Ghost of the Gun—Deception Gulch 1970′s

Next door to Scott lives an old lady in a small shack. Its inside walls are so narrow she can touch them with her arms barely stretched. He has never seen her, but knows she is there because every week someone brings a bag of groceries in the wee hours of night and leaves it at the bottom of her steps. The next morning, the bag is always gone.

Sometimes Father John comes with a delegation of neighbors to beg her to come back to church. She never comes out of the house, but the loud curses from her witches mouth chase them away.

From time to time a family piles out of a disheveled Chevy and calls and calls her, venturing no farther than the bottom of the road. She is silent and doesn’t come out. Eventually they go away.

At night, Scott sometimes hears a tap tap tapping from the vicinity of the outhouse. Tap. Tap. Tap. It is the sound of the old lady tapping the cardboard latch to shut herself in.

One day, there is a small grass fire just outside her house. Scott calls the fire department. In case the firemen fail to come soon enough, he grabs a fine Oaxacan blanket he hopes he does not have to use and his fire extinguisher. He sits on a wall close by and watches as the fire engine charges towards the shack, a red dragon belching stones and twigs from under the tires.

Suddenly the door of the shack opens and the old lady comes out, a frail crumpled wraith. A torn dress hangs from stooped shoulders. He does not see her face. Slowly and with no apparent rush, she advances towards the little grass fire with a glass of water in her hands. She waters the fire with it, watching the flames sputter just slightly before she turns and slowly walks back into the shack. She waters the fire twice more with her glass of water before the firemen arrive and put out the fire with their long hoses. The firemen call to the old lady, but she does not come out again.

Scott hears whispers that the old lady had a retarded daughter who now lives in Prescott and rumors that the old lady is hiding a son from the police in a cellar under the house.

No one ever sees the old lady again. But at night for quite some years, the tap tap tapping at the outhouse could be heard along with the distant yipping of coyotes.

One day, new neighbors appear and begin to repair the shack. They find a rusty twenty-two rifle on the wall and newspaper clippings that reveal that the son and daughter had a child together and that when the child was born, the son killed it with the rifle and fled. They find another clipping that says the son escaped from prison.

The gun holds their ghosts. It holds the confusions of the son, the tears of the daughter that made the very canyons weep and the anguish of a mother who watched her son become a murderer.

Interviews with Scott Owens and Nina Louden

The Ghosts of Jerome Arizona

If you are student of Jerome’s history, as I am, you study ghosts, the people that came before you, that grew up in the house you live in, planted the crab apple and apricot trees you eat from, plundered the mountain where you now you walk your dog and try to figure out what they created or destroyed has to do with how you consider the present and future.

If part of you is a romantic, how could you not sense the ghosts that still amble about Jerome’s streets, souls that did not want to depart for some other job, another ugly mining town, who died too early, got too old, parked their memories inside their homes so their emotions could tug them back, to hard times, better times, family times. These are the ghosts that can’t bury Jerome in their hearts and take to haunting the people that live there.

And if you have studied some Buddhism or Taoism, as I have, you understand that the spirits of animate and inanimate life are everywhere around and to shutter yourself off from them is to shut down part of your humanity and separate yourself from the essential nature of the universe.

Jerome AZ ’70s: More Arrival Tales

Author’s note: Good news: Johnson Books, a subsidiary of Big Earth Publishing, will be publishing Home Sweet Jerome: Rescuing a Town from its Ghosts as early as July 2013. In the meantime, I will be posting new vignettes weekly. Not all vignettes will be included in the book.)

John McNerney: 1973
When my wife Iris and I walked into the $13,000 house on School Street, we took one look at the view from the front windows made a down payment on the spot from some of the money saved from my geology research job at Arizona State University. The only heat for the whole house was a wood stove and the first few winters were frigid. When heavy winds blew down canyon, the linoleum in floors rippled with waves.

