twelve miles from Coyote Pass to the "thriving metropolis" of Black Canyon. After
a week of solitude the two block "business district" was a delight.
I had the car fluids tended to and the jerrycans refilled with fresh sweet water at
the gas station. In the market I purchased a week's supply of food; spicy V-8
juice, orange juice, Pepsi, ice, dog-food and "bickies" for London. I checked the
post office for mail and posted my letters.
Next I went into the only other shop in town, a second-hand store. It was not
long before I knew every article in the store, but my only purchase ever, was a
week's supply of western novels which I could read, often surrounded by the very
local described in the books.
Once a month for a special treat I swung the car into Rock Springs before I
headed back onto the southbound freeway.
Rock Springs had been a stage coach stop back in territorial days and little
had changed. A battered old screen door led me from the heat of the desert
sunshine into the darkened cool room enclosed by thick adobe walls. As my eyes
grew accustomed to the change of light, an old fashioned general store revealed
itself. Grand show-cases were loaded with groceries, supplies, large jars of stick
candy, poke bonnets and Navajo jewlery.
The ceiling beams were hung with antiquated necessities of life from the
nineteenth century. There was a side saddle, cowboy saddles, saddle bags and
cowboy boots - all worn and weathered. There were flat irons, branding irons
dutch ovens and frying pans - blackened and resting from their labours. Rusted
gold-pans, rifles and hand-guns were hung high, as their owners may have been
one hundred years ago.
A small doorway led me into the store's hardware room. It catered to
Snowbirds so the stock reflected their tastes - with a fine selection of new,
shinning gold-pans, coal oil lamps, picks, canteens and ten gallon hats.
I wound my way between the show-cases to the back of the general store, where
another small doorway opened onto the dinning room boasting tables covered
with red and white chequered cloths. The room was large and on the walls were
old west relics, pottery bells and Rock Springs T-shirts for sale.
Whether I chose a chuck-wagon breakfast, a Mexican lunch, a ranch house
steak dinner, a sandwich or a good old hamberger, I knew it was to be, as G.B. had
assured me, "the best rip-snorting meal y'all'll ever eat!"
Despite protests of being sated, I was led with great ritual to the seven foot
pie keep. There I chose a foot high wedge of lemon merange pie from an
incredible selection of berry, fruit, cream and custard.
Each pie was homemade with the freshest, tastiest ingredients baked to
perfection, then placed in the pie keep and illuminated like England's Crown
Jewels.
Phoenix executives brought New York and London businessmen to this ''taste"
of the Old West and locals just brought their appetites.
But Ahhhh, the trip to the bathroom revealed the piece de resistance. I
walked to the back of the dinning room, edged right through an open doorway . . .
and there it was, in all its glory shinning through from the long lost past - the
Saloon!
A gleaming brass rail and brass spittoons accented the massive wooden bar where
a gigantic, glistening mirror reflected back the amber and green bottles before it.
Above the heavy oak tables and chairs, hung an immence wagon wheel encircled
by fresh unlit beeswax candles. The people who breathed life into this echo of
the past were local cowboys and gun toting Snowbirds.
Maybe I didn't stay until evening because I was afraid of having a flat tire or
breakdown on my way back to my butte; maybe I feared G.B.'s reaction to me
alone at night in a saloon. But I wanted to stay. I wanted to see the candles lit. I
wanted to sip Pepsis and watch logs burning in the fireplace. And most of all, I
wanted to stay until the piano player pounded the ornate honky-tonk piano back
to life.
G.B. and the Strange Canadian Painter Lady
by Charlotte Madison and Nana Cook copyrite 1994
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