DECEMBER DESERT DAYS The fiesta was really started. It kept up day and night for seven days. The dancing kept up, the drinking kept up, the noise went on. The things that happened could only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta. -Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises "License Suspended," blares the large sign taped on the front doors of The Rock. "Shit," I say. "This was to be our spot. Where do we go now?" It would be hard to top The Rock. It is just south of the University of Arizona campus. The four of us sit in our red convertible, the trunk recently filled with all sorts of poison from the U of A Liquor store, only a few blocks away. The Rock is an ugly black cube of a building, windowless, looking forlorn in this student neighborhood. It is surrounded by a large, dry, glass-strewn parking area that had the look of a parched field. "Well," says the Bald Duke, "Let's look for the bar with the second most violations." Visions of the craziness in that basement in East Lansing flash through my brain. "Let's get outta here." We have significant duties to undertake in this town grown out of the northern Sonoran desert. And Tucson is the desert, as soon became clear to the boys from the land of ice and snow. Like many western cities, the words "land" and "conservation" are never used in the same sentence. Need more room? Just move on out. Add some streets (make it a nice grid, easier to drive) and buildings (never more than a couple stories high, no reason to build up when we can build out). The Peeper and Bald Duke finally stumble on the location of the Copper Bowl Foundation, the place to buy ducats for the Copper Bowl, aka Cuprina Cratera. As they wander through the building, Bro Dave and I break into the trunk of the convertible. Left to ourselves, the May Bros undertake two of the things we discover we do well -- beers and desert discursions. We wander with cervezas in hand into the vacant lot next door and just like that, we are in the desert. Suddenly we are face to face with the prickly pear and la cholla cacti, the mesquite and the arroyos left in this sandy clime. Where the city does not pave or build, the desert remains. Where the city abandons, the desert retakes. Beers and desert discursions. So this is it--the day after Christmas, leaving snowy MadCity early in the morning, boarding the plane from the rear, having to explain to the photographer that although we look like brothers, we are actually married, free drinks on the flight down, getting our double red convertibles and all sorts of ugly stuff to drink--this is what the crazed fans of a mediocre 7-5 University of Wisconsin Big Ten football team get, huh? I'll take it. I'll take the DoubleTree, with the grove of orange and grapefruit trees right outside our door, and the pool that we use that afternoon to keep up the bowl swim tradition; I'll take the warm sun and cold gimlets that make us drowsy and send the Peep and Bald Duke and I dozing in the sun at the pool side, with The Sun Also Rises and Great Expectations in hand, driving Bro Dave (yes, he of Indy Bowl fame and late of the Smiling Engineer Brigade) across the street for 9 holes of golf. The Alumni Association does a great job getting us from here to there, but we quickly discover some traps for the unwary. This crowd is way too calm and way too full of plaid pants. We are, after all, the only ones in the group greeted at the door of the DoubleTree by a cat in the hat with a six pack, and the welcoming dinner that night is way, way too stable. "I'm the only guy in here with a puking badger on his shirt, Dave." My brother does not hear me; he is engrossed in making new friends. "So, John, where are you from?" Dave inquires of John Benson. As their conversation winds down, I mention to Dave that he was talking to one of the top elected officials of the state, the Superintendent of Public Instruction. "Really?" Dave is flabbergasted. "He seemed just like a normal guy." "He is. But so is that guy across the table." We had gone through the food line and prepared a fajita from the fixings, but the large Badger fan across the table has a plate piled high with three ingredients: Beef, Cheese and Chicken. No need for the tortilla or anything else. He is shoveling in the basics. We are ready to leave when Johnny V (aka Tickle Me Johnny) and the lovely Stephanie arrive, convincing us to have a couple more cocktails before going out to the Cottonwood Cafe. I was told that Tucson was a city of great restaurants, and the Cafe is strong evidence. Earlier in the day, we chanced upon La Indita, with the best Mexican food I had ever had, and the Cafe is great southwestern grill fare that left us all bloated. After a disastrous detour to a burb bar called Kingfisher -- the sort of place a yuppie would take a date to impress her by drinking a fancy martini -- Bro and I end up at Gentle Ben's, tasting the local brews, trying to talk to air force types and seeing if we can find anybody from Utah. It is slow, but it is the night after