Kathleen Williamson: 1974

“I was 20 years old, living in New York, not happy, and got freaked out when my apartment was broken into. I went to Florida and was sitting on the beach drinking beer at 8 A.M, when I noticed a woman walking towards me. I was felt something was about to happen and was determined to say something. I offered her a beer. She said, “No, but I’ll sit and talk with you.” Her name was Mary Frey. Next thing I knew I’m following her to the house to meet her friend Beth Steele. She bought out a guitar and the three of us became fast friends. Everything in my life began to change. Within a month, Mary and Beth left for Jerome. Mary described Jerome as a ‘small town of about 200 “misfits just like you” living 5000 feet up the side of a mountain.’

Two months later, I drove to Jerome in my 1966 Ford Econoline van with 400 record albums, quarter ounce of Columbian pot, guitar, art books, and 400 bucks. As I drove up towards Jerome, I could picture my future here, someone part of the community. It was night and the sparse lights of Jerome looked like candles on a birthday cake. When I rolled in, I parked in front of the Spirit Room bar, and thee were all these hippies were just hanging out, just like they did in Washington Square Park in New York. I had found my element. From August to October, I slept in my bed in my van at the sliding jail, right near downtown. Mary had a Dodge panel truck that she called the White Cloud and she and Beth had a bed in the back. We were like a little mobile home community.”
heat the house and cook on.”

Richard Martin: 1973
I was 27 years old when I left San Diego in 1973, sick of my old life and feeling insecure and inadequate about who I was. I needed to sort myself out away from the influences of my family and the city where I had such deep roots. Only by going away did I feel I could get into a different space and figure out my own dreams.

I didn’t know where to go, but I was offered a job in Albuquerque. On the way, I stopped in Jerome, an old ghost town that I had visited as a child. I stopped at the Spirit Room bar and started having so much fun that I got stuck here and stayed.

During the first three months I camped in a nearby canyon with my new friends Gypsy John, Virgo Bill and Little John, who was 15. We hung out nude, surrounded by sun and red rocks, swimming in the clear pools, smoking dope, doing peyote, reading books, hanging out with girls and being philosophical. And then I started camping out in Jerome.

Virgo Bill and I found a place in the bottom of the Haskins, which was owned by John Watts, who was a part-owner of the Spirit Room bar. There was no electricity, no water, no bathroom. We shit at the bar and peed outside. We were told we could live there as long as there were no women. But then one morning Priscilla the Gypsy Queen walked in with her big hoop earrings and before I knew it, she had taken off her clothes and gotten into my bed. John Watts caught us in the act and threw me and Virgo Bill Out for violating the “no girls rule.”

Ron Ballatore: 1977
I arrived from Long Beach, CA, looking for a change. The town looked small, dilapidated, almost deserted and peaceful. I was instantly labeled as a biker with a Mexican wife. The biker part was accurate, but my wife Pam wasn’t Mexican. For sure we weren’t hippies, although some we began to make friends among that community. Some of the oldtimers, particularly some of the Croats and Serbs, took an instant dislike to us. There was a feeling of solidity and community of growing up together, going to school surviving the shutdown of the mine. We found it to be not a friendly town. There was a lot of nonacceptance of newcomers, not just hippies.

1970′s Jerome Arizona Arrival Tales

(Author’s note: Good news: Johnson Books, a subsidiary of Big Earth Publishing, will be publishing Home Sweet Jerome: Rescuing a Town from its Ghosts as early as July 2013. In the meantime, I will be posting new vignettes weekly.  Not all will be included in the book.)

When did you arrive and where did you live became part of most any conversation I had with newcomers that were here in 1980, when I moved to Jerome.  These people had moved to Jerome after 1953, bought homes, and called Jerome home. Many were still alive in 2010. You will meet them again in this book.  Although not all called themselves hippies, most of the people they partied with were, so it was sometimes difficult to make a distinction.

Dave Hall, 1970 

“My first home in Jerome was the bottom floor of Anne, George and Nick Laddich’s house on East Avenue. I had saved $300 to move here and the rent was $35 a month. Other people who lived on that street were the Dimitrovs, Pecharichs, Selnas and Vincents. All of them had dogs and all of them barked. I made friends with Mama Laddich, who called me ‘boy,’ spoke in broken English and brought me borscht and strudels. The Dimitrovs were spooky folks that had a mentally retarded daughter they kept locked up, but sometimes she’d escape and they’d run up and down the street chasing her.

“Living on that street felt old world, very Eastern Europe. I guess I fit in pretty good. I didn’t have long hair. I wasn’t really totally scary to them like some of the hippies. I was pretty much a hermit who painted and drew. But I did go to the big pool in Sycamore Canyon and swam naked and smoked dope and took LSD with the dozens of other hippies around. To make money, I drove a little route between Prescott and Flagstaff where I sold my work for about $10 a drawing.

 

Mimi and Lew Currier: 1970

“In 1970, Bill and Betty Bland and son Abe, Mimi and I and our son Chris, and a couple from Hawaii moved here as a commune and bought a fifteen room house on seven city lots near the Elementary School for $7000.  It was called the “Lyons” house after a couple that was here in 1953, but moved away. The guy from Hawaii got stopped in Phoenix for a traffic ticket and when they ran the license plate, they got him on draft evasion and impounded the car. His girlfriend was left sitting on the side of the road and we went down and got her, but she stayed only a few months. One thousand dollars bought us tools from what used to be an industrial wood shop. Bill went to Los Angeles for a few months to learn how to make classical guitars and when he came back that’s what we started doing.  We opened up a luthier shop on lower Main Street.  It lasted about three years.”

Barbara and Guy Henley: 1970

“For two summers, my husband Guy and I camped out in Sycamore Canyon helping a friend dig out a gold mine that he had a claim on.  We never did find gold, but we did have a lot of fun.  We went back to California to retrieve a small inheritance of $1500 and decided to move to Mexico. We packed our stuff into a van and stopped in Jerome to see our friend Ed. He had just gotten popped by the police for holding peyote meetings and needed money for a lawyer. Ed offered us three houses that he owned for $500 in Mexican town, just below the post office. We gave him the money, moved in, stuffed the holes in the walls with rags and used an oil drum to heat the house and cook on.

Katie Lee, 1971

Betty Bell had a gallery up town and it was her fault I was here. She told me about a house for rent. “No way I’m going to live on damaged earth. It’s a dead town. ‘Yeah, says Betty, but you’ll love the price.’  I went to see it. Ninety dollars a month. Way less than the $250 a month I was paying in Sedona.  There was black and white linoleum in the front entrance and one wall was painted the most god awful purple with green trim. I put my bags down, handed my keys to the only two guys I knew in town  and asked them to water my plants. Then I began another tour of the United States as a folk singer.  I was on the road from September to May.

Doyle Vines, 1971

“I was 21 years old, disillusioned, grasping for sanity following a nervous breakdown, triggered by a tragic love affair.  Although it was sunny in the valley, as I drove up the road to Jerome, I became encased in a dense fog. The time of year was around Thanksgiving. I made the turn at the Spirit Room and parked.  I saw a glow through the fog, crossed the street and walked towards it. I walked into the Spirit Room, which was full of long hairs just like me. Some of the guys were playing pool. Some of the ladies, most in long skirts, were sitting around sewing, knitting and laughing. There were babies asleep in their snugglies, baskets and on top of blankets and coats on the benches. Cats and dogs peacefully curled together under the pool table.  I walked in from the silence of the fog into abundant life. I fell instantly in love with Jerome. I felt I had found home.

Paul Nonnast: 1972

“When I came to this place for the first time and got hit in  my solar plexus. There was a sense of nostalgia and some latent memory of having seen it before. A poignant déjà vu. I remember standing at the post office and looking up to the warehouse and my solar plexus was yawning open, with no rational reason why, but it seemed a pretty profound response to being there.

The only car on the street was an old Ford Falcon. The windows were very grey and foggy, like the windows of the church across the street. Newspapers were piled so high that I could see three little yipping dogs running up and down and around like one of those horse carousels you see in carnivals.

My eye drifted out to the dirt road leading out of town from the old post office. Two funky miners were coming into town on their burros loaded with panning equipment and rock hammers.

As I looked down Main Street, a woman with tobacco colored glasses, wearing a long dress from the thirties, sat statue-like outside a rock shop.

