Mayer, Az
by Jane St. Clair

The other day I landed up in Mayer, Arizona, for no good reason. It’s smack in the middle of the state, and one of our near-ghost towns that used to be something other than it is now.

In the 1910s, it was a major stagecoach stop between Phoenix and Prescott. In the 1930s it was where you towed your Tin Lizzy when your radiator blew out in the Arizona heat.Today it’s more about historic buildings.

I was lucky in that it was raining and raining hard the day I wandered into Mayer. Just outside of town I got this dramatic hallelujah sky.

Then the subsequent downpour shined up Mayer’s buildings so they looked mysterious and glowing in the reddening twilight. The muddy puddles on the streets had rainbows making little waves as if they were tiny unicorn lakes.

The Wells Fargo stagecoach was stopping at Big Bug Station in Mayer by the 1880s. Twenty years later the town had a saloon, a dance hall, a brothel, a general store and a barber shop. I can imagine cowboys and ranchers resting their horses here in Mayer and frequenting these convenient businesses in the meantime. Some of these shops remain, not quite as ruins but more as remembrances of times past.

I could picture the Wells Fargo wagon a’coming down the street, and Mayer’s townspeople gathering at Big Bug station – wondering if they got salmon from Seattle, a box of sugar maple or a cross-cut saw —the way we wonder what’s in the Amazon box on the porch.

I could also picture the ladies of the town in their long dresses and corsets, living in the dust and heat of the Wild West. Maybe they tried to maintain the standards they brought with them from back East. They’d try to shut down the saloons. They’d insist the town build a big red brick schoolhouse because they wanted to bring refinement and education for the children.

I could even picture the Mayer City River Band! It’d march down Main Street with 76 trombones leading the big parade, and 110 coronets close at hand! Tata ta ta!

The schoolhouse, Mayer Apartments and the business section of Mayer are on the National Register of Historic Places. But I thought other spots in Mayer were just as cool, like the old brothel near the school, the strange little cemetery on both sides of the road, and the big smokestack that was never even used.

It’s easy to miss Mayer. Most people want to visit Jerome, Arizona, a picturesque old mining city only a few miles away. Tourists also head toward Arcosanti, a nearby experimental desert community designed by Paolo Soleri. These are interesting, but there’s something authentic about Mayer. Something that makes you see the old Wells Fargo wagon itself, and think about the magic of the real West.

“Mute,” Jane’s short story about a confused hospice clown, is live online in the 97th issue of Image — see Mute by Jane St. Clair. “Disneyland Death,” a story by Jane St. Clair is online in the Spring 2018 PDF issue of Medical Literary Messenger from Virginia Commonwealth University.