Coming Home From The Cabin

One time we went up to the cabin, but Linda was sick with pneumonia and had to stay home.  Dad took Phillip and Keith and me, and we had lots of fun, but we felt bad because Linda wasn't with us.  On our way home, we stopped at the store in Payson to find something special to take home to her.  We found a little Indian doll.  She was wearing an Indian dress with a fringe at the bottom of the skirt.  Her hair was black and hung in braids on either side of her head.  Her clothes were embroidered with blue and red Indian beads, and she had a bead head band.  She was very pretty, and Linda was so excited when we gave it to her.  Funny, but I can still see that little Indian doll, although that was probably 50 years ago.

Each time we went to the cabin was a new adventure, and we hated to come home, but the drive was kind of fun and it was always exciting to pass the landmarks we knew so well.  Coming home through Payson was our favorite route because of the soft serve ice-cream cones, of course, but coming home the long way through Globe was kind of cool, too.  That road took us through the tiny town of Young, over and down a huge mountain, across a seemingly endless, dry desert, through Globe and Superior, and finally connected with the Apache Trail which led through the town of Apache Junction.

It took an hour longer to go that way, and we were always hot and cranky by the time we got to Apache Junction.  But then we began seeing familiar signs which meant we were getting close to home.  First we would pass Indian Wells, an old adobe hotel and hot mineral baths resort.  We always asked Mom and Dad if we could stop and see what the wells were like, but we never had time.  A few miles after that we would see the building that looked like a miniature castle, sitting on the north east corner of an intersection.  It was such a cool looking building, complete with a buttressed tower, but the sign said it was a vacuum cleaner repair shop.  That always made us raise our eyebrows.  Really?  Our favorite landmark came soon after that.  There was an old motel on the north west side of an intersection.  I can't remember the name of the motel, but it had the most amazing sign advertising the fact that it had a swimming pool.  It was a neon diving lady, actually three or four neon diving ladies, that lit up one after the other, so at night it looked like a girl jumping, curving, and diving into a pool of water.  It was so cool!  When we passed her we knew we were only a few minutes out of town, and would be home before too long.

The funny thing is, although these landmarks were far out on the Apache Trail, a long way from home when I was a kid, not many years later they were right in the middle of town.  After I grew up and got married I often drove past these same landmarks just going to the mall.  Funny how the world shrinks as we get older, isn't it?