In Arizona, We're Not Afraid to Stand Alone

People in the West are resilient. As my mother used to say, "God helps those who help themselves." Back in the 1990s, when it became clear that the hospital in their town of Bisbee needed a helipad, my parents worked tirelessly with townspeople and the local Kiwanis Club to make it happen. They didn't go looking for a grant to get the job done. They did it themselves by holding bake sales and garage sales and raising money the old-fashioned way -- on their own, rather than asking for a government handout.

It strikes me that McCain is cut from similar cloth. When he was imprisoned in North Vietnam and the arms of one of his fellow prisoners were broken as punishment for an attempted escape, McCain was the one who reset the bones, binding them with bandages taken from his own legs. And he did it well enough that when the POWs were finally released, that other prisoner was eventually able to return to flying.

You can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps and the places he frequents in his free time. I read somewhere that one of McCain's favorite home-state restaurants is a place in Jerome, an old mining town not far from the McCains' ranch in Hidden Valley, near Sedona. Jerome is too obstinate to realize that it's supposed to be a ghost town. Old-timers there will tell you that in bygone days, Jerome used to be plagued by fires. In the late 1800s, with a devastating fire bearing down on the business district, the local madam went to the fire brigade and offered all the members lifetime passes to her establishment if they would save it. They did, of course. But then the ore played out. Most of the businesses, including hers, went away, and so did all those lifetime passes.

Today, Jerome is home to 300-some souls, a colorful haven for artists and artisans. A couple of the holdouts run the Asylum Restaurant, which bills itself as "a restaurant on the fringe." My first husband always maintained that he could get drunk in any mining town in Arizona, wake up in any other and never know the difference. I suspect, however, that if he had wandered into the Asylum and come face to face with shrimp scampi or a filet mignon, he would have been astonished. The food there is evidently a big step up from the staple shredded-beef tacos and enchiladas that are readily available in Bisbee, Morenci, Superior, Ajo and all those other fading mining towns that are more into tourism these days than mining.

The folks who run the upscale Asylum have to have a certain amount of sheer cussedness to attempt such a thing in a place like Jerome. I imagine that might appeal to John McCain every bit as much as the food does.

Is McCain flawed? Of course he is. None of us is perfect. Is he bad-tempered? We're all bad-tempered and cranky on occasion -- try getting between me and my coffee pot early in the morning. But I think he sets a high standard for himself and others. He's not necessarily polished or smooth, but he has what we in Arizona like to call cojones, and from what I know of Arizonans, that's something they like and respect in a leader.

What I know about McCain reminds me of a lot of people I've known in my home state over the years. He seems to be a straight shooter. Like my parents, he's an independent man of his word, someone who's not afraid of hard work and who's determined to get the job done. His devotion to this country appears to come before anything else, including political party affiliations. He has a positive mental attitude. His glass is always half full and never half empty.

If John McCain happens to end up in the Oval Office, he'll be a president I can understand. I know his roots. They're a whole lot like my own.

jajance@gmail.com

J.A. Jance is the author, most recently, of "Damage Control," the 13th book in the Joanna Brady mystery series. She divides her time between Arizona and Washington state.