MISFITS, DERELICTS AND DRUNKS...

     I walked into the bus station and pushed a handful of crumpled bills across the counter..."give me a one-way ticket south..." I said, "as far as this will take me."  The surly woman on the other side of the counter gave me a disapproving look and uncrumpled the bills...she counted them, punched in some numbers, shoved a ticket at me and pointed to a bus.  I didn't bother looking at the destination...I didn't care, I just climbed on board and took the empty front seat. A few minutes later a portly driver that smelled like Johnny Walker and looked like Elmer Fudd,  climbed up the steps and strapped himself in. He closed the door, put the bus in gear and pulled out onto the highway.  I shut my eyes and managed an uneasy sleep. When I woke up the landscape outside the window had changed...I recognized the barren ancient hills...I had driven through here before...the Chuckwalla mountains.

CHUCKWALLA MOUNTAINS ©Barry Howard

OUT OF GAS ©Barry Howard

  I had spent a week here once, camping out in my recently deceased van and painting the barren scenery.  Up ahead I noticed a circle of dead date palms...just the trunks sticking up in the air without their fronds.  I remembered them too...Desert Center, a strange little, almost ghost town. The only business that still seemed alive, (barely) was the cafe.  The bus driver pulled in and announced a lunch stop.  I went inside and ordered a BLT and a cup of coffee to go...then took it back to the bus. A few hundred miles back, before I got on the bus, I had passed an art supply store.  I had gone in and bought a new french easel, some tubes of oil paint, some brushes, and a couple of blank canvasses to replace what the busty blonde had driven off with. Other than the BLT and the coffee, it was all I owned in the world now.  I pulled the easel out of the overhead and carried it over to the abandoned gas station next to the cafe. I liked the look of the faded gas pumps. The little numbers said gas was 34 cents a gallon.  This place had been closed for a while. I did a quick oil sketch in between bites of my sandwich and sips of coffee. I got the easel packed up just as the other passengers started making their way back to the bus.  Back in my seat, I decided to look at my ticket and see where I was going....Bisbee Arizona, it said.  I had seen it on the map...a couple of miles from the Mexican border...sounded as good as anywhere.  I leaned against the window and fell back asleep.  
     The bus finally delivered me to Bisbee and I had managed to sleep most of the way. I found myself walking through an area of old Bisbee known as brewery gulch.  I came to a bar called St. Elmo's...and although a beer sounded good, it looked like the sort of bar that no reputable artist would ever set foot in.  A bleary-eyed guy stumbled out of the darkness into the blazing sunlight. He had his own, unique sartorial style...cargo shorts, ratty t-shirt and a pound and a half of cheap gold bling hanging around his neck.  He wore crappy rubber flip-flops on his feet and a shit-eating grin on his face.  One hand carried  a french easel and the other held some kinda low-price-high alcohol content beer in a plastic cup. I liked the guy immediately. We exchanged introductions and he showed me the still wet painting on his easel.  His use of color was fearless...the light and shadow, dynamic...and his buildings and trees wobbled and swayed as much as he did.  It was excellent.

BISBEE HIGH SCHOOL ©Ethan Jack Harrington

  I asked if he knew where I might get a room and he pointed across the street to the Silver King Hotel. "That's where I'm staying..." he said, swaying slightly on his feet.  A sign out front advertised "ARIZONA'S SMALLEST BAR". 

 It was a funky, crumbling brick building that smelled of faded glory...it appealed to my low-brow sense of taste,  so I climbed the wide squeaky staircase and rented a room.






 My first impression of Bisbee was a town populated with social misfits, outcasts, hippies, derelicts and drunks.  My kind of place. I decided to stay for a while.