FIFTY YEARS AGO I arrived at Florida (Flor-ee-da) Ranger Station in the Santa Rita Mountains to begin my career as a wildland firefighter. I knew the work would be hard, but I didn't know my job would be difficult in many ways I couldn't have possibly imagined.
To commemorate this anniversary, I thought to share an excerpt from my memoir: Uprooted: A New Life in the Arizona Sun. Here, I'd been offered, and accepted, a firefighting position in Southern Arizona south of Tucson, an area I'd never seen, both excited and terrified at the same time.
When I called
Greyhound Bus Lines to make reservations, a bored agent said that they could
get me to Tucson, but not to Nogales. That both surprised and concerned me. Good
grief, were they afraid to go to
Nogales too? I had to pry options out of him, which resulted in a call to another
bus service for the last leg of my trip. That done, I made reservations at the
Nogales Motel 6.
Tuesday night, I
packed the largest suitcase we owned with essentials. My parents would bring
down the rest of my belongings on Saturday.
Early morning at
the Prescott bus station, I waited in line to pick up my ticket. Once at the
window, the cashier shrugged, saying, “Greyhound changed their schedule. Your bus
already left.”
To say that my jaw
dropped would be an understatement. My
bus LEFT? Images of not getting to Tucson on time, thereby missing my
connection and most likely not reporting to work on time, made my knees weak. Now what?
“Continental has a
bus leaving in five minutes,” the cashier said. “There’s a seat available…”
I sprinted to the
idling bus, and handed my luggage to the driver seconds before he closed the
cargo door. Once seated, I calmed down, and shook my head. Unbelievable. At least I lucked out with a window seat.
Prescott’s pines
disappeared when the scenery changed to open, high desert with no trees. The
bus approached the familiar plunge into the Phoenix Basin, where the Interstate
turned into a steep, winding road through a series of dramatic canyons dotted
with sahuaro cacti poised like exclamation points. This stretch wasn’t scary as
a passenger, but I’d never forget the first time my dad let me drive to
Phoenix. Petrified by every curve, I had to pry my fingers off the steering
wheel when he took over before we headed into the heavy, congested traffic of
the largest city in the state.
It was always hard
to tell where the line between Not Phoenix and Phoenix began.
As usual, haze hung in the sky like
brown fog, the stench of air pollution working its way through the closed
windows. Mid-afternoon, the driver pulled into the bus station. Inside,
rambunctious air conditioning had turned the grungy waiting room into a
refrigerator. I shivered while I waited-out the hour layover. Most of the
people were travelers like me, but the vagrants sleeping in chairs kept me on
guard.
Back onboard, my
trip continued south, where the landscape turns flat and desolate. Barren,
parched ground, which rarely saw rainfall, looked foreboding and just plain
hot. It sure wouldn’t be fun if the bus
broke down, I thought, adding a new worry to my list. Undulating, wavy lines
of heated air blurred distant mountains. A pool of water appeared on the
asphalt in front of the bus. Mystically it moved ahead of us—always out of
reach. I remembered my dad explaining the mirage phenomenon after we’d
encountered them on our first trip out West. It now made me think of Wile E.
Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons. I entertained myself by recalling a scene
where Wile E. assumed with relief that he’d found a concession stand in the
middle of a desert wasteland. Just as he raised the glass of lemonade to his
lips, it turned into sand.
When we approached
Tucson, I immediately recognized the Santa Catalina Mountains on the horizon.
What would it have been like had I been hired there again? Passing the exit I
used to take, a tug pulled at my heart. I’d miss my friends at Palisades.
In Tucson, I boarded
a Continental Trailways bus. A short time later, I sat up and paid closer
attention to new territory. We crossed a bridge over the Santa Cruz River, and
I craned my neck to see if it held water, but the sandy bottom was dry. There were
several distant mountain ranges—none of which looked tall enough to support trees.
A twinge formed in my chest. Had Ralph
tricked me into taking a job nobody else wanted?
After reaching the
small retirement community of Green Valley, the Interstate ended. The bus made
its way to the two-lane Nogales Highway, a backcountry road with less traffic,
but few passing lanes. When a rickety pickup truck, bed stacked high with hay
bales, held us up for what seemed like forever, I worried about how we were
doing for time. A glance at my watch told me: Not good. The motel reservation clerk had said I needed to check in
by five. Anxiety mounted when we encountered more slowpokes.
We pulled into
Nogales after six. In a panic, I waited for my suitcase, grabbed it the second
it appeared on the conveyor, and took off in a dead run to the motel office.
A Hispanic woman, with heavy-lidded
dark eyes, turned from the black-and-white television screen when I pushed the
door open and rushed to the counter.
“Got
reservations?” she asked languidly.
“Yes, yes, I do,”
I said, out of breath. I set my heavy bag down, and adjusted my purse back onto
my shoulder. “Linda Strader.”
She ran her finger
down entries in the reservation book, and slapped it shut. “Sorry, we gave that
room to someone else. You were supposed to be here by five.”
All of my
nightmares were about to come true. The thought of sleeping in the bus station created
pure terror. But then something clicked. Wait
a minute. This is ridiculous. I asked, “Don’t you have another room?”
After a pause she
said, “Well, yes, I suppose we do.”
“Oh! Great.” Why didn’t she say so in the first place?
She flipped pages
back and forth. “Would you like one with a TV? It’s only five dollars more.”
I thought about it
for a second, and then decided it would give me something to do. I handed over
twenty-five dollars. Room paid for, I hauled my bag up two flights of stairs,
and unlocked the door of number 12.
Once inside, I
quickly secured the deadbolt and slid the chain in place. I made it. Exhausted, I launched onto the bed, positioning the
pillows as a prop. The TV stared blankly at me. Might as well, I paid for it. I got up and turned it on, twisting
the knob through the half-dozen channels. After settling on what looked to be a
movie, I suffered through fifteen minutes of it, and turned the set off. What a waste of five dollars.
