"The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on
the delighted earth."
--- Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), French poet
Welcome to the
"What we did for our summer vacation" newsletter from the Thornton
family. This letter has yet to achieve "cherished tradition" status, but
I've only been releasing them for a couple of decades, and look how long
it took for It's A Wonderful Life to really catch on, so I'm
confident that someday soon I'll be getting those long-awaited notes of
gratitude for sharing our family's adventures, and eventually they'll
outnumber the restraining orders.
We
try to alert everyone when the latest newsletter is out, and every year
it seems that someone new gets added to our mailing list and becomes a
part of our close-knit, “form letter” community. It’s not so much
that our circle of family and friends is expanding… it’s just that in
our fast-paced, highly mobile society, people change addresses
frequently. You’d be surprised how many intended recipients of our
family newsletter have apparently relocated without leaving even a hint
of a forwarding address, in spite of the efforts of the best private
investigation firms we could afford. Fortunately, there are new
recipients to replace these dropouts; complete strangers who now know
about this letter simply because fate has placed them at an address
where the former occupants were targeted. It’s sort of like The
Circle Of Life, or the lottery, or something equally poetic.
To
bring you newbies up to speed, a quick explanation is in order.
Every year I and my wife and our two boys take some sort of vacation.
Sometimes the purpose is to sightsee, sometimes it’s to experience the
great outdoors, sometimes it’s just to get away from the everyday grind.
But mostly it’s so we’ll have something to write about and then share
with our dear family, close friends, and treasured strangers. We
do that with these newsletters, sent out annually and indiscriminately.
We call them “form” letters because, obviously, all of you are looking
at exactly the same document. If I took the time to learn the
“mail-merge” function on our computer and could afford the postage, I
could actually mail this letter and give it the appearance of being
directed specifically to each one of you simply by having the computer
drop individual names into designated strategic positions. But
you’re all too sharp to fall for that, and besides, if I took the time
to master those kind of advanced cyber-skills, I wouldn’t have any time
to write this letter and then what would be the point? (I’m sure many of
you have already asked that same question).
Well, let’s not keep you in suspense any longer. This year we went
to… Scottsdale!
Scottsdale is located north of Phoenix in one of those dry, sandy states
in the southwest. I can’t remember exactly which one because the
map we used didn’t show state borders. It did, however, designate
the location of every Stuckey’s on Interstate 10, and had some great
coupons for nut logs and date shakes.
We
arrived in Scottsdale on Friday afternoon, June 19. The very first
thing that impressed us about the area was the balmy weather, which in
June compares favorably with the climate on the surface of the sun.
Every place in Scottsdale has air-conditioning... giant, heavy-duty
units that are generally bigger than the structures they are attached to
, and are constantly running. The entire city fairly hums with
refrigeration, and everywhere is the refreshing scent of freon.
Although it may be hot, it must be noted that it is a dry heat.
This means that any time you venture out of a climate-controlled
dwelling, every drop of moisture in your body is sucked into the
atmosphere to be transformed into rain in some other, more fortunate
part of the country. To deal with this problem, Scottsdale has
strategically placed mini-marts in 20 foot increments along every
street. These markets pump Gatorade like gasoline. You can
buy large sodas that you tow behind your vehicle. People come to
Scottsdale from all over the country to tone up their flabby kidneys.
My
employer had graciously provided us with a week’s free lodging at a
time-share, so after unpacking, we decided to check out the
accommodations. The pool seemed to be the most popular spot, so we
put on our suits and tried it out. At first we thought it was a
heated pool, and I suppose it was, but only in the sense that the entire
piece of real estate was being microwaved. In fact, we soon
noticed that it was only due to the diligent efforts of the resort
staff, who were continuously dumping wheelbarrows full of ice into the
deep end, that the pool was being maintained at a low simmer.
After doing our best impression of tea bags at poolside, we decided to
take a short drive around town just to get an impression of the area.
What immediately impressed us was the large number of golf courses.
That they existed was not such a surprise; we figured that during the
winter months the weather was probably tolerable enough to support a
golfing industry. But we were aghast to see people playing on
these courses in the middle of June. The heat made it a challenge
to simply draw a breath, much less participate in a sport where, by the
third hole, your club was fast turning into something other than a
solid. We figured that the same mental affliction that causes
people to play golf in the first place probably makes them oblivious to
atmospheric conditions (and could be responsible for the way they
dress).
We
drove around till it felt like the tires were starting to stick to the
pavement, then retreated to our room to map out our strategy for the
rest of our vacation. This strategy turned out to be the same as
that of your average vampire: avoid the sun (we also shun garlic, but
that’ pretty much a year-round family policy). We decided to stick
to indoor activities as much as possible: movies, malls, video arcades,
museums… any place where Mother Nature was thwarted by an air
conditioner cranking out thousands of BTU’s.
There was an exception: Sue (my wife) had heard about an ancient Native
American cliff-dwelling that was located about a hundred miles north of
Scottsdale, so one day we decided to take a look. It was quite
something to see. Into the recesses of the face of a cliff, these
people had built what I would describe as a primitive apartment building
(“primitive” because it didn’t have any air-conditioning). It was
a monument to man’s ingenuity, perseverance, and unending quest for
shade.
According to the brochure that a ranger dispensed through a slot from
the shelter of his refrigerated booth, the people who built this
magnificent cliff structure mysteriously abandoned it. I guess
we’ll never know for sure why they left, but I can think of a few likely
scenarios. I’m sure they probably entertained guests from time to
time who told them that there were other places in the country where
your arrows wouldn’t burst into flame before they hit their target, and
you could perform rain dances with a straight face. Most likely, I
figure that one day they just couldn’t remember what had ever possessed
them to build a house into the side of a cliff, and, demonstrating more
sense than your average Malibu resident, moved on. I’m sure that,
just like most of my home projects, it seemed like a good idea at the
time, but ended up involving too many trips to Home Depot.
Anyway, we left that day with a fuller understanding of why we don’t
understand ancient cultures. On the way back, we stopped at one of
those big factory-outlet malls which, coincidentally, are also
structures mysteriously erected in the middle of nowhere for no apparent
reason.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton