The Grass Ain't Always Greener

By the winter of '96, I'd scraped all the ice and shoveled all the snow I wanted to, so I packed up and moved to Phoenix,, where I KNEW it would be a lot warmer, from my multiple trips down there with the BLM aircraft.

By the time I got into southern Utah, the snow was pretty much off the freeway, it looked like spring in Kingman, and "By The Time I Got to Phoenix" (as Glen Campbell would say). it looked like early summer.

I moved into a double-wide trailer and on New Year's Day of 1997, it was EXACTLY 80 degrees at 10 in the morning on the thermometer on the outside wall.

"Ah-h-h.....WARMTH"............and it would get WARMER!

I lived in Apache Junction, a small community (at THAT time anyway) that sprawled out from the eastside of Mesa to the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, and after a week or so, I found a job driving a flatbed truck, hauling building supplies south to Sierra Vista, and north to Flagstaff.

I think it was on my 2nd run south to Sierra Vista......I was on my way to Tucson, on the back road to Oracle when I saw this big yellow diamond-shaped sign on the road that read "DO NOT SLOW DOWN.......INMATE CHAIN GANG AHEAD.....

I rounded the next curve and there they were on the left.....about 20 of 'em chained up together pulled weeds out in the heat. There was a big Sheriff's Dept flatbed truck alongside the road, with a porta-potty----a big waterjug---and a Sheriff's Deputy with a shotgun.......it looked like something right out of a Humphrey Bogart movie!

They weren't wearing the bright orange vests I'd been used to seeing in Idaho either......they were all clad in the dark blue & white prison garb! If what I'd read previously was true.....everyone of them was wearing PINK UNDERWEAR under those striped suits too.

Like most Americans, I'd heard of Joe Arpaio, "America's toughest Sheriff." Now I got to see a little bit of it FIRST HAND!

If you're one of these creeps who has made crime a "hobby", you do NOT want to get pinched in Maricopa Country, because if "Sheriff Joe" gets you, it ain't the "country club" that most jails are. It's the heat out in "Tent City." You get pink underwear, the striped prison clothes and two baloney sandwiches everyday. 40 cents apiece, per prisoner.

That's IT! You don't like it? Go get yourself arrested somewhere else! the taxpayers love that guy, and he gets re-elected by a LANDSLIDE everytime he runs.

(Joe doesn't "discriminate" either.......he also has a chain gang for the WOMEN, and a chain gang for the JUVENILE DELINQUENTS)

I knew it got hot down there, but did not know it STAYED that way.......I've seen 100 degress at MIDNIGHT down there!

And the traffic...........think it's bad in Ada county??

If you wanted to do something on your days off, it was always best to do it in the morning, especially May through September. I remember 122 one day, and it's even HOTTER in Yuma. Don Mourney (a good friend of mine) and I, used to go out to the Rio Salida Rifle & Pistol Range in Mesa every now and then on Saturday, and if you didn't get there the first thing in the morning, you might have trouble shooting, as it got later into the day, especially with the rifles, where your targets were "out there" a bit, and as you started to line your sights downrange, you could barely make out the target board with the "heat waves" coming up from the hot ground in front of you. It got interesting at times.

I eventually landed a better job out at Falcon Field with Marsh Aviation, where their primary job was to convert old surplus Navy twin-engine S-2's into fire retardant planes for the Forest Service. Some of my work was out in the heat, and the rest inside the hangar. Either way, it was hot and miserable. I made a few friends down there though, a few that endure long-distance to this day.

There was a pretty good little musical group at the church I attended, and I decided to lend my guitar playing to it. For decades, I'd been playing for drunks in clubs, and decided to put it where it would have some meaning.

Like so many other musicians, I too had wasted a LOT of years playing in smoke-filled bars, nightclubs, squadron parties, etc. When you're in your 30's and late 40's, you're pretty much at the top of your game. My finger-speed up and down the neck was considerably faster and smoother than it is today, as you get older----the years of turning wrenches turns into shades of arthritis.

But when I look back, it was pure WASTE, making these "dazzling runs" on the strings that NOBODY in a smoke-filled dive ever even hears with the pool balls being smacked around, the dart games, the "chug-a-lug" beer contests going on, and all the other racket in a night club. But you get paid so you play.........and maybe some "talent scout" from NASHVILLE is gonna walk into some dive out in east Mesa and DISCOVER you!............RIGHT......Already "been" to Nashville!

So, you get yourself straightened out with God, and start playing Gospel music in church were there is NO SMOKE......nobody's DRUNK.....two to three HUNDRED people are sitting out there quietly LISTENING to you play now.....but the years are starting to take a toll on your abilities.

Oh----you're still playing well, and everybody likes it. Everybody but YOU!

You've done BETTER, when you were younger and playing for DRUNKS. Your new congregation doesn't know that, but YOU DO. You almost feel like you're short-changing GOD......."the nightclubs got your BEST, and years LATER, God has to "settle for what's left."

