In June of 1950, I was 13 years old and fixing to be 14 in August. My Grandpa, George F. Sicks had invited me to spend the summer with him in Arizona. Granddad was living in the town of Safford which is on the east side of the state.

I caught a bus and headed west. This was big stuff for a kid that had hardly been out of Augusta, Kansas. Grandpa’s second wife, Mina, went to Los Angeles to visit her sister for the summer. Before she left, she made me show her that I could cook a steak and fix potatoes and vegetables to go with it.

Grandpa was a farm equipment salesman with an Allis-Chalmers dealer. He called on the farms and ranches in the area sometimes. One Friday afternoon, Grandpa came home from work early and said that we were going to the farm. The farm was clear down in the southeast corner of the state, a couple of miles from the New Mexico border and just west of the town of San Simon. Simon is pronounced in the Spanish way, with a long “o.” You say it like the girl’s name, “Simone.”

We left Safford, heading south, and in a couple of hours were in southern Arizona. We merged with U.S. Highway 80 (now Interstate 10), and headed east. San Simon is in Chiricuhua County and is a part of the Sonoran Desert. You can see for miles across the desert country, clear up the Chiricahua Mountains. This is the land of Cochise and Geronimo, so you need to keep your eyes open.

The farm adjoins the highway on the south side, so you can see the whole place from the car. It is 120 acres of steaming hot desert with no tilled land or much of anything. There is a one room adobe house, and that’s about it. The redeeming feature is that there are two Artesian wells on the place- one hot and one cold. Granddad had fixed up the hot well so you could take a shower outside. He built a screen around it so you could have a little privacy from the people driving down the highway.

Granddad showed me around the place and we messed around for the rest of the evening. He called the place his “farm,” but I believe that it was what would now be considered as the equivalent of a “man-cave.” It was a place for him to putter around.

Granddad and I spent the evening out in the yard where it was pretty nice after the sun went down. When we went to bed, I lucked out and got the cot. A little after sunrise the next morning, I was awakened by a pecking noise. I sat up in bed, wondering what was going on. Grandpa, who had awakened also said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s my road-runner buddy telling me that it’s time for his breakfast.” We got up and got dressed and Grandpa went to a cabinet and got a sack of chicken feed. He said, “A year or so ago, Mina went to visit her sister in L.A., so I stayed down here for a month. After eating, I would throw the table scraps out in the yard because I knew some critter would eat them. It turned out that the roadrunner was the lucky creature that came. He enjoyed the food and depended on me to provide it. If I didn’t show up quick enough in the mornings, he figured out that he could peck on the window and get my attention. I guess he has remembered our routine since then.” Granddad took a cup of grain and threw it out into the yard. The roadrunner scurried around like a chicken in the barnyard intent on getting every last bite. It’s been 70 years now, and I still think of that roadrunner from time to time. Who knew that a bird could think or reason or remember anything?

Now, I don’t speak the roadrunner’s language, but I will try to express in English what the bird might have been thinking. Imagine that it is evening and that the roadrunner has been craising all day and comes by the farm in the evening. He thinks, “There is a car. The man must be here in the house. I like the man. He feeds me.” The next morning, the roadrunner is in the yard. “Where’s my breakfast? I’m hungry! The man must be in the house. Last year I figured out how to get his attention, so I know now how to get him. I’ll jump up on the window ledge and peck on the window. Yep, he’s getting up, so it won’t be long until breakfast.” Then, a little later, “That was delicious. Now that I don’t have to spend the morning foraging for food, I’m going to go down the road a piece and find that roadrunner chick and see if she wants to go jogging.”

Dave Thomas

4/30/2020

Step out the door of your motel at sun-up in Sedona, Arizona and feel your mouth drop open. When the sun hits those red rocks, it jars your senses. This must be the place that God and Mother Nature put in some overtime. As the sun strikes the multitude of facets on the side of the mountain, you see one brilliant shade of red after another.

The evenings are just as grand, but much more subtle. As the sun sets, the color of the mountains fades from bright red to shades of purple and then to grays and then to black. I don’t have words to describe the beauty of the area. Go see for yourself. It’s a magical place.

Dave Thomas
04/18/2020

Pat and I had gotten up just a few minutes before and were just sitting down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. We heard a noise outside, and Pat got up and opened the curtains. There was a donkey with his lips almost against the window. He must have been as startled as us because he cut loose with Hee-Haw, Hee Haw, and it was loud enough to shake the house! We recognized the donkey as the pet of the Noble family that lived several houses up the hill from us.

We had been visited by the donkey a couple of times before. We had a Shetland pony for the kids that we kept in a corral next to our back fence. In the previous visits, the donkey had come down the back fence-line, but, for some reason, this time he had come down the street. I had my jeans on and was wearing flip-flops or thongs or shower shoes or whatever you call them. I went out to the shed and got a lead rope and came back and snapped it onto the halter the donkey was wearing. I headed for the street to take him home, and he was well-mannered and led on a slack rein, walking beside my shoulder.

We got to the street and started up the hill but it was tough going for me. The asphalt streets in our development had been sealed a couple of days before, and a fine layer of sand had been spread on them. The footing wasn’t that good, and I kept scooping up sand with my flip-flops. I was relieved when we got up the hill to the Noble’s house. However, about this time, the donkey must have realized he was almost home and he snorted and whirled around and started running back down the hill. I dug in my heels and yelled “Whoa” as I held onto the end of the lead rope. It was a wasted effort! That donkey was going downhill as fast as he could go, and I was out on the end of that rope with my heels dug in and looking like a water skier on a slalom course. Our wild ride finally got us to the bottom of the hill and as we got to our house, I could see Pat in her pajamas and housecoat out in the front yard pointing at us and laughing like a crazy woman. The donkey stopped and I looked back up the hill, and here comes Noble, laughing. He was kind enough to say that he had seen the donkey escape but had to get dressed before he could come out. As you have read, I got no respect at all. It may have been caused by the donkey, but I made a complete ass of myself.

Dave Thomas
7/13/2014 originally
Reposted on 04/13/2020