The Desert's Edge

by Teresa Allen

Dreams Along the Upside-Down River

(I am editing this novel online.  Most recent update:  10-19-00)

Synopsis of this Novel:  my latest novel based on life changing experiences after moving from Phoenix to the rural desert.  This story is in part the vision quest odyssey of a divorcing woman who needs to make a life for herself.  This novel is sequenced by a book about my current job and Training the Doberman Pincher.  

Chapter One:  Corrective Action (Contingency) Planning

That is really the thing with him.  If I trust him with decisions, will I still want to be with him anyway?  Even if he gets it right, by my standards, do I want to spend my entire life with this one man?  (I’m stuck in this decision not to get stuck!)

Then there’s my trust of him doing right by my standards – having to do with not lying to me, not losing control because of addictions; not landing me in trouble or bringing around something offensive – like “drunken he-men away from the women and out fishing.” 

And this is the thing, too.  Did we really reach a higher level just now?  A higher plane of understanding.  Or did he simply win his way with me?  Once again.  Another trick?

This is the edge where I presently live:  I am better off without him.  Or, is he essential to my life?  My Creative Energy Flow.  Often, I demand he get on with his life and leave me alone.  But we stay together, he and I, locked in a melodrama cast by some jolly spirit play.  I am seldom amused.

Ever since the Corrective Action Plan (CAP) in 1997 (see below), I have been regrouping my life.  Stressfully.  Living like a nomad from house to house, room to room -- traveling for ten months in a travel trailer, searching and hoping to settle into serenity and prosperity.  

Most likely I needed more intense challenges, ones less artificial than law school.  I needed fuel, a charge, before propelling onward toward life's ultimate goal of survival in all manner -- physically, economically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.

Maybe the key lesson for me in this story is learning how to live deeply, at the heart of life itself.  Maybe here is where we learn how to really love.  And this is what life must be all about.  Everything else seems petty as we stay together, he and I. 

The man I speak of is my very story here.  He is the storm of my nature, (no one has ever inflamed my anger so much); he is the sorcerer of my heart (it is etched around him, marred and scared); and he is the mystery of my soul (instigator of these words).  He is the man who will not leave me, the man I can never make go.

This story is the third great adventure of my life, a turning point (another expansion).  I am beginning my middle years, learning anew about my nature in a universe of expansion, chaos and uncertainty.  However, when you put your mind and actions on far reaching goals, when you forget about all the human frailties and misunderstandings that boggle progression, the possibilities are limitless.

In the past my quench for adventure has taken me as far away as Urumqi, China and atop the Andes on the Inca Trail.  And just what exactly have I always been after on these quests?  Truth.  Love.  Money.  Rewards.  Sometimes, I don’t even know.  I’m not thinking about it.  I’m just on an adventure.  I'm just living my life.  Until now.  On my present Quest for the limitless, I am reaching as far as I can with all that I have to offer of my mind, heart and soul.

My favorite proverb of all time concerns the Bodhisattva Vimala, which I first encountered depicted on the cave murals of Dunhuan, China in 1983 (during a 3 month tour of the great Cathy after teaching at Huzhong University of Science and Technology).   The caves were especially hard to reach 1983 when me and a British colleague, a red haired woman named Sara Hundelby (who accused me of speaking like John Wayne), spent a week of clambering by train, then rambling by truck or bus down dirt roads, through dust bowl adobe block towns with fly-infested goat meat hanging from posts and eaves. 

Historically, Dunghuan Grottos of 1000 Buddhas had been an oasis between the Gobi and the Taklimakan deserts, and was formerly a frontier stop along the Silk Road.  In fact, the northern and southern routes of the Silk Road merged in Dunhuan, or diverged, depending on the wayfarer's direction.  Entering China the traveler came to the Gansu Corridor, and leaving it he encountered the Taklimakan desert -- one of the most desolate regions in the world. 

For a thousand years, Buddhist monks dug the caves in the eastern slope of Mingsha Mountain, outside Dunghuan.  They carved statues and painted marvelous frescos portraying the wisdom of ancient sutras.  In many soft pastel frescos, barely visible now, angels surround Vimala, a wealthy and corpulent Bodhisattva, sick in bed.

“Why are you sick?” the angels ask.

