THE VACANT LOT
Tom Cole
Spring 2001
BACK TO MEMOIR PAGE
A Cop Pulls Me Over, A Little about Lots, The Burrowing
Owl, Water Pipits, Suburban Coyotes, Game and Fish Guys, The Clown of the
Desert, How to Kill an Alligator, The Haunt of Bums, The Pervert's Journal,
Mountain Bluebirds, Cops Give Me the Fish Eye, Horned Larks, Harriers, Turkey
Buzzards, The End
It was 9:00 AM and I was driving my Dodge Shadow west bound
on Elliot Road when I saw the flashing lights of a Gilbert prowl car behind
me. I pulled into a residential street, stopped, and waited for the police
lady to come to the window.
My dog Noodles started yapping at her the minute she looked
in the window.
"Do you know what you did?" she asked.
"Nope." I said.
"Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!" said Noodles.
"You drove across a vacant lot and had your car out there where
that construction is going on. May I see your driver's license and registration?"
"Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!" said Noodles.
I took out my wallet and found my driver's license. Then I
got the registration from the glove compartment. It was stuffed in the Shadow's
manual.
"Let me see your insurance too."
I handed her the license and registration and then started
going through the manual to find the insurance card. I knew I had it but
couldn't find it right away.
"Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!" said Noodles.
"I was bird watching over there." I explained. "Hush, Noodles,
you knucklehead."
"Have you had anything to drink?" she asked.
"No," I said. "It's a little early for that."
"It depends on when you get up."
"Well, I got up at about six." I waited a second and said,
"You could smell it if I'd been drinking. Anyway, you see, there's a vermilion
flycatcher that likes to sit on that fence."
The officer had no interest in the vermilion flycatcher. She
could, however, clearly see the bird book on the dash and the notebook labeled
in black Marksalot pen: WILD BIRDS I HAVE KNOWN.
My story must have seemed believable. She forgot about the
insurance and said, "I have no problem with you going over there, but I can't
promise that another officer won't pull you over again. You're good to go."
"Good to go." It was still rather new phraseology to me. I'd
heard it on TV but had yet to hear a real person say it. No one I knew used
the expression.
"Okie dokey," I said.
"Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap!" said Noodles.
I drove away and wondered why she thought I might be boozing.
Then I had an idea and looked over my shoulder. There on the back seat was
a unopened can of beer. It was left over from the five-day raft trip I had
just taken down the San Juan River the week before and was still coated with
red dust from the northern desert.
The officer had pulled me over for driving across a vacant
lot. She didn't know that I was on my way to yet another lot -- a bigger
one, a mile on a side -- and one I always felt the cops would kick me out
of one day: the Elliot and McQueen lot.
The lot at Elliot and McQueen was like a thousand other lots
that have had to succumb to encroachment of suburbia. All of them began long
ago as pristine desert that was plowed under to make farmland. As the city
enveloped the farms and the rural land was covered with houses, some lots
remained. These lots retained their rural character in many ways. They were
bordered by dirt roads, they were quiet, and while they did not contain the
wildlife of the original desert for the most part, they still retained the
wildlife of the old rural area: all the hawks, the coyotes, and a dozen other
creatures. And they were more often than not still plowed and planted with
alfalfa or wheat. The lots were still used as working farm land with absentee
landlords.
The lot I drove to visit that day lies on the south side of
Elliot Road with the railway its western border and McQueen Road to the east.
I call it the Elliot and McQueen lot. As I said, once pristine, natural desert,
this lot was long ago first plowed and ruined by farmers, but the fate it
will soon meet is infinitely worse. Soon it will be covered with houses and
all indeed will be lost.
I turned left off of Elliot Road and put the car into the lot
on the dirt road that led south across it. Violet green swallows were streaming
over the green field. To me they always represented the rural areas. You'd
see them only as you drove down these lonely dirt roads that bordered farmland
or these lots -- never right in your suburban neighborhood.
I stopped. A burrowing owl was on the ground next to the V-shaped
cement canal that even now was being used for irrigating crops. People sometimes
asked me where to find the burrowing owl and I would tell them about the Chandler
Airport site, but this was even better -- closer and easier to find.
The burrowing owl is an intrepid diurnal creature of the plains
and desert southwest. It lives in badger holes and the like and has bright
yellow eyes and long legs. It was completely unafraid of my car or me. I looked
at him for a while, wrote him down in my notebook, and drove on.
