I was checking Google Maps and looked up a town near Page, which we stopped in about thirty or forty years ago. We were driving to Grand Canyon and both of us were hungry. I saw a number of little towns, just one or two buildings popping up from the desert, usually with a small diner. This was before fast food restaurants became common and I wanted to stop. But my wife said no, she wanted something a little more presentable -- not a lunch counter in the middle of nowhere. I told her to get out the AAA map and tell me where the next big town was and we'd go there, no matter what. So she perused the map for a while and said, "This must be a big place. It's called Tuba City. They must make the instruments there. We'll definitely find something there."
About fifteen miles down the road was a sign pointing up a hill to "Tuba City." I drove in past a longhouse with about twenty stone-fced Indians sitting on the veranda, glaring at us as we passed. At the top of the hill was another long building with a post office, laundromat and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. The KfC was staffed with Navahos who unsmilingly took our order. My wife was very nervous, apparently fearing for her scalp, but we escaped without gunplay. It seems the town is the headquarters for the Navaho nation, named after Chief Tuuvi (which the Mormons turned into Tuba) and they don't make any musical insturments there.
Today Google Street View shows the same buildings are there but the entire area now has a shopping mall and there are other buildings nearby, including a school. So the town has grown since the late '70s. But it's still not the metropolis you expoect to see based on the AAA map.
So this time we visit Page, Arizona, not Tuba City. Send your entries to me ASAP, since my death from the flu seems imminent.
Sorry not to have posted. Had a computer problem which was traced to a new printer. Took me a while to get it back on line. I'll have to post tomorrow (Sunday).
Well, since you're revealing it, I'll do the same. I find this one hard to work with!
