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Bisbee,
Arizona news, reviews, art, events, history, business and entertainment
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We get there around eight on a fine June Saturday morning. The long, grassy, tree-lined Vista Park is looking good this year - so far.
Vista Park is called Vista Park not because it looks out on a splendid view. It is called Vista Park because it was created to be a pleasant outlook for the residents at the Phelps Dodge mine manager's mansion built up-slope at the head of the park. After the mine manager's shack - called the Loma Linda - was built, of course, the neighborhood was ripe for the rest of the PD upper crust to move into the fairly impressive digs built down the lines of the park. At the feet of the park they built the Warren ball park. So think of the table in a boardroom with the pretty cushy chairs lining the sides of the table and the really cushy throne at the head of the table and the empty chair at the foot of the table where the guest du jour would sit when entertaining the group with some proposal or other that the guy at the head of the table could dismiss with a flick of the finger as if he were disposing of something small and unpleasant collected from somewhere his mother told him not to scratch. This is commerce and industry in action.
The table, then, was Vista Park. Of course, later on the mining turned from the more or less poetic and folkloric underground version to the snatch-and-grab open pit variety and nobody had time anymore to play Great Gatsby on the verandah of the Loma Linda. So they made the area directly behind the mansion a mine dump rising as the base of a massively truncated pyramid to a height many times that of the Loma Linda. Which of course is how it is today. Looking up the long axis of the park to the Loma Linda thickly framed by an enormous pile of rubble, it's possible to understand that Vista Park is not the least of Bisbee's many ironies.
Dennis and Becky Wilcox are looking fit today. "We're both retired and we're into raising gourds," says Becky cheerfully. So they must be. Gourds are standing and hanging everywhere. Gourds stuffed with plants, gourd bird feeders, gourd condiment holders, gourds of unidentifiable function. "These you can bust open, and there's seeds in there. You can plant 'em," says Dennis.
"Looks like you're raising rocks, too." We say. "Yeah, that's for sure," Dennis laughs. "Our daughter does the rocks." "Last week we noticed a lot of dogs, so this week we brought a bucket," says Becky, nodding at what looks like a golden retriever mixed with a basset hound slopping up water from the bucket under the table. Waggo, waggo. We point at a huge gourd filled with peacock feathers. "Ah, I forgot, " Dennis says, "we also raise peacocks. We have thirteen of them." "And no birds were harmed in the making of this piece," smiles somebody. We wonder how you could ever forget you have thirteen peacocks, but say instead, "We heard they're kind of mean. Are they mean?" "Nah," says Becky, looking at us. "Course, there's certain times of the year when you wouldn't want to come up to them." We walk off, pondering that last bit. |
There's
a blue-covered table with rocks with slogans painted on them. One
of them says "If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen."
