Hope doesn't spring, in Tucson. It drifts in.

We used to say that there was no downtown in Downtown Tucson. The Old Pueblo is spread out all over a valley floor, bumping up against the Santa Catalina and the Rincon and Tucson mountains, but that in the center of town, there seemed only to be a bank, and a semi-forgotten old theater, a Greyhound Station, and the rattiest music store west of the Pecos. Something like that.

It may be the slowest and last hope of the Arizona Territories that downtown Tucson is showing faint signs of survival and recovery. Their only water, of course, comes from a dry river up north, and the politics of the city is controlled by what must be John Dillinger's illigitimate offspring: Dillinger once stayed at a hotel in downtown Tucson, next to the railroad station.

It was at the restored railroad station that we met Kathy and Ivy, our former neighbors, and Nancy, whose house we bought, for lunch at Maynard's. It is a fine place, perfectly complementing three of the best and most interesting people we know.

Any city in which it is possible to sit outside in January, for lunch, deserves more care than downtown Tucson has had. There is hope; a fragile, held-hostage-to-incompetence, and short-sighted hope.

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