TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: NAKED FIRE DANCING, BISBEE, 01/01/02

By Grant McGee
I covered the news in Pensacola.  There had been talk of keeping the “Pelican Drop” alive.  The Pelican Drop is a New Year’s tradition…like the crystal ball of Times Square in New York, like the Moon Pie Drop in Mobile, Alabama.  Like the Albuquerque tradition of running the Sandia Peak Tram up the slope of the Sandias on New Year’s Eve. The run was timed so the tram car reached the top at midnight and lit up. I once called the tramway office to ask about it.
“Yeah,” said a disinterested 20-something woman. “They don’t do that anymore,” she said in a familiar Millenial deadpan tone. “That was years ago.” Suddenly I felt old.
Anyway, the new executive director of the board of businesspeople who “OVERSEE ALL THINGS IMPORTANT THAT INVOLVE LOTS OF MONEY” is thinking about keeping the Pelican Drop alive because the board of businesspeople had decided to drop sponsorship, no pun intended.
I know The Pelican Drop won’t be replaced by naked people spinning flaming batons as the New Year begins.
Allow me to explain.
I once lived in a place where naked fire dancers welcomed in the New Year. I don’t know if they still do this in Bisbee, Arizona, but it happened once when I lived there. It wasn't like it was done all the time and I haven't heard that it's happened since.
The city had closed off one of the streets in the center of the historic district. I had been there with hundreds of other townsfolk, visited with my pals, then decided to head home before the beginning of 2002. That’s why I missed out on all of the “fun.”
The next morning I popped out of my front door and waved to my across-the-street neighbor Linda.
“Did you stay for the naked fire dancers last night?” she called out.
She had my immediate attention.
Linda proceeded to tell me that the revelry continued into the wee hours of the morning. The music was loud, people were dancing in the streets when somewhere around 2 a.m. some new arrivals from Seattle emerged in the middle of the crowd, doffed their clothes, lit some batons and proceeded to do a fire dance to welcome the New Year.
“Yeah,” Linda said, “there were five or six young women with dreadlocks, seemed to really know this fire dancing stuff. The crowd went wild.  And these weren’t skinny, scrawny women either.”
Linda went on to say this was all pretty exciting to her 18-year-old son who was visiting from Phoenix. “Yeah,” she said, “he turns to me with these big eyes and says, ‘Mom, I want to move to Bisbee.’”
I get the impression folks doing naked things in public is an accepted part of the Pacific Northwest lifestyle. For instance in the past year I’ve stumbled across news from the town of Fremont, near Seattle, where a summer solstice celebration features naked people marching in a parade. I haven’t heard of this in any place I’ve ever lived:  Roanoke, Virginia; Naples, Florida; Amarillo, Texas; Roswell or Clovis or Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Now there was that busty, topless rollerblader in Phoenix but that was in broad daylight one August and the she turned out to be a he…but that’s another story.

                                                                                -30-

TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: AIRPORT JITTERS

By Grant McGee

Things sure are different in this “Post September 11th” world.  I haven’t been on a plane since that time.  I’m not really that inclined to do so, what with all the hassles and new list of do’s and don’ts for the airport.

I first started reconsidering air travel just a few months after the September 11^th attacks.  I was working at a weekly newspaper and had to take care of some vending machines in the Tucson International Airport.  Once a week I had to go in and re-stock the machines with fresh newspapers.

Because I parked right at the terminal my car had to be inspected.  Mr. Policeman would walk up, have me open all my doors, my engine compartment and trunk and do an inspection.  Then he’d take a long handled mirror and look under the car. 

Then I’d grab my stacks of papers and mosey inside the terminal.  Then I had to go through the security machine.  After doing that a few times I got to where I took off my belt, put on flip-flops and only had my keys and wallet in my pockets, no pocket change…no pocket knife…it cut down on the time I spent with the friendly, neighborhood Transportation Safety Administration inspectors.

One day there was no policeman nearby, he was all the way at the other end of the terminal.  I waved, I yelled, I whistled for Mr. Policeman.  I started doing jumping jacks and yelling, “HEY.  HEY!  HEEEEEEY!”

Finally Mr. Policeman came strolling down.

