I MENTIONED THE DESERT previously, the wild desert, uninhabited and bereft of human structures for long stretches. In those long stretches, the craziest things would happen.
Arriving as a preteen from the cold north, I was utterly unaccustomed to the desert’s flora and fauna though I quickly grew to appreciate its dry and desolate beauty. Creosote bushes were the mainstay. Five to eight feet tall, these scrawny, tiny-leafed wonders were interspersed on the desert floor a few yards away from each other, creating the perfect trails to weave in and out of. Since the desert was generally flat and comprised of hard-packed, dusty soil, anyone with two feet or two wheels could easily feel lost in the broad expanse of the northwest valley.
Few ever truly got lost. The mountains to the south were always a guidepost, rising a few thousand feet. To the north, the valley continued for twenty miles into the foothills where the elevation gradually rose hundreds of feet into lush Sonoran desert.
But for us teenagers, ‘lush’ was happening everywhere in the flats.
When the family moved to Phoenix, at least in part to get away from the painful memories of the north, my mom purchased a house facing directly out to the desert. The house and desert were separated by a rarely used dirt road whose only purpose was to give off-roaders a place to tear in a straight line for long stretches on their motorcycles and four-wheelers without encountering police or sheriff’s deputies.
Since the new house was also a hastily constructed one, it was a natural haven for any bug attempting to cool itself from the searing desert floor. Scorpions were regular indoor visitors, and you dared never to don a shoe without shaking it first – at arm’s length.
These were not the ‘slightly-worse-than-a-bee-sting’ scorpions found in other dry locales. No, they were palm tree scorpions. The smaller and more transparent they were, the worse their sting.
My mother’s friend, one that lasted until she married the evil Chuck, suffered the great misfortune of failing the shoe-shake routine. One of the little buggers stung her big toe. After icing it but finding the massive swelling continued, she rushed to the hospital. Her toe had grown to twice its normal size, and she spent three weeks at rest with her foot elevated.
Bugs were bothersome but not usually lethal. Black widows found shelter in every dark corner of the house, ruling the underworld with their red hourglass precision. A friend of mine had a sister who had been badly bitten by a large one. She swore the dark mistress emitted an audible scream before leaping at her, as if in an arachnid remake of a bad martial arts movie.
Not intending to overstate the daily hassles of that early desert living, the valley had more than its share of other unpleasant bugs. Simply a fact of life. Earwigs, often misnamed as vinegarroons, regularly ransacked the house, releasing a malodorous vinegar stench when you stepped on one. When it came to roaches, however, Northwest Phoenix was spared the large winged beasts that proliferated in the city proper.
Growing up in Northern Arizona with a forest across the highway, I was accustomed to bugs, and I quickly learned how to get along with them. But my mother considered them a constant, unwelcome nuisance whose most effective method of control was ‘the bug guys.’
The always youthful, uniformed gents would visit each month escorting canisters of god-forsaken chemicals that, no doubt, had long since evaded every attempt to comply with the weak national guidelines for pesticide use in homes. Since our concrete slab foundation was a few inches above desert floor grade, most bugs only required a moment to traverse up the foundation and enter through the multitude of inviting cracks in the slab or crumbled grouting in the slump-block walls.
Once the bug made it that far, the fortunate invader was then given free reign throughout the entire house. The drywall attached to its flimsy wooden frames never touched the concrete, so the space behind the crooked floor baseboards served as comfortable, cool, and safe homes as well as convenient shelter from foot-crushing harm. We may as well have used Las Vegas neon lights to invite them inside to the buffet.
‘The bug guys’ were left with only one option in these houses made for bug living: spray the hell out of each room at every visit, then drop powdery pounds of noxious chemicals around the foundation.
Nowhere was this chalky plague of pesticides more apparent than at the doorsteps into the house. At every step-up, a powdery, poisonous stockpile of brown, dry chemicals greeted your shoe or bare foot.
“Don’t step in that stuff or track it inside!” my mother pleaded every time we entered the house, hoping we actually would look at where our feet were landing.
She understood the implications. Kids. Shoes. Dust in the house. More cleaning. I doubt she was overly concerned about the dangerous amalgam of granular death at her doorstep. What mattered was keeping the damn house clean. To any poor lady with three teens and only a few hours a day at home, I can’t say her choice of priorities was misplaced.