Vimala replies, “I cannot be well as long as one other being suffers in this world.” 

The Bodhisattva message is simple.  Before enlightenment or atonement – before getting into heaven -- no one else can suffer in a world seemingly created for suffering.  This -- I suffer as long as others suffer -- is a crusader's mantra, an earthly sutra with a “tall order” to keep.  

Personally, I am too fully aware of the world’s suffering.  My heart is burdened with pity and empathy over the misfortunes of life.  Some suffer because they don’t have enough to survive, others, because they are oppressed, or because they are ignorant.  I suffer because things just ain’t right.  Religious and social thought, legal institutions, political empires, values and many other human imprints, just ain’t right. 

The agony is -- I can do very little to change matters, but at least I make my own decisions about what I see, what I experience.  I am not blindfolded.  I do not rely on someone else’s justification, unless it makes sense to me. 

Compassion makes sense to me.  It is not really a justification.  It is a very precise kind of love, a “be in the trenches,” “learn from the bottom up” kind of love.  Compassion is about integrating with the world.  Considering the impact of decisions – understanding the results of actions – and choosing to help rather than harm.  In the final analysis, I would rather feed a starving dog, if I can, than tell myself, it is better to let him die. 

Emily Dickinson once put it:

I shall not have lived in vane,
If I can ease one life the suffering,
cool the pain

Emily Dickinson was a Vimala Bhodisattva (and so, most likely, am I).

***

Don and I had been married eleven years when we moved away from our subdivision home on Nighthawk Way, Phoenix, Arizona.  For ten of those years, we had watch our neighborhood become part of The Ahwatukee Foothills at South Mountain, one of the fastest growing communities in the US.  

Quiet meditation in my front room was a joke when gravel trucks clambered by, or teen boys on scooters revved up and down our street.  Traffic grew so fierce along Chandler Boulevard (the main vain from our house to the Freeway) that Don had to time his morning escapes to his job at Intel.   

We moved to our 20 acre ranch to live peacefully in the desert and to leave the gridlock of Ahwatukee.  Mostly, however, we moved to the desert because Don had fallen under the clutches of an Intel CAP – Corrective Action Plan, which placed his job in jeopardy. 

This story really begins just after Labor Day Weekend, September 1997, when I went on a typical five day writing retreat to Ramsey Canyon’s Nature’s Conservancy.  I had stayed in these cabins before, to work on a novel, to watch hummingbirds hover at garden feeders, and to hike in the warm fresh “summer ending” air of an oak scrub pine forest.  I had even convinced Don to come down for the Saturday, since he’d never seen the canyon.  He did, driving the five hour round trip journey in one day. 

We had a pleasant time hiking the ridge, viewing red boulder crests rimming the valley.  A wild turkey clattered in the distant scrub, even a baby snake rattled appeared from rocks along our path. 

We talked while overlooking the canyon.  I discussed my story – The Man from Saccaton – and he gave me his typical relevant feedback.  At that time I would have sworn I was at peace.  A status quo thing.  Equilibrium.  No rude awakenings, just plugging along trying to get somewhere with my abilities despite life’s little difficulties.  And I loved the man who sat beside me on the ridge.  He was my best friend, my emotional support, caretaker of my needs and wants.  At almost any time, Don and I could ease into like-minded conversations.  I valued his opinion and respected it, most of the time, just as he respected mine (at least eventually).  We were both progressive environmentally minded progressive thinkers.  (Maybe not the type to commandeer a “stop the refinery movement,” but we recycled, contributed to selected social, environmental, and animal welfare causes, and we discussed the issues).  Really, we seldom argued unless the argument aimed for an important point.  Together, we honed ideas and grew individually.  

During his visit to Ramsey Canyon, Don had graciously spared me the bad news so I could write in serenity. 

“I have something to tell you,” he said soon after I entered the house.    

I sat on the sofa, he on the floor beside the coffee table, a typical station for him, and he told me he had been put on CAP, the catalyst of this story.

I was stunned, scarcely believing that Don had fallen into such a situation – and I had known nothing about it.  Why had he kept this from me?  Lied, essentially.  What was really going on?

