Calico Ghost Town

Sit right back and you will hear a tale. A tale of a fateful trip. It started...  Okay, that may be the beginning of Gilligan’s Island and my trip wasn’t fateful, but like most of the episodes of Gilligan’s Island it was at the very least interesting.  

In fact the adventure that I am thinking about is no where near boating or water and take place in Calico Ghost Town.  When I was a young lass, my mother took me camping at Calico Ghost Town and I distinctly remember the Camp Ground Keeper warning us to never wander into any of the mines, because our bodies might not be found and to always dump your shoes before putting them on, because scorpions liked to hide in them.  Needless to say, we only camped there once and the place left a lasting impression on me, because anytime I am in the desert, I constantly think about scorpions and death by scorpions sting.

 

Now, lets fast forward at least a decade and the urge to go back to Calico Ghost Town strikes me.  I have a love for caves, and what is a mine but a man made cave?  Or at least that is the thought running through my head when I cajole my dear father into a drive to the desert.  When we get there, the town is nothing like I remembered.  Which was wonderful. It was one of my favorite things ever, a roadside attraction with a historical flair. Yes, there were mines, but there was so much more.  The town catered to tourists of a family nature, and there were enough activities to keep young children entertained while receiving a brief history of mining and life on a new frontier.  Pretty much everything my dad could roll his eyes at and humor me on was there, whether that was to dress up in old times clothes for pictures or to ride a train that pointed out the history of mining and the area or walk through the Mystery Shack.  

While most would say that it doesn’t do any good to go down memory lane, sometimes it is just what is needed.  I appreciate the time I went as a small child and the fear of scorpions it provided, but I also appreciate go back and seeing how things can change in a positive way an created new memories.

Opossum Lake

It is Mother’s Day, so it would only make sense to talk about a time my mother may have tried to murder me. Or this is a story about me exaggerating the events of a Sunday morning. 

My mother loves to read murder mystery and detective novels.  When I was a surely teenager I remember us both burning through Sue Grafton  and Mary Higgins Clark novels. After reading so many novels there becomes a check list of things that look suspicious when they happen in real life.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The birds were chirping and there a was that relaxed feeling in the air. This in itself should be suspicious, because only cliched mysteries start with, “It was a dark and stormy night...”.  On that beautiful Sunday morn, my mother drove me out to a remote spot in the woods by a lake.  Yes, this is where all the warning bells should be going off. There is a reason why there are so many horror movies with grisly murders that happen near lakes and in the woods.  It is really easy to “lose” a body in the woods and is not exactly easy to comb a lake.  Check off another box on the murder list.

Arriving at the destination my mother casually mentioned that the lake was recently refilled and stocked with fish.  Is there a more menacing name for a lake than Opossum Lake?  Literally, opossums play dead.  If we were in a murder mystery, the killer would play dead and then strike.  The refilled lake in some of the off shoots there are at least a dozen or more feet deep there are trees that have poke out of the water like grave markers.  It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to picture a body tied to at the base of the tree.  I am sure this is at least three more check boxes on the murder list. 

Mentioning of the concern for bodies under the water and I am reminded that fish have just been stocked.  Fish eat everything.  Any evidence of my presence would be quickly remove by nature if worse came to worse.  More items for the murder list.  How does our hero escape this dastardly plot of  mayhem?  Easy I talk my way out of it. With careful consideration and the knowledge that I was in charge of putting her in a home when she becomes old and infirm, she let me live another day.  It was a close call, or at lease it was by this account of the story.

By now, my mother is reading this and rolling her eyes.  The non murder themed sequence of events, is that it was a beautiful day and we went kayaking in the newly refilled lake, where I spent half the time worrying about tipping the kayak and drowning by being tree that was poking out of the water and her laughing at me for being ridiculous.   So, it wouldn’t have been a murder, but more of an accidental death that didn’t happen.  I am sure my mother is now wondering if she dropped me too many times as a child if a simple day of kayaking turned into an attempted murder.  

Happy Mother’s Day!

April Movie List

I think I might be the only person that did not binge watch movies for the month of April while the world shut down.  My husband had frequent movie nights with his friends, while I worked on a few sewing projects and building furniture for my new and improved lady lair.  One of themes that April seemed to have in movie themes was Bigfoot, the other theme being Cult.  In the very rare instance the two themes combined.  I always have high hopes for a Bigfoot movie, but vary rarely do they pan out.

April List

• Shriek of the Mutilated 

•  Dr. Phibes Rises Again 

•  The Capture of Bigfoot 

•  Night of the Demons 

•  Robowar 

•  MST3K Starcrash 

•  Night of the Demon

Any guesses on which movies could be considered Bigfoot movies and which ones could be considered cult movies?   While April may have been lax in my movie watching pleasure, it seems that May is starting out a bang.