Seven Inches from the Sun

Jon traveled in his car down Highway 10 somewhere between Phoenix, Arizona and Palm Springs, California in the absolute middle of nowhere. His family had lived in a little mining town called Midland, named for the Midland Mining Company, about 22 miles due north of the small town of Blythe, California and, on this trip, Jon planned to visit the home he lived in when he was five-years-old.

Midland was smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert which, in the dead of the summer, could reach temperatures of 124 degrees. As Jon drove, the temperature meter situated just below his front window, reading the outside temperature, read 118 degrees. Year around in Midland, the weather was fierce, scorching and sometimes downright chilly; 124 degrees in the summer plunging to cool, even snowy nights in the winter. In recorded history, the Mojave Desert--which means "by the water" according to the local Native Americans-- has reached some of the hottest temperatures on Earth, as high as 134 degrees, and without any remorse whatsoever could kill you within a few hours if you walked around in it without water. And so being a cardinal rule of survival, you simply did not do it.

The truth is that Jon liked the heat and with his olive complexion appeared to have a tan all the time, although he now lived in the rainy environs of northern Oregon. And he loved the desert although it could be a cruel, hard place to live in that was unforgiving, ungodly hot and dangerous with all kinds of nasty creatures like diamondback rattlesnakes, tarantulas, scorpions, and, because it was close to the Big Maria Mountains, mountain lions. Of course, the desert had terribly fun creatures to watch and touch and laugh at that gave Jon hours of pleasure when he was a five-year-old boy, like horned toads, tortoises, roadrunners, jackrabbits, hawks, vultures and a whole host of other creepy-crawlies that only five-year-old kids can love. 

The road to Midland, even 60 years back in Jon's life, was at the bleak end of a single dirt-gravel-paved always bumpy, dusty road connecting it to the rest of the world. As Jon drove his car, throwing dirt and dust and loose rocks into the air, and jostling him about, Jon realized how worse the road had become over time with potholes and cracks in the asphalt, no doubt because of the baking sun and occasional flash-flooding which crossed over the road in turrets of water.

Although Jon was only five when he lived in Midland, he remembers his mother talking about their family's experience there years later before she died at the age of 45. She said that only about 200 families lived in Midland; most of the men worked in the mine and most of the women were homemakers. The town was completely owned and run by Midland Mining where most of the men worked. There was a hardware/grocery store; a gas station; a kindergarten; an elementary/middle school; an all-denominational Christian church; a medical clinic; a baseball field; a community center; a ghetto; a bar; rows of ramshackle wood houses for the miners, and 1950s style middle class homes for the supervisors. The middle-class homes were located right next to the school and on the other side of the school, divided by a tiny hill high enough to hide them, were the miner’s row houses, including Jon's. When the mine was depleted in the 1970s, U.S. Gypsum left and took the whole town with them, lock, stock, and barrel.

At the end of the 22-mile drive from Blythe to Midland, Jon drove into a flat area that he knew was once where the town was located. The town was gone. Nothing remained. It was a ghost town with no buildings and no ghosts. Just concrete pads where the miners' homes, and Jon's, once stood. No schoolhouse, no church, no medical clinic, just concrete slabs with weeds growing through them, rotting railroad ties on the railroad bed that bordered the mine, a few rusted and gutted 1940s style coupes punctured with bullet holes, and tumbleweeds piled up high on the baseball field’s chain link backstop. There was also a sign that acknowledged the town of Midland and it was rusting and full of bullet holes.

Jon got out of his car and was immediately hit by the heat. It felt like he was seven inches from the sun and despite his thin t-shirt, shorts and rubber flipflops, Jon felt overwhelmed. Jon was by himself because no one else would have enjoyed the trip through the steamy hot desert, walking around concrete slabs where the town once stood, and watching some tarantulas, red ants and scorpions protecting their territory.

Jon was a nostalgic person who liked to visit the places he had once live in; for whatever reason those visits which took him across the United States six times over twelve years, brought back memories of his youth, his loving family and centered him.

Jon started walking around. For whatever reason, despite the 118-degree temperature at noon, which probably would get worse as the day unfolded, Jon did not bring any water with him. To keep Jon and his four sisters and brother alive when they were always very young and wandered into the desert to play, his mother, Ruth, gave them all some simple rules to follow. The rules were: “Keep the town in view wherever you play so that you do not get lost and are close enough to get back before the heat overcomes you.” And “Always come home when you are thirsty.” And “Do not stay out after the sun goes down.” The fact that Jon made it past 5 illustrated that Jon followed his mother's rules to the letter! However, on this day he did not.

Jon walked among and alongside the concrete slabs where there once were gravel roads. Whenever he walked on top of the concrete slabs, now sizzling in the sun, the heat passed right through his rubber flip-flop shoes and heated up the bottom of his feet. As Jon walked off the concrete slab where he thought his house had been and ventured about the ghostly, empty town, Jon realized that he had made another mistake not bringing high boots to wear, both to protect his feet from the sun and also to prevent a snake from biting him on the ankle.

North of him, Jon saw a bunch of metal pieces that some visitor had made into a rough sculpture, and as he admired the artistic work bending over to look at some of the welds, from under a rock came a 6-foot diamondback rattlesnake--called an ambush predator in the desert-- with a venomous bite that can kill a human. No doubt the snake was surprised by Jon's presence, and leaping high up, fiercely bit Jon in the cheek. Jon fell to the ground, the snake's venom now coursing into his bloodstream and brain since the bite was to his head. As Jon reeled from the attack and grew woosy from the venom, Jon knew the toxin in the snake's venom was called a hemotoxin, because it killed red blood cells and caused tissue damage. Jon had not anti-toxin which he could get if he drove the 22 miles back to an emergency clinic in Blythe, but unfortunately there was no time. Jon laid back on the concrete slab, looking at the sun for the last time and it seemed to Jon as his eyes grew bleary and the toxin spread throughout his body, that he was only seven inches from the sun. And after Jon died, and his body lay exposed to other predators like coyotes and red ants and other creep-crawlies that fed off his body over the next few days, once they had eaten all of Jon's flesh, the sun baked his bones and bleached them white, another monument to the last days of Midland, California.