He had worked at his current job as professionally, diligently and intelligently as he had at every other Intel position, I believed.  But now he had landed under a shrewd Bitch Boss who essentially busted him for his neglectful corporate eye.  Don should have known better, he should have seen the writing on the wall.  Don already knew that to survive Intel, you had to BE POLITICAL.  But good nature failed to keep him “ahead of the game, as corporately visible as possible.”  He had failed to escape, as soon as possible, the clutches of a flaky, Bitch Boss who blatantly disliked him.  Don had failed to be a “Father Intel” Trekkie and he got “Capped.” 

We were in jeopardy, in shock and turmoil – what does a spouse say to a respected technical man flung to the corporate gutters?  He would tell no one of this predicament, of course.  It was just too embarrassing, (worse, possibly, than failing to pass the bar). 

How does an upstanding professional engineer, who has ALWAYS followed the straight and narrow, survive a bludgeoned ego -- a severed 12 year career at Intel.  Not well.  Don suffered severely and I suffered with him.  A man on the verge of losing his job is no joke.  Feelings of low self-esteem, inadequacy and even doom spin the days and wrestle the nights.

Our lives changed forever, all because Intel policy forces employees to rank and rate their workgroup peers.  While 80% of the group gain a humble “sufficient” or “you pass” rating and 10 % receive an “exceeds expectations,” 10% get a “needs improvement” Corrective Action Plan.  Thus, Father Intel pushes around (puppeteers) the very lives of its workforce.  Something to be expected, I guess, in the highly paid, highly competitive culture of semi-conducting.  A world that houses brilliant people, something like

Law school where you are ranked and rated by the establishment, and by your peers (“my how intelligent,” “she’s clueless,” “maybe you’ll have a better answer next time,” or even, “don’t feel bad [re: what a boneheaded, imbecilic response.  Very daft.]”) and you are humiliated.  Selected randomly in class to sound off in concise, impressive legal answers to questions about some legal case pre-read for class.  (heaven forbid you didn’t read those cases for the first day of law school when you sit through the Question and Answer routine called the Socratic Method of Random Selection.)  The real humiliation occurs as you decline in grade…90’s, 80’s, 70’s.  When you fall below the mark of mediocrity, as determined by rigid Socratic analytical exams; if you do not write and think like Socrates (and those who created law school), or if you are a little more creative and non-lineal than all the rest, you are booted in the ass.  Kicked around or Kicked out.  I have seen people really torn up, because of law school. 

I never had any kind of conventional job.  Or any kind of hard knock, other than life itself.  Out of high school, I ventured hap heartedly to Europe with my best friend Kathi, (a book), then joined the “2 years and Europe” Army (another book); went to college, traveled to Sweden (to meet my 42 year old boyfriend Lars, I was 22); I wrote a little, dabbled in art, went to graduate school then taught English overseas (another book).  I married  Don, wrote novels, went to law school and worked on an Internet business in 1995.  I guess I am a dabbler.

Happy Home Realty

The idea for moving out to the desert had been with us for several years.  Then, on his way home from Ramsey Canyon, Don passed through the pit-stop city of Casa Grande, 35 miles south of Phoenix, 50 north of Tucson, on I-10, and he toyed with moving there, where house prices and land would be cheap. 

In retrospect, it is probably a good thing to face the mortality of your job (or to struggle through law school).  It forces you to assess your life among the pack.  Forces you to make contingency plans, which are always good to have.  Unfortunately, job mortality also burdens you with unquenchable urgency.  “If we don’t act now we won’t have any financial backing to act later.” 

Now was the time to quit talking and to actually buy that house on 20 acres or so of raw desert land.  So like a whirlwind, we made plans to move, during his three month CAP probation.  Contingency number one, Don concluded, was to quit Intel even if he survived the CAP.  Why?  By this time Don HATED Intel.  It had thrust him (a considerate person) against any sense of consideration -- rather like law school had walloped me against my non-competitive non-braggadocio/ostentatious nature.  No, Don would head out to the desert with me, away from gridlock and noise, quit Father Intel and help me build our small Internet business.  This was certain in our minds.  We would make it.  Even without a stable source of income.  It would be like quitting Intel to backpack around the world for a year.  Other people took risks; others had suffered from poverty to fortune, why couldn’t we? 

