Leaving Arizona
I last set foot on terra Arizona on April 29, 2010 at a rest area on Interstate 10 near the summit of Texas Canyon, between Benson and Willcox. Earlier that morning I had maneuvered our 26 foot Penske rental truck out our 175 foot driveway and onto a dirt road that led to pavement and a four-day journey to our new home in Ohio. Myrna and I had first seen that dirt road fifteen years earlier on a visit to Tucson. Enchanted by the Sonoran desert, we bought land, and later designed and built an adobe house in which we planned to live the rest of our lives. Now, twelve years after completing it, we were leaving Arizona. Ahead lay the East and our children and grandchildren. Behind us lay a life whose time had come and gone. No, we weren’t fleeing Arizona’s toxic political culture, although it is a relief to have left it behind. Arizona has a notable concentration of right-wing political lunatics. Especially in the last year the crazies in the State Legislature have outdone t