Up Against the Wall

BETWEEN A ROCK

&

A HARD PLACE

     When I was 14, we lived in the area of Phoenix known as Paradise Valley. Now an enclave of the wealthy, or at least the semi-wealthy, then it was a largely unpopulated area outside the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, with homes widely scattered over the desert floor. Our home was a small wood-sided house that sat high on the mesa near where the developed area of Phoenix ended and the vacant desert began. Our nearest neighbor was a half mile away, farther up the dirt road that lead to our house. I remember the desert was cut with a grid of dirt roads like ours, but houses were few and far in between. A few miles to the north, a subdivision of tract homes clustered together, but for the most part Paradise Valley was wide open and sparsely settled. It wouldn't last.

     Our home was only about 10 years old, but we had to haul water. A water tank stood on a 10 ft tower behind the house, holding maybe 200 gallons of water. My dad made weekly trips to haul water with a trailer that was provided with the house. Sometimes we would run out of water in the middle of the week, and he would have to make a trip to get a load of water, after working a long day.

     I also remember watching an afternoon TV program aimed at teens. It featured cartoons, live action shenanigans, the Top 10 list every Friday, dancing and record "reviews" by the dancers, and live music, covers of Top 40 hits and gag songs, by a band called Hubb Kapp and the Wheels. It was sort of a cross between American Bandstand and Where the Action Is, on a local level, typical mid-60's zaniness. Years later, I would recognize, beneath the makeup, the same singer I had previously known as Hubb Kapp, in his new incarnation as Alice Kooper.

     Living where we did, with the houses so far apart, there weren't any kids nearby, so I spent much of my time outside, exploring the desert. The mesa rose behind our house, sloping upward for several hundred yards before shearing off in a cliff face that overlooked the cut where Cave Creek Rd passed through on its route into the Paradise Valley. The cliff just suddenly dropped from the sloping desert floor, falling in a nearly vertical face some 60 ft before it meeting the talus slope to continue down to the banks of the road. A gas station, a Flying A if memory serves, occupied a wide spot in the area south of the talus slope. The cliffs, a reddish-brown escarpment of basaltic rock tailed off on the west end, dying into the desert a few hundred feet away.

     I scrambled down the side and looked up at the cliff face; from the bottom it looked even more impressive, presenting a nearly smooth face, broken here and there with cracks and small protrusions of rock. I began by climbing at the edges, following an obvious and easy path, testing each foothold to know I could trust it, each handhold before committing my weight to it before reaching for the next. I soon reached the top, feeling like Sir Edmund Hillary when I rolled over onto the top and sat, legs dangling into space, contemplating the empire at my feet. I was the king of the world; far below toy cars moved through the cut. I knew I had found one of those secret places where fun and adventure met to create something special.

      Soon, I was climbing everyday after school. I would leave the bus, race to the house and drop my books, then head out the back door toward the scarp, whistling a merry tune. Those were some of the happiest days of my youth, lasting a mere three months, but encompassing a world completely apart from any I had known before. I had a tiny transistor radio, hardly the size of a pack of cigarettes, with an earphone that I plugged in, rocking out to the Spring 1964 Top 40, the Beatles, Peter and Gordon, Billy J Kramer, Chuck Berry's No Particular Place to Go, a musical world exploding across the airwaves. I would tuck the radio into a pocket, the earpiece in my ear, and set off across the rock face, looking for new challenges and rocking to the hits, growing bolder with each successful climb.

     Soon, I was climbing down to begin my climb up, searching for evermore difficult routes across the rock face, for the climb had developed into a challenge of epic proportions for me, as I grew more skilled and confident. Before long, I had traversed every path, up and down, even across the face, looking for ever more difficult paths to climb, never stopping to consider that I was perched on tiny outcropping of rock mere inches wide, clinging to equally small knobs with clenched fingers, high above the busy road below, where at any given moment dozens of cars where speeding by. A misstep, a broken foothold, a handhold suddenly breaking away from the rock face, and I would be plunging straight down, rolling down the steep talus slope and into the path of oncoming traffic before I could stop my fall. Assuming, of course, I was sufficiently conscious to be able to stop.

