Because I love CA, too! -- Notes from Zarahemla Political Forum

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Date Posted: 11:24:55 11/30/05 Wed
Author: Bembix
Subject: Because I love CA, too!
In reply to: KathyT 's message, "Oops, I was thinking of" on 18:02:26 11/26/05 Sat

For a long time, I yearned to return to Arizona. I still love the place, but Redlands is my home. I've now lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else in my life. I'm not fond of the coastal cities, but the Inland Empire is much to my liking. The weather here is difficult to beat. It's not as hot as the Phoenix area, and the winters are just as nice. It's still a little small and a little hometownish. I like that. I used to say that I team of mules couldn't drag me to California. Now it would take a team of them to drag me away. I love it here.

Arizona politics were interesting. The "good ol' boy" politics at its best. If you're not a member of the Phoenix 40, you're nothing. Which is why Evan Mecham didn't last . . . he was a bit too honest and a bit too clumsy with his mouth. I remember seeing him in the Mesa Temple locker room, just days after his impeachment. He was quite haggard looking. Poor guy . . .

I've been to Gallup NM once since I was an adult. An experience that I'll never forget. My car windshield got dinged in several places in just a few minutes from the way those drunken Indian drove those dirt roads. We stopped in town for lunch, strolled through the local mall, which to my surprise was quite nice and modern looking. But it was also a cultural shock to me to be just about the only pale face in the place. Virtually all of the merchants and customers were Indians . . . mostly Navajo, if I remember correctly.

I'm not talking down Navajo Indians. They were very much a part of my upbringing in Brigham City, Utah, which was the location of the largest Navajo Indian high school in the nation. Some of my best friends were Navajos. But drinking was a serious problem among them. Near the end of my high school days, they changed the Intermountain Indian School, which was stictly for Navajo Indians, to a multi tribe campus. Wow, was that ever a disaster! Riots and tribal warfare was almost a daily event. I worked at a Ford dealership at the time. We had just sold the local police department six new cars. Within a week, one had been totaled by torching, one had been turned over in a riot, and the other four all had bullet holes and dents galore. That was the end of the Intermountain Indian School as we knew it. There's still an "I" on the mountain above Brigham City signifying the school, but for many years, it has been the home of a golf course/industrial park. Those were the days . . .

Bembix

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