Somewhere between here and there
How do I write a story about a little town called Salome? It’s a very small spot on the map—an intersection, really—that’s not nearly as exotic as the Biblical seductress the name suggests, the dancer who asked for St. John the Baptist’s head on a platter.
A couple of hours west of Phoenix, Arizona, it requires an hour-long detour off the interstate, and there aren’t many reasons to do so. There are no tourist attractions or scenic overlooks. No fancy spas or ghost towns. No dance of the seven veils.
After about 20 miles of watching for cattle along a road through open range that twists and dips into desert washes, you know you’re almost there when you spot the tiny one-room chapel beckoning travelers to stop in to pray and rest.
By then, you’ve slowed down in the 25 m.p.h. zone for the high school, quickly followed by the sheriff’s office. You’ll pass the Nu Vu beauty shop with flowerpots in front overflowing with an explosion of yellow and pink flowers. A car repair shop emits sharp buzzes and bangs. A quirky four-room motel with a big rig cab decorating the backyard shelters day workers and wanderers seeking rest halfway between here and there.It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
On the corner is a post office where the 500 or so people who live in the area drive in from their farms and cattle ranches to pick up their mail. A man in overalls stands with his hands on his hips, checking out the community bulletin board to get the latest news.
Across the street is a thrift store stuffed with clothes and shoes and books and second-hand tools and foot baths you never want to use, and a hand-lettered sign for a new business offering massages.
Look over your shoulder, and you’ll see the gas station and mini mart that sells freshly made pizzas and good bottles of wine that gather dust on their dark glassy shoulders. Next door is a roadhouse restaurant that serves spicy chicken fried steak with a mountain of mashed potatoes and thick brown gravy. A neon sign teases that it’s ‘o-p-e-n’ one red letter at a time. The restaurant closes at 8 p.m.
If you need a bottle of aspirin, the nearest grocery store for some 50 miles is a couple of minutes up the road. You’ll pass a pistachio tree farm that looks like a winery with rows and rows of small trees with delicate black branches reaching into the big sky. And a homemade wooden boat painted yellow and stranded high and dry in a field hemmed in by barbed wire, its anchor hopelessly trailing behind it in the dust.
The store has all the basics—liquor, hair ties, frozen dinners—at twice the price. Just be sure to get there before they close at 6 p.m. I’m told they recently sold a million dollar lottery ticket, and I’m not surprised. This is the kind of out-of-the-way place these things happen.
This is a place where ‘not far’ means 60 miles. The great Arizona outback, they call it, where snow birds park their RVs for a few months out of the year to enjoy the mild winter. Where there’s a neighborhood of folks who live in houses attached to hangars that shelter vintage airplanes that they fly to breakfast twice a week in the next town over.
Here the coyotes give everyone a heads up that the train is coming, howling and whining at 4:20 am before the rails begin to ring for human ears. Quail with crests like fancy hats dangle above their heads as they skitter across the rooftops, and fearless rabbits with truly cotton-like tails look you right in the eye as they urgently cross your path.
Once upon a time, this town was big, teeming with folks digging into the nearby hills for nuggets of gold the size of a fist. By 1904, there was a town here. Even famed Old West gambler and sheriff Wyatt Earp called these parts home for a little while.
Decades later, a two-lane highway passed through town, the only way to Los Angeles, a veritable Route 66 with roadside motels, casinos, and gleaming gas stations that popped up after World War II. The interstate changed all that. The motels are now mere ghosts on patches of concrete broken with wiry weeds. The signs are faded and peeling.
Yet even though the heyday has long passed, something about this place is still magic. The mourning doves announce the dawn like roosters, and the sun glows behind purple mountains to the east of town before pouring gold on the peak that rises to the west of town, where springs used to flow and picnickers would find respite from the summer heat.
With enough rain, the sagebrush opens in a blast of yellow blooms that line the road and release a sharp, comforting scent when the sun warms its dusty leaves. The earth is like gravel and strewn with broken quartz and pebbles, and it crunches underfoot in reassurance that it’s still there, and yes, you are firmly grounded to it.
An occasional saguaro cactus rises out of the brush and rock of the Sonoran desert, an arm or two poking towards the sun, birds roosting in dark holes in its thick, spiny skin. Above is blue-blue sky, bright white clouds like whipped cream, and the light of the world shining down. It’s quiet, so quiet.
This is the time to be here—in the spring before the temperatures shoot past 100 and the sun bakes the land and the sagebrush turns brittle. Before the rattlesnakes come out and sunbathe on the blacktop. Before anything less than shade is life threatening for the weak of constitution, like me.
This is the time of year I resolve to return to this unassuming oasis in the desert. Somewhere between here and there. ◊