September 1994: I Love Tourists

by Jim Stiles

  I love tourists. I love everything about them. They are the mainstay of our economy and the joy of my life. They buy my newspaper even when I pick on them.  What? Me pick on tourists? For example, I love the way they turn left onto Center Street from the right-hand lane on Main. I love their colorful outfits, even their imitation straw hats with purple feathers in them. I love the way they are so moved by the beauty of the canyons that they stop in the middle of the pavement at Arches National Park and take pictures of the magnificent scenery while cars approaching from behind slam on their brakes and skid into the adjacent embankment. I love the way they innocently fail to grasp the concept of going to the back of the line at City Market. I love it when European tourists walk up to the clerks at City Market and say, "It is not possible for you to take Deutch Marks?" That is so darn cute.

     Sometimes they try my patience. Still, I love it when tourists come into an air conditioned restaurant on a hot August afternoon and say, "We don't want to order anything...we brought our own food. We'd just like to have a picnic in here." Or when they send back an order because they wanted the ham on the bread, then the lettuce, then the cheese, not the other way around.

     And sometimes they go too far. Yet you have to admire their ingenuity when they carve their names in a rock, right next to an ancient petroglyph and when they get caught, respond by accusing the Anasazis of vandalism too.

     Some of this is intended to be sarcastic.

     I love it when a tourist pulls up to the entrance station at Arches, thrusts a map into the hands of the ranger on duty and asks just where exactly he is on that map. And the map is of Bryce Canyon.

     I love it when tourists say, "Cool! Rad! Far-out! Awesome (dude)! Buff!" And "like" fifty-three times in one minute.

     I love it when grown men and women walk around in royal-blue tights.

     In short...I simply love tourists.

     Despite all that, there are those who question the affections of this newspaper for our visiting friends.

     But I insist. I love tourists. My life has been inextricably linked to tourists for years. When I was a ranger at Arches, I met more memorable people than I could hope to meet in a lifetime. From one end of the spectrum to the other, from the very best to the very worst. Consider, for example, the man from Canada, who woke me in the middle of the night to tell me that some "Neanderthals" were keeping him awake with their music. I found what I believed to be the offenders, shut down their boom box and went back to the trailer. The man was back, five minutes later.

     "If you won't do your job, ranger, I will!" he screamed.

     "But they turned off their music," I replied.

     "Those were the hippies; I wanted you to discipline the Neanderthals! 

     Neanderthals...Hippies. How was I supposed to know the difference? Later the man threatened to unleash his pet pit bull on the offending parties, and the only question any of us had with regard to the ugly situation was: OK...is the pit bull the one on the right? And the Canadian on the left? Or is it the other way around?

     But then there was Doc and George Bell, two brothers in their seventies from New Bloomfield, Missouri, who came every year to the Devils Garden and hiked the park in search of arches. They called themselves "a couple of old geezers," and the first time I saw them prepare for a hike, I feared for their lives.

     It was late August, still 100+ degrees, and Doc and George were preparing to take a hike to the "Delicate Arch area." They carried their water in a mayonnaise jar along with about a hundred pounds of camera gear.

     I was worried. "Are you sure you guys are going to be alright?" Doc, the older of the two, just smiled.

     "George'll probably walk me into the ground, but I'll do my best to keep up." George was only 75.

     By late afternoon, they weren't back and I was already on the radio to the chief ranger when they came trudging into the campground...on foot. I knew they had driven their car to the Wolfe Ranch parking lot; maybe they'd had car trouble and had hitched a ride back up to the Devils Garden.

     Nope. They'd walked.

     "I told you George was trying to kill me," said Doc a bit wearily. "I think I need another glass of water."

     Doc and George had not deviated from their plan at all. When they said they intended to hike in "the Delicate Arch area," that is more or less what they meant. The Bell Brothers walked to Delicate Arch, but then headed southeast to check out some arches along the rim of Cache Valley. They next doubled back, dropped into Salt Wash and followed the canyon north to Lost Springs Canyon. There, they recorded another arch for the scrapbook, and headed downstream to the main drainage. After another short side-trip to Clover Canyon, Doc and George made the long climb up the old pipeline road that cuts across Salt Wash, and eventually, late in the day, found the campground pretty much where they expected it to be.

