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December 23, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· Arizona Stories
In-Studio Guests:
· Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, author of "Chief Yellow Horse Lives On and Other Stories of Arizona Places and People;"
· Clay Thompson, author of "Valley 101, a slightly skewed guide to living in Arizona."

>> Michael:
Tonight on "Horizon," Arizona has a rich history. And a former reporter and fourth generation Arizonan shares some of those stories in her book, "Chief Yellow Horse Lives On."

>>> He offers a basic course on the Valley every day in "The Arizona Republic." Clay Thompson will tell us about his book, "Valley 101, a slightly skewed guide to living in Arizona."

>>> Welcome to this special edition of "Horizon." I'm Michael Grant.

>>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger has worked as a reporter throughout the state. Her family has been here for several generations and Sedona is named after her great grandmother. All that means is she's told a lot of stories and has many more. Fifty-two of those stories have made it into her book. "Chief Yellow Horse Lives On and Other Stories of Arizona Places and People." here to tell us some of those stories is Lisa Schnebly Heidinger. Nice to meet you.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
It's great to be here. Thank you.

>> Michael Grant:
Reading your bio, I solved one of life' great mysteries, Schnebly Hill Road.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
My great grandpa TC, Carl Scnebly, was instrumental in getting George Babbitt, Coconino County Supervisor, to match funds with the Oak Creek boys, so they could build that road up the side and cut the trip from Oak Creek to Flagstaff from four days to a day and a half.

>> Michael Grant:
I know you have a particular interest in northern Arizona, and the Babbitt family. You can't talk too long about northern Arizona without the Babbitt family creeping in there someplace.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
I haven't been able to do that, no. They were so broadly influential for such a long, long time.

>> Michael Grant:
You've had a remarkable career. You have been a reporter around the State and you've also operated in a lot of different mediums, newspaper, television, radio.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Magazines, columns.

>> Michael Grant:
Any particular medium form you like? Do you like writing better than television or radio better than TV?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
You know they are so different in some ways. The lovely part of television to me after print was that in print, it had to be lieutenant colonel Brigham J. Hughes and then on TV you could say "army guy," and then it was over, TV. On the other side of that, a book lives forever, and so which is better, day or night, that kind of thing, you know. It would be hard to say.

>> Michael Grant:
I often joke about live TV. The nice thing about it when it's through, it's over. It may have been good, it may have been bad, but it's over.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
It's not on your desk Monday morning when you come back in.

>> Michael Grant:
Fifty-two stories, why 52 stories?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
The original working title for the book was "An Arizona Year." How many stories should you tell about Arizona? Fifty-two was a good number. Some of them are seasonal. Snow in January. Monsoons in July, holidays and Christmas, and then others, the Reardon House, Ft. Lowell were simply mixed in arbitrarily.

>> Michael Grant:
The book has a lot of photos in it. You took those?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
I did, except for the night sky, and the monsoon, I did take those. I was nervous because this is -- granted, it's not the Grand Canyon over your couch, but it was still "Arizona Highways," and I felt like I wanted to make sure I didn't ruin their reputation, but I think they did a very good job with them.

>> Michael Grant:
Some excellent photography.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Thank you very much.

>> Michael Schnebly Heidinger:
You've got a ninth career here if you want to pursue that. Tell us about Chief Yellow Horse.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
I just opened up to the picture of his son Scott here, Chief Yellow Horse, if you've driven to Page, you've seen his signs. And my favorite has blown down. It was "We take 'em, MasterCard." When I was a reporter up north, I saw those signs and then got to his little stand at the roadside which had a teepee out front and went in and said, if we're trying to learn about cultural diversity and appreciate our heritage, why are you giving us a teepee here on the Navajo reservation, and he said, well, it's good marketing. "Teepee" says "Indian" to tourists. He says "Hogans do too, but it's subtle." I did an "Arizona Republic" column about him, did him on TV, and then put him in this book. Last time we went up, he has passed on, and his son Scott is carrying the baton and doing a fine job of it. It's good to see it going on.