Not remotely
hungry, and frankly too scared to venture out for something to eat, I changed
into my nightgown, turned off the light, and crawled under the covers hoping for
sleep. It came quickly, but then I awoke every single hour wondering if it was
time to get up yet. This gave me a considerable amount of time to mull over new-job-jitters.
Would I like it? Would my coworkers be nice? I hoped to make new friends, but wanted
the freedom to spend time with whomever I wanted, without commitments. Having a
good job would also give me freedom. The thought of being financially self-sufficient
created a different kind of jitters. Pleasant ones. Maybe I’d have my own place.
I could buy and eat anything I wanted to. I could buy some new music. Heck, I
could save up for my first car. I thought about all of the times I felt as
though I was waiting for something. Maybe the wait was over.
In the morning I
skipped breakfast—not only because I was still too nervous to eat—but because I
feared leaving the room. Instead, I sat by the phone waiting for eight o’clock so
I could call for my ride.
At 8:30 I answered
the knock on my motel room door to find a short, stocky Hispanic man regarding
me through black-framed glasses. The Forest Service badge pinned above the
pocket of his uniform assured me that neither robbery nor kidnapping were on
his agenda.
Rudy drove us to
the district office, where I completed the necessary paperwork—reams of it in
the typical government way. With my right hand cramping from filling out all of
the forms, I accepted my reward: a “Red Card.” Slightly larger than a business
card, it documented my step-test score, and my classification as “Firefighter.”
I stared at it for a moment. Firefighter.
Wow.
Ralph and I
climbed into a government pickup, and we drove north to Florida Ranger Station.
Along the way, I studied the road construction parallel to our route that I’d
not noticed on the way down.
“The remaining
portion of I-19 is almost done,” Ralph said. “Looking forward to it. It’ll make
the trip between Nogales and Florida quicker.”
Once leaving
the highway, we headed up a two-lane paved road toward the Santa Rita
Mountains. Ralph braked for a dozen reddish-brown cattle with blank white faces
standing in the middle of the road.
“Damn cows,” he
said. “They’ve got to be the stupidest animal on the planet.”
He tooted his
horn. The bovines turned their heads, curious, but did not move. It always
amazed me how cows had no fear of a shiny metal box ten times their size
heading straight for them at a high rate of speed. Ralph laid on the horn again.
A few moved, and gradually they all crossed the road, allowing us to continue.
Ralph drove
silently while I stared out the window, frowning. The scrubby trees out there
were definitely not pines. The road climbed steadily and the
mountains loomed closer. The tallest peak did look intriguing—resembling Thumb
Butte in Prescott somewhat, but on a much larger scale. Was the dark green
vegetation up there what I hoped it was? I couldn’t tell.
The luxury of smooth
pavement ended, and we hit a washboard dirt road, truck fenders rattling, and
tires flailing dirt and stones out behind us. Ralph answered a call on the
radio, and I focused on the change of scenery. The scrubby tree variety I saw
earlier grew taller here.
After a few
miles of bouncing on the backcountry road, it narrowed, and Ralph let off the
gas pedal. The road dipped, and we splashed through a shallow creek. Hand-laid
rock pillars acted as sentries on each side of a cattle guard, the metal rails
clattering as we crossed. Massive oaks shaded the way up the steep gravel road.
Okay, oaks weren’t conifers, but this was encouraging. Ralph veered right to
climb up a steep driveway, which was edged by a rock retaining wall. We parked
in front of a small building where an American flag on a tall pole rippled in
the late morning breeze.
“Glenn is in
charge of Florida. I told him I’d be bringing you up today. Let’s see if
anyone’s here,” Ralph said.
The screen door
squeaked on rusty hinges when we entered the office, our footsteps sounding
hollow on the wooden floor. Cool, damp air blew from a noisy machine mounted
outside one of the windows, enhancing the musty telltale odor of “very old
building.” With a quick scan of the room, I catalogued the mish-mash of
furnishings gathered for function, not aesthetics: an industrial-gray metal
desk, an antique wooden desk, two tall green metal file cabinets, and a few gray
metal chairs against the walls. On top of a sturdy wooden dresser sat a large
aluminum percolator, with assorted stained ceramic mugs neatly stacked around
it. A canister of powdered creamer, plastic stir-sticks, and a diner-style
sugar dispenser rounded out the coffee station. The aroma of stale coffee
lingered.
“Guess they’re over
at the fire cache,” Ralph said.
Instead of
driving, we walked, passing a few of Florida’s structures. On my left, an
apricot tree bloomed in the front yard of a house with no signs of occupancy. I
freely stared into the windows. Oh, I
hope that one will be mine! The first building to my right also appeared
vacant, but the next one, with a faded blue van parked in front, had music
drifting from the open windows, and laundry on the clothesline. A cluster of
buildings at the center of the complex formed a circle, where a group of men stood
under a large oak. My gaze moved from them to landing on exactly what I needed
to see—honest-to-goodness conifers! Tall, stately, and downright perfect.
A lean, darkly
tanned man noticed us, and walked our way, taking long strides. He squinted at
me from beneath the brim of his Stetson cowboy hat, and extended his hand.
“Hello, I’m
Glenn.”
After we shook
hands, he held onto mine for a moment, and turned it palm up to give it closer
inspection. He raised an eyebrow. Then he reached out and squeezed my right
bicep, shooting Ralph a half-smile. Was he teasing, or questioning my ability
to handle the tough job ahead? I decided he must be teasing, and smiled.
If you'd like to read this book, it's available on Amazon.com. Uprooted: A New Life in the Arizona Sun