At the end of the road is Mesquite High School. It borders
the southern end of the lot. I looked and saw that there were water pipits
in the grass on the baseball diamond. They flew out into the plowed field
of the lot. Pipits look like large heavily streaked sparrows, but they give
themselves away with a teeter totter pumping of their tails and a longer,
non-conical beak. That year they were the only water pipits I could find anywhere
so I was happy to see them.
I turned west on the next dirt road and found another cement
canal there. It was full of water. Of all things a black-crowned night-heron
stood up at the edge of the canal and flew away. I got out of the car to watch
him go and then decided to walk Noodles along for a while with the car parked
behind. We went to the tracks and found meadowlarks in the plowed field beyond.
There was also a rather large and woolly coyote in the field. He pranced
off slowly and with little more concern than to look over his shoulder once
or twice to see what we were up to.
I'd seen him before. He had come out and looked at Noodles
and me more than once before. Each time he then just disappeared into the
tall wheat that covers various parts the vacant lot. I turned and looked
and there was another coyote next to a creosote bush watching us. I took
it for a female. She was cutting a rather bold pose -- a cocked but unconcerned
stance in front of the bush.
These coyotes were right in town and I assumed they ate a jackrabbit
or two a day; there were plenty of those desert hares in the field. I knew
I wasn't about to tell anyone about the coyotes because Game and Fish would
likely send their guys over to shoot them on general principles. At least
I thought they would. They'd find a scientific or humanitarian reason, I thought,
but it would still be a sport shooting.
I had seen Game and Fish guys on television. One day it got
into their heads that shooting coyotes from helicopters was a fun idea. On
the day of their outing the TV news cameras came in to ask what they were
doing. Suddenly, the Game and Fish guys did not seem so proud of their plans
and became positively retiring and demure They would talk to no one. They
had no comment. They wouldn't even get near the helicopters. They pretended
to shut the whole thing down because they knew very well that people who shoot
dogs are held in low esteem by the general public and like most people they
still wanted to be popular. And, of course, they had no good reason to be
shooting coyotes from helicopters anyway -- aside from the sport of it. So
they waited until almost all of the camera people had left. A couple of cameras
remained but the Game and Fish boys couldn't wait any longer and went on
their hunt anyhow. Only a few seconds of video were taken.
I saw the video. What struck me were the hats -- the big, silly,
preposterous hats that all the Game and Fish guys wore. They were big, wide
brimmed cowboy-like hillbilly hats and they wore them inside the helicopters
where there was no sun. I knew immediately why they were wearing them. This
coyote hunt was a fun sporting event for the Game and Fish guys and such joyous
events call for certain apparel. They were party hats.
My father always hated Game and Fish. He once showed me an
article in a Game and Fish publication. It was entitled, "The Roadrunner.
The Clown of the Desert."
The story told of how a rattlesnake would take a snooze out
in the noonday sun and how the roadrunner (that clown of the desert) would
sneak up and build a ring of cholla around him. Now the rattlesnake, so the
article went, cannot cross over cholla and the roadrunner knows it but the
snake doesn't, so when the roadrunner wakes the snake up, the snake slithers
away and gets stuck on the cholla spines and the roadrunner takes advantage
of his preoccupation and chops his head off.
I can still hear my dad: "Oh, Jesus! Those rattlers do like
to take naps -- and right in the noonday sun where their temperature will
go up to 120 degrees. What utter bullshit! And isn't that clownish of the
roadrunner to chop off the snake's head? He haggles the snake's head clean
off, that clown -- that CLOWN of the desert!"
The roadrunner's technique of killing the rattlesnake is kind
of like my technique for killing alligators. My method relies more on distraction,
though. You just leave the Sunday paper by the swamp. Then you come back and
sneak up and club the gator over the head while he's clipping coupons.
On the western side of the lot are a few hovels that bums reside
in. They have some palm fronds set up as wind breaks and a some of their Spartan
gear stowed around there -- cans and ratty blankets and the like. The area
is full of Anna's hummingbirds, loggerhead shrikes, and meadowlarks.
If you've ever gone and looked around the area where bums hang
out, you will be surprised that you can more often than not find some girlie
magazines or pornographic magazines lying around. You can also find the bum's
stash quite easily. Just look for a rock that seems to have been moved recently
and look under it. Half the time you'll find a bag of dope or a pill or some
crystal meth or cocaine. I don't take their dope, but I do find it interesting
to find their stash. It's kind of a hobby of mine. There's another lot --
an old dump where someone has stashed a ton of women's clothes: brassieres,
pink pumps, dresses and a half dozen cheap wigs. I guess the bum or whoever
he is -- maybe the dean of liberal arts from a local college for all I know
-- goes out there and dresses up and dances from time to time under the light
of the silvery moon. Humans is real strange critters.
