Where I Live: Fort Huachuca, Arizona

On two occasions in my life, I called the state of Arizona home.

The first happened when I was fresh off the plane from Germany. My father had been reassigned to Fort Huachuca (which means "Thunder Mountains"), 15 miles north of the border with Mexico. It was here that I recall my first memories. The choo-choo train cake from my 2nd birthday party. Family gathered around as I was given a large plastic knife to cut a piece of it with. My older brother being yelled at by my Grandmother for staying out past dark. The very first thing I remember seeing on television (Fraggle Rock). Arizona is where my life really began.

It's a hot state, hotter than I think anyone who lives in the east or north realizes. Temperatures can climb over 110 degrees in the summer. There's no oppressive humidity, but all that means is that you dry out that much faster. Also, the climbing mercury provides the ideal heat for monsoons - squalls which can cause flash floods in seconds with downpours so tumultuous you legimiately fear for your life. They can put everything around you underwater and then vanish to reveal clear skies in the space of five minutes. When monsoon season rolls around, it is not uncommon to see this event four or five times a day.

Beyond the weather though, there is nothing quite like the sight of the western states. There are deserts teeming with life; plants, mammals, and lizards adapted in ways completely unlike anything back east. There were roadrunners native to the area, and it was a common occurrence to hear coyotes howling at night (yes - we had roadrunners and coyotes). Other native wildlife included scorpions, deadly spiders, gila monsters, mountain lions, deer, javalenas (wild pigs), fire ants, turkey buzzards, and condors. Natural sites of wonder can be found in Arizona's extensive bat caves, a fascinating place to visit and learn about these amazing creatures, the petrified forest, the painted desert, and, of course, the Grand Canyon.

But to narrow it down so much takes away from Arizona's natural beauty. There is little about the state that is not a wonder to behold. If you're unused to the kind of marvel a desert climate can produce, you don't know what you're missing.

My memories of my first tenure in Arizona are dim. My parents divorced when I was 2, and my mother took us to live for a time in a trailer on the outskirts of Sierra Vista, the town adjacent to the Fort. I visited my father occasionally, one such visit giving rise to a classic story wherein my mom - for some ungodly reason - had decided to grow my hair out in a rat-tail. My father took one look at it, flipped out his knife, and chopped it off. If mom objected, she never says so when she tells the story - perhaps she saw me without it and realized her mistake.

At this time, she began dating a young officer named Brad, whose towering height (he was 6'7''!) made a definite impression, but for some reason his roommate was the one who really caught her eye. Thus is was not long before my mother and then-2nd Lieutenant Dennis Schlitt began seeing one another.

We moved into a house, adding my Grandmother AND Grandfather - they'd been divorced for nearly 2 decades - to the mix. There we stayed until orders came that Dennis was to be made a 1st Lieutenant and thus reassigned to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. There we remained - until Dennis was again promoted to Captain, and back to Arizona we went.

This is where my memories of Arizona firmly take root. Having my 7th birthday party at the Pot O' Luck, where they had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. Moving first to the interim housing, then to an apartment, then finally our house at 107A Lawton Ave. Visiting Lake Havasu and enduring temperatures of 120 degrees to see the actual London Bridge - yes, it's in Arizona. Seeing Tombstone and witnessing gunfight reenactments. Driving 90 minutes to Tucson to visit Toys 'R Us, or 3 hours to Phoenix or Scottsdale for the enormous malls. Meeting my best friends ever, Willy and Hannah, the brother and sister who lived next door to me. Then when we moved to a larger house (105A Arizona St.) to accommodate our growing family - now consisting of Dennis and my mom, my older brother, and the newest addition, my younger sister Samantha - my new best friends ever, Mikey and Mallory, the brother and sister who lived up the road. While I had fun after school every day with them, it wasn't until Mikey and Mallory moved away that Jason Chapman moved in, and I had my real first best friend.

Jason, supposedly an actual descendant of American legend Johnny Chapman, or Johnny Appleseed as he is more widely known, was my first best friend. We played at the playground by my house. We played at the playground next to the bus stop. We drew together (he was much better than me). We made up whole stories and worlds and acted them out in my backyard. We fought and hated each other and then apologized and forgot and played some more. I still have some of the stories we made up to this day. I keep telling myself that one day I'll do something with them. Ultimately, he moved to Germany, and it wasn't long before we lost touch.

There were so many others, though. Jesse and Ted, David Muldanado and Jonathan and Justin. Brandi, Sam, Christian, Chris Sontag and Matt Oldham, even my first girlfriend (we never actually went on a single date) Jennifer Achaval. From age 7 to 13, Fort Huachuca was my home. It was where we had our Irish Setter, a purebred named Princess Shanel (but referred to as Shanny), and where I had my first two iguanas, Godzilla and Gigantis. It was where Mrs. Gross, the teacher of the Academically Gifted class, educated me and my friends in literature and logic for 5 years running. It's where I met Ms. Bird, the nastiest and yet somehow most caring teacher I've ever encountered. Arizona is where I first became old enough to walk by myself to the PX and the Commissary, where I saved up all my allowance and birthday money to buy my own Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. And where the youngest member of our family, Evan, my little brother, came to be.

