 Owning an older home presented myriad challenges. Plumbing was the first. Being city-suburb dwellers, such matters had always been invisible to us. Two toilets didn’t flush properly, and all the faucets leaked. We called Oracle’s one plumber, Delbert “Dub” Ragels, owner of Dub’s Plumbing. He showed up a couple days later. After greetings and a few niceties, he fixed the worst offending faucet and suggested that we’d better learn to change the washers ourselves or we’d soon run out of money.
“This is Oracle,” he said with a grin, “but don’t get me wrong, I like the business.” Read the rest of the Episode 4 here: frankpierson.substack.com
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 During our first few days in the new house, a balding white haired man (about my age now) drove an ancient four-wheel drive Ford pickup from the road straight to our front door on what wasn’t intended as a driveway. So who the hell is this rude old guy and what does he want?
Stiff of back (like mine is now), ever so carefully placing each foot, he lowered himself down from his truck - breathing heavily with an oxygen tank in tow. “Bill Collier,” he announced holding out his calloused right hand, “the neighbor right behind you.” Before we could respond he followed with, “Just thought I’d drop by to meet you folks and bring you up to speed on the neighborhood and its history”. (Visit frankpierson.substack.com for the entire Episode 3.)  On our first visit, we were blown away by the oaks, the majestic Santa Catalinas rising at towns edge, wild growing iris, mysterious granite outcroppings. Not desert, not mountain - somewhere in between - a “transition zone”. And so it became for us, geographically and personally from one way of life to another.
Most of Oracle was hidden away in the nooks and crannies of ridges and washes, all somehow carved out from the Santa Catalina foothills facing a desert plateau. Every view, even a handful of feet away, opened to new vistas, different plant life. A place of infinite visual discovery. We didn’t know a soul. We had no relationships to build on. We’d never been through such a place much less considered actually buying in to it. Follow our story: The complete Episode 2 is up on frankpierson.substack.com  Cedar Ridge, Oracle, AZ Looks about the same as when we moved to Oracle in 1979.
------------ New York City was drowning in debt. Felix Rohatyn and the Municipal Assistance Corporation had just taken over the government moving it even farther from ordinary citizens. Crime was spiking. A series of bizarre murders, several nearby us in Queens, scared everybody half to death. A couple was shot returning from an evening out at a disco. A Barnard student was shot dead in the face. Mayor Beame and local law enforcement were helpless. He showed up one day near our apartment when Kaz confronted him: “Do something you asshole, “ she shouted to his face. I had a meltdown of sorts one afternoon in Astoria Park. Sitting with my dog Roofer I put my arms around his neck and started telling him my troubles (okay, I was crying). As man’s best friend Roofer was a good listener with an ear for lament. I told him my work seemed to be going nowhere and I wanted out of the city. Meanwhile, David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, was also engaged in dog conversation, one that included demonic instructions of murder and mayhem. My work – “community organizing” - in light of the cataclysmic events unfolding all around us seemed piddling. I was exhausted by trying to play the hero. We were lonely for relationships that we didn’t know we missed. A weird limbo we struggled to get our heads around. -------- Visit https://frankpierson.substack.com/ for the complete Episode 1. I'm looking to post a new episode every other week. Free sign up.  This is It: No knead bread right out of a Dutch Oven. BTW I'm writing my Oracle book on https://frankpierson.substack.com/ Serialized in "Episodes" that capture some of the events and people we've known over the years since we moved here in 1979. What does substacking and bread making have in common? Trying out new things. |
AuthorKaz and I moved to Oracle in 1979. The house we bought dated to the late 1940s. With little advance knowledge of the place, we set out to build a new life together, intending to settle in and raise a family. 
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