AZ/NM Beauty & McBain Jokes

Neither of us can yet get over the beauty and diversity of the American Southwest, Arizona and New Mexico in particular.  In Arizona, the drive up the hill to Flagstaff is a mini-tour of what the state has to offer—heat and desert of the Valley floor, then up and up to the summit before Verde Valley and then the lush vista of the valley as you sweep back down, then up again and around and around until you crest at the upper plateau with that huge view from the overlook, and miles of plateau farm and ranch land before entering the pine forests before Flagstaff with Whitney’s Peak towering over you, then east over toward the meteor strike with the Painted Desert to the north, and then the black lava beds just before leaving the state.  Awesome.

We drive east on Hwy 40, getting our kicks on what Nat King Cole made famous all over the world in its old title, Route Sixty-Six. Western New Mexico has a bleakness about it that I find depressing.  Maybe it’s the evidence of extreme reservation Indian poverty or maybe it’s simply the absence of much animal or human existence.  The one bit of beauty is the multicolored layers of cliff faces and the wind-hollowed sandstone hills along the highway.  Albuquerque spreads greenly before you as you cross the last slope before going down into the valley.  Northern New Mexico, ah, there’s the real beauty of the state.  You start climbing as you head north to Santa Fe and then east to Las Vegas, about 6500 feet above sea level.  The air is delightfully cool after the temperatures near 110º in Sun City West. The high country from Las Vegas to Raton is simply beautiful—lush green pastureland with the Rockies in the western distance.  You climb again into Raton and then climb some more until you hit the Colorado border where the land levels out into sweeping fields of grass to the right and the ever-encroaching Rockies to the left. It’s a trip of nearly six hundred miles, but it’s six hundred beautiful miles.

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I wish I could have met Evan Hunter before he died.  I think he and I would have really hit it off.  His sense of humor, for one thing, was much like mine.  In his 87^th Precinct series, he nearly always salted his books with a joke or two.  For example, in Poison, Carella sees one of the police lab boys about distilling nicotine.  They greet as old friends who haven’t seen one another in a long time.  The man tell him a joke he’s just heard:  A man goes to see a urologist.  The urologist says, “What seems to be the trouble?”  The man says, “I can’t pee.”  The urologist says, “How old are you?”  The man says, “Ninety-two.”  The urologist says, “So you peed enough already.”  .  .  .  Another man goes to see the same urologist.  The urologist says, “What seems to be the trouble?”  The man says, “I lost my penis in an automobile accident.”  The urologist says, “No problem, we’ll give you a penis transplant.”  The man says, “I didn’t know you could do that.”  The urologist says, “Sure.  I’ll show you some samples.”  He brings out a sample penis, shows it to the man.  The man says, “It’s too short.”  The urologist brings out another penis.  The man looks at it and says, “I was really hoping for something with more authority.”  The urologist brings out this magnificent penis.  The man looks at it.  “Now that’s more like it,” he says.  “Does it come in white?”  See, that’s humor I can relate to.