Chuck Bowden, the lizard king of Arizona authors, is shedding some skin this summer. A Tucson-based essayist, bird watcher and former newspaperman, Bowden has made his literary nut writing books full of his own deep, dark rumblings about life in the Sonoran Desert. His latest book, Trust Me: Charles Keating…
Until the 1960s, the banks of the canals that flow from the Salt River and fan across Phoenix were oases, de facto promenades bordered by shady cottonwoods. Phoenicians walked there and swam there, and, according to many an old wag, even water-skied. But in the 60s, swimming in the canals…
Environmentalist Debbie McQueen was aghast last October when she opened the public file she had obtained from the state Department of Environmental Quality. The file was on Marsh Aviation, a crop-dusting company that had been the subject of numerous McQueen complaints. Inside the file, McQueen found a handwritten note that…
Too many of Joe Calo’s friends in the Italian-restaurant business and the drug trade here in Phoenix were being systematically murdered. Seven died in less than a year–June 1988 to February 1989. The cops figured this could not be written off to mere coincidence. Especially since in so many of…
Arizona liquor czar Howard Adams is under attack from his own people. They are concerned that the kind of politicking and deal cutting that led the Arizona Republic to dub Adams the “Mr. Inside” of Phoenix City Council in the late Eighties does not translate well to the field of…
Tom Owens leans against the gas pump at a convenience mart in Pinetop–a tiny, tree-shaded town on the edge of the Mogollon Rim–and spits a huge glob of tobacco juice on the asphalt. As he fills the tank on his cherry-red pickup, he glares disapprovingly at the clipboard-toting young woman…
The Lady Kings won a game a couple of Saturdays ago, and for the first time in team history, Phoenix’s all-female hockey club was not in last place. Karmel Scott scored on a breakaway with less than a minute to play, giving her team a 2-1 victory over the mostly…
I sat there watching Congressman Dan Rostenkowski proclaim his innocence of all wrongdoing. Everybody in Chicago calls him “Rosty.” Very few people now alive remember when Rosty wasn’t the congressman from the 8th Congressional District who lived in the family home in the 32nd Ward–the Polish ward. In Chicago, that’s…
You could tell right off that Grant Woods was upset. “This was so bad and so outrageous,” said the attorney general in a phone call to New Times managing editor Jeremy Voas. “It’s absolutely fucking ridiculous.” Mr. Voas did not disagree. We had asked Woods to be photographed, telling him…
George Golden is not now and never was a fan of rock n’ roll music. And, at the age of 79, it’s a virtual certainty that he will not soon convert. But in early March 1957, the 40ish Golden was singing a considerably different tune. A phenomenon named Elvis Presley…
On December 16, the day he would be killed, Fred Schrader got up before dawn, made a pot of coffee, turned on the TV, and sat down to watch the morning news. His wife, Elaine, was still asleep when she first heard the creaking of the approaching bulldozer. In her…
Indignation, and some amount of beer, compelled Robert Carter’s first telephone call. Carter had just seen Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on television, he said. The sheriff was bragging about the county’s work-furlough program for jail inmates, and defending his department’s recent inability to keep prisoners from escaping. Carter had…
Ellen Avilla was a good soldier in the war on disease. For almost five years, while working as a technician in the Arizona Department of Health’s state laboratory, Avilla performed tests on thousands of blood samples–checking them for HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), hepatitis, measles and other infectious and…
The first letter I read upon coming back from vacation had this to say: “How come you wrote about the Suns the way you did? How dare you sell out to Colangelo like that?” Wonderful. Things are back to normal. Let’s get a few other things out of the way…
“Domestic or imported?” That’s a question that local Coca-Cola drinkers are facing with increasing regularity in small madre y padre Mexican restaurants around the Valley as they’re offered a choice of two varieties of Coke when they order that beverage with their meals. One choice is a domestic Coke, the…
Senator Dennis DeConcini has contradicted his own sworn testimony in the Keating Five scandal. On Monday, DeConcini admitted he was aware as early as 1984 that his chief fund raiser, Earl Katz, was in business deals with the recently convicted financier Charles H. Keating Jr., who controlled the failed Lincoln…
“Would you like to spend some time alone with him?” “Yes,” I said. The vet looked down at Ramble the Dog. He shook his head from side to side. I caught my breath. I realized I had committed myself to something irrevocable. Ramble was spread out on the floor of…
HORTON BAY, Michigan–The road is narrow. No traffic. I haven’t seen another car for a long time. I hoped it would be this way. It’s like a journey back in time. This is the little town in which Ernest Hemingway really grew up. Hemingway spent all the summers of his…
During an after-Christmas sale last year, at the Dillard’s store in Paradise Valley Mall, Billy Mitchell went to a sales counter to purchase a pair of pants. He gave the salesclerk a hundred-dollar bill and waited while the clerk got change from another part of the store. As he waited,…
Amid racks of guitars and stacks of amplifiers at the Arizona Music Center hang autographed publicity photographs, the type most any music shop will accumulate over time. Inexpensive frames display the grinning likenesses of Tanya Tucker, the Bellamy Brothers, Barbara Mandrell and others who have passed through the Glendale store…
No one knows better how handy the Arizona State Retirement System fund can be for speculative forays into Arizona real estate developments than Governor Fife Symington. Symington found the system to be an easy touch when it came to borrowing money for his real estate gambits. Like many of his…
Mark Sullivan can smell blood. His body tenses, focusing all energy on the prey. Only 40 yards away, a huge lion sits under a bush, with languid eyes fixed on the human hunters moving slowly toward him. Crouching, Sullivan scoops up a bit of dust and watches as it trickles…
