As usual, the town sprung out of nowhere, an oasis in the dry south-western desert.
A very disappointing first impression left me wondering if we had made the right choice. Decisively, we had detoured a good few hundred kilometres from the tourist loop, to visit a piece of my childhood nostalgia.
Every Saturday night, my Grandma would babysit for my cousins, and they would settle down to Dallas, some Poppets and an American Cream Soda. My brother and I were denied any hint of trashy modern American bunkum, so Starsky and Hutch and The Dukes of Hazzard were out. No need for screechy car chases and fence-leaping athletics, when you can watch John Wayne moseying down to the sheriff’s office in the latest spaghetti western.
Driving into downtown Tombstone was, with respect, like driving through the kebab corner of my birth town, Morecambe. White wooden ply-boards covering a parade of empty business units and buoyant cash converters coffering pennies in exchange for much-loved family jewels and unwanted Bontempi electric keyboards.
Grumbling out from my Lonely Planet, we spotted a remote street sign pointing towards the historic tourist zone.
Wahoo for us, it turned out to be one of the best days yet. We had out-manoeuvred the blizzards of northern Arizona and the Pineapple Storms of southern California, bursting forth into a brilliant sunshiney tourist day out, like Evil Knievel from his motorcycle ramp of double-decker buses.
In truth, the majority of stores were lacklustre tourist traps. A mediocre display of Red Indian feather necklaces, lucky rabbits’ feet, Strippers’ boas and cowboy chaps lay dormant in every storefront window. The crestfallen “Wanted” caricature posters and stagecoach souvenir photographs teased you with a taste of days gone by (roughly the early 1980’s). Flailing at the bottom of Tombstone’s gift selection were the inevitable fridge magnets and pan-pipe CDs.
The main street escorted us up to the jewel in her crown – the Birdcage Theatre. She flung open her doors and invited us in. This theatre/gambling den/bordello dated back to 1880 and was publicised as one of the few surviving original buildings in Tombstone.
Our gargantuan gun-slinging tour guide parked up behind the sasparelli bar, landscaped by a fancy-fluted mirror and a fogyish cash till register. (Isn’t fogyish the best word ever? To you and I, it means old-fashioned).
He spun tales of sharp-shooting gunfights and miserable ghostly presences in this very spot. The “original” gunshot holes in the woodwork sealed the deal and we parted with a fistful of dollars to discover further intrigue behind gift shop partition walls.
Through the saloon doors we gambolled and imbibed a century of manliness and dust. The eaves cradled 14 cribs or “birdcages” overlooking the entertainment stage and the public games hall. Red velveteen curtains with gold-tassled tie-backs afforded privacy to each crib patron for the seduction of his lady-friend whore.
Bizarre collections congregated on the saloon floor, implements and souvenirs from an era long gone: toe-curling dentistry kits, music hall pianos and green-baize poker tables laid out for some action. Up onto the showgirls’ dance floor and we passed back-stage, face-to-face with a macabre assembly of funeral carriages, pint-sized coffins, stuffed animals and wagon wheels slinking against the walls, like girls waiting for a dance partner on Prom Night.
Down into the cavernous depths of the private gambling rooms and Madame’s quarters, we exited the back door and fell out into the sunshine, like a group of bleary-eyed partygoers at sunrise.
I doubted the full authenticity of the stories we had heard, but definitely a good stamp on the tourist trail map.
Next stop, a tour of the first silver mine in Tombstone. Historically-speaking, Tombstone’s fame and fortune grew from her success as an Old West mining camp, not from the vagrants and vagabonds that followed in its wake.
Our guide was really excited about seams, shafts and bore holes. The bore was unquestionably there for me, but I hoped the kids experienced a little bit of Disney Seven-Dwarves-down-the-mine magic. The entertainment highlight for me was our Whack-a-Mole mining hats - not a good look for me. (See attached photo).
Sadly, no random chunks of precious metal just hanging around for me to swipe, but we had completed today’s Topic class at school.History class and the main attraction: the “Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral” show. As a slight niggle, the re-enactment was taking place near the actual spot of the original “Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral.” That’s like going all the way to Bethlehem to look at the stables where Jesus was born, and finding out you can only visit an MDF replica five minutes down the road. But time marches on, and I could live with that.
Inside the venue we were welcomed by the most shoddy, weather-beaten fibreglass gunslingers ever. I’m talking horse-hair toupees with moth-eaten bald patches, shiny chipped Laughing Policemen faces and permanent marker eyebrows. Truly awful, and once again reminding me of Morecambe prom’s tacky, jaded chintz.
