Sushi at the Foot of a Black Mountain

There have been people in this place for probably 12,000 years, and archeologists have located evidence for a village about 4,000 years ago.  People have farmed this land since 1,200 B.C., when nobody, anywhere, thought or said, "B.C.".  In other words, people were farming here before King David was born.  

But, of course, if you weren't here yourself, nothing counted until the Spanish got here.  A Jesuit priest, Father Kino, arrived here in 1692 and, in 1700,  founded a mission that still stands just south of Tucson.  In 1775, the Spanish built a walled fortress in what is now called, "downtown" Tucson, except that Tucson does not have a downtown.  Hardly.  Barely.  I do not know whose line it is, but "I visited downtown Tucson once, and it wasn't there".  

There are half a million people in the city of Tucson, and about a million people, in all, in the valley, some of whom are descendants of people who lived here thousands of years ago, and in all that time, with all those people, there must surely, sometime, have existed a downtown.  Archeologists (and contractors) still find the evidence of the city's center, or what used to be its center:  even large forgotten cemeteries. 

Later generations sprawled, instead.  Long, parallel streets reach from the Tucson Mountains on the west to the Rincons on the east, and north and south until other desert island mountains are reached.  

But today, the wobbly, old critter that has survived the ribbons of asphalt is coming back to life.  The awkward old streets are being rebuilt.  The quaint old streetcar line, resurrected by great faith and old men, is getting new life, reaching from the University complex at one end, worming its way down Fourth Avenue and under the transcontinental railway, will go directly through the wobbly, old remnants of downtown, cross the dry Santa Cruz River, and circle near the prehistoric origins of this city to go back again, the reverse of the way it came.  

Today Mari and I took the gift certificate Michael gave us, and drove the the center of what always should have been the center, to eat sushi.  Downtown!  As middle of downtown as it is possible to go.  The old Congress Hotel up there, across from Maynard's in the old train station.  With old theaters telling new stories.  The funky old Chicago Music store on the next street.  The musty smell of old, old churches over there, in the Barrio Viejo.  Almost within eyesight of the Cushing Street Bar.  Old adobe bricks under our feet, under the street, everywhere, where something else used to be.  New buildings everywhere:  "What is that?", we ask.

Nobody ever accused the governing bodies of Tucson of being efficient, or squeaky clean, or effective or wise.  But somehow, the downtown is becoming downtown.  It will not be a huge place, but it will have the sweet smell of history, the shape of old intentions, and the dancing feet of new life.  

Some of the seafood we ate came into the harbor at Long Beach from Hawaii, and left there at 4:30 this morning.  It was here by lunchtime.  Not to a mall, or up on Sunrise somewhere, but downtown; to this little, funky, becoming downtown. 

We drove past the Cushing Street Bar and Restaurant on the way home, up the street from El Minuto, not because it was right on the way, but because of all the construction going on downtown.  We said, when we sighted Carrillo:  "There's Michael's school".  

Once there was water at the foot of a black mountain, but today the river is dry.  We still call it a river.  

Downtown!