A couple weeks ago we returned from a five day trip to the Grand Canyon. Since then I’ve been inundated with Stuff That Must Be Done, most of which is bullshit, wastes my time, and provides no sense of accomplishment when completed. And I’ve yet to start the taxes, which is the bullshit doubled and redoubled.
It was a minor miracle that the trip happened at all. Two weeks earlier Kathy had been in the hospital. The American Republic was being destroyed wholesale by two willful children, one a convicted felon and the other a drug fiend. Somehow I dragged myself out of my depression and got in the car.
We made up our minds to lodge with Fred Harvey, or at any rate his ghost, and stayed in two classic railroad hotels, La Posada in Winslow, and El Tovar overlooking the Canyon. Both hotels were enormous Edwardian structures, and El Tovar was probably the biggest log building I’d ever seen.
The photo shows probably the most famous intersection in Arizona, in which a drifter is “a-standin’ on the corner in Winslow, Arizona with seven virgins on my mind.” (My memory of the lyrics may be a trifle inexact.) The mural behind the statue tells the rest of the story, beginning with the appearance of the girl in the flatbed Ford and going on from there in a counter-clockwise direction.
Just outside the frame is a statue of co-writer Glenn Frey, standing beneath the sign proclaiming it Glenn Frey Drive. Frey’s co-writer, Jackson Browne, seems to have been neglected by the Winslow city fathers.
Despite the urging of the song, somehow I have never managed to take it easy.
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