Those cotton fields back home

The Palms Inn still standing tall.

Back in 1965 I was a cotton inspector for the state of Arizona. In no way was I qualified to inspect cotton but my college roommate at Arizona State University, Cal Z. Miller, was an entomology student. He studied bugs, Cal was going to be a cotton inspector in the hell hole of Gila Bend that summer and he recommended me to join him. It was the best paying job a college student could get in the mid-Sixties. $1.50 an hour was the going wage for a bartender or men’s wear salesman. I was both as well as others like a truck driver, bank teller, a PR flack and a singing waiter. As cotton inspectors we’d be making $275 a week. A bank trainee straight out of college earned about that. We were in high cotton if you'll excuse the pun.

So, I interviewed with Cal’s supervisor at the state Capitol in Phoenix, couldn’t spell the weevil in boll weevil, and still got the job.

Palms at the Palms

The legendary pool at the Palms.

Learning to be a cotton inspector had a short and shallow learning curve, right up my short and shallow alley. You opened the cotton boll, looked for the tiny insects, did that a hundred times and your day was done. As I recall it, we walked twenty steps into a row of cotton, picked a plant, inspected it and moved on to the next row. It was easy if blisteringly hot work. By noon each of us had tested the obligatory 100 plants. We worked five or six hours a day, five days a week for our $275. We found no weevils. Ever.

Throughout the summer of '65 we drove 70 miles from Tempe to Gila Bend every Sunday night, checked into the Palms Inn, still there and better than ever as the photographs above attest. I’ve punched the saturation to cast a mid-century vibe. We returned to our apartment at the Lone Palm in Tempe every Friday afternoon, and repaired to the pool beer in hand. It's been said that college mates say they never saw me without a beer after 5pm. We held beer chugging contests from time to time. The contestant stood in the bath tub, it's wet business, beer can in hand and waited for the go signal.  Two stop watches timed his effort. Jack Francis amazed with a world record of .9 seconds. I did 1.2. Yes, sports fans, that's faster than you can pour a beer down the drain. As if anyone would do that

When I call Gila Bend a hell hole I am not embellishing. The town was often the hottest in the country vying for that recognition with Presidio, Texas and Death Valley. To survive we were in the fields by 6am and back at our motel by noon every day.

Our routine was to work in the morning, have lunch in our swamp cooled room, take a nap, lift weights, hang out by the pool, shower, read a good book and walk to Frankie’s Bar for a steak and several bottles of Budweiser, the King of Beers. It was the same every day. Then and now I relish routine and ritual. On Fridays we were back by the pool at the Lone Palm in Tempe by mid-afternoon. It was a simple, unchallenging life. By the end of the summer of 1965 Cal and I were bronzed gods and rolling in dough.

In the spring of 1966 Cal graduated from ASU and became a health inspector in LA. I graduated a year later after eight off and on years. He visited us in Van Nuys a couple of times after Peggy and I moved to The Valley in 1968, Then we lost touch.

All of this is prompted by our drive to southern California in mid-March. In our two-day trip to the coast we stayed in Tucson for one night and took the low road to Borrego Springs through Gila Bend. We were not impressed by the backwater. It is a pit. Whereas most towns from my long ago and misspent youth in Arizona had flourished, Gila Bend had shriveled. It was less than I remembered and that’s saying something.

Of the icons of the summer of 1965 in the no stoplight Gila Bend the Palms Inn still there and was crisp, beautifully maintained and much better than it was when I was 23. Sadly, Frankie’s is no longer. If, indeed, that was it's name. I don't have a clue but Frankie's feels right. The building that once housed the dive bar was gone. I considered making the shuttered bar across Main Street from the Palms as Frankie’s but Peggy’s disdain for small fictions dissuaded me.

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www.immelphotography.com