Pilgrimage to Superior

RETURN

After a half-century, a wayfarer revisits her roots and ponders what might have been Fifty years ago, I left Superior. I was 11 years old, and I couldn't remember ever living anywhere else. I acquired my values in Superior, discovered how to be a friend and an enemy, learned how to read and write. I went through spiritual formation and learned the names of more than a hundred rocks and a thousand desert plants. When I went back to visit this year, I didn't expect to see so much of the town boarded up. The mine - it was the deepest copper mine in the United States when I lived there had been idle for a long time. Some of the houses were abandoned, their windows covered with plywood. But a young woman at Hamburger King was enthusiastic. "The mine is working again," she said, deftly rolling a green-chili burro. "People are coming home. Are you back to stay?" She looked at my silk shirt and my jeans and nodded hopefully.

SUPERIOR

"No, just for a few hours," I told her as I wound up the film I'd shot. In 1942 I took a last look at Apache Leap (See Arizona Highways, March '93), Picketpost Mountain, the wine-colored rocky butte southwest of town that looks like a buffalo, and the pale vermilion tailings from Sam Herron's mine on the hill. Then I climbed reluctantly into the backseat of my parents' car with my dog, and we drove away. We had lived for several years on Magma Avenue and then in a company house at the top of Copper Street. Both our old houses are intact; the brown stucco company house is now painted white and has cypress trees growing beside the porch. The present owner invited me inside to see the remodeling. The living room and kitchen were the same, and I took pictures of everything. A company house was owned, of course, by the Magma Mine Co., where my father worked. Most fathers worked at the mine, if they worked; some kids' dads were out of jobs, and they went on relief, and their mothers did ironing. But by the summer of 1942, when we left, the mine was on a wartime schedule, and the Depression was over. On Copper Street, the red brick houses ours was the one stucco building were for straw bosses and engineers and other men who wore ties to work. They still have gray glassedin wooden back porches that served as kids' bedrooms and utility areas.

"A lot is gone, isn't it?" the woman at the restaurant said, plunging a basket of French fries into hot oil.

"The skyline's the same," I said over my shoulder as I loaded a roll of slide film into my Nikon and went outside. I shot frame after frame of Apache Leap, where Geronimo's men were supposed to have ridden their horses off the mountain to avoid capture, and where, they say, you can sometimes see a 400-year-old Spanish soldier, in helmet and armor, leading his horse through the pink pinnacles, still looking for the cities of gold. Big boys at school sometimes said they'd met the man up in the rocks and talked to him in Spanish. White block-faulted limestone hills, full of fossils, front Apache Leap, and Sam Herron's mine tailings still lie red and permanent on the cactus-dotted slopes.

In the wintertime those mountains sing. Cold winds rushing at high velocity through the rose-colored spires sometimes create a high clear call and sometimes deep tones like the lower notes of a pipe organ. We'd walk to school backward, so the pebbles that bounced in the gale winds would strike our calves instead of our shins. And we'd sing along with the mountains. I swore I'd grow up and write an opera, using those pinnacle tones.

Picketpost Mountain, on the west, looks like a man's profile. The redto-blue rock formation rises behind the Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum, where resides one of the finest collections of arid-land plants in the world (see Arizona Highways, June '89). Our Girl Scout troop and groups from the Community Church had picnics there. We followed Mr. Gibson, the ranger, through the park. Sometimes he gave us green pods, perfectly round with soft green spines: "These are porcupine eggs," he'd say with his shy smile. He and his family lived at the old Thompson house, which nestles into granite and sandstone environs.

A small white-painted adobe roadhouse still huddles against some trees at the western end of town, perhaps still serving up the best Mexican food in the country; its red neon sign continues to read "XXX Cafe."

The Tres Ecces? I wondered, as I drove by. No, we didn't say it in Spanish. We called it the Triple X. But our parents called it a different name sometimes.

