Monday, August 16, 2010

Texaco building - Frisco Avenue - Clifton, Az - August 9, 2010

The patient’s home was located on a small road that was on the side of a cliff. The directions I received on how to get there read, “Across from the RV Park baseball diamond - old Winebago style camper at the top of the road on the left. Patient’s home is behind the house in the front. You will have to walk back up to it and up the stairs.”


Believe it or not, I actually found the patient’s home. I guess I’ve gotten use to figuring out directions to some “never, never land.”

His son greeted me at the door. He made some small talk about the big horn sheep he had seen that morning on the side of the cliff . While his father/the patient slept, he reminisced with me about his father’s life as a miner. He told that when his father was young, in the mining town of Morenci, white people and people of color lived in segregated sections of Morenci. The son added that his father didn’t realize he lived in a segregated society until he went to school. He said that his Hispanic father just accepted his life for what it was and enjoyed the cultural richness of his African and Native American neighbors.

After my visit, I had to drive over some railroad tracks in order to get on the highway back to the hospital. Near the railroad tracks was an abandoned building with “Texaco” written across the front in large letters. It didn’t have any gas pumps so it wasn’t a former filling station. However, to the side of the building were silo shapes that might have held fuel for train engines.

Got out of my car and left the air-conditioning on. I placed, photographed and documented cowboy and indian icon art piece #51 there. Quickly, I got into the car, out of the sun and drove away. The merciless afternoon sun beat down through my car’s front windshield. However, I was distracted away from its intensity as my thoughts drifted between imagining the sight of lumbering big horn sheep eating grass in the cool, early hours of the morning and young children of color, from long ago, playing stick ball on a dusty, dirt road. Their zest exuberant - undaunted by any of the day’s weather.

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