    I listened to their itinerary and shook my head. "I don't believe it," I said. "You must have covered more than 20 miles today. It's 100 degrees...I was worried about you guys."

    "Jim's right," Doc said turning to George. "Next time we'd better take two jars of water."

    Doc and George and I became good friends over the years. I learned that in the winter, when they were stuck at home in Missouri and couldn't search all day for arches in the desert heat, they constructed life-like dinosaurs for their backyard. This was done a full decade before "Jurassic Park" which made them visionaries of a sort. And they were two of my favorite tourists...they were the best.

     Or consider for a moment, the Wild Welshman, Geoffrey Woods. Jeff hitchhiked around the country with a huge pack on his back, bigger than anyone could think his 5 foot 6 inch frame could support. But no matter where he was or what he was doing, he always stopped for tea at the proper hour. He was outrageous at times. He once broke wind at the Arches Visitor Center and when an adjacent offended tourist turned to him and complained, "You farted in front of my wife!," Jeff replied evenly, "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't know it was her turn."

     And he talked backwards. If I said, "Aren't you hitchhiking to Canyonlands today?" he would reply, "No, I am." And I'd say, "Which is it?" and he would say "Both." And I'd growl, "What are you...nuts?"

     And he would explain that what I really said, without the contraction, was: "Are you not going to Canyonlands today?" and thus the appropriate response should be: "No, I am."

    So if anyone asked: "Isn't Jeff Woods one of your favorite tourists?" I would have to reply: "No, he is."

    But on the other hand, I remember the night that Martin Borman stayed at the Devils Garden Campground. If he wasn't Borman, he was, at the very least, an escaped Nazi war criminal. The silver haired gentleman with the young blond nurse ordered me into his trailer. When I explained that I could not accept his personal check from Argentina for the camping fee, he went ballistic.

     "I vaunt yor badge number! I vill see that you are FIRED!"

     He needed a pen to jot down my name and other vital statistics so I handed him my standard government-issue ball point. But the point was retracted and Mr. Borman did not immediately grasp the concept of pushing the little button on the pen top. Instead, he ground the pen into the paper with all his strength. He kept screaming, "You vill write!" as I backed out the door. I let him keep the pen.

      I love tourists. Some of them make me happy, and some of them annoy me in the short-term and give me wonderful stories to recall later. To despise tourists would mean we despise ourselves, because sooner or later, we all wear the tourist hat, even if some of us have the good fashion sense to avoid those hats with purple feathers. As for the European tourists, they have truly become some of my favorites as well. They visit all the stores which makes Moab merchants happy, they think that if they get out of their cars they'll be consumed by rattlesnakes and scorpions, and...best of all, they don't want to come back here and build second homes. Merci beaucoup, mes amis!

                    * * * *

     During the course of the month, people send me clippings...clippings from newspapers and magazines across the country. Subscribers send me clippings mostly. Some of the information contained in these clippings is important and it occurred to me that I should share some of them with you whenever space allows. For example, a subscriber sent me this story, titled, "Cereals With Pesticide Were In Stores For A Year." Apparently millions of boxes of Cheerios containing traces of an unauthorized pesticide sat on store shelves for a year before being discovered. Still I didn't understand why this particular article should be of interest to me until the subscriber explained in a separate letter. He believed that I must be an ardent consumer of Cheerios and that too much pesticide to the brain was responsible for the July "Alien Issue." Not so Mr. Severance.

     Likewise, this story puzzled me for a moment. The headline read: "Defense says widow of 'Lobster Boy' was driven to hire killer." A sideshow performer known as the Lobster Boy for his clawlike hands was murdered by a hired killer because he brutalized his wife on a daily basis. Then I read on...Lobster Boy's real name was Grady Stiles of Tampa, Florida. Uncle Grady?