At the Elliot and McQueen lot, I picked up a piece of paper
printed out from a computer. It seemed to be part of the journal of a man
who said he was the author of children's stories. The account told of how
he received air fare from his publisher to go to book signings and meet all
of his wonderful young fans. Most of the journal page told about his relationship
with a woman and her prepubescent twin daughters. In part he wrote:
"Susan went on to tell me more: How the girls had been aware
of other people's sexual feelings since they were out of diapers, sleeping
together and experimenting with their own bodies. She said (and I blushed)
that if they were going to fool around with someone else she would rather
it be with someone she knew...We hugged chastely, like brother and sister,
drawn together by our mutual love for her daughters.
"Not many mothers would allow their daughters to hang around
with a confessed little girl lover, but that was exactly what she had done.
I felt I owed her something for being so understanding, so I tried to think
of something that would help her with raising two young girls.
"It was good not to have any secrets, I thought, as I drifted
off to sleep a little later, visions of two identical girls dancing naked
through my head."
I showed my co-worker Margot the manuscript page and she made
me give her a copy which she sent to the Gilbert police on the off chance
that it would make the difference in some pending court case against this
perve.
I have continued to visit the lot nearly every weekend. Recently
I saw some birds there I couldn't quickly identify. Then I said, "They're
bluebirds!" And a little later I was able to say, "Jesus, they're mountain
bluebirds!"
Mountain bluebirds have a much less hunched posture than western
or eastern bluebirds and don't have the rusty colored feathers on back and
breast. Mountain bluebirds are sky blue thrushes and they have the habit of
hovering some fifty feet above the ground before diving down for insects on
the ground. I had always felt that mountain bluebirds were high altitude birds.
I had seen them often in Flagstaff hovering in the icy air. I was surprised
to see them in the Valley. I was able to come back for weeks to the Elliot
and McQueen lot and find the same birds there hovering and diving. They stayed
long enough for me to bring people over to see them.
There's a big Christian church right across the street from
the lot and on Sundays at around ten o'clock the cops set up a little roadblock-like
traffic control area there so the people who have just drunk a heady draught
from the goblet of religion can drive out of their lot without getting run
over. I always motor back from bird watching at the Elliot and Cooper recharge
station and make a left turn around the cops in the street and weave my truck
around and through their parked squad cars there on the side of the road.
Then I drive into the Elliot and McQueen lot like I own the place. It's the
least I can do. They always give me the fish eye, but so far they haven't
been curious enough to ask me what I'm up to.
I drive down the road and stop the truck to look through my
Swift Audubon 8.5 X 44 porros at some horned larks that have flitted across
the road and landed on the ground in the dry field to my right. I know that
I have seen my last horned lark at the recharge station a mile away because
the field next to it has been covered with houses now and I have to come here
to see the larks. I look across the field for any bare areas and see under
the magnification of the lenses other horned larks on the ground. They burst
into the air in a scattered low-flying flock making a wheezing squeal like
someone unfastening old, rusty car parts.
Beyond, in the sky, there are northern harriers cruising for
rodents, some high up and others gliding only feet from the ground so slowly
that you would think they'd lose airspeed, stall, and tumble into the plowed
earth. Harriers are always present here and most of the time, as is the case
today, turkey vultures hang as though painted in the enormous sky.
I know that it will not be long before houses cover the lot.
I will miss the cement canal and how it dries up and gets clogged with tumbleweeds
and how my dog likes to burrow into those tumbleweeds because they smell like
rabbit. I will miss the haunt of bums. I will miss having an in-town place
to see mountain bluebirds and a natural area close to home where I can see
the harriers glide over the fields. I will miss any chance of getting the
next edition of the pervert's journal.
The passing of this lot will be the same as all of the ones
I have seen for years. From my house, I once could look out far into the mystery
to the south. Out there, over the fields, I could see the groves of cottonwood
trees and beyond them other fields still that spread across the land onward
to the distant horizon. When houses were built on that land, only a few lots
remained until they too were filled in with the advancing beige jungle and
there was no longer a desert, or a farm, or a vacant lot. Everything was
gone; and along with everything else went the long lonely dirt roads that
stretched mile upon mile along the quiet fields with the violet-green swallows
flying over them.