A little rain must fall, even in Bisbee

Tom Collins Arizona Summer Wildcat The Quartermoon Coffeehouse, which features bands and spoken words, is the same building that held the telephone company in Bisbee's boom days. After the rain fell, people congregated there to listen to the entertainment.

I don't mind.

That's what John and Paul said.

I agree.

Gassing up the car Friday afternoon, it was dark gray out over the mountains to the east, but the clouds seemed to be moving north. We'd be going south.

I figured we'd miss it. I figured that was all right, we were going to be driving down to Bisbee and driving in Arizona under even the threat of weather is a scary proposition. People start getting nervous when the wind picks up. Start making strange lane changes and the like.

Me and my roommate, Mark, set out with a couple of quarter pounders, a 44-ounce Thirstbuster and a pack of Camels. And some other stuff.

Riffing on the Blues Brothers, I had on eyeglasses.

Interstate 10, Friday afternoon, rush hour- getting out of town is hard. We forget, here in our square-mile university lives, just how far this city stretches east. By the time we were at Kolb Road, there was lightning on our right and by the time we hit Sonoita, it was raining.

A real summer monsoon, big-drop drenching. We got over in the right lane going about 35 mph. Looking left, as we went up and over hills, we saw slick-tired trucks barreling down on Geos.

These are the moments when you wonder why you ever left the comfort of your couch. And moments when nature does its job and it's all right.

My roommate sat in the passenger seat, worrying about driving. In a matter of days he sets out for New Hampshire to be with his girlfriend. He's been planning to pack it in for nearly a year. He's been working his typical Tucson job, evenings pissed off at all the customers, eating stolen sandwiches. But when his girlfriend calls and he retreats into his bedroom for an hour, he comes out happy. She keeps his batteries charged.

Looking at those trucks, Mark wishes there was some way to get east without them. Some semi-free freeway.

We were going to Bisbee, former mining boomtown buried in the mountains on State Route 80.

After Tombstone you hit a patch of almost uninhabited land. It's flat and runs up into hill left and right of the road. The road heads up into the mountains, the foliage changes from scrub to trees. Highway 80 is closed in by the sides of the mountains. Then, on your left, they simply end, like a wall ripped away revealing this little town. It looks like a little piece of Massachusetts.

Bisbee is home to world-famous Brewery Gulch (says so on the sign), which I'll tell you ain't much these days, just a couple of bars. Back in the day, I've heard, it was home to all the taverns and cathouses several thousand miners could use.

Up from the gulch, Main Street is stocked with antiques, cafes and the Bisbee Repertory Theater. Friday night, cars were parked along the street for the "Wizard of Oz."

It was a small town weekend. We could hear each and every car pull up as we walked the street, hear people eating and drinking in a way we don't in the city (Funny, once you're off I-10 how quickly Tucson becomes "the city").

We wandered around, stopped into the Stock Exchange in the gulch for a beer.

After driving through a rain storm and then through Benson, St. David and Tombstone, you're thinking beer, to settle down and settle in. You want that Ernest Hemingway feeling.

Later we headed for the Quartermoon Coffeehouse, in the building that used to house the telephone company in the boom days. It's blond wood and local art. Warm.

Between Benson and Bisbee the rain had stopped, but the sun was blocked out. We stopped by the side of the road, looked at the clouds, sullen and angry, to the west and east. The wind was blowing and it felt good. Also unsettling, eerie. It was day and night, at once.

To the south, over Bisbee, it looked like the clouds were breaking - or weren't there yet. We were hoping to beat the storm there and we didn't. But it was all rained out anyhow.

The storm was done, except for periodic, silent lightning.