance of the Sonoran Desert.  But there is nothing subtle about the acres of airplane carcasses lined up glinting like a misplaced aeronautical mirage. We can't drive as close to the Pinal Air Park as we'd like, but a slow cruise reinforces the surreal atmosphere surrounding the landscape of mismatched airliners, forgotten airlines, and seeming random dismembering of the abandoned machines. Alien? As exotic and fantastical to Midwestern eyes as the desert itself.

What do I see in my desert dreams?  The pale green leaves of creosote, like a haze on the slopes in the low January light.  The backlit pads of prickly pear wearing a halo of golden needles.  Not one, not two, but an army of saguaro marching down the slopes, like the brooms in the Sorcerer's Apprentice, single, long string beans of cactus, arms up, arms akimbo, and others leaning or with black holes like eyes or mouths.  These are  not mere plants; we project our emotions onto their humanoid forms.

Finally, the indescribable hues of the far away mountains are indeed the stuff dreams are made of. Blue? Violet? They look painted...one pointillist peak fronting the next, like a stage set in a Technicolor Western.

There have been plenty of Westerns filmed around here and Old Tucson provided backdrop for many  winter weekend favorites like McLintock, Rio Lobo, Maverick, Tom Horn, the Sacketts, and El Dorado.  Sure, it's kinda kitschy; the Sweets Shop sells Prickly Pear fudge and there's a place to "Pan for Gold" (silver requiring so much more infrastructure), but Old Tucson is entertainment history, not  "just the facts, ma'am", celebrating the myth and spectacle of a genre that is as faded as the movie posters in the museum. In this spirit, we gather along the railing of Main Street as the shootout plays out.  One little boy hurries across to our side as the actors set the stage, asking breathlessly,"Have I missed anything?" No worries, son, just the preamble....not the fireworks.  It's a pretty satisfactory shootout, by the way, lots of dust and smoke and noise and stunts, with the long shadows and chiaroscuro lighting provided by Mother Nature herself.  We leave Old Tucson both satisfied and nostalgic.

All the beauty and romance and magic of sky and stars, rock and shadow, desert and adobe, mount and valley are married in the Hacienda del Sol.  

We arrive after an hour of Tucson traffic, climbing the twisting drive into the foothills of the Santa Catalinas on the east side.  Festive farolitos illuminate our way through the flowered and fountained courtyard; the staff is courteous in what would be described as Old World manners, if I were writing a travelogue.  Our room is paved with terracotta, roofed with rough beams; we wash our hands and brush our teeth in a basin of colorful Talavera tiles.  There is a real fireplace, an orange tree near the front door and a big blue agave where the patio looks up to the mountains. When we go to dinner we are momentarily disappointed when we pass through the Terraza's enclosed patio and hear the jazz trio serenading the diners, but that evaporates when we are escorted to our table in the Grill to the tinkling ivories of a particularly inventive version of Angel Eyes. 

 The diminutive host sports a bleached blond hairdo and strongly resembles either Hans (or Fritz) of the Katzenjammer kids.  His name, however, is Bing, and, he tells us, he will be there all weekend and HE WILL REMEMBER US!  Threat or promise, we cannot ascertain, but, alas, our stay here is a one night stand and we will scarce stir a neuron in Bing's memory.

The Hacienda del Sol will linger long in ours.  The former girls' school for debutantes, the former guest ranch, the former getaway for the likes of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn wears its age gracefully, the new and old blending seamlessly. We look down across the valley at sunset during our supper and the lights of Tucson are blinking like Christmas lights. We look up, early to rise on Midwest time, and the mountains are wearing clouds while we drink coffee in the predawn hour. 

So many many years ago, I used to look at the Arizona Highways magazines my folks got in the mail.  Every sky was technicolor; every silhouette die-cut; every vista extraterrestrial, fantastical, imagineered...like Disney, like CGI a generation before CGI was an acronym.  Reality...well, it's leaning away from a windblown semi in the left lane of I-10.  Road-wise, no romance.  But our Arizona Highway is the magazine spread, a dreamtime of purple mountains, Western shootouts, and saguaro silhouettes. 

No apology necessary....