     A story from the Wall Street Journal titled "Businesses near some parks are hurting" was, on the other hand, fairly clear. Here are some of the numbers that other national parks are seeing through the first half of the year. If you think we have problems, how would you like to have a tourist-related business near the Dry Tortugas?

                      insert

     Another piece in the WSJ is going to require some more time and reading and contemplation. "Chaos theory seeps into ecology debate, stirring up a tempest...If Nature is not governed by an ultimate order, what's the place of Man?" That's just the title. Complementing that story is one I received called, "In his solitude, a Finnish thinker posits cataclysms...What the World needs now, Pentti Linkola believes, is Famine and a good War." More on Linkola and the Chaos Theory next time.

     Finally, I have received clippings from newspapers all over the country of a story that first appeared in the Los Angeles Times. An old girlfriend who I haven't heard from in 20 years even sent me a copy of the story as it appeared in the Hartford Current. It was written by Travel Writer Chris Reynolds.

     First of all, I should explain that most but not all travel writers are people who want to be writers but who don't have anything to say. They just have this thing about bylines. I talked to Mr. Reynolds for an hour on the phone last spring about Moab. I told him about the building explosion and the fear that maybe we've overbuilt. I explained the impacts of runaway tourism on the fragile desert environment. I told him about our pork belly housing boom. I described Easter Weekend. I conveyed to him everything I've tried to convey to the readers of this paper. We covered a lot of ground.

     When the story came out, this is what he quoted me as saying:

"We are completely overwhelmed.

Everyone should stay home."

     That was it. An hour's conversation summed up in those two sentences. And what's worse, he misquoted me. Badly misquoted me. What I actually said was:

"We are discreetly planting elms.

Everything grows great in loam."

     All of Moab knows that my neighbor Toots McDougald hates elm trees and once called me a pain in the ass when I suggested planting them along the fence line. I have to be discreet about planting elms and I wanted Mr. Reynolds to understand that.

     Seriously, we've all felt overwhelmed by the tourists at times, and anybody who won't admit it is either a liar or brain-dead. But this classically out-of-context quote has followed me around all summer and I thought I'd put it out of its misery once and for all.

     And my elms have never looked healthier. Must be that loam.

                    * * * *

     This has been a summer of anniversaries: D-Day, Woodstock, Man on the Moon, the Manson Murders, Nixon's Resignation. Except for the 1944 invasion of Fortress Europe by the Allies, I remember all of these events. I remember them clearly, as if they happened yesterday. And it is difficult to believe that so much time has passed and so many memories have accumulated in a life that has seemed to pass like the blink of an eye. Yet none of those anniversaries was as personably remarkable as the one I attended this summer.

     I've always wanted to time travel...more than anything else I can imagine. One hot, humid Sunday afternoon last month, I got to do that very thing...

     Sometimes, when the light is just right, when the leaves of the catalpa tree in my yard filter the sun in a certain way, when the breeze blows gently and the sounds of the afternoon are muted and soft, sometimes...it reminds of being a kid growing up in the old neighborhood.

     The center of my life 35 years ago was a place called Glen Meade Road, a considerable distance from here. It was one of the first suburbs in Louisville, Kentucky. Behind our house was a great wheat field that seemed as wide as the ocean. At the end of the street were the Woods, where we built tree ladders and carved trails through the cane brush. Beyond the Woods lay the Swamp, which was supposed to be bottomless and full of snakes. It was a great place to be a kid.

     Not everyday, or every week, but sometimes, I've wondered where my buddies are. I think all of us wonder about childhood friends who played such an important part of our lives, but whose whereabouts now is a mystery. I knew that out there somewhere, David Kotheimer and Timmy Kremer were all grown up like me (a terrible thought really) trying to survive and make their way on the planet, just like me. Did our experiences in the Swamp help to prepare us for our lives as adults? And I wondered what ever happened to Michael Pottinger, the first kid to ever slug me, but who eventually became my good friend and fellow baseball fanatic. He taught me how to play the bad hop off the manhole cover when we played street ball. Where was Johnnie Jones, or Dougie Miller, or Greg Caudill, or Wayne and David Mark Yarborough? And where...oh where was Jayne Novicki?

     On that muggy Sunday I found out. Some of the neighbors on the old street who still live there after all these years got the idea last winter to have a block party reunion. To track down the original families going all the way back to 1954. It was a formidable task, but they did it. And it was amazing.

