Richard Shelton - Going Back to Bisbee

I t is July 20, 1989, early afternoon, monsoon season in the Sonoran Desert, andI am going back to Bisbee. As I drive east out of Tucson, the temperature is 106degrees and the humidity must be in the forties. Huge white thunderheads are buildingup in the south, drawing moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, but they dont look verypromising yet. Too white and too far apart. Between them the sky is cerulean undera fierce sun. The heat doesnt seem to have anything to do with the sun. It comesup from the ground and just hangs there, almost solid. Perhaps the clouds mean astorm later in the afternoon, or perhaps they will just drift north like idle promises.No blue-black horizon yet. No thunder. But the breeze is from the southeast, whatthere is of it, and a monsoon can move in quickly at this time of year, especiallylate in the afternoon.

The desert could certainly use a storm right now to cool things off and lower thehumidity. I am reminded of what somebody said about a fundamentalist fire-and-brimstonepreacher. Its not the heat so much as the humility. Ive been on the road onlya few minutes and already my backside is melting into the car seat. The sane part of me says Stop! Roll up the windows and turn on the air conditioner! The insane,masochistic part of me answers No! You will be leaving the desert floor soon, climbingout of this furnace and into the rangeland where it will be cooler. Dont be a pantywaist.I engage in these dialogues with myself about the air conditioner quite often. Theyhave as much to do with the history of the van I am driving as they do with my ownwarped point of view.

The van bug bit me a few years ago when Rosalie Sorrels, the folk singer from Idaho,came to visit us, driving her elderly van which she had named Mabel Dodge. Rosalieand Mabel Dodge had been batting around the country doing concerts. In fact, Rosaliehad been batting around the country so much that she was known as The TravelinLady from the title of one of her best known songs. The romantic notion of ahome on wheels attracted me at once. Why couldnt I get a van and bat around thecountry doing whatever it is I do, and I wasnt exactly sure what that was, but theidea felt good. So my wife and I started looking for a used van. I didnt want anyfurniture or fancy trappings, just room to stretch out in. With a sleeping bag andan ice chest I would be fine.

And soon, on one of her trips to West Texas to visit her family, my wife found thealmost-perfect van. She called me from Ft. Worth.

Happy birthday. I bought you a van.

Great! Wonderful! What color is it?

Its the color of your eyes. My wife can be a little romantic herself sometimes,especially when she has just driven a hard bargain.

Good lord! I dont want a red, white and blue van.

No, its blue all over, inside and out.

It was a 1978 Dodge with one previous owner and a considerable number of miles onits odometer. It had front seats and a bench across the back and was otherwise devoid of furniture. But it was gloriously, decadently carpetedfloor, walls, and ceilingwitha deep shag, light blue carpet. Sleeping in it, I was soon to find out, was likesleeping in a blue womb. Otherwise its personality was masculine. I named it BlueBoy.

Other than a Rickenbacker owned by my grandparents, which was an elegant antiquewhen I was a child, Blue Boy is the only automobile for which I have ever felt genuineaffection, and we have had many adventures together from Canada to the tip of BajaCalifornia and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Blue Boy is badly faded now, likemy eyes, from years of Arizona sun, and he has a gash near the rear where my wifebacked him into a paloverde outside our garage. (When asked how it happened, shesaid, God moved a tree, and she sticks to that story.) He is a little loose inthe joints and has many rattles as the result of some of the worst roads on theNorth American Continent, but he continues to purr along like the perfect travelingmachine he is.

But Blue Boy had one peculiarity which was linked to the fact that he had lived allhis previous life in West Texas, although I didnt make that connection until yearslater. His motor ran cool enough, even with the air conditioner on, until the outsidetemperature rose above one hundred degrees. Then he began to overheat when the airconditioner was on. From the depths of my ignorance of automobile mechanics, Iassumed that Blue Boys engine was not powerful enough to take on the added burden of the air conditioner at such high temperatures, and I simply got used to drivingwithout the air conditioner most of the time, and always when the outside temperaturewas very high. I took a certain macho pride in being able to tough it out, as myfather used to say, and had a tendency to sneer at the occupants of other vehiclesas they rolled down the highway all sealed up in their air-conditioned capsules.

This went on for several years until last summer when we took a trip from Tucsonto the West Coast, during which my wife wept, complained, and threatened to faintnearly all the way to Los Angeles. She flew home and announced that she was nevergoing anywhere in Blue Boy again in the summer. My wife is resolute. When she makesup her mind, she makes up her mind; and when she issues an ultimatum, there is nogetting around it.