Event of the Month

CASCABEL'S CHRISTMAS FAIR SERVES UP FOLK ARTS

Cascabel isn't a commune anymore, but vestiges of its bygone Bohemianism abound. Take, for example, that ancient, decrepit Studebaker school bus. "I lived in that bus as a young hippie," says former resident David Minton, now a 44-year-old consultant to investment firms. "I spent about a year in it with a couple of babies and a bride. Someone had brought us out from Tucson, and as soon as we saw this place we said, 'This is it.'" Cascabel is an obscure, unlikely, and enchanting community on the bank of the San Pedro River at the end of a dirt road 30 miles east of Tucson. It's a lovely environment; the handful of houses is scattered through a mesquite forest so dense that the desert seems to have been repealed. Few people have heard of it. There's a mountain between Tucson and Cascabel, and it might as well be a continent. The first full weekend in December, however, a few hundred visitors and occasionally a wistful alum like Minton converge on Cascabel for the Christmas Fair, which is unlike any other in Arizona. (There's also an "Open House" - booths displaying local art, handcrafts, and products on the first Saturday closest to May 5.) There are the ubiquitous arts 'n' crafts booths, of course, selling handmade earrings, cassettes of dulcimer music, and howlingcoyote sculptures (here fashioned, rather creatively, from barbed wire). There are folksingers and country bands and the seductive whiff of barbecue. But the real attraction of Cascabel is its people, many of whom cheerfully open their homes for the fair and let visitors simply wander about. Cascabel (Spanish for "little bell") was founded by a few Mexican homesteaders around the turn of the century. Ranchers later bought out the homesteaders. Then, in 1970, an artist from Woodstock, New York, founded a communal pottery school called Cascabel Clayworks and attracted a coterie of apprentices and assorted hippies. The commune evaporated in the mid-'70s, but its spirit remained, comprising a remarkable eclecticism and tolerance. The 50-some people in the area now include organic farmers, artists, crusty old ranchers, a University of Arizona professor, a professional dowser, a retired colonel, and a teacher of meditation. "It's indicative of what the counterculture has evolved into," says Minton. "The commune has literally become community, and that's wonderful." Whatever it is, it's incredibly open and friendly. Barbara Clark,who with her husband, Dennis Farrington, now owns Cascabel Clayworks, continuously shows fairgoers through her rambling house made of stones, bottles, and scrounged materials such as the old railroad ties in the living room floor. It's a virtual museum of self-reliance and creative recycling. Ivan Wilson also has a sprawling handmade home, part adobe, part wood from an old barracks at Fort Huachuca, part glass pyramid. He came to the Sonoran Desert because of its inherent spirituality, he explains "it's considered to be highly in tune with the cosmos" and built the third-story pyramid as a meditation center. Students come to study the teachings of the ascended masters. George Thompson lives a few miles down the road but comes to the fair to offer knifesharpening and dowsing services out of his pickup. Thompson says he has dowsed successfully not only for water but also lost objects and missing people. He doesn't know how or why dowsing works, he says, only that if someone charges for it, it doesn't work. "I'll accept something after I dowse, if someone wants to offer it," he explains. "But it won't work if I plan on making a profit." An idyllic community? Not for everyone. The nearest real town, Benson, with stores, schools, and doctors is 24 miles away on a dirt road. But city people who go to the Cascabel fairs get a glimpse of a style of life we thought was the American ideal, yet which has never really existed in many places: one in which selfreliance is always a necessity, but conformity never is. "I'm moving back here as soon as I can," vows Minton.

WHEN YOU GO

The Cascabel Christmas Fair is scheduled for December 4 and 5. To get to Cascabel from Tucson, drive 45 miles east on Interstate 10 to Benson, then take the Pomerene Road exit and continue 24 miles north to the community. The dirt road is passable in passenger cars. For more information, contact the Benson Chamber of Commerce, P. O. Box 2255, Benson, AZ 85602; (602) 586-2842.