LOOKING FOR GONADS

We had a great time at Rockhound State Park in New Mexico. Not because we know one rock from another, but because we hooked up with friends from home, Bob and Mary Ann Warner. Mary Ann is the Rock Star. She is always walking around with her eyes on the ground. The rest of us see dirty rocks but she sees gem stones. Bob doesn’t want to know how many pounds of rocks he is hauling all over the country in their 36 foot motor home. Every time he fills up at the gas station he is just praying that some of them contain gold. Gaila was  mistakenly calling geodes "gonads", until I told her the biology of her geology definition. Everyone was looking for gem stones and Gaila was looking for family jewels. The best part of traveling is meeting characters and one day in Deming, we met several. Bob and Mary Ann introduced us to Gertrude and Geraldine Kretek. They met them on a previous trip and became fast friends. The "girls"  (80 year old twins) are native to Deming, growing up on a large 3000+ acre ranch just east of town. We thought that was large until they took us out to meet their friend, Nadine, who has a ranch consisting of 15 sections. Her grandparents settled there in 1902. The highlight for us was visiting with Nadine who lives on her ranch by herself at 87 years old. She even has her own mountain. Most women bring out there knitting projects to show visitors. Nadine brought out her jars of rattlesnake rattles. The twins called her the Annie Oakley of the area. The rattle collection came from her yard. She likes to use her .22 cal rifle to shoot snakes that come up to the house. Her kids would prefer she use a shotgun but Nadine said that shotgun pattern puts holes in her garden hose and bird feeders.  She said that one day she just couldn’t seem to hit the darned snake. “I kept shootin’ and the snake kept comin’.” Finally she went in and got a fresh box of shells and finished the job. She found out later her grandkids had loaded her up with blanks. Ranch life can be dangerous this close to the border. Nadine’s late husband always told her to shoot first and ask questions later. One Christmas he decided to surprise her with a new wood burning potbellied stove. He unloaded it out in the yard after dark so Nadine would see it the next morning. Nadine was up before sunrise and in the dim light could see someone standing out in the yard. She shouted a couple warnings before she poured lead into her new potbellied stove. 

The twins have a ranch hand named Brent. He was showing us his latest hunting trophy, an African Oryx. You can see it in our slideshow as well as a photo of the twins. THE DICK AND GAILA CECIL B. DEMALLERY SHOW The Oryx were introduced to the White Sands Missle Range, here in New Mexico, for hunting purposes. It’s bad enough we can’t take care of the animals that were here originally, we are adding new ones to manage.

Gaila and I drove up into nearby Spring Canyon State Park and hiked up to “Lovers Leap.” You could see for miles into Mexico and off toward Arizona. I couldn’t get Gaila to jump. I guess, down deep, she really doesn’t love me. We also visited City of Rocks State Park - a geological wonder. These massive rocks, out in the middle of the desert, were blown here form a volcanic eruption 33 million years ago. We parked among the balancing rocks and explored the area for nearly a week.

We are still dealing with cool weather. Most days are warm and sunny but it drops into the 20s and 30s at night. My furnace has been acting goofy the whole trip. I have had it out and apart several times and still have not licked it. Before it’s over I will be an RV furnace expert. When it’s not working, it can be a two cat night. Sheba and Funny Face keep slapping me with their paws and looking at me like, “Hey, dummy. Go turn the furnace on.” They don’t know how lucky they are. I make them watch the weather news back home every night so they appreciate how good they have it.  

We are really glad we decided to come back to New Mexico. We did have a little excitement leaving Arizona. The car partially came loose from the motor home. It is connected with two towbars and cables. A cotter pin somehow fell out off one bar and the car started wagging behind the motor home. Gaila calls these innocent incidents “PreDickaments.” Luckily I wasn’t going too fast. I had just come off of a winding canyon road. I usually can’t see the car behind the motor home so when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw it trying to pass me, it got my attention. 

