It was the first day of spring semester 1974. I walked into the basement of the old chemistry building at the U of A in Tucson, AZ. I saw a pretty lady with two black braids that hung to her waist, wire rim glasses, backpack on, sitting against the wall of the door to where organic chemistry was to begin. We were both new nursing students. We smiled at each other (I told her I was Dobie, Leslie was her name) and walked in and sat together. Dr. Ceilly began his class with this admonition, “You better find a partner or you won’t get through my class.” We looked at each other, and a lifetime bond was forged in that moment.
Leslie passed chemistry, but I didn’t. But she did save my life that semester when I tried to commit suicide with an overdose of antidepressants. My first husband was very abusive, and I tend to internalize things.
The years would pass, and Leslie and I stayed friends. Our daughters, who were two, and her son who was three, would stay lifelong friends. We babysat for each other, lived together several times, visited each other even when we were thousands of miles apart.
Leslie had moved to Bisbee to finish nursing college at Cochise Community College near Douglas, AZ when the UofA did not accept her after two years of prereqs to be one of their 100 nursing students that year.
We drove from Tucson together to check out the college. You have to pass through the tunnel in the Mule Mountains to emerge with a view of the town of Bisbee. We always called it the time tunnel, because Bisbee is an historic district with no new construction. It is like going back in time to the early 1900’s.
When the copper mines closed in Bisbee in the seventies, the miners left in droves selling their houses for hundreds or a thousand dollars to hippies who were flocking there.
CCC is outside of Douglas, AZ about 20 miles south of Bisbee. After seeing the college we sat on the porch of the Copper Queen Hotel and had a drink.
“What do you think? Should I move here? “ Leslie asked me. “I would,” I said. And she did. And later, I did. I moved there the first time in 1976, but went back to my ex a year and a half later.
The hippies who moved to Bisbee owned it after the miners left. We used to compare living there to the movie The King of Hearts with Alan Bates where a young soldier comes into a town in France and has a great time with the people, never knowing they had all just escaped from the lunatic asylum.
The film is set in a small town in France near the end of World War I. As the Imperial German Army retreats they booby trap the whole town to explode. The locals flee and, left to their own devices, a gaggle of cheerful lunatics escape the asylum and take over the town — thoroughly confusing the lone Scottish soldier who has been dispatched to defuse the bomb.
At the old Catholic Church above Brewery Gulch, we would have gatherings, where a large pot of peyote brewed and everyone danced. During the 70’s and 80's there was always music in Bisbee. In the parks, in the streets, at the gatherings, we were always dancing. Together, alone, it didn’t matter, we danced.
Leslie became a nurse, and I had switched to computer science attending American River College in Sacramento, CA. I had just had my daughter Sarah and was living in Folsom, CA when I visited Leslie in Bisbee for Thanksgiving in 1980.
She had been telling me on the phone about this guy, Skip, that she really liked and took me to meet him that weekend. We went to his “shack by the railroad tracks” (this is what my kids and I always called it). The walls were painted psychedelic pink and purple, and there were tons of little kids running around. Skip drove a truck and was almost never there. It was one of three houses he had bought for a thousand dollars. He let anyone who wanted to crash or live there. The only thing I remember about him that day is I thought he was very nice. Little do we know sometimes.
Three months later my husband and I made our final split after ten contentious years, and I moved back to Bisbee. On my way there I picked up my sister in law, Dawn, and nephew, and they moved there with me and my daughters.
Leslie had just married her true love (this would last a year) and was moving to Texas; so Dawn, the kids and I moved in her house on Tombstone Hill as she moved out.
A couple of days later there was a knock on the door and it was Skip. He had come to say congratulations to Leslie. He started to leave, turned around and said, “By the way, you have a flat tire.” He changed my tire, and the rest is history. Two months later we were living together and married three years later.
Leslie and I always laughed about how we would be grandmothers sitting in our rocking chairs on the porch talking about how our friendship lasted longer than the men in our lives. You never know the future.
Tomorrow is my birthday.
Leslie died on my birthday, January 14, 2002. Skip died the day before, Jan. 13, 2007.
I write this today in remembrance of them both. My two dancers.