Christmas. We do manage to recon with the Peep and Bald Duke, who took TMJ and Steph back to the Double Tree. Across the street, the Frog and Firkin is decorated with Christmas lights, and other oddities, and it is not populated by people recently out of uniform, so we are at home. The day is closing in on 17 straight hours of imbibing and madness and I am contemplating the two young women at the end of the bar: one of them looks the way my wife must have looked 25 years ago, and the other looks the way my daughter will look in 5 years. This is scary. Real scary. "Bo, your eyes are slits." "They are? At least they are open," I reply, looking into the mirror behind the bar. "Let's get outta here." It's a wrap. No more wandering today. We are set. Tomorrow is football. Cuprina Cratera. And Ron Dayne. But the next morning, the Cuprina Cratera has to wait, as I go for a run and then Bro Dave and I hit the links. Even the golf courses are culled out of the desert, with brown grass everywhere. It would be impossible or stupid to water all this, but at least they don't try. It sets Tucson apart from Phoenix, where they water everything, making you think you are in a sauna in the desert. Here they accept the desert. It is warm, and I am spanking the dimpled white one for only the second time this year, but I feel great. I even beat Bro on a couple holes, listening to the two retired guys complaining about getting bogeys while we struggle to keep from losing balls. I skip one off the water; the May Bros hit the beer cart and I am telling bad jokes that only the retired guys think are funny. I am puzzled as one of the retired guys mumbles something about "going to shake hands with the unemployed" after we putt out on the 5th hole. As I turn around expecting to see some homeless on the course waiting for handouts, I see he is actually going to the men's can. We are in stitches. It is ab fab to wander in the desert with a beer and a Bro. Somehow my brother Dave and I have forged this friendship despite being brothers and despite being about as far apart politically as can be. He is the quintessential northern Wisconsin redneck; I am the classic Madison pinko. Worse yet, he is an engineer and I am a lawyer. But a road trip for Badger football makes blood thicker than anything. Dave is here because, despite the lowly status of the Cuprina Cratera, he has to keep his string of Badger bowl appearances intact. I'm here because, well, because I have to. We are flying by the time we get back to the Double Tree, and the red-and-white tie died bib overalls with the "Fodetus Mortuus Est" t-shirts, and beret and cat-in-the-hat hat are de rigueur for the afternoon pre-game party and the game. Ah, the game! I love Badger Football. This was the nearly lost season of 3 straight losses to top 5 teams by a total of 10 points, including the devastating Homecoming game against Northwestern, which the UW had won but fumbled away. A season where we seemed to be wandering around like the Israelites, trying to find a way to salvage something. The season of constant rumors about Barry Alvarez on and off the field, the season rescued by the heroics of a freshman named Ron Dayne. We learned over the course of the season to say "Ron Dayne" with the elided dropped fifth that emphasizes "Dayne." This kid is the real thing, breaking all sorts of Wisconsin and NCAA records in his first year. He was the Moses of the program, rescuing us from a fate worse than the Cuprina Cratera. A little history is in order: Many of us remember that incredible run of games turned in by Billy Marek in 1974: MSU-107 yards Iowa-206 yards Northwestern-230 yards Minnesota-304 yards (and five touchdowns) In four games, Marek had 847 yards, enough yardage in four games to have been the leading Wisconsin rusher in 35 of the last 50 seasons. Marek also helped win the final three games, to provide a rare winning 7-4 record for the Badgers. I doubted I would see the likes of it again. But Dayne, an incredible 5'10" and 260 lbs, turned in five games like this: Purdue-244 yards Minnesota-297 yards Iowa-62 yards Illinois-289 yards Hawaii-339 yards In five games, he had 1231 yards. Only 3 years in the last 50 did a Wisconsin rusher have more yards in a complete season. Dayne broke the UW season rushing record and the NCAA rushing record for freshman, along with the UW record for most carries in a game and most yards in a game. AND HE'S ONLY A FRESHMAN!! The pregame festivities are classic Badger, with brats, beer, band and much, much more. On the bus ride to the party, a guy tries to lead the crowd in a B-A-D-G-E-R cheer (you know, "Give me a B"), but the goof misspells Badger and the bus is merciless. Bro Dave and I march down the avenue where the parade will be, singing (sic) "On Wisconsin." Tickle Me Johnny is in a real hurry to get to the game, maybe to escape the John Wayne look-alike ("Hello, pilgrim") hanging with the Big Red crowd. On our way to the stadium, we finally spot a few Utah Utes, a team with an 8-3 record, but from the woeful WAC conference. And, sweet