THING 1: The Dusty Ramblers Project.
The band is part of what I’m calling “the CattleTrack Scene” — although I’m sure I’m not the only one calling it that. The CattleTrack Scene: the creatives orbiting in-and-around (about) a 2-mile strip of road called Cattletrack in Scottsdale, where the desert homes (among them is Fritz Scholder’s estate), studios, and back-porch stages blur together and the art feels very much lived. If I had to label them, I’ll borrow one and call The Ramblers “Sonoran Americana”: pedal steel and acoustic guitars under open sky and violins and petal-steel guitars that breathe in our warm air and don’t really ask for a whole lot of attention. Their sets move easily between covers I forgot I loved and originals that sound like they’ve been around even longer than the band’s “many years” of playing together. Big bonus points here: one of the band’s members, Brent Bond, runs Santos Press, so yea…I’m partial to The Ramblers due to Brent’s work both singing with them as well as pulling paper through his Vandy Universal 1.
THING 2: Heroic Harry and His Partner Blasting Boy.
I’m a collector. Have been my whole life. But you know this. I can’t remember, though, if I told you it started with my love of comics — specifically The Hulk and Daredevil — when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. They’re the first thing I ever collected. Here’s something I know I’ve never mentioned: I loved them so much, I even attempted to draw my own. Fast forward to 2010-ish. I’m poking around one of my favorite, SoCal flea market haunts when I stumble upon a stack of discarded paper. Among that paper? Heroic Harry and His Partner Blasting Boy. Pencil on lined paper, 2 issues staple-bound, multiple covers, logos, issue numbers, villains, time-warps — a fully realized comic book universe imagined by some unknown kid who believed in his characters enough to publish them under the proud banner of “Bravo Comics Group.” I’ve held onto it all these years because it reminded me of my childhood, when I did the exact same thing: folded notebook paper in half, invented my own superhero, numbered the issues like collectors would someday argue over them. There’s something very honest about that level of conviction.
THING 3: Michael Rutter’s Upstairs Girls: Prostitution in the American West.
Whory Dory. Rockin’ Chair Emma. Poker Alice. Fuzzy Girl. Little Gertie. Cuttin’ Lil’ Slasher. Big Nose Kate. Those names aren’t pulp inventions. They’re pulled from documents — arrest records, city directories, newspapers — and they live again in Michael Rutter’s Upstairs Girls: Prostitution in the American West, which has been sitting on my nightstand…when it’s not sitting on my lap. Rutter’s book is less moral judgment and more ledger book: who worked where, what they charged, how they moved from boomtown to boomtown as mining camps rose and collapsed. Prostitution in the West was infrastructure: brothels stood near saloons, hotels, assay offices. Women rented cribs, upstairs rooms, and paid city fines and license fees, navigated madams, pimps, lawmen, gamblers, and the steady churn of silver and gold money. In Tombstone around 1880, they were as much a part of the street life as the Cowboys and the Earps or walking up Allen or Toughnut to Hop Town to score some opium under gaslight lamps.
THING 4: The Annual VNSA Book sale.
The VNSA Book Sale is tomorrow, which means I’ll be up crazy-early — a rare event unless I’m catching a flight to Paris, Amsterdam, or, paybe, New York City. Short of a flea market at dawn, this is about the only thing that pulls me out of bed before sunrise. The sale is put on by the Volunteer Nonprofit Service Association, a Phoenix organization that began in 1957 to support the Visiting Nurse Service, raising money to provide in-home healthcare for people who needed it most. What started as a modest fundraiser has grown into one of the largest used book sales in the Southwest, filling the Arizona State Fairgrounds with tens of thousands of donated volumes. In recent years they’ve added a “rare book” section — which, yes, will be my first stop — but I’m just as excited about the art book tables and the long rows of hardback fiction where some real surprises tend to hide. Massive sales like this are democratic in the best way: high and low sharing the same folding tables, treasures misfiled, forgotten first printings sandwiched between book club editions. It’s part treasure hunt, part civic ritual, and part reminder that books still circulate hand to hand in this desert city. Did I mention the massive line to get in?
THING 5: The Discipline of Letting Things Go.
I don’t really need the money I earn from selling books. It’s a nice supplement to whopping Social Security check, sure, but that’s not why I get up early for flea markets or wander into junk shops. It’s my idea of rescuing things. And I use that word deliberately. So much paper ephemera — books, handmade comics, forgotten art — is one bad decision away from a dumpster. I’ve always felt a kind of obligation to intervene. But lately I’m learning that rescue doesn’t mean permanent custody. Some of the things closest to me — the Heroic Harry comic I held for fifteen-odd years, the record collection I swore I’d never break down, books I loved enough to read twice — eventually deserve to move on. Letting go is its own discipline. It clears space. It sharpens taste. It reminds me that collecting isn’t about possession; it’s about stewardship. I get to hold something for a while, appreciate it, understand it, then send it back out into the world. What’s next? Maybe even the books inscribed to me. Why not. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the story doesn’t end when an object leaves my shelf.
Sometimes that’s when it actually begins again.
