Whip Outs In Progress And Cave Creek History

 March 16, 2023

   Lots to talk about. We're chugging along on the May issue and I found this in the upstairs morgue while looking for a cover image for Jeff Mariotte.

Daily Whip Out: "Rurale On The Jump"

Daily Whip Outs In Progress

   I usually work on multiple paintings and scratchboards at the same time. When I get stuck on one, I move to another one and then hopefully come back and finish the original piece. Occassionally, I will become super-over-extended and overwhelmed with too many pieces in progress, like today.

Ridiculously Over Extended

Cave Creek Fireside Chat

   Meet my sidekick for my fireside chat at the library this afternoon.

Allison and Mystic

   His name is Mystic and he had some great vibes, barking at all the appropriate pauses in my history of Cave Creek monologue. He is being held back by Allison Taylor, the Desert Foothills Library Adult Program Manager. We got some big ol' raindrops at the 4 o'clock mark and had to bail, but it was a ton of fun. I opened with this tidbit that is 53 years old!

Cave Creek History

   The first time I visited Cave Creek was in 1970 as a surveyor-lineman for Arizona Public Service. Our job was to locate and put in stakes indicating where the J-boxes (junction boxes for electricity) would go for new homes and businesses and the word was that little old Cave Creek was getting a bowling alley. So our line crew drove out to Cave Creek to locate the property lines and establish exactly where the J-box would go. Not long after we arrived at the empty lot on the snorth side of Cave Creek Road I was sent up on a saguaro studded hill to get an elevation marker and as I sat there waiting for the instrument man to set up his tri-pod I looked over the lush landscape and thought to myself, "I could live here."

   Almost a century earlier, someone who probably thought the same thing was living in the cave that Cave Creek is named for and on Christmas Day, 1874 they were attacked by Al Sieber and his scouts, looking for "bucks" off the reservation.

"The only thing new in this world is the history you don't know."

—Harry Truman