We parked our backsides on the bleacher benches surrounding the set. With a crack of gunfire we met the goodies (Wyatt Earp and his brothers James, Virgil and Morgan), the baddies (the McLaury Brothers and Billy Clanton. Hiss! Boo!) and the in-betweener (Doc Holliday).
Lots of bickering, accusations and general Coronation Street misunderstandings later, the gunfight began and the illustrious Good, the Bad and the Ugly fell to the floor.
My favourite part? Five minutes into the performance, Morgan Earp’s trousers accidentally split fully open, revealing a grubby pair of Calvins. Unstoppable, childish, infectious giggles spread like leprosy amongst the actors for the rest of the show.
To round off the tour, we returned to the gift shops and bought some of their jumble: a Sheriff’s badge for Daniel, a fake-ivory cap gun for Joey (that should be fun at the next passport control) and a Spanish flamenco “whore” fan for Holly, wishing us “Greetings from Crete.”
Last stop, the gunslinger’s graveyard at Boot Hill Cemetery, reserved seating for the most notorious of celebrities. RIP headstones exposed how each unfortunate died. Simple diseases such as diphtheria, nephritis, scarlet fever, smallpox, and rapid consumption gave you the easy way out. Murder was another option – ambushed by Indians, shot by a Chinaman, stoned to death by Apaches or just plum legally hanged. And the bizarre: amputations gone wrong, cock fight disputes, shot because of the colour of your shirt and fighting with the Wells Fargo postman over a package.
And finally, the worst apology ever, chiselled into a headstone:
“Here lies George Johnson, Hanged by mistake, 1882.
He was right, we was wrong, but we strung him up and now he’s gone.”
… the joys of a good lynching.
Dodging the voluntary contribution box, we said our fond farewells and plugged in the Satnav once more.
In our own little tinker with the lawless regard of the Wild West, Tombstone dealt out a $250 speeding fine – in a campervan! The girly waterwork tap gushed open and our second friend in blue reduced the fine to $80.
Five not very happy campers began our 675 kilometre trundle over to San Diego for some more mainstream action: the legendary San Diego Zoo and the dancing Shamu at SeaWorld.
On a whim, we detoured slightly and pootled off to Saguaro National Park, home of the classic Loony Tunes cactus. We drove through eighty kilometres of cactus-littered desert to arrive at Saguaro’s official cactus-littered desert. Not the brightest move, but not a problem.
The sun was setting and the ranger had wandered home for the night. He (or she) had left us alone with a spectacular vista of jet-black cacti silhouettes, backdropped by a candy orange and pink sunset.
After dark, we ambled off for our mega-schlep. We ran parallel to the Mexican frontier and I cunningly checked out the U.S. border control operations, Jack Bauer style, but without the binoculars. Hundreds of kilometres of sandy desert, dotted with the odd high profile State Line inspection unit. I didn’t really understand what stopped these pesky refugees from just running across the road in the dark, Wile E. Coyote-style.
In a generous mood, I drove a good wodge of this section and as the eyes started to droop, I hoped to stop off at one of the three motorway lay-bys that Satnav promised, en route to San Diego.
The first one passed us by before we realised. I wasn’t overly bothered as we could make up some good distance by travelling just a little bit further before a pit-stop.
The second lay-by was closed. We had started to climb out of the desert and way up into the hills. The road had become one long series of hair-pin bends with unforgiveable drops. The rains began, and mercilessly smashed against a blurry windscreen. By now I was fairly panicked and Tony took over.
A desperation to pull in anywhere crept high into my throat. We agreed to exit at the next available slip road, which, as it happens, took us to the border police HQ. Not the best tactic for some crafty under-the-radar R&R.
By now, it was gone 2 a.m. with one last pit-stop opportunity. We swapped drivers every 5 kilometres or so, as we were just so exhausted, mostly from spent nerves, driving in such hazardous conditions.
Of course the third lay-by was closed. Here we were, characters in our own private Steven King novel – trapped outside in the dead of night, pitch-black darkness encircling us, the driving rain rapping at the windows, and the ominous feeling that something bad could happen at any moment.
In total despair, we considered parking on the long, slow bend of a slip road, but we knew the danger it promised. It was a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.
I truly don’t know how we managed it, but we finally crawled into San Diego about 4am. Satnav hopelessly searched for our friend Wal-Mart, so that we could enjoy a few hours rest, but the poor thing was just as tired as we were.
Our saviour appeared like an angel in the distance: the mammoth, neon Toys’R Us logo, flashlighting its superstore car park, crammed with inviting empty spaces. Fully clothed, I slept a weary slumber, waiting for those déjà vu thumps on the door, asking us to keep on trucking, like the gypsies we had become.
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