That very next weekend we scouted the outskirts of Casa Grande, not finding much until we drove down Main Street past an Evergreen Hardware, a Texaco and various economically crushed businesses including a plaza with three UHAUL trailers for rent, we encountered the sign, “Happy Home Realty,” in front of a house/business.  

We parked.  Entered the house, hesitating at the door because inside was a family living room rather than a business office.  In fact, a toddler and five-year-old boy were playing with trucks and a helicopter on the sofa, as the television rambled cartoons.

Come on in,” we heard a man with a slight Texan drawl came from a back room.  A gray-haired man dressed in blue jeans, a cowboy shirt and, instead of a cowboy hat, appeared with a realtor’s “honest friendship” smile.

“Don’t mind the grand kids,” he added as he turned down the television.

He shook our hands and introduced himself as Darrell Sadler, realtor for 25 years, having moved to Casa Grande from Armadillo 20 years before.  

“Call me Tex, everyone else does.” 

“We’re looking for a home with land,” I proffered, my hand still firmly in his grip.

“Nope, got nothing now,” he replied, as if he weren’t even in the business of selling homes.  It was very odd.

“There must be land for sale out here,” Don suggested.  He could be very forthright, when necessary.

“Welp,” Tex stood back in thought, placing his hands in his pockets, “Do got some doublewides out on Parkins Road… real nice buy.  An old widow’s gotta sell.”

A doublewide? I thought, unable to picture what Tex Sadler had in mind.  Don and I came from a 150 thousand dollar tile roof stucco home in the heart of a region exponentially increasing four door garages.  There are no doublewides in The Ahwatukee Foothills.

But soon enough I understood the “double-wide” as the trailer homes spotting the surrounding desert.  “No,” I said, “we want something larger, for up to a couple hundred thousand.”  I had to get to the point.

“Oh, well, there’s nothing like that out chere,” Tex said definitively, drowning out the helicopter moans of the small boy.

I edged to leave, about to motion Don that we not waste any more time when Tex entered a moment of reflection.  “Welp,” he said, “there is this old guy who was selling his place out in Desert Valley…  Near Gila Bend…  It’s a big house, ranch style, on 20 acres…  Probably what you folks got in mind.  Even has a guesthouse the old guy rents out…  And there’s a well too.  Got to have a well out chere, you know.  Otherwise you got to haul water to and fro and you don’t seem like the folk to be hauling water to and fro.”

We left Happy Home Realty that day, anxious about seeing the old guy’s 20 acre ranch.  Sight unseen and on the spot, I envisioned renting the guesthouse to help supplement costs, since Don would be leaving Intel and I’d still be a dabbling novelist and entrepreneur, though now dwelling in the desert.

  We had to wait a few weeks before Tex Sadler called and said he had talked to the old man out in Desert Valley.  The place was still up for sale – having just gone down in price from 200 to 180K.  That sounded affordable– a steal in fact, considering the small lots and half million dollar prices of the Ahwatukee Foothills.  Here was a 4000 square foot ranch style house with a 1500 square foot guesthouse on 20 acres for a mere 180K.  Maybe we could even bring down the price a bit!

  On a Saturday, we met Tex at his realty office.  He drove us the 50 miles to Desert Valley in a 1989 Cadillac Seville lacking its steer horns.  Along the way Tex pointed out the wondrous legacy left by John Wayne who had a huge Cattle Ranch outside of Casa Grande.  “Yep, old John Wayne was a real character out in these parts.  He’d come to town now and then, take a drink at Smartie’s Tavern, along with the locals.  Act like one of the guys, a real sport, though he had a hell of a temper with that hot-blooded wife of his.  People could hear their shouting matches when they stayed at the ….” he referred to a prominent resort along way that sat in remote desert cattle country, near the base of Casa Grande.

  After about thirty miles we reached a series of dirt roads winding through saguaro dotted hills.  We passed a pecan orchard, an orange grove, stretches of vineyards, and many shabby to new double, single, and even a few fancy triple-wides nested on the land.

