Desert Joys

Idon’t see an Indian casino nearby. In Yuma, yes, but not yet in the Valley. Whatever happened to the off-reservation casino OK’d by Jerry Brown? It was supposed to be built near Calexico. However, the absence of a casino does not stop us from gambling. I bet my walking shorts and two T-shirts will dry faster than your denim shorts. I’ll raise you $20 on that bet.

All the laundry is floating in the breeze on the backyard clothesline. It’s only a matter of minutes before everything is dry. Drier than a bone. Dries faster than the electric dryer. Anything ignite, I ask my dear wife? See. There are advantages to living where the temp easily reaches 110 degrees though I can’t seem to convince my out-of-town friends to come visit in August. No lines. Plenty of parking. Good service. Nah, they say. We’ll wait till November. Chickens all!

We just made a quick trip to San Diego to deliver a car to our daughter who has committed to a job there after living in Italy as an expatriate. Living overseas, even in Florence, Italy, sounds romantic, and it has some alluring aspects.

However, it is also quite difficult to uproot from the United States and live in a country where government services and the bureaucracy that delivers them harken back to the Roman Empire. What, no water service in your apartment? It’ll take a couple of months to repair as we round up the necessary number of slaves from the market to fix the aqueduct.

Our daughter told the bureaucrats that she did go on-line to complain to the responsible authorities about no water service in her flat. No, no, they said.

You don’t understand Italian well enough. You must get in line and wait in the hot sun. I suggested she come home, that we have plenty of hot sun in the Valley. But, let’s face it: The Italians eat better. The government employees take a couple of hours for lunch. To heck with customer service. Time for pasta and baked artichoke hearts. The quality of life is excellent as long as you don’t need to use the post office.

My dear wife does not enjoy driving in San Diego as the cars pop in and out of freeway lanes at 20 miles per hour over the speed limit. I drove the trusty Toyota Corolla that we were to deliver.

I once heard a guy on Car Talk exclaim that driving a Corolla was akin to driving a WWII Army jeep. Pretty basic. Where’s the satellite radio, I asked? It’s a pre-satellite car, I was told. Why is the CD player broken? Ah, but it gets incredibly good mileage without being a hybrid or electric plug-in. It’s the poor man’s Prius.

It all ended well. We delivered the car, and, coincidentally, had a nice lunch at Piacere Mio, a small and tasty Italian restaurant in South Park. It’s a good place to practice your Italian. If you are a Spanish speaker, you can pick up most of the Italian quickly. I sit there and smile eating my fish and pasta.

All this said, it was good to get home. I dislike the heat. Intensely. But San Diego nights are very humid. The days were pleasant. Oh, but the cars are everywhere. We arrived in El Centro, and my first task was to water the plants.

We are trying to summer-over eggplants and some peppers. Our water bill could float the Midway aircraft carrier, so keeping the vegetable plants alive may not have been the best idea.

But the cactus, succulents and assorted trees are doing well. Many of these are on drip.

Try it. This is, after all, the desert, though the local landscaping models don’t replicate desert landscaping. It’s a Midwestern model.

Expect visitors after All Saints Day. If you have too many, tell them you are busy gardening or just enjoying the outdoors.