Arizona: Every Kind of Country

Fifty-four years ago I visited Arizona for the first time.  We were driving a little black and white 1957 Opel Rekord with a white top that I had purchased for the large sum of $350.  I bought a little metal roof-top carrier for the top of it, loaded all our possessions in or on top of the car and off we went from California for the East coast.  Along the way we visited “new” family—some in Phoenix, others in Kansas, Ohio, etc.  Phoenix was terribly hot (in April).  Traveling north to Flagstaff it was cold and I had trouble starting the car because of both the cold and the altitude.  It was that issue which caused a cog to pop out of the Opel’s transmission while being “pushed”.  The transmission was temporarily repaired enough in Flagstaff for us to creep cautiously across the Painted Desert to Albuquerque where we connected with the Unser Brothers garage, and a new [used] transmission could be installed.  I’ve already told that story—but it always come to the fore when I’m in Flagstaff.  Fifty-four years ago I had no idea that our son, Luke, and his family would be living here in Flagstaff.

I attended an Air Force Chaplains Conference at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona in February some thirty-plus years ago.  I left Maryland in an ice and snow storm, but arrived in Tucson to sunshine and 80-plus degrees.  For the first few days of my visit in Tucson I was convinced that I should move my family to Arizona!  But, alas, it didn’t happen!  And what if it had?  Would my son Luke have met Kim, born and raised in Tucson?

Arizona has all kinds of terrain (and thus weather) from the desert valleys of the Sonora Desert, to the White Mountains and the Kaibab Plateau.  “Arizona is a land of contrasts geologically, racially, socially, and culturally,” according to a Arizona Guidebook in 1940. “Its mountains tower a mile or more into the air; the rivers have cut miles deep into the multicolored earth. Snow lingers on the peaks while the valleys are sweet with the fragrance of orange blossoms. Here are sere deserts and the largest pine forest in the world. Here are fallen forests turned to stone, and forests of trees that have survived the slow change from jungle to desert by turning their leaves to thorns.”

I think Zane Grey in his book, Valley of Wild Horses, has his character sum up Arizona much better than I can. "I had a pard who came from Arizona. All day long and half the night that broncho buster would rave about Arizona. Well, he won me over. Arizona must be wonderful.
"But Pan, isn't it desert country?"
"Arizona is every kind of country..."

That Opel looked something like this.....