>> Michael Grant:
You know, we talked about your great grandfather and Schnebly Hill Road, but your great grandmother is who Sedona is.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
That's right. She was Sedona Schnebly. No one in the family or out knows how her mother happened to make up that name. Her brothers and sisters have predictable names, Minnie and Phillip. She came west with her husband in 1901. He wanted to name Sedona "Schnebly station," but because it would have been "Schnebly Station, Arizona Territory," it wouldn't fit cancellation stamp. Some people have suggested they should have done that because nobody would want to live in a place named Schnebly Station, and it wouldn't be as full as it is now, which might have some merit.

>> Michael Grant:
You know, it's amazing, as we travel around the country, and for that matter, travel in other places in the world. More often than not, if you say you are from Arizona, as opposed to getting a response, gee, how's the Grand Canyon, someone will make reference to Sedona. It's amazing how popular and large and attractive it is.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
See, I only travel in Arizona. So I wouldn't know that.

>> Michael Grant:
I think it's the beautiful red rocks up there that captured people's imagination. Tell us about Emma Lee.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Emma Lee is one of my favorites. She is John Doyle Lee's wife. They ran Lee's Ferry at the Grand Canyon. I think their farm at Lee's Ferry is one of the most powerful places in the whole state.

>> Michael:
Why so?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Partly the beauty. It is so massive and spare and then this little green jewel of a ranch down under those huge red rocks. And the fact that it is a woman's place. John Lee was off exploring, and this woman ran the ferry by herself, watered the orchards until the last tree died. Gave birth to 200 children alone in this little ramshackle stone and wood cottage that is still there. She was just indomitable, and I admire her.

>> Michael Grant:
And the time frame for this was roughly?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
1860s. When was John Wesley Powell? Right after the civil war, so '60s to '80s. She was down there by herself, raising her kids and carrying on. Brave woman.

>> Michael Grant:
Speaking of the Grand Canyon, and Abbey's Watchtower.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
It's in here, because we went to the north rim and made a pilgrimage, I did, to see his fire tower, where he had written, reflecting as I did so that that would have disgusted Abbey, because he would have said don't traipse around in the footsteps of somebody, you know, carve your own path, go into the forest, have an experience, don't look for a ghost of some writer. That would have bothered him.

>> Michael Grant:
Where physically is the watchtower located?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
If you are going to the north rim park entrance, it's a mile and a half or two off the main road. And if you ask right there, you park right there by the little ticket taker, and they will show you which road to go up. You can't really get lost. You go up, you see the tower, you go back. But it was a neat experience. Even though Ed wouldn't have liked that, I was pleased I did that.

>> Michael Grant:
I suspect there is a lot of things that he would not have liked.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
A good point, yes.

>> Michael Grant:
He was cantankerous.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Yes, he was not a role model.

>> Michael Grant:
You went shopping at the Arizona state prison complex?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Yes, took my children.

>> Michael Schnebly Heidinger:
Tell us that story.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
We were doing a story about the biosphere, which is in here, and there were bored, and I saw this little shop. I said there's the prison shop. Let's stop, so we stopped. My daughter Sedona found a Mancala board, the African game that you play with little stones, that was brightly painted and they wanted to buy. So I took it up, and I said is there any way to find out who made this, and the woman said Rusty Norris made that, who is the only person I know who was in the Arizona prison system, and he is on death row -- no, not death row, he killed his wife. I dated his younger brother many years ago and knew Rusty and was amazed years later to find out that he was being tried for this, and it led me to reflect that there are not criminals and the rest of us. There are people who make bad choices from which they cannot come back and the rest of us who make bad choices from which we can recover. But it was sad.

>> Michael Grant:
How ironic.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Yeah, how many people in the system? I don't even know.

>> Michael Grant:
That that item would have been made by someone that you knew.