The only sound was Caruso’s operatic tenor blaring from a scratched record. I walked to the corner of the Spirit Room to find it was coming from the English Kitchen. Standing outside was a Chinaman wearing skirt-like white pants, black slippers, stained white restaurant apron and a white coolie hat.

The whole scene was as surreal as any hallucination.”

To be continued. . .

 

How to Get Rid of Grasshoppers: Jerome AZ Citizens Give Advice

(Editor’s note: I took almost all the vignettes off the site. The next thing I’m going to put up is a formal book proposal. I’ve begun thinking about publication and one step is to complete one of these.)

During a grasshopper infestation in Jerome, Arizona in the early 1980’s, I asked our local gardeners what to do. After 20 suggestions for entirely different solutions. I stopped asking. I understood why Jerome is sometimes called a village of 400 people and 1000 opinions.


1. Shake some Diatomaceous earth on your plants. It contains ground-up skeletons of algae-like plants called diatoms, which contain lots of calcium, silica and other trace minerals. When the grasshoppers eat this, it cuts their intestines to pieces and they die.

2. Use an environmentally safe product like Nolo Bait, which infects them and cuts down on germination.

3. Distribute bottles containing one part molasses with ten parts water. The grasshoppers will jump in and not jump out.

4. Spray your plants with a mixture of soap and hot chile peppers.

5. Put garlic in a food blender, mix with water and spray it on the plants.

6. Go out early in the morning when the grasshoppers are sluggish and gather a bunch of them. Put in a blender and spray the plants with the mixture.

7. Get a battery-operated tone generator tuned to a frequency they don’t like. Of course, you’ll have to experiment to find the right frequency.

8. Use more mulch so they can’t hatch.

9. Plant enough for you and the grasshoppers.

10. Pay your kids a dime for every grasshopper they collect.

11. Put a larger fence around your garden and keep chickens. The chickens will eat the grasshoppers, and besides, then you’ll have fresh eggs and lots of fertilizer.

12. Get toads. Toads will eat anything that moves. There’s a lot of ‘em down at the Verde River.

13. Spray the plants with hair spray. They hate it.

14. Spread powdered sugar on the ground. The grasshoppers will eat that instead.

15. Connect a hose to the exhaust of your car, start it up, and hose ‘em with carbon monoxide.

16. Smash them dead with a golf club.

17. Sprinkle bran on the plants. They eat it and explode.

18. Poison ‘em with Malathion 50 (or other insecticide).

19. “I don’t know. But I’m going to need an answer soon!”

20. If all else fails, you can eat them. Fry them up in a little olive oil, crunchy and tasty if you have good stuff growing in your garden.

Jesus and the Thieves: the First of the Big Jerome Pot Busts

One day, fireman Terry Molloy looks towards the Holy Family Catholic Church from his perch on the roof of the old fire station on Main Street, which he is trying to repair. What he sees astounds him. Papa Lozano appears to be sawing the breasts off a wooden mannequin. Terry gets down off the roof and strolls up towards the church to get a better look and, sure enough, that’s what Papa Lozano is doing.

A few days later, Terry strolls up Company Hill Road and there, in the backyard of the church, he recognizes the mannequin, which has become transformed into a life-size statue of Jesus Christ nailed to a crude wooden cross. He wears a crude skirt and red paint is splattered on the wrists, fingers and knees. Beside him are two more mannequins, equally bloodied with paint, now transformed into Jesus’ two thieves.

Some of Jerome’s citizens are outraged: the statues are too grotesque, too bizarre, too much like a bad LSD trip. They’re right in the face of everyone who walks up the Company Hill Road. A few women pronounce themselves members of the Mary Magdalene Society and take a petition to the Jerome Town Council Meeting asking that they pass an ordinance to remove them.

According to Papa Lozano, the statues are his thanks to God for answering his prayers to cure his daughter. She had injured her back after falling down some stairs. When the doctors could do nothing for her, Lozano prayed to God to make her well.
 Her cure was miraculous. In the old Catholic tradition, Lozano bought the mannequins from Good Will for $15 each and created a tribute to God.

The statues stay up.