Today in 2011, I play lead guitar for the church I attend here in town. Once in a great while, I'll be walking around Wally-World and run into a fellow church member, and he'll introduce me to whoever it is he's talking to, and say something like "Hey Bill, this is Mike Bradbury....you should hear this guy play the guitar!.....(and I'll think to myself.....yeah, so should YOU!-----20 years ago!)

I still play lead guitar OUTSIDE of church once in awhile, with my old friend Curly Surles, who holds dances in the big barn next to his house on Friday nights. No booze or cigarette smoking in there, and we usually close with a GOSPEL tune.

Anyway, back to Arizona:

Your daily routine changes a bit in Arizona. Especially when you don't live far from the Superstitions......

You learn to shake your shoes out before you put them on, and NOT to reach anywhere you can't see. Never know where you might come across a scorpion.

You look out and down before you open a screen door, and glance under the shade of your car before you climb into it. Diamondbacks are known to seek shade no matter WHERE it is. You get used to it though, and soon it becomes pretty routine. You're always cautious where you go for walks, especially at night.

But the heat and the crowds were starting to get to me in the next few years, particularly in the wintertime, when the temperature drops into the 60's and 70's.......and Arizona gets FLOODED with "snowbirds". Life almost comes to a crawl, with all of these retired folks jamming the streets, creating massive slowdowns, flooding the restaurants and the fastfood joints, they are EVERYWHERE. The Phoenix area is a fastpaced life, and all of a sudden, it comes to a "screeching halt" in places.

(I don't miss THAT a bit!)

In July of '98, I got a call from my old buddy Dave Labar, here in Mountain Home. (Dave & I first met at Lakenheath back in 1980). His son Duffy had just joined the Marine Corps and was on his way to boot camp in San Diego (where I had gone). San Diego isn't all that far from Phoenix as the "crow flies", so I told Dave to let me know if Duffy was gonna make it all the way to graduation (because not ALL of them do)....and if so, I'd drive over there for his graduation.

Well......Duff' hung in there through all 13 weeks and was gonna be a Marine, so I took a couple of days off and drove over there. It was really strange to walk through those old portals where they had thrown US off the bus 32 years earlier. And there they were.......those MULTI-SETS of yellow-painted "foot-prints" where WE had all lined up, scared to death with all those D.I.'s swarming over us. Man, I felt like I was in the "Twilight Zone" or something!

It was early in the morning, most of the parents of the boot camp graduates hadn't arrived yet, including Dave & Cindy, who I was looking for, so with camera in hand, I began walking around. Little had changed.

I found the old "quanset hut area" where WE had lived, but it was empty now. The recruits of today are living in open-bay barracks', and the old quansets are just being used for storage now. I slowly walked around the old place, just soaking it all in again. In my mind, I could still hear Johnson and Montgomery screaming at us, tossing people out of bunks, turning over wall lockers and throwing trashcans around.......it was really eerie, and when I had reached the pinnacle in my memory................

I felt a "presence", turned around and there was a lone D.I. (Drill Instructor) standing about 15 feet behind me! Hard, chiseled, staring at me through those two beady little eyes from under that "Smokey the Bear" cover......"CAN I HELP YOU?"

It's 1998. I'm 50 years old now, the last time I was here I had just turned 18, yet seeing a D.I. again sent a bolt of blind panic through me all over again!

"Uh....well.....I'm just here for the graduation ceremony, and when I came through back in '66" (probably about the time THIS guy was BORN), "We lived right here in these old quanset huts!"

"Oh really?".....he loosened up a bit, and we talked a few minutes. When I told him I'd fought at Khe Sanh during TET, he shook my hand vigorously and said "We've got a STREET down here now, named after you guys!" Then he told me to have a nice day, and to stay out of the training areas with the camera, which I naturally understood.

As he started to walk away, I asked him to hold up a minute. I said to him.........."I HAVE to know something......at the re-unions I go to, I've been told that you guys aren't allowed to hit recruits and kick 'em around anymore.....is that true now?"

"WELL".................."We're not SUPPOSED to!"....and he walked off.

........I THOUGHT so.........

I finished taking my pictures and when I walked down along the "grinder" (parade deck), I passed one of those open-bay barracks where I heard a D.I. yelling, and a whole platoon yelling back "AYE AYE SIR!" and there was SOMETHING being slammed around up there on that 2nd floor. I just smiled and thought to myself......."There ain't nothin' changed down here......."

A few hours later, I videotaped six platoons of freshly graduated Marines marching by and got a good shot of Duffy in HIS platoon. When the flag came by, the band played the Marine Hymn. Everyone stood (which you seldom see on "Main Street USA" anymore).

It was good. We had a nice visit and I drove back to Apache Junction, where life WAS a change from the cold and the wind of Idaho, but the grass wasn't greener.........there wasn't any grass at ALL. Only hard dirt and cactus!