“Sir, do you have a problem?  You’re scaring the passengers,” he said looking at me sideways.  I think he was pondering whether to haul me to jail.

“I just wanted to get an inspection.”

“Sir, there’s a phone just inside the door to call for an inspection.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.”

As I walked into the terminal I pondered his words:  “You’re scaring the passengers.”  I wondered what kind of world was forming around me that my fellow countrymen would be afraid of a lanky dude down at the other end of the terminal doing jumping-jacks…but people have been afraid of lesser things I reckon.

Then there was the time I caused a sensation at the George H.W. Bush International Airport in Houston with my 18-wheeler.

There’s a road that goes to the tractor-trailer loading area at the airport there and there’s a road to the main terminal.  They’re side by side.  In the age before GPS thingys I took the wrong road.

I ended up in front of the passenger terminal at the George H.W. Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas.  I thought I must’ve looked like an elephant amongst a herd of cattle.

People were staring.

People were pointing.

Then I saw a hand stuck in the air, waving, at me.  The hand belonged to a policeman.

I rolled my window down.

“I’m sorry, sir, I made a wrong turn,” I wanted to be sure to speak first and let the dude know that I knew I messed up.

“No shit,” said the policeman as he came up to my window.  He spoke softly but firmly, “You’re scaring the passengers.  Now just get this thing out of here.”

“Yes sir,” I said and rolled up my window.

Now I could understand people being afraid of an out-of-place 18-wheeler at an airport in the months after the September 11^th attacks.

But a guy doing jumping-jacks?

TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: "WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE WORLD STOPPED TURNING"

by Grant McGee

            I’ve been meaning to write a nice letter to the country singer Alan Jackson for a while now.

            It would be just a fan letter, letting him know how I think he has been blessed with a great songwriting talent.

            I thought about writing that letter when I first heard his song “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).” 

            Jackson has written a lot of good songs, but to me, “Where Were You…” captures the essence of the first initial feeling many of us probably felt as the events of September 11, 2001 unfolded.

“Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day.”

Where were you?

I was living in Bisbee, Arizona. I had two dogs, I walked them every morning before I went to work in Tombstone.

As I came back to my house a neighbor stuck her head out her door.

“Check out the TV, a plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

Inside the house as I stood in front of the television wondering how a passenger jet could be so far off course and hit the building, a second plane hit.

“This is no accident,” I said out loud.  I was stunned.

“Did you stand there in shock at the sight of

That black smoke rising against that blue sky.”

We all know the rest:  the incredible tragedy, the collapsing of the twin towers, the ominous cloud of dust raging down the concrete canyons of New York, the crash at the Pentagon, the crash in western Pennsylvania.

I couldn’t get enough news that day.  There was no television at work.  I left the radio on, tuned in to a Tucson station.  I felt like I was moving through molasses.  A co-worker stayed away from my office, she didn’t want to hear what was going on, she didn’t want to know any more than she did.

The boss walked in and wanted to know why we were behind schedule.

“The planes, the World Trade Center,” I said.

“Oh, THAT,” she said.  “That doesn’t affect us, what’s the problem.”

“Someone has attacked our homeland,” I said, verging on getting outwardly angry over her incredible indifference.

“This will be taken care of, it doesn’t affect us, now let’s pick up the pace here.”

Unprecedented things kept happening:  All air traffic in the United States was grounded, the New York Stock Exchange would be closed the next day.

The next day I found a swatch of black fabric and wrapped it around my left bicep.  I couldn’t see just going about my business as if nothing happened.  I felt something deep and jarring inside as it was revealed that our homeland had been deliberately and maliciously attacked.

Tombstone is a tourist town, so American flags were a common sale item in the shops there.  I bought one for my car.  It was the last one in this particular store.

“There was a barrelful of those yesterday,” said the store worker.

We all know the rest of the story from that day and the days…weeks…months…years afterward.

On a bus to Little Rock, Arkansas the following spring I sat beside a Marine Corps sniper.  He told me about his work, why he thought he had the best job in the world.

“So you’re on your way to Afghanistan?” I asked.

“No, home on leave, then we’re off,” but he declined to say to where.

“So where were you on September 11?”

