#Underheard: Cry At A Jewel Sale, Howl Like The Coyotes

From the desk of Broderick Mitchell -- 

Good morning, Scottsdale!

Well, sort of. That’s what Dalcy and I were saying just last week. Dalcy used to be a member of the Dolley Madisons – some sort of charitable group I thought was a local thing until they had a national get-together in Arizona last week. Some sort of New Year’s resolution to reconnect, I suppose. She hadn’t been to one of their meetings in three or four years but thought visiting with some old friends would be fun. I didn’t see the sense in it, but she really wanted to go, and I was tired of the weather here – so why not? We flew out for a few days, but I won’t be hangin’ around the convention. None of that was for me, so I headed out into town. Old Towne.

I really got caught up in downtown Scottsdale – it’s a touristy place with a plethora of places to buy aquamarine-colored jewelry. Can anyone have too much aquamarine-colored jewelry? Yes! Cripes, the stuff seems to spawn while you’re standin’ there watching it lay motionless in its native cardboard box. Is there some sort of contest to see which store sells the most? I’d wager it’s all a big racket: all the stores are owned by Clyde Gabriél, and the stuff is mass-produced by a factory outside Peoria. I dunno, I was just there visiting. One store had a huge sign announcing it was GOING OUT OF BUSINESS but when you walked by the small print indicated it was temporary. Chintzy advertising.

There was a somebody-or-others art gallery with scads of artwork just waiting to be used for Louie Lamarr book jackets. There were lots of cowboys and lots of horses. I nearly ran into a bronzed cowboy figure—I called it Lanky Brannum—and would have been paying through the nose the rest of the decade had it tipped off its base. Poor, pitiful me if that had happened.

Does anyone remember those stupid LoVE stamps? You know, the letters L-O-V-E are stacked together, and the O has this arsty-fartsy slant to make it cute to the eye? Right about where Old Towne starts to switchover to something designed by Crazy Guggenheim was a statue of LOVE. A couple of kids decided to climb the L as I approached. Neither girl was particularly agile, so after watching their mediocre climbing skills, part of me wondered how much they would love falling from it.

What I thought was an old library turned out to be a historical museum - really an old elementary school. It resembled the school I attended as a child, except the stiff, waxy-looking teachers were mannequins. One of ‘em reminded me of Ms. Steinmann, my grammar teacher. I ran into a curator-of-sorts, an affable and talkative chap named Mark, who was from Ohio or Indiana and wound up talking about the century-old school building as if he attended classes there. I was noticeably clueless about the region's history and got an earful about Winfrey and Helene Scott. It was a great place to spend an hour or so.

With Dalcy later in tow, we ran by the Hotel Valley Ho. Didn’t stay there, though. Dalcy said the place probably had a “Sinatra Slept Here” plaque hidden away. It looked like something out of the 1950s. One of the Dollies had suggested the restaurant across the street from this hotel – the Tortilla Factory – and we enjoyed steaks there. Our hotel was north of town, out along the Pima Highway. On our last night in town, we sat on the back patio, still warmed from the glorious afternoon sun, and listened to the coyotes yipping away at low-flying planes. Another out-of-towner thought it would be cute to yip back.

And that’s how I started off my 2012.  Now time to get to work.