Now, Fort Huachuca itself is an army base. There's not a lot that will ever change there. My brother visited recently and tells me the only difference is that the yards, formerly lush green grass, have all been replaced by smooth desert rock, likely in a water-conservation effort. Other than that, the houses all remain the same. There's the enlisted housing, officer housing, Colonel's Row, the Officer's Club, so on and so forth. What sets Fort Huachuca apart is the mountains. I am not exaggerating at all when I say there was a mountain range in my backyard. Literally - there was the fenced-off portion of my backyard, about fifty yards or so of open grass, a steep decline that led to the one road out of town below, and then mountains. Waking up to a red sunrise spreading out over those majestic green peaks was always something to look forward to. And on occasions when it snowed, it was even more breathtaking. Snow, of course, was a rare sight to be treasured. It was much more common to be told to put on a sweater if it dipped below 60.

The outlying town, Sierra Vista, is, I'm given to understand, now heavily developed. When I was there, it was more or less a single road with stores on either side, leading to some apartment buildings where my Grandfather lived. There were run-down saloons and Native American gift shops, tiny shopping centers and a single comic shop, Stasis, that became a treat to visit. The most monumental occasion of the time I lived there was when they opened up a Blockbuster. I'm told that these days the town is unrecognizable from what it once was. Maybe one day I'll go see it again, but I prefer to keep my memory of that quiet little town where every new happening was monumental.

As often happens, I eventually found myself further along in time than I had been before. Dennis was not going to make Major, and at that time in the army the policy was up or out. So, for the first time, I was about to leave my life in the military. This time, the destination was Ohio.

Oh, but I completely left out North Carolina. Well, both my time in Fayetteville and Dayton were transitional times for me. Maybe it's best I cover them elsewhere - perhaps in my next installment of Where I Live.

Luck of the Irish

Bennigans has been closed awhile now, bankrupt and out of business. And while I won't shed a tear for the terrible service and lackluster, lukewarm food that made the College Park franchise notorious in my eyes (though it was the site of the time I accidentally hijacked the first date between someone else and the girl who would eventually go on to be my girlfriend without knowing I was doing so), I had some pretty good times at the Rockville Pike location back in high school and beyond. Getting a drink with some coworkers after my break-up, or more often ending up there with Ari and Miles on one of our drives, Bennigans was never THE place to be (that honor went to the Silver Diner) but it was certainly a place to be, and so we were.

And so, maybe deserves a requiem.

Bennigans, I only knew you oh so well. You were part of the Pike Franchise Restaurant Trifecta, one third of a team comprised also of TGI Fridays and Ruby Tuesdays. You offered me a corporate slant on Irish food and laid claim to the one sandwich I refused to ever try, and now never will. But many people ate your ham and turkey and cheese sandwich, deep fried until oily gold, and then doused in powdered sugar with a raspberry dipping sauce. And when those people die before me, I think I'll know why. No, B, you never gave me the best food, or best decor, but you gave me a few good nights.

And you gave me this.

Just before going to Maryland, I had a cup of coffee at Montgomery College, just a semester to get used to being back in civilization after the eight month ordeal regular readers know as New Mexico. I took my first theater class in about a year there, and became friendly with a girl named Audrey. She was from Arizona.

Now I have a theory about people who grow up in Arizona.

They're all crazy.

And no one from Arizona has yet proven me wrong. It's all stories about lake side keggers, cults, and avoiding gunfire in abandoned shopping malls. And Audrey's stories were no different. She went to the kinds of parties I still wonder what it would be like to attend - full of public grinding and ending in shower orgies. She had been in a car accident in Arizona and it was a pretty bad one, and so her parents brought her here to recover. By the time I met her she had, and was missing home pretty bad, waiting it out 'til she could afford to return. And in the meantime she had found a few people at MC that helped bring that Arizona feel here.

Believe me, I wasn't in her league.

So I was at Bennigans one night with my good friend Ari, sitting and eating as we would often do, when Audrey walks in. I hadn't seen her in a little while so we started to catch up a bit - I didn't want it to go too long cause Ari sort of just had to sit there. But then she started telling me a story about the last party she went to, going into a lot of detail about her getting naked in the shower with a lot of people and forget friend protocol, I was fully invested in the moment we were sharing under the neon kitsch.

Then she pulled out her camera, said 'Oh wait, I have pictures!' and proceeded to show me a bunch of pictures of her naked. Totally naked. Like 'hey, look, those are nipples' naked. I looked up at her, back down at the pictures while she talked, narrating the night to me. Yup, that was her. And that was her naked. 

And she was pretty hot.

Now Ari was in the most unfortunate situation because he totally wanted to see the pictures too (imagine the feeling of being left out, but multiplied by hot naked girls). But he had never met this girl and there's no real couth way to be like "Heeeey... can I get a turn?" So instead, he just sat there uncomfortably across from us as this girl showed me a bunch of naked pictures of herself in the middle of the restaurant, until she gave me a hug and had to go.

Ari stared at me with daggers.

So I'll miss you, Bennigans. 

You didn't give me much. But I have a lot of very attractive female friends and to this day none of them have since surprised me in a restaurant with naked pictures, though I often wish they would.

So until they do, maybe at Jaspers or Chef's Secret or even Cheesecake Factory, I raise a glass to you, spill a drop of Guinness, and maybe I'll fry a turkey sandwich in your honor when I get tired of this cruel world.