Gen BizB

Bisbee produces interesting people.

The small former mining town attracts a variety of people: artists, musicians, restauranteurs, house flippers, working professionals, retirees, of course- tourists... to a person passing through this town with winding roads sometimes leading to charming homes perched on the hillside- sometimes leading to long stairways leading to homes perched on the hillside, Bisbee holds a unique ambiance and seems to catch people in some kind of "energy warp" that leaves them feeling either nurtured, inspired, or a little creeped out.

I've often been asked, "What was it like growing up in Bisbee?" What a difficult question to answer. We had no fast food, no mall, no movie theatre, no stoplights.

These are the snapshots that are etched in my memory, just like our names that we carved into the bench at the post office and into the old wooden pews at First Methodist Church (which were spared when they refinished the pews in recent years- they sanded and stained around our names so as not to minimize the value of goofing off in church and, more importantly, defacing sacred property):

Walking freely through the streets of Bisbee with no fear of being apprehended by strangers (there weren't many to speak of in this town, even the "strange" ones were well known to us or our parents).

My sister and I drinking Shirley Temples at the bar down Naco Highway, mooching quarters off of our dad so we could play the jukebox- Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and the occasional La Cucaracha. We would walk home sucking on a "Chupa Chup" lollipop.

Swimming at the pool at the Elks Club or at the City Pool in Old B. I liked the Elks Pool better- it seemed cleaner and that's where the cool older girls hung out- probably the cool older boys as well, but I must have been too young to notice.

Playing Little League softball and getting a free rainbow sno-cone after each game.

Hanging out after school before ballet class- we'd go to the corner drug store and get a HUGE cherry milkshake and then regret it halfway through class when Mrs. B. would get off of her stool by her old record player, long cigarette dangling out of her mouth, and "tap" us with her cane telling us to "SUCK IN!".

As we got older...

Hanging out at the Pizza House, playing Pac-Man and Frogger in the back. We'd order some kind of pizza that required us to squirt sour cream all over the top (does anyone remember what that was or why we did that??).

Exploring every layer of the town... from the "tunnels" (the underground drainage ditches that could even give us a very close experience with the pit) to the top of Castle Rock where we sometimes encountered various species such as scorpions and Bisbee's finest roaches... to the top of the Divide for the more "public" parties and to "Screw the Dog" for the more private parties- that was the code for the "secret" loation so that we could be oh-so-selective of who would join us... who in their right mind would want to go to screw the dog??

Yes, we were clever. We were unique and "deep" and "different". We did things like dye our hair crazy colors or even shave our heads (ok, maybe just a few... ok, ok, just one of us did that) or walk around town barefoot so we could "feel grounded". We wrote poetry and published "zines" and held concerts in the basement of the Y where our cool punk rock bands fueled the mosh pit. This is what Bisbee produced: young, developing minds who, in the absence of trendy stores and mainstream media, were forced to get creative in order to stay entertained. Yet as "unique" as we were, I look back at photographs from that era and find that I have a hard time distinguishing between people- we all looked very similar in our granny dresses and Doc Martens, our hair over-processed from all the coloring products.

And now, here I am, back in Bisbee. But as a pretty "normal" adult. I see people from that era every day. Some left and went to college before coming back into leadership roles in our community. Some left to "find themselves" and came back to "find themselves". Some never left. Some are hooked on meth or on Elmo's. Some are living with a mental illness (Bisbee is often referred to as the "largest open-air mental asylum" which makes sense- rather than being viewed as "mentally ill", they are seen as "eccentric" or "artistic" or charmingly "crazy").

Some are now parents and have families of their own. As a mother of two young children, this is what I find refreshing about Bisbee: Watching my daughter perform in a school play alongside the daughter of a former classmate of mine. Picking up my son from daycare and running into people who used to run through the "tunnels" with me. Going to the Farmer's Market and running into a classmate's barefoot children with hair reminiscent of ours from long ago. These things bring up those old snapshots and in a sense, we are re-living those experiences through our own children. Will they grow up to do the same things we did? Pac-Man and Frogger have undoubtedly been replaced with high-tech gaming systems. Zines have been replaced with blogging. Yet I have a feeling that the spirit of a more creative, explorative, inquisitive way of being will continue to thread through this next generation of Bisbee kids.

Unfortunately, Bisbee is not sheltered from cable television and the empty, fruitless programming available to our highly evolved minds. On that note, it's time for me to commune with Tivo and catch up with Jillian's latest drama on The Bachelorette.