“We were in Okinawa, we stood there in front of the television for about two hours, none of us saying much,” he said.  “Then one by one we walked to our bunks and started packing.  We were sure we were going somewhere.

“Then our commanding officer came in and told us to unpack, he understood our feelings but they had other plans for us, we ended up going to the Philippines.

“I wish we’d gone right after them instead,” he said, looking out the window.

I thought about how differently I’ve felt about this aggression as opposed to the big war of my youth, the Vietnam War.  How different things would have been had the Viet Cong caused such destruction upon the American homeland.

“Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day.”

TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: THE PHILISTINE AND THE ART MOB

By Grant McGee

Philistine:  A person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them.

She called me a philistine.

Poseur:  A person who acts in an affected manner in order to impress others.

I called her a poseur after we had parted company.

I wouldn’t call her a poseur while we were hanging out together, but she thought it was important to label me a philistine to her Roswell art friends.

Such was life hanging out with Muriel.

Muriel liked Jackson Pollock.  I knew a few things about Jackson Pollock:  Ed Harris played Pollock in a biopic about him, Pollock had problems with drinking and anger management according to the movie and Pollock made “big coin” flinging various colors of paint all over empty canvases.  Someone labeled him an “abstract expressionist” and therefore he “made it.”

Because I thought Pollock’s art was “bullshit” she called me a philistine.  She practically spit the word out.

There was that time we drove to Albuquerque to view a display from one of her friends who had “made it,” he was pulling in thousands of dollars for his work.  We walked into the gallery on Central Avenue.  The walls were festooned with little cubes, little blocks of wood.   There’d be this, say, 8 foot by 10 foot space and a little, say, 2 inch by 2 inch by 2 inch cube in the center.  Lights would be trained on it.  There was a price tag in the corner of the space:  $10,000.

“You’ve GOT to be f#$king kidding me,” I said in a hushed tone.

“What,” said Muriel.

“$10,000 for THIS?”

“You’re such a philistine,” she said.  She wasn’t smiling.

“THIS is such bullshit,” I said.  “Where is the art in this?”

“You’re supposed to appreciate the lighting, how the light plays with the angles of the cube,” she said.  “Now if you can’t appreciate this just be quiet and don’t embarrass me.”

I should’ve seen that as a “red flag” about Muriel but it would be some time before one day I’d snap awake and realize she and I shouldn’t be hanging around with each other.

I was an impressionist, realist, romantic art kinda guy anyway.

Years later as I was riding my bicycle along a county road I spied a piece of bent metal.  I paused and looked at it in the dust.  Was it worth saving?  Was it an art treasure waiting to be developed?

            Bent rebar as art?  I suppose if I hadn’ta hung around Muriel and made those trips to Albuquerque and Santa Fe art galleries I wouldn’t have given the rebar a second glance.  But as I learned, people were paying hundreds, even thousands of dollars for things made from stuff I saw in roadside ditches every day.  I thought, “Dang, I could go to Santa Fe do art and make big coin.” 

            I remembered not long after I returned from one trip to “The City Different” it seemed opportunity fell right in my lap.  While out walking I found a foot-long strand of barbed wire with two chicken-egg sized hunks of concrete on each end.  I took it to work the next day and stuck it on the wall in my office.

            “What’s that?” asked a co-worker.

            “Santa Fe art,” I said. 

            “It needs a frame,” she said.  “What’s it called?”

            “The American Farmer.” 

“I don’t get it,” she said.

For just a moment I pondered calling her a philistine, but I thought better of it.  She probably wouldn’t’ve understood anyway.

“You see,” I explained, “The barbed wire represents the American farmer, and one hunk of concrete is a rock, the other is a hard place.”

“Ohh,” she nodded her head in understanding.

“I figure someone in Santa Fe might pay a thousand bucks for it.”

I never took “The American Farmer” to Santa Fe.  I finally came to my senses and threw it out.

Besides, I’d learned in my encounters with the art world that success in that realm isn’t so much about selling art as it is about networking, socializing and making a small fortune by starting with a large one.

I looked at the bent metal in the dust.  Was this art in the rough?

Nah, just a hunk of rebar. 

I got back on my bike and pedaled home.