     Such thoughts really didn't cross my mind, I was certain of my immortality and supremely confident of my ability to climb any route up this cliff. It was this self-delusion that nearly brought me literally crashing down. I followed a twisting, tortuous path up the cliff face one afternoon, selecting the hardest holds, looking for a way I had yet to travel, making choices based on difficulty. I finally ended up on a section I hadn't climbed before, because it was almost smooth. No cracks, nothing sticking out to step onto, the face was a blank. I reached up as far as I could, for a tiny handhold, and left my last solid foothold for a tiny projection that barely allowed enough purchase to keep my foot on. Suddenly, there I was, face pressed up against the rock, hanging on for dear life. There was no way to get back down to where I had been, and nothing presented itself for me to move onto, in the way of a hand- or foothold. I was stuck, some 60 ft up in the air, looking down at the cars as tiny as Hot Wheels rushing through the pass below. I was well and truly stuck, with no place to go, no way to signal anyone, because my position was so tenuous I could not risk taking a hand away to signal my distress.

     Panic began to well up in my chest, I could just imagine my mother's anger and sadness over my broken body (I could easily visualize black tire treads criss-crossing my body!). I knew she would be saddened, but I also knew how righteous her anger would be. I did NOT want to be the object of that ire, so I began an intensive study of the rock face, looking at it from mere inches away, because I couldn't pull my head back very far. There didn't seem to be any options, as I carefully reversed the direction of my head against the wall, turning to look the other way. I desperately sought any hand hold, any crack or cranny, any place I could lodge my hand or rest a foot to give me leverage to move to another. Nothing appeared to be close enough, and my panic grew, my heart beating like a trip hammer, threatening to burst out of my chest from the sheer intensity.

     I swallowed hard, pushing the fear down, and again looked at the rock face for an escape. I had gone over it enough to be able to memorize it, when I noticed a small vertical crack above my head, slightly out of reach. I looked to see if there was any place to put my foot, and saw a tiny outcrop that was too high to step too, and too low to hold on to, and too far away in any case. I studied these possibilities and finally decided if I could get my hand into the crack above, I could swing to the foothold, and there would be other handholds near enough to reach from there. I would have to launch myself from my already tenuous foothold, up to jam my fingers into the crack and then swing onto the foothold, a series of feats worthy of an Olympic gymnast, but I had no other choices.

     I set my set ready to go, gathered my courage, such as it was, and focused on the tasks necessary to accomplish what I wanted. Saying a final prayer, I tensed my thigh muscles and leapt up toward the crack. I managed to jam my fingers just barely into the crack, taking the entire weight of my body on them as my feet left any purchase on the rock. I hung there for a moment and then swung over to get my foot on the tiny ledge of rock and pulled my other arm over my head to get a grip in the crack. This allowed me to pull my abused fingers out of the crack, flex them to get the blood back into them and then reach up for another handhold above. By this manner, I crabbed up the smooth face, reaching for each succeeding hold as it became available, until I finally was able to pull myself over the edge and lay on the flat ground at the top once again. As I gasped and gathered my scattered wits about me, I looked down at the face, and at the drop I would have taken, at the traffic rolling by oblivious to my recent peril.

     I knew I had been spared a horrible fate, and I gave thanks to whatever guardian angels had been sitting on my shoulders that day. I sat with my legs dangling over the edge, a stupid grin on my face. I plugged the earpiece back in and twisted the volume up, Dave Clark Five's Bits and Pieces rocking out, as I gazed out over my realm. I knew I couldn't tell anyone about this, lest it get back to my mother, and besides, who would believe it anyway? I didn't half believe it myself. A few years ago, when I finally told my mom about this escapade, she wasn't amused. I knew then I had made the right decision to spare her the worry this might have caused, and myself the punishment it would have generated. It might have been worse than the fall....