Home Sweet Jerome by Diane Rapaport (2014. Johnson Books. ISBN 978-1-55566-454-1)
Most folks who travel to Arizona for vacation (or to spend the winter as “snow birds”) eventually end up taking the long, snaking road out of the valley up to the old copper mining town of Jerome located between Phoenix and Flagstaff. Rene’ and I bypassed that side trip last April, our first visit to The Grand Canyon State, in favor of, well Sedona and the Grand Canyon. This year, with Rene’s sister and brother-in-law along for the ride (actually, come to think of it, Al rented the car and drove!), we made time to stop in Jerome on our way to Sedona. While wandering the crooked, narrow, steep, slanty streets of Jerome, I stopped in at the local museum and bought this short history of Jerome’s people and the place. I’m sure glad I did.
More of a collection of short vignettes about the rise and fall of copper mining, pot growing, the arts, the characters, and the buildings of Jerome than a cover-to-cover narrative history, I found Rapaport’s choice of inserting the personal alongside the factual a solid editing choice. It made the book read much like you’re taking a stroll down one of the town’s rugged thoroughfares. The four of us spent a couple of hours wandering around this fascinating village in the sky, the snows of the San Franciscan Peaks still visible in the distance despite the 90 degree weather in the valley. High in the sloping neighborhoods of Jerome, the temperature was more moderate, 65 degrees, a welcome respite for northerners vacationing in the desert, and the perfect climate for discovery. I only wished I’d read Rapaport’s chronicle of the rise and fall of Jerome before we hit the streets, slid into a cozy little eatery a cup of coffee and a snack, and talked about the town’s vistas and beauty. I would’ve liked to have known about details of the village’s illegal, pot cultivating heritage-the income producing industry that replaced mining when the Douglas family pulled the plug on the copper mines-as I wandered the streets, gazing down at the nearby state park where the old underground mine is preserved for tourists. But I didn’t. And that’s a shame. I didn’t have the narrative backdrop of the exciting times that roared into Jerome in the late 1950s and into the 1980s when pot was king. Rapaport’s discussion of the end of the backyard drug trade reveals the sort of simple, matter-of-fact reportage that makes the book imminently readable and memorable.
The police raid was like an explosion. It shattered lives and caused immense turmoil. Those arrested were friends and neighbors. They were an integral part of the community. Six of them owned homes and worked hard to restore them. They helped fill volunteer positions. Our kids played with theirs. We smoked and partied with them; went camping and rafting. The fallout wrapped us in collective mourning, guilt, and anger.
When mining ceased in the 1950s and the town’s population plummeted from 15,000 to 400, leaving behind sagging streets, broken water mains, leaking sewers, and a demolished economy, the slow influx of artists and musicians and seekers and writers and dreamers was the impetus for the town’s salvation. With few financial resources and a devastated infrastructure to rebuild, the beatniks and hippies and the few natives who hung one reclaimed the once proud town, much of the reclamation being funded by illegal marijuana growing and selling. Not everything was easy. In fact, reading Rapaport’s account of the town’s resurrection, nothing was easy. And yet, today, the place is visited by over one million tourists, whose credit cards and currency keep the dream of Jerome alive, all thanks to a handful of tough, ornery cusses whose vision of an artists’ and thinkers’ paradise, at least when the hubbub of tourism dies down, isn’t far from the reality of the place.
A worthy exploration of a unique backwater town.
4 stars out of 5.
Peace.
Mark
