Valentine Potpourri

We celebrated Valentine's Day a little differently and there were so many parts to it, I want to share. Overall, it was a good day. The weather was a little cooler but felt soft and that's the way Valentine's Day should feel I think. But here's what I learned on my first Valentine's Day in Superior, Arizona:

I had a phone call from a friend who lives 'in the Valley' and he reported a pretty young woman had offered herself to him for 'two fifty'. Would that be two dollars and fifty cents, I inquired. No, it was two hundred and fifty dollars. Hmmmm, I know the price of groceries has gone up but she must have a pretty high opinion of herself.

Bill put the rock and dirt tires back on the Cruiser so this afternoon he and Chuy and I rode out into the desert to try and find Mattie Blaylock's grave once again. We made the trek this time last year on my visit here to try and find the elusive grave that could be on a number of hills overlooking Apache Leap and Picket Post mountain to the west of town. But due to vandals and grave robbers, maybe nobody will ever really know where the poor woman lies. We did find a dandy wash from the winter's rain and I spent half an hour loading up on flat red and pink rocks only, just because it was Valentine's Day. Then we got back in the Cruiser and resumed our search for the grave. I find it odd that we've put this much energy into trying find this woman's grave. She's been gone a hundred and thirty years come this July. I think dead, she's probably vastly more interesting than the poor woman ever was alive. (Ain't that a legacy!!!!) She was Wyatt Earp's second 'wife', commonlaw at least, and lived with him from her early twenties until her mid thirties. When Earp went and married his third wife, Mattie was just devastated and it didn't take too many years of drink and drugs to overdose and die at the age of thirty eight. She died in the defunct town of Pinal City, just a few months before the town itself died and was buried in the old Pinal City Cemetary. Stories say there's a stone there depicting Mattie's grave but that vandals and grave robbers have messed things up pretty badly. Some say she's been 'reburied' on a hill looking back at Apache Leap. That's where we thought we'd found it last year. It sure 'felt' like Mattie was there. But today we were in search of the old cemetary. And except for some rings of stones in one place, we probably didn't find it. It might have some campers fire ring, or it might have been some elaborate ruse somebody set up to make folks think they had found Mattie's old grave. Guess we'll keep looking....

And then, on one of our walks, we glimpsed this young woman who when we offered a cordial "Good afternoon" averted her eyes and kept on walking. What in the world? A neighbor said she's one of the crackheads who inhabit one of the abandoned buildings down the street and that 'he heard' she had a small child living with her and she hustles out in the early morning bumming change from the folks who buy their gas and coffee at the Circle K. Imagine that: a modern day Mattie Blaylock, only one not fortunate enough to have been a lawman's Lady and probably destined for an early demise from overdosing of drugs too. Makes you wonder what might have changed in this corner of the desert in the last hundred and thirty years, huh?

But the topper of this semi-sweet Valentine's Day was a lovely green beaded necklace with a carved bone feather on it from Bill. And we shared a plate of frosted heart shaped cookies I baked (with Chuy, of course!) And then, the best of all: I received via email this Valentine from my sweet grandson. So what couldn't be better? I'll take it all thank you, the good, the sweet and the bittersweet too.

Happy Valentine's Day!