"Chapo's," I said aloud suddenly, overwhelmed by memory. "Chapo's Place." I recalled the face of the small dapper man who once owned the XXX Cafe. He was always smiling.

Also on the west end were Laster's Garage and the ice house. I won a footrace one July 4, running from Laster's to Seymour's Drugstore. The distance looks pitiful now, but I was panting in the heat. Pat Gorham, the sheriff, gave me a silver dollar as first prize. (Later, in high school, I became a record-breaking miler. I hadn't known, until that festival day, that I could run so fast.) In summer we chased the ice wagon as it made its way up Magma Avenue. Sometimes the driver would give us a hunk of the sawdust-edged ice; sometimes we stole one.

Serious entertainment and important ceremonies took place in the Superior High School auditorium. The school is still standing; the dark-red brick and the pillars are intact, even after close to a hundred years' worth of graduations, magic shows, Tom Thumb weddings, Boy Scout Courts of Honor, and tap-dance recitals.

My mother was the town piano teacher; her recitals were either in our home or at the Community Church. The church is still there, too, its gray stucco now painted white but otherwise much the same. I wondered if the basement where we had Vacation Bible School and evening potlucks still smelled of damp concrete and coffee. But nobody was around, so I looked in through the windows and remembered praying inside.

When I went back into the restaurant, I asked about the smelter. The stack was cold, and it looked barren down there. "Isn't it working?" I asked.

"They smelt down at San Manuel," she said. "Magma owns that town, too."

I closed my eyes and remembered the thick yellow smoke belching from that ancient brick stack. We weren't supposed to run or play hard in the late afternoon when the day's copper was being smelted, and the heavy sulfur smoke billowed over the town. I can still taste it, remembering.

The sulfuric-acid bath leaches every last drop of copper from the ores: malachite, azurite, chalcopyrite, and rare bubble-topped copper dioptase. After sunset when the smelting was done, the western rim of our world turned red and fiery as they poured the hot slag.

We learned to live with death. Some of our fathers or our friends' fathers died in the mine, crushed in cave-ins or choking from silicosis of the lung "rock-in-the-box" they called it they'd picked up working in the mines in Colorado before they came to Superior. My friend Paul, who lived next door, came out one morning with his blue Swedish eyes bleached by pain. He was four, I was six.

"My daddy went away last night," he said. I knew; my mother had been called out after we were all in bed. I had heard Paul's mother sobbing. They had come from Sweden together, Paul's parents. His older sister yelled and threw things around the house all day, while Paul and I hammered a fort together in the yard. In those days, people in Superior called me "Dottie Beth."

On this trip, I didn't find any of the wild burros that roamed the yards and hills and even the streets when I lived there. The burros also ate the garbage thrown into a small canyon behind the

house. (The little canyon is filled with dirt now, but the big mesquite tree there has grown larger, its sweeping branches almost hiding the odd-shaped old fossil rock.) We watched them eat prickly pear cactus, too, the juice dripping down their thick lips, and we wondered why the spines didn't injure them. The burros seemed not to mind them, or they took the pain as just one more sadness in their lives. Our burros were ex-mining donkeys or descendants: Crippled Jack, Silver King he was the meanest burro in Pinal County Short Tail, Whiskey, Brown Boy, Lobo. I don't remember any females, but since the burros kept proliferating, we must have seen some. One morning we woke up in our house on Magma Avenue and found a burro inexplicably trapped on our service porch, braying to be heard across the world.

We used to rope those burros and ride them, and they usually bucked us off. One threw me clear up on the tin roof of that same service porch. I still have a scar near my right elbow where the edge of the roof cut me.

If you got hurt or terribly ill you went to the Mine Hospital. I had my tonsils out there, and my mother was treated there for a scorpion sting. Scorpions, black widows, tarantulas, Gila monsters, and rattlers were our only childhood enemies: human beings left us alone. We learned to kick rocks over, not pick them up, because of poisonous reptiles and insects. To this day I sometimes shake my shoes when I get up in the morning, even though it's 50 years later in the green Northwest.