Jerome, 1983: The First of the Big Pot Busts
Three self-proclaimed members of Jerome’s ethics police, Steve S, Don C and Joe M turned their sights towards getting rid of dope smoking hippies. There wasn’t far to turn: when the wind was right, a rich odor of ripening pot plants came wafting towards Steve’s house.

They started investigating, and, sure enough, looking down from the pathway to Richard’s house, were dozens of pot plants hidden from the street by a corral made up of tall, thick bamboo at Glen Baisch’s house. The corral was 300 yards on a diagonal from Steve’s house, just below the main highway into town.

What nerve! What outrage! What to do but call the cops. First an airplane came whizzing over the corral. Then the cops arrested Glen and his girlfriend Lisa, ripped up the plants and shoved them into the trunks of their cars.

Hiding pot plants in bamboo corrals did not originate with Glen. In 1977, police confiscated 1000 pounds of pot in Centerville, Arizona much of it grown behind a bamboo and scrap wood fence. (Verde Independent August 17, 1977)

The big surprise was the one-inch newspaper headline in the Verde Independent, which focused not about the arrest of the grower, but on Ron Ballatore, Chief of Police: “Chief Accused in Drug Trafficking.” (Verde Independent, Oct. 7, 1983)

According to the article, “Jerome residents have accused Jerome’s police chief of ignoring a massive drug trafficking problem in the tiny community . . . One of them said he’s got a loaded gun in every room to protect himself from drug dealers who have threatened to kill him. . .They requested anonymity because ‘it’s only a matter of time before the killing starts. . .’”

Steve S commended the paper for “having the guts and integrity to print the truth regarding the circumstances we have been living under in Jerome. …Let’s all serve notice to the drug dealers. We will not tolerate them destroying the lives of our young people and the future of our community.” Don C said older people were “afraid to even talk about it with their closest friends.” (Verde Independent, Oct. 19, 1983) Joe M commended the paper for its “courageous ad truthful reporting.” (Nov. 4, 1983) Joe M. wrote, “I knew it was only a matter of time before someone wrote the truth about this town. . .”

Other letters accused the paper of inept, tacky, misleading, biased, and shockingly sensationalist rubbish and yellow journalism. Phil Harris, who worked at the Douglas Mansion State Park, said that “the individuals interviewed are well-known all over town as chronic trouble makers who are also ‘up to their ass’ in paranoia, unconstructive criticism, boorish bad manners and arrogant attitudes. Fortunately, they are in an infinitesimal minority.” (Verde Independent, October 13, 1983) Another letter said that only a couple of stupid old fools would be capable of dreaming up the kind of crap the Verde Independent printed.

The crap included a mistake in the number of plants actually found. The original article said that the cops ripped up 473 plants; the next week, however, the paper issued its correction: 87 plants.

In February 1984, Baisch pleaded guilt to a felony charge of possession of marijuana. He was placed on three-years probation, fined $1370, ordered to serve 100 hours of community service work and was sentenced to 14 days in Yavapai County Jail. His girlfriend Lisa pled guilty to a misdemeanor, was placed on probation for two years, ordered to perform 50 hours of community service and serve two days in jail for possession.

Jesus Christ Gets a Marijuana Leaf Crown
The night after the Verde Independent came out with its sensational headline, three men stole into the churchyard of the Holy Family Catholic church. One of the men propped a ladder on the shoulders of the former store mannequin that had been fashioned into the bloody replica of Jesus Christ.

A man climbed up and nailed a new crown on Jesus’ head: a large wooden marijuana leaf that was painted a flamboyant green. Across his stomach, he nailed another sign: “Ballatore.”

The sign disappeared the next day; but the marijuana leaf crown stayed up on Jesus’ head for 6 weeks. Although Papa Lozano came to the church every day to work on its restoration, either he never noticed the addition to his statue or chose to ignore it.

Baisch was only a secondary character in Jerome’s Wild West hippie drama: How to Grow Pot Without Getting Caught. The star that was dead center was James Faernstrom. If Ferne Goldman embodied the hippie ideals of peace, love and good vibes, Faernstrom became the icon of their betrayal.

1983:Kate Wolf Meets Katie Lee: A Fire Burning Bright in Old Jerome.

