CONVERSION OF A PALEFACE

My geography teacher was really a peach. She had the delightful habit of looking out the school-room window when I failed to know the answer to her question. In that way, I bounded Virginia on the north, south, east and west by glancing at my open book partly hidden beneath the desk: My report card, while never promising any real genius, generally managed to please my parents. And certainly I was satisfied. I knew the capital of my own state, New York; I knew that all the people in England were born, raised and died in a dense fog; that in Venice one lived in the water; and that in our own country everything west of the Rockies was sand.

Unfortunately, my family limited its travels to three states: New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Even the one excursion to Washington, D. C. to visit the Monument and the Congressional Library did nothing to widen my geographical knowledge. But I was still perfectly satisfied. "Who in the world would want to live anywhere else?

So it came as somewhat of a shock, after I had been married a few years, to discover that I might have to spend the rest of my life with the Indians!

I know quite well that all my friends weren't taught geography in the hit and miss fashion that I was, but to a surprisingly great many of them, the West meant sand and Indians. They were small comfort to me. "So you are going to Arizona. Well, they say that after NORMAN RHODES GARRETT, F.R.P.S.

If you have lived there a few years you wouldn't live any other place. But what about the scorpions and rattle-snakes?" No, they weren't much comfort. "I bet you folks will be back at the end of the year to see the trees and mountains once again." And I thought, "I bet I will too."

But, my word, that was eleven years ago, and here in Arizona we still are! And we haven't seen a scorpion, a rattler, nor worn a pith hel-met yet. And where is all that sand I once thought was out here?

Of course, I know there is a desert here it has a great deal to do with the charm of Arizona. We often drive from our town just to gaze at its beauty. But still I can't con-vince some of our back East friends that we live among the mountains; that our streets are paved; that we can buy Whitman's chocolates; that we get all the best movies; that we eat fresh vege tables; that our dairies are inspected; that we have more than one doctor; that our radios function; that we have gardens, fruit trees, pine trees, pep-per trees, nut trees. That our friends don't all greet us with a "Yip-ee, hi there sister;" and that the Indians aren't just waiting to scalp us. I have a cousin who seemed startled to receive a handkerchief from me, that first Christmas we were here. “Where on earth did you ever buy it?” she wrote. And I was one of these. It was this first Christmas, I remember, that we received mainly books and cold creams from the folks back home. We surely must miss a library. And didn't that potent sun do frightful things to one's skin? That potent sun. Why, it picks up one's spirits along with its shining, so why worry about a few freckles?

To be true to form, we should be living in a cave. Or else an old Indian ruin. I wonder what our relatives would say to that? But we do have a friend who lives in an Indian ruin. He is the park ranger at a national monument, and we had to climb a ladder to enter his apart-nment. A long cry from a penthouse in New York, but so much more civilized. It was the day we visited him that we drove on from there into the Indian coun-ntry. We skimmed along over perfect roads, and thought of city traffic. We drove by some dinosaur tracks; we saw some petrified pumpkins. We noticed Indians working their fields, we saw their children playing around the hogans. We felt it awesome and quite outside our own world, when plump, we were among a grove of cottonwood trees, and there was a dairy farm, regular cows and all. How can one write home about such things?

My husband sent some snow pictures to a friend of his in Philadelphia. “We like Norman's pictures so much,” she wrote, “but where on earth did he go to get snow?” Well, there was plenty of it right in our back yard, but why bother?

They just wouldn't believe it. Nor would they believe how glorious and different the snow is out here.

When one is a child, a snow storm is a thing of wonder and beauty. I man-aged to have lots of fun wading around in wet snow that covered my small rub-ber boots. My flannel petticoats (not red, but flannel just the same) would steam around my moist person and I was generally in a receptive state for pneumonia. However, after every snow fight, I was thoroughly dried, dosed with milk of magnesia and rubbed with pul-moline! It was an ordeal, but the snow was worth it. When I outgrew the sled age, the snow lost some of its former appeal. And when I finally had to dry off my own daughter, I began to long for a snowless universe. How nice it should be in Arizona, where there was nothing but sand.

So it was with misgiving I watched the barometer fall the first winter we were here. Could it be possible that it snowed out West? It was altogether possible, I soon found out, and we had a good big storm. But wonder of wonders, the land-scape remained white! Instead of wet rain to reduce it to a slush, the sun came out and transformed it into a fairyland (Turn to Page 45)