Big Fat Daddy, MamaCharlie, and the Goat

In June the semester ended and MamaCharlie was moving out of the dorm and up to Phoenix. We had only been going together for a few months and I wasn't sure our relationship would survive the extra 130 miles. The first Saturday she was gone I went up to Tucson as usual and drove around feeling restless and hot. It was 105 degrees and felt like about a minus ten percent humidity. My little GTO was overheating and there wasn't much fun in the park or any of our usual haunts; nobody was around...in short...I missed her. I was lonely. It was unusual for me to feel that way. I had been alone a lot in my life (all 20 years of it) but I used to like it. Being lonely was new.

After about the third cool-down stop, somewhere around 6:30 pm or so, I started thinking about Phoenix. She had told me it was greener than Tucson...I had often groused about how brown and hot Tucson was. She told me that there was a lot of water and irrigation and all. I looked at the sign over the bank that said it was still 105 degrees and decided that Phoenix had to be better than this. I stopped at a gas station and fueled up, picked up a couple sodas, and struck out for Phoenix. I wasn't even sure how I was going to find her, but green sounded pretty good to me.

The trip was uneventful: freeway to Casa Grande then two-lane up to Baseline Road. Across Baseline to 40th Street, then north and there was freeway again. Once you get the drift of how Phoenix is laid out, any idiot can find his way around...I am living proof. Numbered streets run north and south, eight numbers to a mile, on the east side of Central (the main north and south street in downtown) the numbered streets are called Streets and on the west side of Central the numbered streets are called Avenues. So 1st Street and 1st Ave run parallel to each other, north and south, two blocks apart. The east-west streets are named and the major streets are a mile apart. Grand Avenue is the only anomaly; it runs at a 45- degree angle from the center of town out northwest.

MamaCharlie was staying with her grandpa just off of 27th Avenue, a little north of Bethany Home Road. I was gonna find her.

I blasted up the two-lane like...well...like a fella on his way to see his girl. It was still hot and between Casa Grande and Gilbert there is a pretty good grade you gotta climb, adding to the heat problem with my little engine. Over the top and a gentle coast past the flower fields where Japanese flower growers have made best use of the desert for generations. I got up on the freeway at 40th Street and survived the aroma from the stockyard, which soon became pleasant compared to the aroma wafting out of the rendering plant that was just up ahead. With no A/C, I had to keep the windows all the way down and got full value from all those wonderful smells. Just past 19th Avenue the freeway turns north and a little beyond that was the well-known Goodyear sign (anyone who has been on the Black Canyon Freeway will remember seeing it, the time and temperature in 8-feet-tall figures). It was almost 9:00pm, the Goodyear sign informed me, and  the temperature was 112...at nine oclock at night...I couldn't even see the green!

I am not sure how I found her Grandpa's house. But when I did, she wasn't there. Her grandpa was an interesting old guy; when he determined I was in the Army he allowed me to come in and wait for her. We talked Army stuff; he had been a tanker in WWI and was pretty hard of hearing because of it. He had worked as a railroad mail clerk until he retired. MamaCharlie finally showed up; he had been out to dinner with her Dad. She was kinda glad to see me, I think. We sat in Grandpa's living room for a while just talking; as I was looking at her, she seemed to glow. I don't recall much of what the conversation was about, but I remember thinking that the drive, the heat, the smells, the 130 extra miles, were worth it. I was hooked. Now, more than 40 years later, whenever I am not with her, I get that "Tucson" feeling...nothing is any fun without her. I look in the mirror and see the wreckage the years have left on those two cute kids that used to roar around Tucson in the green Goat, hang out a Randolph Park with buddies.   I start to feel sorry for myself. I am getting older by the minute. Then I hug Mamacharlie and close my eyes and I get the "Phoenix" feeling...it is worth the trip.