Photo by Bob Swanson, Swanson Images.com

In 1983, the late singer songwriter Kate Wolf visited Jerome, Arizona. I knew Kate because she was one of the first artists in the San Francisco Bay Area to record and release her own independent recordings. She and other indie artists helped spark the revolution written about in my book How to Make and Sell Your Own Recording, now out of print.

Kate gave a concert in Jerome’s old Episcopal Church and met writer/singer/wilderness activist Katie Lee. The women became instant friends, a mutual spark between two very remarkable artists.

A day after the concert, Kate wrote the song “Old Jerome” and dedicated it to Katie. The song is found on Kate’s album, “’The Wind Blows Wild,” released after her death from leukemia in 1986. The song encapsulates the magic of Jerome and the hold it has on almost everyone who has ever lived here. The song can be found on http://www.amazon.com/Old-Jerome-Live-Kpfa-Berkeley/dp/B00122MJD6
(You need to cut and paste because the link tool doesn’t quite work in the middle of a story).

The recognition of the fineness of Kate Wolf’’s songwriting continues to this day. Since 1996, a Kate Wolf Memorial Concert is held annually in Northern California and is produced by Back Roads Productions in conjunction with Cumulous Productions, Inc. The 2011 festival will feature Taj Mahal, Ruthie Foster, David Bromberg, Angel Band, Poor Man’s Whiskey, Hot Buttered Rum,and many others.
More information can be found at:

http://cumuluspresents.inticketing.com/events/135889

(Please cut and paste)

Katie Lee performed Old Jerome on the TV special “Portraits of America.”

In 1987. The Jerome Town Council officially adopted ‘Old Jerome as its official town song.

OLD JEROME

(For Katie Lee)
Words and music by Kate Wolf
Copyright 1983 by Another Sundown Publishing Company

Drinking early morning coffee, talking with good friends
and walking the streets of rough cut stone,
She was once a miners’ city, then the ghost of a dying town,
now there’s a fire burning bright in old Jerome.

Some have come for fortune, some have come for love
some have come for the things they cannot see
But the grass is green and growing where the gardens once had died
and the birds sing in the wild Ailanthis trees.

The sun comes up on Cleopatra
Where the mines lie sleeping far below
The wind and the rain sing an old mountain refrain
And the copper shines like Arizona gold

They say that once you live here, you never really leave
she’ll have a hold on you until the day you die
With her ground moving crazy and her fierce wind blowing free
and her ruins standing proud against the sky

Old houses cling to mountains like miners cling to dreams
they hold on just so long and then let go
For the mountain is your mistress, you’ll ride her ’til you fall
and wash down to the valley far below.

The sun drops behind old Cleopatra
Where the mines lie sleeping far below
The wind and the rain sing a miners’ old refrain
And the copper shines like Arizona gold

The walls stand strong and silent staring out with empty eyes
like beggars lame and blind who do no harm
With their silent empty rooms that hold the old town’s memories
and their doorways that reach out like empty arms

In the streets the children play, climbing up the crooked stairs,
and lovers touch and make their way back home
The sound of hammers echo in the once forgotten halls
and hope stirs in the heart of old Jerome.

The moon shines down on Cleopatra
Where the mines lie sleeping far below
The wind and the rain sing an old Ghost Town refrain
And the copper shines like Arizona gold.

Katie inscribed four lines of the verse that begins “Old houses cling to mountains like miners cling to dreams” into the concrete landing that leads to her writing space.

You can read more about Katie’s books, music and activism at her website: http://www.katydoodit.com

Definitions of Jerome AZ in the Seventies and Eighties

Twinkle Town

Rebels without a Clue

400 people and 800 opinions

An unintentional community

The last of the Bohemian ghettos

Large hippie coffeehouse

Only place I know of where you can spit a block

The backwash of the avante garde (Or the avante garde of the backwash)

Retirement community for hippies

Floating galaxy on the mountain

A hippie redoubt

The town that died and went to heaven.

A den of pirates

Where eccentricity seems commonplace

Boarding house for the voluntarily insane

Patchwork quilt

Town full of hippiecritters

Rest home for old retreads

Insane asylum without a roof