What's This All About?

For the past month (plus), Bill and I have been involved with a Chamber of Commerce fundraiser. It's a home and building tour with an art and antique show of things uniquely Superior. It will take place all across town this next week-end January 31 and February 1. We've got five or six home to tour and seven buildings for folks to see. We're going to have art and antique vendors selling from the local school and I've been in charge of procuring food vendors who will be set up downtown.

It's all coming together well. We've had good publicity from the 'tony' magazines of the Southwest to local television and radio coverage that certainly can't hurt. We hope to attract some of the Snow Birds as well as restless locals from the Phoenix area looking to do something fun. We've even gotten sponsorship from the Arboretum.

What we haven't had, is a lot of volunteers at the local level. That's probably because 1) it's the first time we've had this tour and 2) it does coincide with Super Bowl Sunday and there's a lot of Cardinals fans here. Still, it would be nice if we had a bit more co-operation. One of the buildings we're proposing to show is the old high school. Built sometime in the mid-1920's and operated through the 2000-2001 school year, it's a mammoth two story red brick structure. The school board sold it for a mere pittance several years ago and the poor edifice has been sitting empty and uncared for ever since. The organizers of our Home and Building Tour got permission from the owners to open it up for tours on our two day event, but... (isn't there always a but?) it had to be cleaned first. So the committee members assembled at nine Saturday, armed with brooms and buckets and mops and a couple of vacuum cleaners to clean a few rooms. At least, that was the plan, I thought I'd heard at the meetings we've been attending.

The chairman, who is one of the hardest working ladies in town that promotes our fair town, was uneasy how many folks would give up their Saturday to come out and clean the looming edifice. She kept saying that if just a few showed up, then we'd just clean a few rooms and that's all that would be shown. Seven of us showed up Saturday morning, followed in a few hours by about seven more. Most of these folks (everybody except the chairwoman and her husband and Bill and me) were alumni of the old high school. Now, when room after dusty room was opened up that morning, there were ooh's and ahhh's and "I remember this..." and "Do you know what happened here...?" anecdotes scattered all over. It would have been fun to listen to more of their stories if we hadn't been dealing with so much dirt and dust.

Do you know how much dust can accumulate in eight years in this desert environment? I'll tellya, how much: A BUNCH! It's soft and silty and covers everything! When you sweep it, it flings itself into a cloud over your head and hovers there, making your nose itch and your eyes tear up and pretty soon while you're sweeping, you're sure you're going to expire of Valley Fever! Once you've done cleaning a vast expanse of (once beautiful) hardwood or (really vintage) asbestos tile, you look back over what you've cleaned (yeah, you think you've cleaned it!) only to find another dusty sheen, perhaps not as thick as the original, still remains. Well then, the mop buckets and mops came out. Even as a corner or two got the grime off, buckets would have to be emptied and mops cleaned up for another go at the same stretch of floor. After three attempts over the chemistry room's pale green asbestos tiles, I gave up in disgust as muddy streaks mocked my efforts to abate them. I don't know what might have worked, a good pressure washer, maybe!

By noon, I had physically had it. I felt as if I'd used up every spare bit of energy I might have risen with. I mopped one room three times, swept and dust mopped three more rooms and one hallway and scraped soil and leaves off the front steps. The folks who toiled away were still trying to make the upstairs gymnasium and its vast expanse of polished hardwood presentable and another group was toiling away in the library where shelves had been piled haphazardly. Yet a third building remained untouched until the group got down to that after lunch.

Now, I didn't stay for the afternoon fun. Bill brought me home where I collapsed on the couch for a nap with Chuy nestled beside me. He went back and worked with the others till four-thirty when nobody could stand up any longer. The building will be on the Tour and if you come, I hope you'll stop by and see the old High School, whether you were an alumni or not. I told Bill later, I'm sure glad the rest of the folks who agreed to show their homes and buildings on the Tour didn't need us committee members to come by and clean up their space for them. 'Cause if they did, I bet we wouldn't find any more willing members to do it!

For those in the Phoenix area, come see what I'm talking about: Superior Chamber of Commerce presents their First Annual HOME and BUILDING TOUR with Art and Antique Show, Saturday January 31 and Sunday February 1 from 10 AM to 4 PM. Cost is $10 day of event, or $8 presale. Call Superior Chamber of Commerce 520-689-0200 for more information. And no, we won't make you sweep a floor!