Despite the losing battle to keep the abundance of desert life outdoors away from the indoors, I didn’t necessarily perceive the two as different things. The house was a place for sleeping and eating. It was generally, though not always, safe from rattlesnakes slithering inside, and one could manage the presence of scorpions and black widows by assiduously checking their normal dark enclaves of shoes, carpet, bed sheets, and pillows.
The house was also the place where my highly valued, portable Panasonic stereo record player was located. My mother was raised on Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, and other great singers and musicians of her era. But she was no fan of rock n’ roll and forced me to keep this wonderful gift in my bedroom.
“When you play that thing,” she commanded, “keep the door closed. I don’t know what the songs are saying, and I don’t want to know. Just don’t let them lead you into drugs.” Every kid in the 1960s heard that same refrain continuously but few kids followed the advice.
Rock began to rule my life. Every week, I’d grab my meager allowance from completing my chores, ride my bike a few miles to the local five-and-dime store, and buy another record or two. This was during the transition from 45-rpm singles to long-playing, 33-rpm albums. Album covers were often magnificent works of art and information; basically, an analog version of the Internet that whetted your appetite for more information about the band and the album’s songs.
For a kid who knew very little of the world, rock opened many doors in my mind, and I am compelled to mention the significance of it in my life. Most who grew up in that period would say the same. Though I could trudge on about how great it was and still is in comparison, I’ll leave it at that.
A magical place, the desert was, teeming with life under every rock. Every unsupervised moment was spent out in that wonderland where my friend Tommy and I would traipse around and explore for endless miles.
One sunny day, Tommy concocted a crazy-ass, death-defying plan. Like me, his father was gone – not from death, but divorce. Another latch-key kid, he was far more adventurous. He also owned a dull red, used Honda 50 motorcycle when no other kid I knew could afford one.
It wasn’t that Tommy’s family was wealthy. I guessed that his father gifted it to him in an attempt at guilt-recompense. But where it came from didn’t matter to us. This low-powered marvel allowed us to discard our bikes when we got tired of wheeling them through the desert, dodging creosotes and cacti. The red Honda cycle always awaited, assuming he could sneak it out of his carport storage room and avoid the suspicious eyes of his worried mother.
The lure of unconstrained, motorized riding is unavoidable for desert kids. Of course, we used no helmets, thinking we’d likely not hurt ourselves because the underpowered 50-cc engine would never exceed the maximum speed achievable on our bicycles.
That blistering afternoon in the middle of summer, Tommy wanted to see how fast two people could go. So we hopped onto the Honda and set out to sail across the desert at full throttle, traveling northward as far as possible or whatever the gas tank allowed. I could tell by the strain of the motor that this was our fastest speed yet achieved.
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I was holding on for dear life, my arms locked around his belly. “Tommy,” I yelled above the rattling engine din, “how fast are we going?”
“Like forty,” he yelled.
“Can I drive?”
We had gone out many times before, but it was his Honda, he was always in control, and he loved the motorized wonder. He knew how to shift gears, accelerate, and safely come to a stop by coordinating the rear foot brake with the front tire handle break.
To my surprise, he slowed down. “Sure. I think we’re far enough away that you can’t damage anything if we crash.”
We both laughed, understanding the low likelihood of that happening. He then showed me how to shift gears, then hopped on back. With all the new things to consider – two brakes, a throttle, clutch and gears, and the hot exhaust pipe – I nervously inched forward.
“We’re barely moving,” he observed. “Go faster.”
I obliged, but had still not gotten the hang of the handle-based throttle. We rocketed forward.
Nearly flying off the back as the front wheel rose up, he screamed, “Back-off!”
I did so instantly, and we puttered along. After a few more tries, he saw I was getting the hang of it and commanded me to pick up speed.
We were now skimming across the desert, wind in our hair and dust in our eyes. The motorcycle felt airborne, as if it had lifted us from the desert floor. Nothing could stop me now, I believed, from screaming like a banshee across that brown tarmac, weaving and dodging around the sparse creosotes and enjoying the exhilaration of having mastered the machine.