  Finally, we turned down Thorton Road, named from the first rancher on the stretch of land, and we entered Desert Valley.  The horizon stood in craggy buttes and hill that edged BLM land.  Land that stretched openly, unscathed by doublewides, untainted by motorized scooters, land rovers, and burgeoning garbage trucks.  Thorny ironwoods, mesquites, and large Palo Verde trees rustled in a breeze scented by creosote and sage. And under the autumn blaze, hedgehogs, prickly pears, saguaros, ocotillos and barrow cacti fronted the slopes and gullies.   

  But after a mile down the road, these enormous towers appeared and approached.  At first I feared that the power lines crossing the terrain just before the old man’s ranch.  Then it turned out that the easement actually spliced through the 20 acres.  Power lines are unacceptable.  They would not reconcile with my desert living (especially if I had any appreciation for FenShue). 

  Soon the big ranch house appeared, an institution in that desert place.  Visible from all the hills around, it was huge, sprawling, like some kind of mission hospital.  It was like three or four places:  the main house long enough to be a duplex; then, on the northwest side of the main house, the guesthouse and the holding tank for the well water not far from a weathered and torn garage size barn leaning to the side.

  “You can get someone to pull that down,” Tex suggested out of the owner’s earshot.  “Look in the Casa Grande News, or hire a wetback with a truck.  They’ll pull it down and haul it off for no more than fifty bucks.”

  Two hundred yards beyond the power lines, Tex turned off Thorton Road and onto a dirt driveway leading to the house.  In the middle of that drive, stood a four-foot log capped with a deerskin cape topped with antlers -- obviously someone’s idea of something not exactly New Age.  Not even close.  It was an old hunter’s very hideous contraption.  The first thing to go, I thought as we drove past it to the wrought iron front yard gates. 

  Over the next few weeks, during summer’s final scorch, ending September, Don and I made several visits to Desert Valley, both with and without Tex Sadler.  We would even drive down there and sit on the corner of Thorton and Sage, just to view our ranch. 

A Grotesque Old Man without a Shirt

  Masterminding the creation of our Desert Valley ranch was eighty year old Gus Amatto, an obese grotesque man (grotesque because he shamelessly walked around shirtless -- and Don and I had this thing about how grotesque old men tend to go shirtless.)  Amatto was balding and had much of his gray hair on flabby breasts and an astounding girth.  He spoke in a gruff whispery voice, slow and somewhat Chicago Italian.  (I later heard rumored that Amatto was retired Mafia, a believable story for his gaze was seedy, that of a senile gangster living in recluse.) 

  Gus Amatto lived with his elderly wife, who was tied to oxygen tubes, a fact that made us even more eager about the deal:  though he had been trying to sell the ranch for the past few years, now he really had to sell because his wife needed to live by the hospital.  Despite her illness, Mrs. Amatto seemed friendly though rather a fragile smoker who had lived her life with kitch and tough guys.  She even showed us a few things around the house while porting the breathing tube that ran from her nostrils. 

Also living with Mr Amatto were five Pomeranian dogs, little ping-pongs that bounced before the old man whenever he met us at the front door and while he paused to catch his breath when showing us the property. He paid no mind to his Pomeranians, his kids, though we could hardly hear him speak over their yapping.

It was amazing to encounter such a couple living reclusive lives with Pomeranians, in illness, senility, and with strange notions about the world.  Basically, I’d sum up old Gus as “one to get what he could get and to keep whatever he got.”  Senility tends to accentuate a person’s most prominent feature, so their house and property stood burdened with scores of clutter and confinement.

Slump block construction

In 1983 Amatto and his two brothers, built the main house and guesthouse from slump block, which gave both structures a rustic and sturdy look.  Broad eaves covered a veranda that ran from the front garage on the west end to the Arizona room (a room extending off the back side of the house, as in most Ahwatukee homes.) 

  Dominating the center of the main house was the common room with a high vaulted ceiling.  A centered fireplace and wall divided the living room area from the back kitchen and dining areas.  In this common room, to the side of the front door, Amatto had covered one entire wall with a wallpaper picture straight from the seventies.  An orange, yellow and brown sunset over a duck pond with reeds shouted across the room, and I couldn’t wait to tear it down.

  The Amatto brothers first built the guesthouse to live in while building the main house. The square structure was about 1500 square feet and had two bedrooms and two bathrooms in need of attention.

