Brian Jabas Smith - Tucson Salvage

A true champion of the dispossessed and forgotten. Smiths one of the few journalists giving voice to the voiceless. We need this now more than ever. I cant recommend this book highly enough.

Willy Vlautin, author of The Motel Life, Lean on Pete, and Dont Skip Out on Me

These arent stories of the movers and shakers of our world, these are stories about the rest of us, the lucky ones trying to hold it together under the daily grind and the not so lucky who have been crushed by all the moving and shaking. Brian Jabas Smith lovingly describes these people, their remarkable spirit and resilience and the city and desert they call home. Thank God or whatever deity may be out there that we have gifted writers like Brian Jabas Smith who have chosen to undertake the noble endeavor of telling these stories, and to remind us that these human beings who exist in the shadows are as much as those who live in the limelight.

Tom Hansen, author of American Junkie and This is What We Do

Brian Jabas Smith sees stories in the faces of people the rest of us dont notice, and he tells them in a way thats impossible to ignore. The writing is terrific, but its the grace, the empathy, his reverence for humanity, that makes this work so beautiful and important that it takes my breath away.

Amy Silverman, author of My Heart Cant Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love, and Down Syndrome

In this collection of essays Brian Jabas Smith empathetically captures the plight of the disenfranchised, the forgotten, and the misunderstood (often people of color) that comprise the backbone of the cultural landscape of urban Arizona. Read this book and try not to weep ideally you will.

Pat Thomas, author of Listen, Whitey! The Sounds of Black Power 1965-75, and Did It! Jerry Rubin: An American Revolutionary

These are haunting, human stories written with an experts eye for salvation. In his profiles of the overlooked, the forgotten, and the dismissed, in his ability to stop while others move on, Brian Jabas Smith has captured the spirit of Joseph Mitchell and set it to roam out here in the desert. If you think you know Tucson, stop and read this.

Thomas Mira y Lopez, author of The Book of Resting Places

I cant think of an American writer who captures place with as much empathy, precision, and grace as Brian Jabas Smith. Tucson Salvage: Tales and Recollections of La Frontera is as gritty as it is kind, and Smiths prose sparkles with insight and heartbreaking description. In these pages we encounter a gifted writer at the height of his powers. An enviably brilliant book.

Cal Freeman, author of Fight Songs

Whenever I want to hear about the truth about whats really going on in the world of the American Southwest and the particulars of that regional story, I turn to the writing of Brian Jabas Smith. Smith doesnt flinch or turn away from telling the truth exactly as it is, straight on, no chaser. His tales of lives lived hard but true take us inside the everyday struggles of what it means to be alive. The American Southwest may be a desert in the eyes of most, but Smith shows us otherwise: that this is a region infested with sharks, and these are true stories of people artists, magicians, fighters, hustlers, bus-stop mystics swimming to save their lives. Pick up this book if you dont mind your whiskey from the well and your habaneros dipped in the Rimbaudian fires of hell.

Peter Markus, author of The Fish and Not the Fish, We Make Mud, and Bob, Man or Boat

They say everyone you meet has a secret that would break your heart. In Tucson Salvage, Brian Jabas Smith meets with the discarded men and women among us and with an openhearted curiosity searches for the humanity in these secrets and finds it. Every. Single. Time.

Danny Bland, author of In Case We Die, and I Apologize in Advance for the Awful Things Im Gonna Do

Brian Jabas Smiths street poet writings are quilted with a lean patchwork sewn up with extensive thread. Its poised work that allows the reader to walk away knowing someone theyve never met. He is remarkable in such infiltration with the rare breadth of delivering poetics in prose, as opposed to cons. It feels like its a matter of time until he scours the entire cityscape revealing all that lurks in shadow land, himself a beacon.

Howe Gelb, singer-songwriter, Giant Sand

First published in 2018

by Eyewear Publishing Ltd

Suite 333, 19-21 Crawford Street

London, W1H 1PJ

United Kingdom

Graphic design by Edwin Smet

Cover image photograph by Brian Jabas Smith

Printed in England by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

All rights reserved

2018-2020 Brian Jabas Smith

Based on the column, Tucson Salvage, which first appeared in the Tucson Weekly,

9/2015-Present. Used with publisher permission.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The editor has generally followed American spelling and punctuation at the authors request.

Set in Bembo 12 / 15 pt

ISBN : 978-1-83978-043-1

WWW.EYEWEARPUBLISHING.COM

Briansmithwriter.com

Tucsonsalvage.net

Dedicated to Howard McDonald Smith

I-10 heading west travels pretty much a straight line from the Atlantic ocean to a point just south of downtown Tucson, where it takes a hard right north towards Phoenix and despair. To the left lies Mexico lurking like a huge Gila monster, one can feel its hot breath all the way from El Paso. Its a junction that acts as a vortex, an asphalt and concrete divining rod with the aquifer underneath shrinking by the day. Two imposing granite and pine partitions the Catalina and Rincon mountains form a natural shelter for the city, keeping past lives and disappointments at bay. An outpost for the lost and weary, a sanctuary for misfits, miscreants, and misers, Tucson is the town that refuses to be a city, even with a half million denizens that now call it home.

A friend of mine from San Francisco once asked me why Tucson has so many drifters and dreamers this was right after a bartender jumped over our beers and knocked out a surly drunk in a dive called The Boondocks and I replied that people trying to get to LA run out of gas or the radiator goes and they just wind up staying. They find a weekly rate hotel, get a minimum wage job, and put off the better life in California for the next month or so. Soon, however, their physiology starts to change, its hot and dry and they become desert creatures, moving slowly from shade to shade and never