vindication, the game is a rout. The Utes are out manned. Their touted tailback ("Mufala Walakamaba," as Bro Dave puts it) gets injured after carrying for 5 yards on 4 carries. After Mike Samuels runs for a TD, Dayne takes over on the next series. From the Wisconsin 23: two carries, 77 yards, 6 points. When Tarek Saleh tips a pass and Cyril Weems returns it for another TD, the drubbing is on. It is 31-3 at halftime, and 38-10 at the final gun. Dayne has 246 yards and 3 TDS on 30 carries. The only thing that stops him is a fumble and being pulled from the game. He ends the season with 2,109 yards rushing, both Wisconsin and Big Ten records. Five times during the year, he had 100 yards rushing in a quarter. We speculate if Utah could have beaten any team from the Big 10. It is, without doubt, Wisconsin's best game of the year. What a rescue. And what a town. Gentle Ben's and the Frog and Firkin are the bars of choice tonight, but we run into Chico and Munch, and end up back at the Double Tree consuming more and more of the poison, watching the replay of the game at 2 am, finally plugging in the traditional dirty movie and . . . . "Gawd, I'm sore," I mumble as I fall out of bed. I am on my way to the Circle K to get some chocolate milk when I am greeted by the rarest of the rare -- rain in Tucson, and a rainbow. After an hour or so, Bro Dave is up and, despite the pain, we hit the road. Time for more desert discursions. South of town, on the Indian reservation, is the Cathedral of San Xavier del Bac, a Spanish Franciscan mission built over 200 years ago. This was not on Bro's list, but I force him to check it out. Once he is behind the wheel of the convertible, he will drive wherever I tell him to go. "Bo, have you driven this thing?" "Hardly." "It's nice. Real nice. Do you want to drive?" "Hey man, as long as you'll cruise, I'll navigate." "Deal." Now, the inside of the cathedral is a trip. The statues of the saints are covered in real clothing. All around the front of the church are numerous saints and angels and Madonnas painted in that bright but simple style of the Mexican religious. There are 13 alcoves around the cathedral, 12 of them filled with statues of the apostles and the empty one to remind you of the 13th. The nativity scene allows you to swing a hammock-like cradle holding the brown baby Jesus. A wooden body of St. Xavier is displayed in an open casket, with all kinds of gifts and cards and pictures pinned to the robe. We learn it is a method of prayer. If this place wasn't crammed with tourists, it would be spooky. We buy some of the fried bread outside the cathedral, and I absent-mindedly order honey on mine. We are soon in a firestorm of bees, after my honey. "I didn't know there were any insects here." "Let's go to the car," Dave says. "Your answer for everything is to go the car!" It works. We are cruising again (only worried now about the chipped paint on the side door, which we know was not there the day before. "What do you think it will cost us?" Bro Dave asks. "It better be nothing"). We head north, and then west, to the Saguaro National Park and Monument. Again, the desert. If you have never seen a saguaro, you have never seen the real southwest. These monsters can grow 40 or 50 feet high and live over 200 years. They don't even grow the famous arms you see until they are about 75 years old. And they are amazing. The National Monument is one of the great saguaro forests, filling the mountains and plains west of Tucson with spikes reaching to the sky. They have a spiny interior and are not, contrary to popular belief, to be cut up and eaten when dying in the desert. Crossing the mountains, we stop for a few photographs and, upon reaching the plain on the other side, we wander briefly among the saguaros. We try to go to Old Tucson, but it is under construction, and bypass the world famous zoo for a chance to parade through the desert plants near the visitors center of the monument. "You were right, Bo, it is a prickly pear," Dave says. "Yeah. I have no idea where that came from. Scary what the old synapses will recall when you least expect it." "It is the sah-gwahr-o and la choya," Dave intones in his worst Spanish. "And the collared peccary." "You know what, Bo? If you had to travel across this place on foot, you would die. And you would have to have a damn good horse to make it from those mountains, across this plain, and over that range to Tucson." "Probably a lot of bleached bones out there," I say, squinting in the distance. It looks closer than I am sure it is. "Enough biology," Dave says, "Let's go to the Sabino canyon." Bro Dave is back at the wheel, and we traverse Tucson along the northern foothills -- avoiding stopping to buy a couple Stetsons and dusters only because we want the cash for tonight -- finally getting to the Sabino Canyon area, where we go on a 5 mile hike into the Bear Canyon and back. Now this is a real desert discursion. We have no water. It is hot. It is dry; my lips are already chapped from two days of abuse and lack of