Nothing, except for barbed wire. It wasn’t that barbed wire had no place in a desert where no cattle ever grazed. Instead, it was often used to section off desolate, desert ranch plots, so one rarely encountered it. To our misfortune, however, we met up with a baleful that day.
“Stop!” Tommy screamed, noticing in a split second that a wire was stuck to the front wheel, rattling and spinning with every revolution.
When he asked me to ‘stop,’ I did what any bicycle riding kid would do: I applied all my hand strength to the front brake handle.
Whether it was my amateurish braking or the barbed wire or both, we’ll never know. Either way, the Honda’s front wheel, rotating dozens of revolutions per second at forty miles an hour, stopped abruptly.
A dead stop.
Tommy and I continued forward, motorcycle-less.
When slow-motioning through an accident, you don’t think about how it happened, and you don’t have time to consider where or how to land. Instead, you gaze at the bright blue desert sky as it rotates multiple times into view. You wonder if this is what the astronauts feel like in space. Weightless, almost. You also assume it’s all going to work out okay like it does most of the time for them.
The choking, desert dust from the mishap began to settle.
It took me a moment to gain my sense of what just happened. I was coiled-up like a frozen cinnamon roll, my chin smashed against the sternal notch. “Tommy?” I uttered with teeth clenched.
No response.
“Tommy, are you okay?” My legs were thrown over my head, and I couldn’t budge from my cinnamon roll position.
Then I heard movement. “Shit,” he groaned. “What the hell just happened?”
In the immediate post-accident moments, we each envisioned our potential personal outcomes. Broken bones. Hospital visits. Paying for the smashed motorcycle. Angry mothers. Consoling girlfriends enamored by idiot risk-taking.
“I can’t see you,” Tommy continued. “Did you land in this cholla like I did?”
That’s the last word you want to hear at a time like that. Cholla. It’s the only cactus a desert-lover loves to hate. We weren’t cactologists by any means, or whatever they call experts in cacti, but we knew their technical names and had previously experienced many unfortunate encounters with these monsters.
Sahuaros? Don’t ever meet up with one. Their needles are interspaced and stiff, instant death for anyone crashing at speed. Ocotillos are easy enough to dodge because of their height. Prickly pairs are right next to chollas, taking second place as the least favorite cactus of desert brigands like us.
Chollas are little thumb-sized bastards that somehow insidiously fuse together in prickly segments, creating a wicked and deceitful defensive cluster designed by demons to jump effortlessly on the unfortunate passerby. A friend to none, this succulent fiend is the undisputed master of desert trickery, wasting no time to cling painfully to your shoes, socks, pants, or even the hair on your arms.
Peering between my curled-over legs, I looked directly up toward the sky and realized my view was obscured by that nasty nemesis.
To my good fortune, I wore jeans that day. Jeans were at least a minimal line of defense. The prickly little dregs would sink their barbed ends into the fabric instead of human skin, allowing the transgressor to escape the vicious grip of its numerous hooks and nettlesome hairs.
Very cautiously, I uncurled my legs, being certain not to disturb the dark devil bulbs of pale green pain shimmering over my forehead. I hurt, everywhere, but I had encountered enough of these plants to grasp the subtle, slow movements one had to make to minimize further bodily attachments to flesh via its countless, segmented children.
Rolling forward and onto my butt, I realized multiples of the children had detached, spreading everywhere across the ground from our conflagration of speed and stupidity. They were now enduringly affixed to the back of my shirt and butt of my pants.
I again imagined the next four hours of painful interlude. Riding home, if even possible. Broken limbs or other internal injuries. Searching for a sign of civilization somewhere in the barren expanse. Ambulances. Police. Hospitals. Mothers. Groundings. Not a pretty picture for either of us.
Then I sensed movement to my right. Turning around ever-so-slowly, I saw Tommy. He was laid out flat, enveloped within a big brother cholla, his own personal one that could have proudly displayed his nameplate since it was so attached to him. The monster was standing peacefully at rest, gloating at our mishap. It ravenous arms were still attached and fully loaded, anxiously waiting for a poor coyote to brush by.
“Great!” I thought. “He avoided my fate.”
