The post for this month was to quote a passage of a vacation in one of one's books. This is from a short story I've been working on forever. It's based a bit on truth, a bit of imagination. Maybe the truth is getting in the way. Or not.
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| Buick Century |
June 29th, 1956
They latched onto Route 66 in Gallup, and seventeen-year-old
Shelly ate her first authentic Mexican food at the counter in a little café
along the dusty highway. A picky eater, she savored the taste of the spicy
beef, the oozing melted cheese on the corn tortilla and the cooling
lettuce-and- tomato garnish.
Shelley’s
dad drove the robin’s-egg-blue Buick Century, gobbling up the miles to
Flagstaff. The Buick was Shelly’s favorite car ever. She pulled the Texaco map out of the glove box and stared at the cat’s cradle of
intersecting red, blue and black lines. The Buick cruised along at eighty. They
passed signs that the had entered the Petrified Forest. Her dad raced full-speed
ahead and never braked for roadside attractions.
“Can’t we stop and look around?”
she asked. “Maybe we could find a piece of petrified wood.”
“We got a late start. I want to get
to Flagstaff and find a room.”
“A few minutes won’t make any
difference.”
He kept on driving.
They passed Navajo hogans—some
little better than hovels. Many looked deserted but others had carts and even
pickups parked outside and sometimes a mud oven in the baked-earth backyard.
She never saw any Navajos.
Shelly
would not have agreed to keep her dad company on this trip from Eastern
Colorado to Arizona, but this summer her friends were either working or out of
town for weeks and she didn’t want to listen to her mother hound her to try just a little harder to get a “real” summer
job.
Before them, the road was a black
ribbon stretching over rises, past mesas and more hogans. They began passing a
stream of pickups with Indian families jammed into the backs, the women arrayed
in colorful dresses or even buckskin, their chests and arms loaded with silver
and turquoise bracelets and necklaces. The pickups became even more numerous
until the Buick was part of a gaudy parade heading toward Flagstaff.
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| Southwest Indian Jewelry |
They drove past little covered
wagons pulled by teams of horses or sometimes one lone horse, wagons brimful of
Indian families in their finery. The horses walked by the side of the road, not
on the highway. The women, with their impassive faces like weathered copper, were
awash in turquoise and silver. Even the little kids, decked out in beads,
feathers, and buckskin, wore silver.
“Maybe there’s a Powwow,” her father said.
“Now that would be something.”
* *
*
They pulled into blazing, bustling
Flagstaff in the late afternoon, joining the crush of people. Banners strung
over the streets and placards in all the windows announced the annual PowWow.
Motels, preferred by her dad, all had No Vacancy signs, so they checked
into the ancient-looking Hotel Monte Vista. A compact, darkly handsome young
man who appeared to be a bellhop without a uniform flashed a smile at Shelly
and introduced himself as Leroy. When he offered to carry her suitcase, her dad
said, “Much obliged, but I’ll carry it,” grabbed both their bags and trundled
them up the stairs.
So
much for that possible flirtation
This trip was unlikely to advance
any romantic possibilities, with more much
obliged, but I’ll carry it moments with her father around all the time.
While she unpacked, her dad sat on
his bed, lit a cigarette, and speculated that Leroy was a Basque. He said
Basques were originally from Spain and herded sheep, like that explained
everything. Shelly’s dad knew more stuff.
*
* *
The Pow Wow campground sprawled in
a forest of tall Ponderosa pines next to the rodeo grounds. They parked and
walked around, staring at everything. The smell of the pines reminded Shelly of
hot afternoons in the Colorado mountains. She breathed deeply, filling her nose
and lungs with the foresty fragrance. Her dad pointed at a hunk of raw meat
suspended from a tree branch with flies buzzing around.
“Mutton,” he said. “I never took
much to eating sheep.”
Shelly gasped at the ocean of
turquoise and gleaming silver laid out on makeshift tables, on blankets, and
every kind of rustic handmade display. Rings, bracelets, necklaces, even ornate
squash blossom pieces, concha belts, bolo ties, every variety of adornment with
the turquoise from palest blue to a deep sea-green.
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| More Indian Jewelry |
Her dad ran his hand over some
antique-looking jewelry. “Old pawn,” he said. “More valuable than new things.”
More stuff he knew about.
They walked from vendor to vendor,
and Shelly couldn’t decide what to buy with her baby-sitting money. Further
into the camp, the smoke from cooking fires teased her nose. Was it the fry
bread her dad always talked about? Little kids scampered everywhere. In
a wagon, a woman nursed a baby. Horses neighed or ate the sparse grass. In the
distance, she heard drumming. She didn’t recall seeing so much . . . life,
jumbled and noisy and smelly but somehow magnetic, pulling them into the Powwow.
“Make up your mind, kiddo.”
Shelly bought a silver Zuni ring, with turquoise stones
arranged in the shape of a leaf, and a medallion on a thin silver chain, with a
thunderbird mosaic of turquoise, bone, and coral. It looked lucky, better than
a rabbit’s foot.
These bloggers will also publish vacation or travel writngs that have appeared in their stories.
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blo
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
J Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.w
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/b
A.J. Maguire http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspo
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1GK
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.co
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| Photos is from an old Arizona Highways magazine |
These bloggers will also publish vacation or travel writngs that have appeared in their stories.
Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blo
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
J Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.w
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/b
A.J. Maguire http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspo
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1GK
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.co
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