The Adventures of Fric and Frac: Adventure 109: Faywood Hot Springs/Post C

Ain't America Great!

Ok, Enough! She's spanking me like a nun after an unruly child, and she leads 3-2. I have to win tomorrow morning just to stay alive, and then I have to win the decider. If things don't change, it means she will have won four straight matches. If that happens, I'll have to pull one of my cousin Douglas's tricks: I'll get a new deck. My card shark woes aside, we had a lovely day of touring in Fric. First, we visited a state park not far away called City of Rocks. It literally looks the part. You come over a rise in the desert and suddenly there is an expanse of vertical rocks hexagonal in shape (Sort of), and of various heights all lined up like the strip in Vegas (Minus the lights). It's a pretty cool natural phenomena (The aliens did it). Then we drove to Silver City, which exists because of the world's largest copper mine, a humongous open sore in the earth that they've been mining since the 1900s. It's closed now. They layed off four hundred workers three or four years ago. Now, the activity is what they call 'Reclamation'. My guess is that means copper is so valuable now, it's cost effective to comb through the old tailings in search of any salable material left behind. I'm just guessing, but my suspicions of the greedy know no bounds. Silver City itself is a mixture of retired types, disenfranchised Native Americans, some granola eaters enthusiasts, a few outdoorsy types (bikers, hikers, and such), and some college kids )NNMU. For a town of ten thousand, it appears you could find just about any demographic you'd want. You'd still have to like yourself pretty much to live there because it isn't on the way to anywhere. One thing that tells me there is retired money in them there hills is that there are more restaurants than people downtown. They all appear to be doing well, which means people eat in them. We ate at Jalisco's, a family owned Tex-Mex place that was just delicious. I met a guy in the hot pool who is related to the owners. His advice was good, a rarity for locals. We walked into a knitting shop and a retread from Boston (Nice lady, a retired teacher, and her husband taught seventh grade language arts: weird. talked all four of our legs off. I'm sure she was the entire staff of the chamber of commerce. Following her advice, we then climbed the mountain toward Gila for a while to a little western town called Pinos Altos, which is an old mining town, and now boasts a a cowboy feel, including a saloon that the locals around the area like to cut loose in (It's where Judy is going to play her ukelele for open mic). After we got back, Judy did yeoman's work in the afternoon coordinating the next four weeks of our adventure, which is a little harder now that we've entered the snow bird zone. But we're all set, and I'm going to give her a long relaxing thumper massage tonight as a reward for her troubles. As for me, I soaked a little after we did bookkeeping, and talked with people who think that the world is due for a cataclysmic change. They think that earth is ready for aliens (Really) who will come down and lead a spiritual healing. (Wow! I wondered what the liberal press is going to call the Iranian nuclear program). Anyway, I listened politely, since I can't fight and cover myself at the same time, but I have to say, most cataclysmic change has been driven by greed or a quest for power, not some altruistic plan for benefitting mankind. Unless, the alien that arrives happens to be Jesus, I just don't have that much faith in human motives. Regardless, I can do nothing about either event, so for me life is good, especially today.