Tommy arose, clearly dazed. A dozen cholla segments adorned his hair. His sleeves were covered in them like unwanted epaulets, gifts of the desert. He turned his back to me.
“Shit,” he cried. “I think some are in my back.
I surveyed the damage and gasped aloud. The cholla’s long arms had been undisturbed by his ground landing, but it was the kind of cholla you’d always give a wide berth to, and for good reason: it drops all of its nasty progeny within a five meter circumference of the ground surrounding it, fearful of pushing those thorny children too far away from their mother. I counted twenty-three sizable segments embedded into his t-shirt and back.
As desert veterans, we knew enough not to attempt removal of the children by hand. The hooked barbs would simply become firmly embedded in whatever device was used to extract them, be it a Good Samaritan’s fingers or a stick. So a stick it was going to be. In that moment, any other bodily damage from the accident was taking back stage to the immediate and urgent pain of the cholla barbs.
“Can you help me?” he begged, frozen in place and attempting to limit any additional movement of his body.
I wasn’t yet finished removing the few dozen bastards embedded in my own pants and shirt. They were uncomfortable but not imperative problems.
“Sure,” I replied, stumbling like an inebriated dog toward his inglorious landing place yards away.
“Can you believe what we did?” he yelled with an air of excitement, wincing as I extracted a segment.
“Crashed and survived?” I replied.
“No. Not that. We flew. We flew in the air like two eagles. That was the best feeling I’ve ever had!”
I was snipping the segments from his back and assumed he was delirious. Leaning forward to study his eyes, I noticed they were peering up at the sky as if he was in a trance.
It was no trance.
It was his girlfriend.
Tommy was a stunning athlete, a runner, and one of the best in the region for his age. He was the only guy to win a freshman letter and the only freshman to own a letter sweater, universal proof of teenage virility. Four years, four stripes. Shit. Nobody had four stripes. Not even the greatest football or basketball players. Indeed, three stripes was enough to give anyone pause at such apparent manhood.
But that day, Tommy wasn’t thinking about his letter sweater or his uninvited ride in the sky. He wasn’t pondering his yet to be uncovered injuries from our crash or the pain of hundreds of cholla barbs embedded in his skin.
He was thinking of Callie.
Callie was half Native American and half Anglo. Blessed with unblemished, naturally brown skin, dark brown eyes, and long, lustrous black hair, she was the undisputed beauty of the class. Most of us boys were secretly in love with her, though nobody would never confess as such to Tommy. She had gone steady with him for months, and the two were regular fixtures at every party. Like any reasonable kid with a beautiful girlfriend, he considered her before all else.
‘I wonder what Callie will say when she hears about this smashing the motorcycle shit? When I describe our acrobatics? The injuries? Crashing into the netherworld of an ancient cholla? She’ll be aghast and amazed as I describe the lead-up, the sheer stupidity of the driver to hit the front brake, the rolling thunder as we tumbled in the air, and the brave tolerance for pain.’
I knew some narrative like this was buzzing around his head, so his next comment didn’t surprise me.
“If the Honda can still run, I’ll take you back home and then head over to Callie’s house, once you get these cholla out,” he stated, as if it was just a regular day and things were fine.
We managed to extract the most noxious barbs from our clothing and flesh, then surveyed the Honda. The back half of the motorcycle had assumed it was still traveling forward. The engine was idling, and a cloud of dust and debris was kicking up at the behest of the back wheel.
After shutting the whimpering machine off and deftly unwinding the barbed wire from the front wheel, Tommy picked it up by the handlebars, the only place not blanketed with cholla. He brushed off the seat and kick-started the engine.
It coughed, sputtered, and returned to its screaming, 50 cubic centimeter whimper.
Within a few hours, I was at home watching a show, TV dinner discards on my tray. I got up to chuck them, and my mother saw me limping towards the trash can.
“What happened to you?” she inquired.
“Oh, skateboarding accident,” I lied, knowing that mentioning ‘motorcycle’ in any sentence would result in immediate, harsh retribution.
As I expected, Tommy drove his ailing Honda straight to Callie’s house. She gave him a hero’s welcome.
And, in a sign of Tommy’s thoughtful rationality, he never let me drive that motorcycle again.