     My entire family showed up...Ma and Pa, my brother Jeff and myself (along with Jeff's wife and kids). But as we parked in the church lot where the wheat field used to be, I was skeptical. When push came to shove, did I really want to know what became of the neighborhood? Maybe I was better off with my memories. I looked at my brother; I could tell he had his doubts too. But we were committed, and so we cut through the Pottingers' backyard and stepped into the Twilight Zone.

     We saw a registration table where we picked up name tags. As a result, hundreds of people were walking tentatively down Glen Meade Rd. staring at each other's chest. I spotted a big guy with a ball cap and a mustache. I gazed at the name tag...

     "David Kotheimer?" I said, amazed.

     "Jimbo Stiles?" David replied, equally stunned.

     For the next seven hours, I was Jimbo Stiles. I forgot, I guess, that everyone called me Jimbo in those days. At one point in the evening, Johnnie Jones' dad stopped to chat with me. "Jimbo," Mr. Jones said, "I hear you're living out..." Then he paused. "I guess you don't go by 'Jimbo' anymore."

     "Today I do, Mr. Jones," I said.

     He chuckled. "Call me John; you're old enough now."

     The old gang slowly found each other and settled in by the sewer grate in front of Joey Fowler's house. It's where we met in the mornings to plan the day ahead. There were important decisions to be made. Should we get a ball game together? Or head for the Woods? Or should we see how close we can get to the old Huntsinger House (a huge old mansion at the end of the street) before Old Lady Huntsinger sees us and scares us half to death in her black dress and raised wooden cane? Or maybe just a good game of Guns (prior to discovery of Intermittent Explosive Personality Disorder)? 

     Before Nintendo and Super Nintendo and 3D-O Interactive and MTV and Beavis and Butthead and Malls and designer Nikes and Walkmans and Watchmans and videos and 99 channels of cable TV and bicycles that cost more than our '59 Chevy (brand new) and Sega Gamegear and Virtual Reality and Gang Warfare and Driveby Shootings and Armed Students... before all that, sitting on the sewer grate in the shade of a brilliant summer morning and planning a sprint across the wheat field is the way we passed our days.

     It didn't take much to make us happy then. My family, like most families, lived in a modest home. We had one car, one TV that picked up two channels, a hi-fi for my parents' music, and a transistor radio to listen to ball games and rock 'n roll music on WAKY. That was the extent of technology in the Stiles home.

     And it occurred to me that just about everything any living soul needs to survive on this planet and be happy, healthy, and safe was invented by 1960. Everything that has come along since then, all those items mentioned above, are what we have created in order to remain a "productive" society with an ever increasing population/work force. Technology continues to produce amazing gizmos which make our lives simpler, but they are, for the most part, toys, even if we now think they're indispensable. They entertain us, that's for sure. But as a result, we've forgotten how to entertain ourselves. How much creative energy has been lost to techno-toys over the last couple of decades? One thing is certain, it was a lot easier to be entertained then, and a lot cheaper too.

    

     Over the afternoon, I located most of my old pals, except for Timmy Kremer, who I'm convinced didn't show for fear we'd call him "Ho-zay..Yay..Yay...the Sugar-coated Monkey," a nickname for which none of us could recall the origin. However we decided to give credit to Michael Pottinger, since he usually got the blame for everything. We'd all aged to the point where some of us no longer resembled our former selves at all. Except for Jayne Novicki, who honestly appeared to be getting better, not older. As a cluster of boys of all ages surrounded the former Miss Seneca High School, I heard David Mark Yarborough observe, "Some dreams die real hard."

      While the Boys of Glen Meade acted like they were still 16, the street itself had changed a lot. Trees I remember as saplings now stood a hundred feet tall. But the wheat field behind our street was gone, paved over. The Swamp had been filled in years ago...I guess it wasn't bottomless after all. And the Woods had been thinned down to a single row of aging trees. Late in the afternoon, my brother and David Kotheimer and I strolled along the edge of what used to be our favorite place in the world. As we passed beneath the canopy of leaves, my brother glanced up and saw something out of place on one of the giant oaks.

     It was a weathered piece of wood, crudely nailed to the trunk. A remnant of another time. A gnarled piece of history.

     "That Michael Pottinger," my brother smiled sadly. "When he built a tree ladder, he built it to last."