humidity. Dave takes off his shirt and I see him begin to turn pink. We stay off the main trail and use the one that keeps us stumbling over rocks, trying to avoid the cacti. Dave is expounding on his favorite obsession. "You see, Bo, dioxin is one of the most poisonous things we make. But you can't make paper without it. Which do you want, paper or dioxin?" "What?" I am not following this critique of pure dioxin. "I figure that it may eventually save us from the insects. It is as bad for them as it is for us, but we have managed to control it. Better to have some dioxin around in case it comes down to us or the insects." "Well, I'm with you on that one. Ultimately it is us or the insects." We've been in the sun for a couple of hours now, and it is the first day we have gone this far into the afternoon without ingesting some of the wares from the U of A Liquor store. I'm beginning to wonder if we have lost the main trail. Our maps seem useless. "If we keep cutting forests, we may have less chance of dioxin death than if we let them grow," Dave is saying now. "What the hell are you talking about?" I demand, wondering to myself whether I am going to die here in the desert with my brother who makes paper for a living and thinks dioxin is the key to understanding the universe. Shit, I don't even know what dioxin is. "Ron Dayne!" I yell at him. "Ron Dayne!" he responds, and we escape the dioxin diversions, soon find a water fountain and turn around back down the canyon toward civilization. The final night in Tucson is a blur. We start with great food at El Charro, one of the oldest Mexican restaurants in the area, with Carne Seca (dried beef, although TMJ takes to calling it "Lou" carne seca) and margaritas the featured menu items. Stephanie uses the word "addled' twice in the same conversation and it suddenly comes to me that she is a very, very complicated woman, which for some reason begins to make sense of her marriage to Tickle Me Johnny but I decide that's way too much to think about right now. David is mumbling about dioxin; Johnny and I are arguing about the pronunciation of saguaro and whether we will have to board from the rear again tomorrow. As Bro Dave and I drive out of downtown with the top down on the convertible, we do the cheerleader nod and get TMJ and Steph and Larry to open their car windows. It is undoubtedly the first, and probably the last, time they have sat at a stoplight in the desert in December next to two look-alike Badgers in goofy hats in a red convertible doing the cheerleader nod and singing "Blowin' In the Wind" at the top of their lungs. They speed off and we lose sight of them, as we head for the Cactus Moon. If you are looking for a bar in Tucson, never take the advice of retired guys you don't know who you happen to golf with. The Moon is pure western. We are the only two fellows in there who are wearing hats that are not Stetsons. Line dancing is the motif. Red and white tie-died bibs and a beret are not common here. "You boys from Wesconsin?" "You bet, pardner." "I'm from Wyoming. If Wyoming'd been here, we'd a whupped yur ass." "Well, maybe next year, you'll be good enough to go to a bowl." "Wyoming wouldda whupped yer ass. We shouldda been here. We were 10-2." "My high school team was 11-0 and they weren't here either." "Wyoming wouldda whupped yur ass!" "Maybe if you'd bring more than 4 fans to a game, you'd get invited." "Wyoming wouldda whupped yur ass." We finally move on. Dave gets accosted by a woman at least ten years older than me, and returns from the dance floor with sound advice. "We gotta go, Bo." "How's that?" "When somebody like that starts grabbing her crotch when I'm dancing, it's time to go." "Dave--let's get outta here." Back in the red convertible, we hit the Third Stone, and find it is the bar we should have been at for days. This place is eclectic. A jazz band with a guitarist who is obviously sitting in, as he looks much more familiar with Jimi Hendrix than any jazz guitarist. The folks are friendly ("I just need to tell you, you look great in those clothes"); the scotch is smooth, and we are relaxed. Dave is in an animated conversation with some fellow from the Wisconsin band (they took a trip to Nogales, Mexico, that day) and the woman next to me is freaked out because the guys in the band at this joint are all former students of hers. The Tucson road grid makes it easy for Dave to find the Double Tree. We are both in pain on Sunday. But after jockeying to return our cars -- I embarrass TMJ by profusely thanking him for hours because he helped us take our car back to the airport in time, not to mention that I divert the attention of the guy looking at the convertible, so he doesn't see the scratch in the passenger's door -- the Alumni Association does what it does best: gets us from place to place. It is cold in Madison after a seemingly endless flight. The Ron Dayne express is home. A successful Cuprina Cratera. A salute to Fodetus. Desert discursions. And the bibs are no longer a maiden. The Monsignor January 11, 1997