>>> Michael Grant:
You mentioned the biosphere.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
I call it the "Tupperware of the desert." I'm impressed by that place. You remember when it was first opened. It was kind of easy to mock, because they took themselves so seriously. And then the experiment that must have been the longest two years of those people's lives. I can't imagine how they got through it. But they are still doing some very, very good research there, and I think it has potential, particularly on things like global warming, because they can fake the climate and study the effects to do us a lot of good. I feel bad that the reporters that went out there made fun of it sometimes.

>> Michael Grant:
Is Columbia University still part of that?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Yes, they are still part of that. They are bringing out more students. They have built casitas for more students. It's going to become more and more a research facility.

>> Michael Grant:
You talked about Tucson's hidden treasures?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Yes, you read guide books. One of them is if you go on Flowing Wells Road and come back towards Grant, there is a Farmer John processing plant, and they have painted cows and trees around it, but there is a bull charging directly at the road coming from Flowing Wells. When I was a child, my father would accelerate toward the bull and we would scream and he would come to a stop at the last moment and so charging the bull is still a great thing to do, as long as you stop before you hit the fence, we want to save it for others. The Garden of Gethsemane, which is under the Congress underpass of I-10 just to the right. There are these life-size statues that a man named Lucero carved after World War I. He pledged if he were saved he would do art glorifying God. You have the Last Supper.

>> Michael Grant:
I have been under that underpass a thousand times and never knew that was there.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Right to the west, just sitting all the time, open for anybody to visit. >> Michael: Other Tucson --

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Austin's Ice Cream, which has been there forever and has a whopping butterfat content on Broadway. Wonderful stuff. A gorgeous headstone in the cemetery. Mrs. Mansfeld Sanders said, "I have loved the stars too deeply ever to be fearful of the night." And the shrine to the unconsecrated young man who supposedly was part of a lover's triangle on Broadway - no, on Cushing Street, just south of Broadway. And Fort Lowell.

>> Michael Grant:
You spent time in Green Valley.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
That was my first reporting job. I was there for four years.

>> Michael Grant:
South of Tucson?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Yeah, the retirement community.

>> Michael:
Green valley tales in there?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
It's a wonderful place.

>> Michael Grant:
That area is really rich with a lot of historical and cultural things.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Yes, and there are still the old ranch families with the big complexes and the pickups and the dogs in the yard and neighbors saying "I'm going into town, do you want anything," and it is, it's gorgeous. And the Green Valley residents were like having a thousand professors to learn from, because they had so much wonderful life experience to share with a young reporter.

>> Michael Grant:
Have you got a favorite of the 52 stories?

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Sometimes they change. One of the ones I really like is the last story about John Thomas. There are some people who wouldn't be able to place him, who was the janitor back at Tucson at Kagen when I worked there, and he's a great old guy from Texas. It talks about him wanting to see the pearly gates when his time comes and how he does that. I love Emma Lee, the north rim. Monsoons, I love the language of monsoons because it's fun to describe a monsoon and how they come in over the mountains and the arsenal of rain and all of that. So I think it's like your children. There is not a favorite but there are favorites for different reasons.

>> Michael Grant:
Sounds to me -- getting back to a point we talked about earlier, sounds to me like you like the art and the craft of writing.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
I guess I really do. I had never thought about that, but I think there is a compunction if I've had an experience that until it's been written, it's not done.

>> Michael Grant:
You've got the family holiday card photo in here.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
From 1969. I went out on a limb, the cat's eyeglasses, because my folks have 50 family Christmas cards showing the unfolding of all of the family. Spouses come, spouses go, but I didn't think it was an experience unique to us. It's called "smile, darn it" about how you get them all in there, and how everybody is doing that, and there is "I think you're hiding me, move! My hair is funny," and the picking of the card from all of the choices, you know, the voting and the wheeling and dealing that goes on. But we love them and the siblings are doing it. What happens to you, you pass onto your children.

>> Michael Grant:
Let me give you an opportunity to plug the website.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Oh, arizonahighways.com, yes, absolutely. You can get "Chief Yellow Horse Lives On" from there.