  “Ah, still got to fix this,” Gus would mumble during our visits to the guesthouse.  It appeared that lately Amatto puttering projects occurred in the guesthouse in the form of some painting, some patchwork on walls and lots of unappealing popcorn dots and wide-sweeping swirls on the ceilings of every room.   We encouraged him to just leave the work alone.  He didn’t have to fix anything else in the guesthouse.

Cyclone fencing, Wrought iron fencing, block fencing, rails…

Don and I came from where a six-foot cinderblock wall surround everyone’s house;  it’s a place where you can hear, but never see, someone’s baby grow up.  Still, I never gave too much thought to fences and walls until encountering Amatto’s property.  He had inexhaustibly confined his acreage, yard and areas within his yard with a variety of fences. 

  Barbed wire ran from pole to pole around the entire 20 acres, much of it in need of repair (and that would come).  A three-foot cyclone fence gave the main house a sizeable yard within the acreage.  But then the back yard had its own rusty bent cyclone fence 1) around a large satellite dish standing in weeds outside the western most room and 2) around the east yard of the central Arizona room (an area that would harbor my first nine dogs – I had never really liked dogs before). 

  About a foot from the cyclone fence, at each side of the house and around the eastern front patio, were the kind of rails found in an auto racetrack -- white painted lumbered logs holding stretches of plank (in need of diagonal black stripes?).  This was Amatto’s original fence.

  Then there came the use of wrought iron.  The front gate (before the antler thing) was wrought iron cemented in slump block pillars.  Little wrought iron fences bordered the front walkway, restraining two garden beds that contained measly strings of impatients and clumps of dead or dying asters -- plants desecrated by desert grit and heat. 

  Wrought iron fencing also embraced a walkway along the east side of the house, one leading to the Palo Verde patio.  Of course the patio was blessed with wrought iron fencing, just outside the “auto rail,” guard.

  “Nice patio,” Tex would nudge whenever we made it there. “You can sit here and enjoy the shade.”  About the patio, were three old metal padded chairs on wheels, straight from a 1960’s office.  We never sat on them, of course; too dirty and infected with desert vermin.  I would wait until bringing my own chairs.  Then I would sit under the Palo Verde shade and grow mint, basil, chives, nasturtiums and rosemary.

  And the wrought iron continued.  Before the front of the house, from where the garage extended to the eastern patio, wrought iron stood affixed on knee high slump blocks confining two sub yards.  The yards looked all right except a thick Mexican Palm and two saguaros formed another fence that blocked the view from this front room picture window.  The palm may danced beautifully at a beachfront resort, but it would have to be moved from my desert haven. 

Speaking of Plants

In the yard east of the Arizona room (where I was destined to keep a mutt named Bishop, a midget Burnese Mt. dog named Rachael and an awesome Shepherd name Kali who would kill my baby pit bull Shaman), there pillared a row of pointy and very much dead arbor vitas, along with several stunted citrus trees with one or two living twigs.  And then blocking views from the Arizona Room to the west and north, were thickly sprawling groves of prickly pear and bamboo clusters.  

  “You can hire some wetbacks to haul them off,” Tex uttered more than once.

  “Ah yeah,” Amatto would muster out, if he overheard such an idea, “just hire a couplea wetbacks to do your work…”

Abandoned stuff, also known as garbage

As to be expected in any rural area with hicks that like horses, rural discard radiated from the inner core of our ranch through the outlying desert.  On our acreage alone, trash would shamelessly reveal itself in washes, in the form of rusted nails buried in tree wells, at the skirt of ironwood and mesquite trees and in mounds found mostly behind the holding tank for our well.  Here, buried beneath one tremendous pile of earth Amatto had stowed garbage straight from his kitchen (And maybe here beneath one of many middens we never touched, there was, as the rumor went, the missing body of a gangster or two.)

