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
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