Mike's Spread in Chino Valley, AZ
So, family dynamics are about what you’d expect.
Janine’s mother’s ex-husband Mike and his wife, with whom we’re staying (it’s complicated) are terrific people. They’re amazingly hospitable – generous to a fault, kind, caring, and very conservative. Mike is much more conservative, than his wife Susan. He was an L.A. cop, and he served a tour as a Navy Ceebee (they built stuff) in Vietnam, I’d say he came back to the states radicalized, and I can’t say that I blame him.
He went over there to protect us, and came back to a round of indifference at best and hostility at worst.
Mike saw heavy combat – his unit was attacked, and a lot of his mates were killed in a single day. He lost a lot of his hearing that day, and he told me that he still has nightmares. That’s a lot of baggage to carry around.
And, as you might expect, from time to time the conversation turned to politics. Without getting into too many specifics, I think that Mike is angry at “liberals” without knowing much about what these so-called “liberals” want to achieve. Conversely, I’d suspect that many liberals would indeed discount Mike’s contribution to our society. Hell, I would have found a way to stay out of Da Nang, and I sure as hell would not have spent seventeen years patrolling the streets as a cop.
Janine’s mother’s ex-husband Mike and his wife, with whom we’re staying (it’s complicated) are terrific people. They’re amazingly hospitable – generous to a fault, kind, caring, and very conservative. Mike is much more conservative, than his wife Susan. He was an L.A. cop, and he served a tour as a Navy Ceebee (they built stuff) in Vietnam, I’d say he came back to the states radicalized, and I can’t say that I blame him.
He went over there to protect us, and came back to a round of indifference at best and hostility at worst.
Mike saw heavy combat – his unit was attacked, and a lot of his mates were killed in a single day. He lost a lot of his hearing that day, and he told me that he still has nightmares. That’s a lot of baggage to carry around.
And, as you might expect, from time to time the conversation turned to politics. Without getting into too many specifics, I think that Mike is angry at “liberals” without knowing much about what these so-called “liberals” want to achieve. Conversely, I’d suspect that many liberals would indeed discount Mike’s contribution to our society. Hell, I would have found a way to stay out of Da Nang, and I sure as hell would not have spent seventeen years patrolling the streets as a cop.
So I’d say we have a fair amount of coming together to do if we want to create something lasting with our politics. And that’s a lot of what we talked about.
A good guy, very bound up in what has come before, and who can blame him? And very much a part of a different generation.
Interesting side note – the only Democrat he can stand at all is Obama.
Enough of politics. This morning Susan took Maggie out on a trail ride, and while I know Janine was shitting bricks, it was obvious that Maggie was going to have the time of her life – off on a horse, without fences. They were gone for nearly an hour, and when Maggie got back she was glowing. “The best forty minutes of my life,” she announced.
It was also great to spend time with Janine’s half sister Tina, Tina’s husband Phil, and our nephew Xander. We always have a great time together, and gathering at Tina’s dad’s house was the perfect excuse for a get together.
We made our goodbyes around noon, and we were now on our own.
There is something very cliché and Easy Rider-ish about hitting the open road, but in our family, we tend to devolve into schtick. Our little clan has any number of in jokes, including a character based on Harvey Fierstein, the gravelly voiced gay New York playwright, who sounds like cross between Selma Diamond, Tom Waits, that coffee talk lady played by Mike Myers, and, well, Harvey Fierstein. We take turns doing the Harvey thing until it’s not funny anymore, but it’s good for fifty miles of schtick, which works for me.
We stopped for provisions in William, Arizona, where I espied the iconic image of the trip so far – a liquor store that also sold ammo. Or maybe it was an ammo store that sold liquor. (In Arizona, by the way, you can carry a gun on your hip without a permit, so long as it’s visible – comforting).
The sign in the window read “booze, bows and bullets.” We never had such a sign in Queens. I believe our signs read “pigeons, rats, and subway tokens.”
Booze, Bows, Bullets - The American Way
As we pushed up through Navajo country to the east side of the Grand Canyon, it started getting very Grand Canyon-y – red striated cliffs, great big vistas, the stuff you see on postcards.
We pulled into a lovely campground nestled among the lodgepole pines and it’s got that crazy good sweet pine smell that nobody has been able to capture in a bottle.
Last night, we grilled steaks and drank Russian River Pinot, and you just couldn’t beat it.
This campground is the last one with full hookups before the Grand Canyon. This hookups business becomes something of a thing. When you’re RVing, you spend a fair amount of time thinking about your tanks, and full hookups means emptying the bad full ones and filling the good empty ones. There’s something deeply cleansing about this process.
Without making too much of a deal of it, the order in which you empty your tanks is very important. Hook the hose up to the sewer, and dump the “black” water tank first, then the “grey” water tank. Do not get this backwards. Fortunately, I have not made this error yet, but I wouldn’t put it past me.
Today, we’re off to the north rim of the Grand Canyon – it’s said to be much quieter, a lot cooler, and just plain better than the crappy old south rim. Word on the street is that the visibility is excellent right now, and if we get really, really lucky, we just might find a campsite down there.
We pulled into a lovely campground nestled among the lodgepole pines and it’s got that crazy good sweet pine smell that nobody has been able to capture in a bottle.
Last night, we grilled steaks and drank Russian River Pinot, and you just couldn’t beat it.
This campground is the last one with full hookups before the Grand Canyon. This hookups business becomes something of a thing. When you’re RVing, you spend a fair amount of time thinking about your tanks, and full hookups means emptying the bad full ones and filling the good empty ones. There’s something deeply cleansing about this process.
Without making too much of a deal of it, the order in which you empty your tanks is very important. Hook the hose up to the sewer, and dump the “black” water tank first, then the “grey” water tank. Do not get this backwards. Fortunately, I have not made this error yet, but I wouldn’t put it past me.
Today, we’re off to the north rim of the Grand Canyon – it’s said to be much quieter, a lot cooler, and just plain better than the crappy old south rim. Word on the street is that the visibility is excellent right now, and if we get really, really lucky, we just might find a campsite down there.
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