About the property, steel drums smoldered away at a small fraction of the old man’s refuge, including glass, plastic and metal trash.  Other refuge on the acreage included eight rolls of un-extendable barbed wire, at least three rolls of rusty cyclone fencing, un-rollable, broken glass left from target shooting, the metal hunk of a car’s engine (that would take a back hoe to budge), three topsy-turvy toilets, faucets rusted permanently onto pipes, soiled carpet pieces, a discarded dryer, washer, an ancient meat freezer that looked like a beat up gray box on legs, and a really out of place turquoise spa-tub cracked in half.  There were also half dozen separate stacks of brick, block and gallon paint cans, half used; and, beside the leaning barn, Amatto had stacked up what was now an enormous heap of sun beat, scorpion infested, PVC piping.  Amatto had also, somehow, flung into a prominent wash running behind the barn, at least two tons of ripped-up concrete chunks.  Most were now buried from the on slush of muddy waters (he would one day help clear the stone, at my behest).

“We can make the old guy get rid of all his junk in the contract,” Tex would assure us

(though we never made it quite that far.  It would take Don and I five full dumpster loads before we were through getting started!)

Outside Lighting Everywhere

In addition to the rampant fencing and undiscovered trash, Amatto had adorned his retreat with excessive outside lighting.  Light fixtures were everywhere -- along the slump block walls and pillars, along the broad eaves around the house, atop tall iron pipes clear down at the entry off Thorton Road, at each corner of the patio, in increments along the veranda walkway, and even on the deer antler pillar.  And much of the lighting was in the form of FLOODLIGHTS.  At night, with all the lighting on, the house shouted its presence for miles, not exactly an obscure doublewide hidden in the valley. 

A dark, wooden “tavern” interior with confined nooks and crannies  

Ironically, with so much exterior lighting, the inside of the house was a cavern of darkness.  It turned out that Amatto had been a tavern owner most of his life, and was crazy about the dark tavern motif.  Everything inside was dark in color and if possible wooden:  all the furniture was dark, kitchen cabinets were dark, light switches and outlets had dark wood covers, a fake dark wood linoleum covered the kitchen and dining floors, a dark pea-green carpet covered the front room and a brassy orange the bedroom floors.  Hanging from the vaulted ceiling on both sides of the fireplace wall were lights made of black medieval looking wood and chimneys.  Even the two skylights on the vaulted ceiling had been painted dark.  

What really darkened the place was the wood paneling.  If it hadn’t been slapped the wall entirely, it ran halfway up them.  Paneling draped the fireplace mantel, central wall and in the entire kitchen.  Paneling formed a squared off arch over door between the living area to the kitchen.  And paneling even created beams on the vaulted ceiling.  The beams were actually strips of paneling made into boxes and painted dark brown.  Amatto had laboriously tacked these fake beams to the rafters, even anchoring one over the darkened skylight.

To further the tavern feel, EVERY NOOK, CRANNY, and EDGE  “of – THE – ENTIRE – HOUSE” had on it Elvis porcelain statues dancing amid porcupine toothpick holders, waddling daffy ducks, “been to Coloradie” nut holders, beer mugs, “boob” coffee cup and condiment shakers, Glenfiddich shot glasses, ashtrays and whatever other knickknack the Amattos had collected. 

And there was one more unique feature of the house, one that furthered the darkness and clutter.  Throughout much of the house, Amatto had built walls and closet sized rooms.  In the common area before the front door, attached perpendicular to the central wall, lumbered a rectangular closet with a doublewide “dark wood” plastic door screen, sister to the single wide plastic screen that closed off the hallway at the west side bedrooms. 

 Naturally, the closet had been crowned with a spectacular array of special knickknacks.

Beyond the east kitchen door, we stepped up to a variety of rooms and walls cordoning an area that needed to be one large utility room.  It was the area between the common area, garage and the far west room.  Inside the kitchen door, to the right, was a room that barely fit a toilet. 

“In case you have to go while cooking,” Tex said, maybe in jest, though it seemed he might also mean that it was a good idea. 

There were glass sliding doors leading to the garage from this room and in the middle of those doors, Amatto had cleverly constructed a that created a hallway and strange bed room that was also a passageway to the far west room.  There was a bathroom off that hallway as well, a nice large bathroom that had a small cheap cabinet sink built into an unnecessary cubby with shelves.  And, all around a piss yellow spa tub beside a piss yellow toilet, were walls built to confine the tub and contain shelves to house bathroom knickknacks – knitted shrouds for toilet paper, wrapped perfumed soaps aged in a shell dishes…. 