>> Michael Grant:
Outstanding book. And Lisa, nice conversation. Thank you for being here.

>> Lisa Schnebly Heidinger:
Thank you so much. I've loved it.

>> Michael Grant:
In 2000, it started as a weather column, but now it has become so much more, including a book. I am talking about the daily column by Clay Thompson of "The Arizona Republic, "Valley 101." 128 of his approximately 1,000 columns made it into the book. Here to tell us what inspires him and some of the stories is clay Thompson. Clay, I can't tell you my wife is so impressed that I am talking to you.

>> Clay Thompson:
You have to take her out more often, Mike.

>> Michael Grant:
You got here in 1979, came from Iowa?

>> Clay Thompson:
Grew up in Iowa and worked for papers there before I moved out here.

>> Michael Grant:
Was "Valley 101" -- I guess it's weather predecessor, was that your first foray into column writing or not?

>> Clay Thompson:
It started in the middle of 1999. We started a column that ran once a week, and then twice a week which was newcomers' questions, questions people have about Arizona. Why are garages on the fronts of new houses so big, and why does the desert smell that way after it rains, and why don't we have daylight savings time, things like that. Then it -- then we started a column in 2000 called "outside" which was weather and outdoor recreation. Since then, over time, they sort of evolved or degenerated into what they are today, which is questions about anything people have.

>> Michael Grant:
Well, yeah, when you get right down to it, the weather concept sounds good, but I think there is only so much you can do to the weather.

>> Clay Thompson:
You would be amazed at how interested people are about the weather out here, which is interesting because we don't have that much weather. It's hot or not so hot, but people are fascinated by the weather.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, I've got to tell you, you don't look anything like your photo in the column.

>> Clay Thompson:
That's probably just as well.

>> Michael Grant:
Why an old photo?

>> Clay Thompson:
I was told when we started "Outside," and it had the photo on it, my boss at the time told me that she wanted the column to have a cult mystique. I'm so dumb I actually believed that. It took me a while to figure out that they weren't sure I could actually do it, and it would be easier to swap out the photo than the BYLINE. So they didn't put a photo on it. Now it's become the way it is.

>> Michael Grant: And Ed Montini has that great pose, you know, you have to figure, if you were going to do that, you would have to think forever about the pose you are going to strike.

>> Clay Thompson:
People pick up the book, I show the book to people and they page through it, and they turn to the back cover and they read Ed Montini's blurb and say "that's really funny."

>> Michael Grant:
You bunk -- not literally, but cubicle with Richard Ruellas, Ed Montini and Lori Roberts.

>> Clay Thompson:
I work in the company of giants.

>> Michael Grant:
How many questions do you get?

>> Clay Thompson:
In a given day? Anywhere from five to 15 or 20.

>> Michael Grant:
And you answer how many of those?

>>Clay Thompson:
Maybe three out of ten. I've either done them before or I just don't think that they are something a lot of other people would be interested in or I can't find the answer or it's just way too much work.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, you have got this book, but do you really consider yourself to be an author?

>> Clay Thompson:
No, I consider myself to be a columnist who was fortunate enough to find a publisher who would put them together in the collection for me. These are just the Arizona columns, the newcomer columns.

>> Michael Grant:
Has this sparked any interest in doing a book? >> Clay: Actually writing a book?

>> Michael Grant:
Yeah, actually writing a book.

>> Clay Thompson:
I'm far too lazy to do it.

>> Michael Grant:
A start, a middle and a finish?

>> Clay Thompson:
That's out of my league.

>> Michael Grant:
You've been doing book signings and those kinds of things. I understand that you are a god in Sun City?

>> Clay Thompson:
I have a good following in Sun City. But I think older people tend to read the newspaper more thoroughly and they are more likely to respond. They have more time to respond than younger people.

>> Michael Grant:
I was not kidding about my wife to a certain extent, me too. That is the one thing that we consistently read in the paper. There is something very -- you have a great style. You are obviously very funny in writing, and a lot of the subjects you pick are engaging.