I went to Roosevelt School. The red brick building is still there, and when I peered through the window in the door, the main hall looked the same. They've bricked in the windows, though, adding air-conditioning and windows on the far side. They've torn down the older gray stucco building where Miss Miller taught me to read in first grade, and Miss Knowles taught me to think in second. Miss Knowles was the first true professional teacher I knew; when I taught school later, I heard her voice in my voice.

Once, on the way to school, we found a man dying in a ditch. His skin was turning blue, and his chest bloomed with blood like a bouquet of carnations. Someone got Mr. Stone, our principal, and he shooed us away. But I memorized the man's face: his sensitive lips and wondering confused eyes. He had dark hair and needed a shave. Later that day he died. A young red-haired teacher at our school whispered to us that he had shot himself after finding out his wife was in love with another man. We wondered where the gun was and why we hadn't seen it.

RETURN TO SUPERIOR

RETURN TO SUPERIOR

Most of our teachers lived at the red brick Hotel Magma. Miss Spain held Minerai Club meetings in the genteel old lobby. The turn-of-the-century inlay on the rusty exterior still says "Hotel Magma," as does the inscription on the sidewalk. Now a sign at the lobby door says "Wing's Hotel."

The Wings and the Hings really were Ongs. We called our grocer Mr. Hing, but his daughter Lily, my schoolmate, ex-plained that Ong Hing and Ong Wing were brothers, and that in China the last name came first. We could get penny candy and O Henry! surprise packs and movie tickets at Hing's while our mothers shopped for eggs at 10 cents a dozen or chose steaks and chops from the skylighted meat counter. When we got outside, we had to shake our shoes to remove the clinging damp sawdust.

In 1940 the government started drafting men into the Army. When war broke out, we lost our principal; a math or history teacher would move into the office until they got drafted, too. Female teachers didn't become principals and had to quit when they married In the fall of 1940, Spanish Flu swept through Superior. I had never seen my parents sick in bed before. On Thanksgiving Day, they sent me to the restaurant side of the Silver Dollar where, for 55 cents, I had a huge traditional dinner, and for another dollar, I took a lunch pail full of turkey and dressing home to my parents I was the only customer that afternoon, so two waitresses and the cook hovered over me, feeling desperately sorry for the nine-year-old girl who had to eat a holiday meal alone in a café. But I was having the time of my life. I'd never eaten alone in a restaurant before, and I was thrilled. Apache Leap glowed nearly crimson in the November sunset as I walked home with the metal lunch bucket. My heart was full Seymour's Drugstore is now some other small business struggling along in the ruins. Seymour's was where you took your film to be developed and where you could kneel on the spinning seat of a Satool to drink a chocolate soda at the marble-topped fountain. Some people called Mr. Seymour "Doctor" and asked him to suggest cures for lumbago and croup and "summer complaint." Ryan's Drugs was directly across the street. It stayed open later. The movie crowd went there for snacks after the last show.

When crossing Queen Creek to the south side of town, kids turned their heads away from the stone building on the bank of the stream; we didn't know why, but our mothers said not to look. Their lips were set tight about that building. I found out years later that it was a small brothel. Now it's a bed and breakfast, carefully restored.

I photographed the boarded-up buildings: the Uptown Theatre, Hing's, the drugstores. As I started to step across Magma at Main, a flashing "Don't Walk" signal held me between abandoned businesses.

"Come back soon," the woman at the restaurant said.

"Yes," I said, thinking about the novel I was writing, thinking about the old stone brothel as a place to finish it.

I went outside and stood on the bumper of my rental car to photograph the mountains. Then I headed out into the forest of ancient saguaros and cholla, lacy mesquites with their fierce thorns and long curved pods, and the faithful paloverdes that, as soon as the spring rains leapt joyfully down the arroyos, erupted into saffron bloom without fail, maybe every year since the Creation.