THE STATE FLAG OF NEW MEXICO

The yellow field and red symbol colors are the colors of Spain. First brought to New Mexico by Spanish explorers in 1540. On New Mexico's flag we see a red sun with rays stretching out from it. There are four groups of rays with four rays in each group. This is an ancient sun symbol of a Native American people called the Zia. The Zia believed that the giver of all good gave them gifts in groups of four. These gifts are:

• The four directions - north, east, south and west.
• The four seasons - spring, summer, fall and winter.
• The day - sunrise, noon, evening and night.
• Life itself - childhood, youth, middle years and old age.

All of these are bound by a circle of life and love, without a beginning or end.

RV PARKING RAGE

I hesitate to tell this story. Readers might get the idea that I’m getting crotchety in my aging process. Truly that is not the case. I think my problem might be my vicinity to an aging population lately. We spent a wonderful few days in one of Arizona’s most beautiful “Sky Islands” high above Green Valley, Arizona. Being winter, we enjoyed sunny warm days and cold nights in Madera Canyon’s Bog Springs National Forest Campground. We love these out of the way, hard to reach, NF campgrounds for the solitude they offer, the beautiful locations, and the dark quiet nights. Because the campground is located a half-mile up a rough, little maintained, mountain road, few RVers are willing to negotiate it for the prize location we find at the summit. This is another reason to have a rig that is not too big to squeeze into hundreds of great government sites. 

The problem started when we left our mountain utopia and ventured into the valley below. The land of Oscar the Grouch. We decided to head for Patagonia, AZ, but first thought we would stop at the Green Valley Library book sale and get some reading material. It was early in the morning and we found a huge, mall type parking lot behind the library. The sign said it was the White Elephant Thrift Store but other buildings looked like Sheriff, Road Commission, county type stuff. We were the only vehicle in the lot. I parked horizontally, taking up five spaces. I was way out at the edge of the lot in nobody’s way. It was an hour until the library would open so we sat and ate breakfast. Quickly, over the next hour, every lot slot in the parking area filled. We were amazed. A line was forming at the White Elephant Thrift door. Soon the Golden Girls blocked me in from the front and Archie and Edith blocked me in from the back. 

When the hundreds of lot slots were filled, people started parking out on both sides of the street. 

I thought I was just imagining the looks we were getting from people walking by. Could my five spaces be that important in a sea of overflowing vehicles that clearly had to flood the nearby roads whether I was squatting here or not. I went on a recon mission. I discovered they were all here for the White Elephant Thrift Store. It wasn’t a once a year sale. This thing goes on six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. It is more popular than Walmart at Christmas. When I got back to the motor home I discovered I had not been imagining the “LOOK.” The head of the Geritol Posse knocked at our door. At first I thought it was the Sheriff. Brown shirt with official arm patches, khaki pants, shiny gold badge and radio. My first clue she was White Elephant Security was the fact that she wasn’t packin’ any heat. 

When she said, “You have to move. You are taking up five spaces”, I could see the panic in Gaila’s face. She thought I was going to go into my raving jailhouse lawyer mode. It was true that I was breaking no law. I had every right to be parked where I was. I could have given this female Broderick Crawford much grief, but I could also see the strain in her face. Coming out and telling me I must move was the last thing she wanted to be doing, but the Golden Girls and several other complaints forced her from her better judgement. I could have unhooked, parked the car and motor home separately and vertically. That would have really blocked the lot. I know that would have sent her into a panic. So instead of being Mr. Hyde, I decided to be Dr. Jekyll. I told her I couldn’t squeeze out until she had one of her complainers move their vehicle. The word was out. I had been evicted. Cars were already vying for position to take my five spaces. When she got the car behind me moved, I still could not exit the parking lot until she made those crowding for the slots, like vultures on a fresh kill, to move on past. They did not want to lose their positions. Because of poor eyesight, I could tell many had taken their Vytorin in combination with their Viagra at breakfast and it had hardened their heart. They wanted to string me up but couldn’t find a tall enough cactus. We finally eased on down the road and found a gas station that said we could drop the rig for a couple hours. We went back to the library and later explored the White Elephant store. I saw my Rent-a-Cop friend and told her I had parked down in Nogales, Mexico and wondered if that was far enough. She got a chuckle out of that and hoped I would never come back to Green Valley, Arizona. No chance of that!  --Keep Smilin’, Dick E. Bird