A-1 Memories & Another Stab at Rurales Suspended In Amber

 January 9, 2025

   This old heartwarmer popped up on my phone and it made me smile.

A-1 In The Snow

One of my proudest possessions: the neon A-1 Beer sign off the old Nogales Cafe in downtown Phoenix, seen here, lighting up a snowy landscape near the cave in Cave Creek.

Still working hard to capture Rurales suspended in amber. Such a great phrase and fun, but not easy, to execute.

Daily Whip Out:

"Rurales On The Ridgeline #7"

Mas Reed to Read

  So, John Reed has bummed a ride with an Arab muleteer to get to the front lines and he drops a couple politically incorrect zingers, "They say there are so few Jews in Mexico because they cannot stand the competition  of the Arabs. . ."

   And, of course, he describes the land, "Then all the rolling leagues of desert glowed and came near in the soft light. . .now the western mountains were blue velvet, and the pale sky a blood-stained canopy of watered silk. But by the time we reached the great gate of the rancho, above was only a shower of stars."

   Then, this: "We passed only one human being all that day—a ragged old man astride a burro, wrapped in a red-and-black check serape, though without trousers, and hugging the broken stock of a rifle. Spitting, he volunteered that he was a soldier; that after three years of deliberation he had finally decided to join the Revolution and fight for Libertad. But at the first battle a cannon had been fired, the first he had ever heard; he had immediately started for his home in El Oro, where he intended to descend into a gold mine and stay there until the war was over. . ."

—John Reed, Insurgent Mexico

   An entire life of an ex-soldier—without pants!—summed up in a paragraph!

"There is always a philosophy for lack of courage."

—Albert Camus