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8:30 pm - Vacation - Day
8 (the end)
We drove back to Phoenix, turned in the rental car, caught the plane and said
goodbye to Arizona - The End. It's always a bit of a downer when you have to return
to 'real' life so I guess we've just got to find a way of turning the
wonderful adventures we have when we vacation into something that we can
experience for longer periods of time.
 Some
thoughts on Sedona:
Ever since I set sight on Courthouse Butte when we first entered Sedona, I
had a continual feeling of déjà vu - you know, that strange sense that all
this has occurred before. However, this was not just a fleeting sense of
reliving some unknown past experience, but a feeling so strong and incessant
that I thought I might be suffering from some sort of neurological disorder.
Then, on one of the last days of our vacation while wondering through uptown
Sedona, I ran across what looked like an old movie theatre. It actually
turned out to be a part of the Sedona Heritage Museum and as soon as I walked
in I saw the déjà vu images that had been flashing through my head projected
on television screens around the room. Old western motion pictures such as
John Wayne's Angel and the Badman and Joan Crawford in Johnny
Guitar flickered round the walls of the room. I was so taken aback that I
thought I even caught a glimpse of Zane Grey's Call of the Canyon (the
1923 silent version!) I'm still not sure if I did or not. Apparently, there
have been more than 80 (mostly Western) feature films shot in Sedona. And why
were they so recognizable to me? Because as a very young boy, I sat for hours
on end with my late paternal grandfather watching these films over and over
again. A Romanian immigrant, he had a near pathological fascination with what
he referred to as "shoot'em-ups" and I was always more than happy
to sit at his feet and nearly memorize these cowboy epics that seemed to be
on every Saturday morning. It is my most enduring memory of him.
 I
was somewhat disappointed in the Museum itself. They had no complete listing
of the films made in Sedona and only a handful of video tapes were actually
on view. No one seemed to know when others would be showing or if they would
ever make tapes available for purchase by the public. The young staff was
earnest, but seemed to know very little about the actual movies themselves. Hmmmm…
Perhaps I should apply for a job and whip the place into shape - that would
allow me to be on vacation year round! It would be a chance to relive a
child's wonder: a world of heroes with no ambiguity, no sordid pasts and no
complicated motivations; the good guys bring in the bad guys - every time.
You just have to be able to stand the summer desert heat.
One last quick Sedona fact: how it got its name. At the turn of the century,
the largest landowner in the area, T. C. Schnebly, named the area after his
wife, Sedona. Sedona's mother, Amanda Miller, "just thought up" the
name Sedona because she thought it sounded pretty.
So, the name Sedona isn't Spanish, nor is it Native American. It was
"just thought up" by a woman of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage living
in Missouri. But you know what? Like Amanda Miller, I think it sounds pretty,
too.
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