WHEN YOU GO

Superior is 63 miles west of Phoenix on U.S. Route 60. Nearby is the Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum. Each year 80,000 people tour the arboretum to see the large collection of desert plants from all over the world. Hours are 8:00 Α.Μ. to 5:00 Ρ.Μ. daily, except Christmas Day. Admission is $3 for adults; $1.50 for children ages five to 17; free for age four and under.

For information, contact: Boyce Thompson Southwestern Arboretum, Inc., 37615 E. Highway 60, Superior, AZ 85273; telephone (602) 689-2811. The Superior Chamber of Commerce, 151 Main St., Superior, AZ 85273; telephone (602) 689-2441.

The Friends of Arizona Highways offers Photo Workshops among the state's scenic wonders for picture takers of all skill levels. Our premier photographers lead the workshops and are assisted by experts from Nikon and Hasselblad. Scenic Tours also are available.

PHOTO WORKSHOPS

Monument Valley on Horseback; June 7-12 Explore the valley of sculpted wonders with Don Donnelly Tours. Photographer: Gary Johnson.

Monument Valley; June 16-19 Marvel at the spectacular rock sculptures seen in many Western films. Photographer: Jerry Sieve.

Prescott Rodeo; July 2-5 Focus on cowboy contests in the arena. Photographer: Ken Akers.

Grand Canyon North Rim; August 1-4 If the summer monsoon arrives, watch for dramatic cloud formations. Photographers: Willard and Cathy Clay.

Hannagan Meadow; August 18-21 Enjoy the verdant scenery and cooler temperatures of the high country. Photographer: Edward McCain.

Arizona's Old West; September 3-6 Highlights include the Old Tucson movie studio, Bisbee, Tombstone, and Apache Pass. Photographer: P.K. Weis.

Painted Desert/Petrified Forest; September 22-26 See colored dunes, petrified trees, and

TRAVEL WITH THE FRIENDS OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

ancient petroglyphs. Photographer: Dale Schicketanz. Canyon de Chelly; October 6-9 or 27-30 Navajo guides take you deep into remote and scenic canyons. Photographer: Jerry Jacka (first trip), Jay Dusard (second). Sedona/Oak Creek Canyon; October 28-31 Nature's paintbrush adds even more color to the red rock country. Photographers: Bob and Suzanne Clemenz.

Monument Valley; November 3-6 Experience the drama and majesty of the valley deep in Navajoland. Photographer: Gary Ladd.

Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness Hike; November 17-20 Backpack through a wonderland of waterfalls, autumn color, and wildlife. Photographer: Jack Dykinga.

FRIENDS SCENIC TOURS

Keet Seel; June 4-7 Explore one of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in the Southwest on this hike.

Canyonland Tour; October 7-10 Visit the Grand Canyon, Oak Creek Canyon, Walnut Canyon.

SCENIC TOURS WITH RAY MANLEY

Led by a premier Arizona Highways contributing photographer, these trips are organized primarily for mature adults. Canyon de Chelly/Monument Valley; October 25-29 See otherworldly rock formations and prehistoric dwellings in Navajo country.

For information, telephone the Friends' Travel Desk, (602) 271-5904.

Arizona Mileposts Travel Guide

The miles will fly by with this fascinating milepost-by-milepost guide to Arizona's most-traveled highways. This 204-page book is filled with entertaining and interesting facts about place-names, landmarks, personalities, history, flora, and fauna you'll find along Arizona's highways. Plus, full-color photography and detailed maps show exactly what you'll see on each of the 15 tours of the state's interstate highways, U.S. routes, and state highways. 204 pages. Softcover. $15.95, plus shipping and handling. (Available after May 26, 1993.) Order by returning the attached card, or write or visit Arizona Highways, 2039 West Lewis Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85009. You can place telephone orders by calling toll-free nationwide, 1-800-543-5432. In the Phoenix area, call 258-1000.