Night of the Lepus! (Not "The Milagro Beanfield War")
I usually don't like horror movies that actually scare me, but I do sometimes enjoy horror movies that I think are funny because I'm not scared by the stuff that's supposed to be scary. Some of my favorites from my younger years:
I stayed an extra night in Ajo to avoid some wind and to give my ears an extra day to recover from my head cold before changing elevation. The conference center wasn't available, so I booked a room at a quirky motel.
I had a few hours to kill in between checking out of the conference center and checking in to the motel, but I didn't want to counteract the benefit of staying an extra day by driving far enough to change elevation, so I did a fair amount of driving around Ajo. I saw a lot of murals, visited the overlook to the nearby mine, and I paid a visit to the Ajo museum.
The white building that looks like a church in the next shot is the Ajo Museum, which inhabits a former church.
When I got to the museum, I was the only visitor, and an old guy named Jose had nothing better to do than to talk to me, so I learned quite a bit about Ajo's history. Just driving around town, it's obvious that the town was once much more prosperous than it is now. What I didn't know is that a big mining operation that was very lucrative for several decades became unprofitable in the early 1980's, and the mine shut down. As a result, the town lost about half its population very quickly.
I'm not able to verify everything that Jose told me online, but the gist of the story seems right. The mine isn't totally depleted, but the economics have to change again to make it profitable to operate. Jose clearly believes that someday they'll start mining more seriously again and the town will spring back to life. I hope he's right. There's a lot to like about Ajo.
Some more people arrived at the museum, and Jose started talking to them. I snapped a photo of the display about movies that had been filmed there:
According to imdb.com, the list is even longer than that: https://www.imdb.com/search/title?locations=Ajo,%20Arizona,%20USA&ref_=ttloc_loc_4
About an hour before check-in time, I decided to see if the motel could handle an early check-in. When I got there, the door was locked and there were several laminated signs posted giving information about where to deposit keys to check out, and multiple numbers to call in case of emergency. Since the door was locked and all those signs were posted, I decided the answer to the question of whether they could handle an early check-in was a resounding "No!" and I went to explore Ajo a bit more. I returned a few minutes after the official check-in time, but the door was still locked, and all the signs were still posted. One of the signs said "in case of emergency or if you need a room," so I called that number.
A cheerful young woman appeared almost immediately. She said something that sounded like she'd been hanging around waiting for me to arrive, but I let that slide because she was friendly and helpful and told me I was flagged as a VIP (I have no idea what that might be about and she didn't either). I was shown to a very conveniently-located room, and she turned on every light in the room and the TV before I returned with the first of my stuff. Turning on every light in the room was no small thing -- there were table lamps on just about every available surface, and a light bar above the sink that I could only figure out how to turn off and on with a pull chain. It was a rather peculiar service to provide, I thought.
You know how motels usually have blank walls with maybe one or two fairly bland pictures? Not this place. Everywhere I looked was something decorative and brightly colored. There were also lots of laminated notes warning about something or other. The photos below show some of the wall decorations in my room, the shower curtain, part of my favorite warning sign, and the amusing way that extra rolls of toilet paper were provided. The vibe was more like a teenager's bedroom than a motel room. I was fine with that.
I'm not sure exactly what "extremely prohibited" means, but I suspect that I'd have lost my VIP status if I had tried to stream over the TV. :^) I could see why people might be tempted to try -- there were YouTube and Netflix (and a couple of other relevant) buttons on the remote control. Clearly it's possible to do, but has some unpleasant consequence for the motel which they would want to pass along to anyone who violated this extreme prohibition.
- "The Car" with James Brolin
- "Crack In The World" with Dana Andrews
- "The Exorcist" with Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn
- "Night of the Lepus" with Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, and DeForest Kelley
I stayed an extra night in Ajo to avoid some wind and to give my ears an extra day to recover from my head cold before changing elevation. The conference center wasn't available, so I booked a room at a quirky motel.
I had a few hours to kill in between checking out of the conference center and checking in to the motel, but I didn't want to counteract the benefit of staying an extra day by driving far enough to change elevation, so I did a fair amount of driving around Ajo. I saw a lot of murals, visited the overlook to the nearby mine, and I paid a visit to the Ajo museum.
The white building that looks like a church in the next shot is the Ajo Museum, which inhabits a former church.
When I got to the museum, I was the only visitor, and an old guy named Jose had nothing better to do than to talk to me, so I learned quite a bit about Ajo's history. Just driving around town, it's obvious that the town was once much more prosperous than it is now. What I didn't know is that a big mining operation that was very lucrative for several decades became unprofitable in the early 1980's, and the mine shut down. As a result, the town lost about half its population very quickly.
I'm not able to verify everything that Jose told me online, but the gist of the story seems right. The mine isn't totally depleted, but the economics have to change again to make it profitable to operate. Jose clearly believes that someday they'll start mining more seriously again and the town will spring back to life. I hope he's right. There's a lot to like about Ajo.
Some more people arrived at the museum, and Jose started talking to them. I snapped a photo of the display about movies that had been filmed there:
According to imdb.com, the list is even longer than that: https://www.imdb.com/search/title?locations=Ajo,%20Arizona,%20USA&ref_=ttloc_loc_4
About an hour before check-in time, I decided to see if the motel could handle an early check-in. When I got there, the door was locked and there were several laminated signs posted giving information about where to deposit keys to check out, and multiple numbers to call in case of emergency. Since the door was locked and all those signs were posted, I decided the answer to the question of whether they could handle an early check-in was a resounding "No!" and I went to explore Ajo a bit more. I returned a few minutes after the official check-in time, but the door was still locked, and all the signs were still posted. One of the signs said "in case of emergency or if you need a room," so I called that number.
A cheerful young woman appeared almost immediately. She said something that sounded like she'd been hanging around waiting for me to arrive, but I let that slide because she was friendly and helpful and told me I was flagged as a VIP (I have no idea what that might be about and she didn't either). I was shown to a very conveniently-located room, and she turned on every light in the room and the TV before I returned with the first of my stuff. Turning on every light in the room was no small thing -- there were table lamps on just about every available surface, and a light bar above the sink that I could only figure out how to turn off and on with a pull chain. It was a rather peculiar service to provide, I thought.
You know how motels usually have blank walls with maybe one or two fairly bland pictures? Not this place. Everywhere I looked was something decorative and brightly colored. There were also lots of laminated notes warning about something or other. The photos below show some of the wall decorations in my room, the shower curtain, part of my favorite warning sign, and the amusing way that extra rolls of toilet paper were provided. The vibe was more like a teenager's bedroom than a motel room. I was fine with that.
I'm not sure exactly what "extremely prohibited" means, but I suspect that I'd have lost my VIP status if I had tried to stream over the TV. :^) I could see why people might be tempted to try -- there were YouTube and Netflix (and a couple of other relevant) buttons on the remote control. Clearly it's possible to do, but has some unpleasant consequence for the motel which they would want to pass along to anyone who violated this extreme prohibition.
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