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By Georgie Wood
(ggannwood@yahoo.com)
Cliff, Neal, and I enjoyed watching baseball and basketball games on TV, especially the Arizona Wildcats! It was during the time when we were working at taking care of our ex-Panorama Ranch homesite along Aravaipa Creek when the 1988 Final Four game between the Arizona Wildcats and the Oklahoma Sooners took place, and we with a number of friends and family watched that game on a television set we had set up outdoors by the old grapevine arbor on the ranch. Although we were disappointed about the Wildcats’ loss, everyone was feeling pretty good when some played basketball after dark at the one hoop that had been in the front lot for a long time.
A strange thing happened at our downstream home shortly after the terrible earthquake hit San Francisco on Oct. 17, 1989. After Neal had turned the TV on to check on the World Series game at Candlestick Park, he yelled at us that there was an earthquake at San Francisco. We watched the news continually, and about one and a half hours after the earthquake had hit, Neal called our attention to the two macrame plant hangers inside of our closed front windows because they were swinging back and forth! There had been oral reports that our nearby Brandenburg Mountain had been disturbed a century earlier by rock slides due to the March 3, 1887 Sonoran Earthquake just south of the Arizona border.
On October 31, 1989, the Aravaipa Property Owners Association (APOA) Halloween party was held at our home. Most people wore costumes, but Cliff wouldn’t. I attempted to look like Gloria Swanson, early actress and fashion icon, by wearing black tights, a long, flowered black and white shirt, a white scarf around my head, dangling white earrings and long white necklace, and lots of makeup. I’m pretty sure that gave a few something to talk about later! Neal, who had three grills going, wore a rubber mask that looked like a dirty old man!
Neal had really liked Pinal County Range Deputy Beryl Kent of Mammoth who had died in 1982, after which Neal had written a very touching poem about Beryl. It had been through Beryl that Cliff’s and my daughter, Francie, had met Walt “Nick” Meyer of the Flying UW Ranch west of the San Pedro River. By 1982 their marriage had given them four daughters, Lilah, Jenny, Katie, and Nickie, and our daughter Ann’s marriage to Jesse Burge had given them both April and Grant before 1977. Cliff and I really enjoyed having those grandchildren with us.
I don’t remember the year when Francie held a Halloween party at our home on the hill overlooking Aravaipa Creek. Several Aravaipa children had been invited to the party, and their parents also came. I took a picture of Cliff and laughing Aravaipa Farms owner, Bill Farney, after Cliff had startled Bill at our door with a hug while wearing a blue, flowered muumuu, slippers. a wig and makeup. That was so very funny! We had so much fun with friends and family members in those days.
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