>> Clay Thompson:
The great thing about doing this column has been the great width and breadth of things that people wonder about, stuff that would never occur to me in a hundred years to wonder about or think about. I got a question the other day from a lady who wanted to know if the sun gives off an aroma during the whole fusion and everything. Does the sun smell?

>> Clay Thompson:
If I live to be 100, it would never occur to me to wonder if the sun smells.

>> Michael Grant:
What's the difference between partly sunny and partly cloudy?

>> Clay Thompson:
It has to do with the degree of cloud cover and the weather service has a formula for this, but the biggest thing is it can't be partly sunny at night.

>> Michael Grant:
That's an excellent point. It does make intuitive sense. Well, listen, we're going to resist making the rest of this trivial pursuit, but I want to ask you about some of the questions. Now, you wrote about the man who killed Santa Claus.

>> Clay Thompson:
That's a great story. And it came from a book by Dan Dedera, who used to be the editor of Arizona Highways. Back in 1930, there was a man named John McPhee, editor of the paper out in Mesa. He was worried that sales weren't going well and the interest in the annual Christmas parade was lagging, so he hired a pilot and a parachutist -- this is when everything was still sort of new -- to fly over the town. And the parachutist was going to wear a Santa suit, jump out of the plane and lead the parade through downtown. And there were kids on their parents' shoulders, and he went to get the parachutist and the guy was too drunk to jump. So McPhee goes to a store, grabs a mannequin, puts the Santa Claus suit on him, sends him off with the pilot. The pilot flies around town a few times, pushes the mannequin with the Santa suit on out of the plane. The parachute doesn't open --

>> Michael Grant:
And he's just plummeting?

>> Clay Thompson:
Like a rock. And this great silence engulfed downtown Mesa, and you could hear people crying in their homes and some women went into labor prematurely, and McFee had to leave town for a while. But he was known for a long time afterwards in Mesa as the man who had killed Santa Claus.

>> Michael Grant:
Were you a WKRP fan?

>> Clay Thompson:
I remember -- I know the show you are talking about when the turkeys flew out of the helicopter?

>> Michael Grant:
Now that you have related that, I wonder if somebody didn't know that and flipped it into Thanksgiving. The premise basically was we're shoving turkeys out of a helicopter, and they didn't realize that the turkeys didn't fly, and so they plummeted in front of the crowd, too. Why do we call it "the Valley."

>> Clay Thompson:
Because it is the valley of the Salt River. That's a great broad valley that runs from Cave Creek out to Arlington, which is out to the west aways, and it's every place that the river over the centuries has deposited its -- what do you call it effluvial deposits.

>> Michael Grant:
Why do we have walls around valley houses?

>> Clay Thompson:
As I recall it's a Hispanic influence that when people used to have like animals in their yards and everything, and it was customary to have a low wall around your house, not only to keep the animals in but for protection from whatever might be out there.

>> Michael Grant:
Are you good at trivial pursuit? >> Clay: No. >> Michael: Because you are doing very well here.

>>Clay Thompson:
Thank you.

>> Michael Grant:
There is a star walk at Central and Monroe. I don't think I knew that.

>> Clay Thompson:
At the San Carlos hotel, which is still a very nice place, but back in the '30s, it was sort of a hideaway for Hollywood stars, Gene Autry, Clark Gable, Mae West, people like that. It was before air conditioning, and they offered something called automatic cooled air, as I recall. And fresh drinking water in every room. It was a place where Hollywood stars came to get away for a while, and on the sidewalks outside of the San Carlos, there are 8 or 10 stars with the names of these famous actresses and actors on them.

>> Michael Grant:
You know, in fact, if I recall, isn't the opening scene in Psycho -- now, this would be later than that, but I want to say it was shot from like the top of the Adams hotel, if I recall correctly.

>> Clay Thompson:
You know, that's a question I got once. I don't believe it's in the book. Where was the opening shots, and I worked on it for quite a while and came up with these or four answers, and then I heard from people for three or four weeks, where they thought it was shot.