Everything Amatto had used in construction was of the cheapest quality, which we really discovered after examining the far west room, one of the best rooms in the house because here was a perfect view of the desert hills across Thorton Road and the BLM land stretching to the west.  It was the view from this far west room that won my heart.  But the room was a mess.  At the entry to this room from the large utility room, was a landing with a left door to the garage a right door to the back, and a paneled wrought iron rail edging and forming a gate on the step into the sunken living room area.  Unfortunately, the large commodious den was nearly crushed from a ceiling much too low (it needed to be vaulted).  This was the one feature of the house that disturbed both Don and I.  Otherwise, the room was nicely carpeted in off white, though it did have this peculiar step the size of the common room beams, against the walls.  The room was in an auditorium pit.  Was the odd step a mistake?   An effect?  (Eventually, we’d hire a drunk and dishonest cowboy named Reggie to rip down and trash the entire room, rebuild the room with a high vaulted ceiling.   Reggie may have eliminated the step around the room, but ….  the entry’s guard rail was destined to disappear immediately after closing.)

The pit room den contained several coffee tables with three long sofas that smelled of smoke and Pomeranian pee.  All windows were heavily draped with dark material and dusty Budweiser chandeliers hung in three places, these Mrs. Amatto vowed to keep. 

“You’ll have to replace any attached lights that you take,” Tex warned her, though by the time we finally moved in, the Amattos had taken with them all their tavern chandeliers along with most of the wooden light and outlet covers in the house.  He did leave us, however, the medieval hanging lights in the common.

Lastly was the garage, totally cluttered with the old man’s tools, nails and building materials.  He had built two side rooms in the otherwise large, possibly 4 car garage.  Both rooms had their own doors out to the yards and to enter either room you  had to squeeze down and aisle by the planks of work tables and shelves cob webs jars of nails….   Triming the outside of these room, wood rails and wrought iron nailed to the sheet rock wall.

When we were making the deal with Amatto, through Tex, the old man wanted to buy much of his furniture, which was the kind of loud soiled sofas and chairs, drapes and bedding collected in thrift stores.  It all reeked of stale cigarette smoke and retirement medication.. “I’ll make you a very good deal,” Gus would say then suggest an outrageous price. 

He especially ached to sell us this enormous black metal gold trimmed and glass entertainment center lodged against the back wall of the living area of the large central common area.  The thing was so big in fact, Amatto had to leave out sections of it.  It must have been six feet high by thirty feet long and on it was a large screen tv.. stereo and all the general assortments of Tavern knickknacks.   He asked $2000.  “It really fits the wall.  I hope you kids buy it…” he really seemed disappointed when we declined.  The old tightwad was senile, and he would taunt us later when we had questions about the house.

We were smitten

I wanted that house.  I wanted to find a new beginning in the desert.  “If you’re going to live in the desert, then live in there,” instead of in your artificial plot behind a six foot wall.  The raw, open beauty of the land left me smitten.  (I loved the openness because I have Pacific NW inside rain-belted-foliage claustrophobia). 

For Don the real kicker was the guesthouse… he actually envisioned using it as our business office, and housing our international guests…

Now here is a major question that both Don and I skirted when we bought the place, “How can you run an Internet business when THERE AIN’T NO PHONE LINES, and there never have been and probably never will be in your short yuppie “attempt” to stay here?”  We were just too taken away by the CAP and the need to firm something up before he was inevitably decapitated from Intel. 

Naturally, Don and I wanted to live comfortably, and that would not be in a doublewide.  But rural Pima County south of the Ahwatukee Foothills was the place for doublewides.  Along with, single wides, beat up “Yosemite Vans,” rock houses, horses, pigs named Wilber that would be butchered after a gun shot to the head; a place with old Mexican caballeros who castrate animals with homespun veterinary talents; where people named Mountain Mike, Plumber Dale and Big John run around drinking Busch by the case, by the day.  A place where white supremacists adulate themselves by target shooting their discarded trash. 

© 2000 by Teresa Allen. All Rights Reserved.

My Other Web Sites:

www.yachthouse.com    www.arastar.org    www.tarot-insight.com    www.ecotravel.net    www.world-products.com

Web site design & hosting by www.arastar.org
E-mail:  teresa@yachthouse.com

(last edit:  12-22-00:  Merry 2001 Holiday Season!)