Beware You Have Entered the Twilight Zone

I’ve shed many tears lately…..tears of temporary sorrow from missing my wife, my granddaughter, my family as a whole, and my home town of Pagosa Springs.   If I am being truthful, however, the majority of tears stem from joy as I contemplate all the people who visit my food trailer, and share how they’ve read my blog;  or when I consider the fact that my wife is so very patient as I work through this freakin’ mission;  or when I consider how the locals recommend Eddie B Cookin and just keep sending more people my way.  Most people that know me on an intimate level,  tell me that I’m a metro sexual male.  I suppose that’s true, as I wear my emotions on my sleeve, plus the fact that I really do enjoy foo foo cosmopolitan martini’s.  So here it is….Eddie comes out!!!!  I have to admit that I have shed tears for all the reasons I listed above, and since I’m in a confessin’ mood, I might as well tell you this:  At the end of the day when I’m exhausted and I collapse in my tent for a bit of relaxation and a nice glass of chardonnay (It’s that metro sexual me coming out) I find myself contemplating the magnificent blessings of my life and I well up with tears.  Okay, so I’m a crier…what about it?    Since I’ve plunged into this world of minimalism and surrounded myself with people who choose to live on society’s fringe, I’ve developed a greater appreciation for the simple blessings we usually take for granted.   For example:  The other day a gentleman came out of the desert riding his quad, he had a purpose in mind, he wanted to share with me the fact that he enjoys reading my blog.  I am taken aback by the number of people who show genuine concern as to whether or not I am making it.  I am touched by the person who left a fifty dollar bill in my tip jar, and the person that posted a comment on my blog asking, “hey where you at man,  when is the next update coming?” One thing I’ve discovered about being in the throes of a midlife crises is that emotions become extreme……uhhhh, am I experiencing Man-a-pause??  Woe unto me, so there you have it, my new found sensitivity of life’s simple pleasure of feeling appreciated.

Talk about feeling appreciated, it recently occurred to me that I am probably the only food vendor in this temporary geriatric metropolis doing it all solo, as in no helpers, yet still I am full of Joy.  That’s not to say that all other food vendors aren’t grinding away at trying to make a buck.  It’s just a statement relating to the fact that the mass crowd numbers never really materialized to justify a helper in my world.  By all accounts this is the worst year in memory for Quartzsite, yet I refuse to allow that to bring me down. 

Eddie B Doin' It His Way

Okay, so now it’s getting stupid crazy! There are so many people here now it’s making me dizzy. Quartzsite now qualifies as one of those must do things if you live within a 100 miles. For me the transformation is now complete. I arrived here the last week of October, and this place was a barren desert outpost. Today, it’s a bustling community rife with the traffic of quads, motor homes, motorized scooters, motorcycles, and every homemade vehicle imaginable. I have chronicled the evolution process in small steps…..but in one exponential step, the baby is full grown. My food trailer is positioned on a main thorough fair for the major swap meets, so cars, trucks, motor homes, etc….are constantly driving in and around the road’s shoulder in front of my trailer.  I came up with, what I considered a great idea, to put my large wooden advertisement sandwich board in a spot that would prevent cars from parking long term  directly in front of my trailer.  I want potential customers to be able to see my trailer from the roadway.  My neighbor Jim, being the seasoned veteran that he is, bet me that before the day was out, someone would unintentionally run right through it.  Of course, being the self confident man that I am,  I accepted the bet.  I figured that Jim was sure to lose since the board is 4 feet high by 3 feet wide and bright white in color.  Surely, I thought, drivers would see it and avoid hitting it.  Obviously I thought more highly of the local drivers than Jim did. 

  

A Real Sense of Community

           Two weeks incommunicado, suffice it to say:  Eddie B having computer problems.  I’ll save the computer problems for another day…. For today, I’ve much tell.   January is here….”the big month”, the ”you’ll be so busy, you will want it to stop” month.  The,  “you’ll be amazed by the amount of people” month….. Well, let’s just say that I’m still waiting to be amazed.  At this point, I’m  thanking the Good Lord for the locals who have discovered my trailer. It is the locals who sustain me.   At this point 90-95% of the customers say they were told by someone they know to try my food. I am once again humbled and awestruck at the pace of the way word travels in this desert arena. As the snowbirds continue to descend upon this remote desert warm spot, and all the vendors that intended to get here are here, things are heating up. I was beginning to believe, that I had come to Quartzsite way too early, but now I see the blessing of arriving way in advance. As this sub-culture continues to develop each week, I gain a whole new perspective of this place. Snowbirds continue to arrive en-mass in big massive million dollar motor-Coaches. I guess, once you reach that super elite level, you now travel in a ”Motor Coach”.  Yet they stay out in the desert on some BLM land for $180.00 per season….what’s up with that?  While on the subject of snowbirds, I am going to go out on a limb and voice two issues I have concerning my future senior years.