Roadside Rest

oadside Rest The Answers at Last as to What Makes Arizonans Unique

With an open mind and pure heart, I have been trying to imagine myself at a linen-draped table of the Griswold Inn in Essex, Connecticut. I am being sized up by my spouse-to-be. Awaiting the sole, we are sipping a glass of sherry. For this hazy day in late summer she has chosen a blue blazer, liberty print blouse, Brooks Brothers wraparound skirt, Bass Weejuns, a pearl circle pin, and scarab bracelet.My hair is studiously sculptured into a windblown, justback-from-the-regatta tousle, properly complementary of my seersucker suit with the flap pockets. My Cartier wristwatch is secured by a lizard strap. I am also wearing glove-soft ox-blood leather Gucci loafers; no socks. No socks!

All this rushed back to me across many years the other day as I perused a copy of Yankee magazine, that splendid bible of New England and all that's attached to it. An insightful Yankee writer catalogued and priced New England character essences: 50 points for an unpainted mailbox, 500 points for homegrown gooseberries, 5,000 points for every cord of handsplit firewood. That sort of thing. The article convincingly gave the lie to a currently fashionable lament holding that some insidious leveling force probably national television is rapidly eradicating regional differences and homogenizing American culture. It was gratifying to learn that little New Englanders are still being nicknamed Muffy and Skip before Choate, Rosemary Hall, and Phillips Exeter Academy polish them for futures as stockbrokers and home decorators. Tradition matters. How impressive that Harvard was established in the Massachussets Bay Colony some 349 years before my own Arizona alma mater convened its first class in an adobe frontier river town. But balancing the elitist ledger, Arizona and the Southwest as far as today's Kansas was explored by Europeans 80 years before Plymouth Rock.

Which raises a fair question: aren't there peculiarities of attitude and behavior to define the Arizona character? I asked friends. They obligingly completed the premise, You Know You're an Arizona Native, When..."You wear your cowboy hat into a cafe and nobody notices." (Frank Honsik) "You're firmly convinced that east of Eagar, Arizona, there's nothing... not even Dedham, Massachusetts." (Joanne Ralston) "You can't remember when you last saw a snow shovel." (Emma Lou Philabaum) "It's ingrained in you that any job that can't be done on horseback ain't worth doin'." (Bebe May) "You recollect measuring a journey by the number of flats along the way." (Gene Mangum) "You'd rather go broke than go back on your word." (Bud Brown) "Somebody asks to see your ID, and you show your belt buckle." (Al Moore) "You're convinced that cowboy cooks make better biscuits in a Dutch oven than a boulangere in a boulangerie." (Carrie Bell) "You've told so many lies about Arizona weather, you have to hire a stranger to call your dog." (Ken Alstad) "You'd rather drive the old Ford pickup than the Bentley." (Jack Yelverton) "You use your pen knife more than your pen." (Isabelle Brown) "You operate more on 'Indian' time than Greenwich, e.g., 'I'll see you along about sundown." (Bill Ahrendt) "The Navajo rugs your folks bought as cheap floor coverings now hang on the wall as works of art." (Jay Brashear) "In your heart you know that at the end of the rainbow there is not a pot of gold - but a good Mexican restaurant." (James W. Cook) And so it went. J.C. Martin, feature writer for the Arizona Daily Star, challenged Tucson and southern Arizona to submit more typical clues. Overnight her readers "came up with 300 experiences, memories, behavior patterns, and/or other considerations" characteristic of the Arizonan. "You smell the desert after a rain and it's special." (Leslie Perkumas) "You promise to finish your 'honey-do' jobs by first snowfall, prolonging the chores indefinitely." (Dave DuVall) "Horned toads are your pets of choice." (Pat Childs) Catching the spirit, the Payson Roundup newspaper called for submissions.

"You remember keeping your car windows rolled up so others would think you could afford air-conditioning." (Bill Close) "Your growing children recognized the seasons from the temperature of the tap water: boiling hot or almost cool." (Jan Harelson) And my own: "You can find, from experience, Four Corners, Wagon Tire Flat, Newspaper Rock, Bear Wallow, Fort Misery, Freeze Out Canyon, Mount Baldy, Brewery Gulch, Tom Mix Wash, Mistake Peak, O.K. Corral, Wild Bunch Pocket, Rustler Park, Horse Thief Basin, Phantom Ranch, Total Wreck, and Screwtail Hill." And, "you can pronounce Gila Bend, Mazatzal, and Teec Nos Pos."

Back in New England, it is said that the wearing of loafer shoes without socks was popularized by Bobby Kennedy & Co. But as a 50year Arizonan, I would rather put red kidney beans and ketchup into chili than venture sockless six paces from my bunkhouse door. Beyond concerns about our biting and stinging critters, I am mindful of a sign posted upon the swinging door of a bonafide Arizona saloon during the rebellious 1960s: No Shirt, No Socks, No Stetson, No Service.