>> Michael Grant:
Has anybody measured the wind speed of dust devils?

>> Clay Thompson:
Dust devils can get up to 50 miles an hour. There was one near Flagstaff a few years ago that hit 75. The interesting thing about dust devils is a couple of years ago, some scientists from the University of Arizona did some studies down around Eloy, studied dust devils down around Eloy, because they were getting ready for a mission to Mars. So it's kind of interesting that part of our state at least bears a strong resemblance to mars.

>> Michael Grant:
And they thought some of the atmosphere there would kick off the same kind of phenomenon?

>> Clay Thompson:
Apparently so.

>> Michael Grant:
Interesting. Well, speaking of things space-like, is there a UFO buried under Dreamy Draw dam?

>> Clay Thompson:
I think if you want to believe that there is a UFO buried under Dreamy Draw dam, then there is. It was back in 1947, and it was two months after the incident in Roswell, the famous incident in Roswell. There were reports, people believed that a UFO crashed someplace up in that area, and there were two little space guys on it, and they were in some guy's freezer out in that area for a while. And then the government seized them and spirited them away, and had them buried, and if you believe in all of this, which I don't actually, the reason Dreamy Draw dam was built was not for flood control or anything else, but to cover up the evidence of the UFO, which seems like a lot of time and effort for the government to go to if you ask me, but there you have it. There are people who believe it.

>> Michael Grant:
Sort of a son of Roswell, New Mexico, story.

>> Clay Thompson:
There you go, our own version. >

> Michael Grant:
I did not know this. It is against the law to grow Morning Glories in Arizona. Why?

>> Clay Thompson:
It's common in a lot of agricultural areas. Morning Glories grow into a very compact tangle of roots and vines and so on and so forth, and they clog up farm machinery, like a combine or a machine that picks cotton or something like that. They can be very dense and difficult to deal with massive Morning Glories.

>> Michael Grant:
Another question that you have been asked and that you have answered, is fishing allowed in Arizona canals?

>> Clay Thompson:
Fishing is allowed in Arizona canals. You can't swim in the canals. You shouldn't throw stuff in the canals, but you can fish. I don't know that I would, but apparently a lot of people do.

>> Michael Grant:
You showed up in the late 1970s. I got here in the late 1960s and you answered the question about Legend City, which I actually remember Legend City, but what was it?

>> Clay Thompson:
You know, I can't remember if Legend City was still open when I came in '78 or not, but it was an amusement park down by Washington and 40th Street. And it was a big deal when it first opened. Compton Terrace started out there. There were rides and a western theme. The problem with it was, it was about the time when Disneyland was opening in California and people were able to go over there, and it just didn't compare very well to Disneyland. And it went through two or three sets of owners, and I don't think it ever really did make very much money, and it eventually went out of business, and that's where the Salt River Project bought it and have their offices there now.

>> Michael Grant:
Yeah, I think so. All right. I saved the best for last. Why do cockroaches die with their feet in the air?

>> Clay Thompson:
Well, it depends on how they are killed. If you womp one with your shoe, it will die right there with a big mess on the floor.

>> Michael Grant:
Let's assume natural causes.

>> Clay Thompson:
If it's having a seizure of some sort or if you gassed it, or if it's been treated with some sort of a neurotoxen, its little cockroach arms and legs fly around, and it eventually flips itself over on its back, and it can't get up. Like a turtle, like turning a turtle over. It's back heavy, so to speak. The shell is very heavy.

>> Michael Grant:
Clay Thompson, we need to mention the web site or your publisher gets irritated.

>> Clay Thmpson:
www.claythompsonbooks.com.

>> Michael Grant:
It is a great book. Clay Thompson, I enjoyed the conversation.

>> Clay Thompson:
Thank you very much.

>> Michael Grant:
Thank you very much for joining us on a special edition of "Horizon." Have a great one. I'm Michael Grant.

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