"Mmmmm, I sure do like her lemonade!"

So a random story i heard when i was face down, getting a deep tissue massage in Las Vegas last weekend.

"Hey, you look like a musician? Is that true? I mean you got longish hair and tattoos and look all white and stuff," declares the 26 year old woman massage therapist at the pricey Caesar's Palace spa. She is tall and muscular. I say back, "Uh...yeah. You look like a volleyball player!" She smiles widely, "Hey, you're pretty smart there, You!!" She is also, clearly "g" rated and talks like someone in Fargo minus the midwestern accent.

We get to talking and I, wanting to relax and not talk myself, encourage her to tell me her life story. Turns out, she is from Miami, AZ. When I was in junior high, I lived in Arizona and I used to look at my globe to figure out where everything was in this unfamiliar, new Grand Canyon State. I remember that off to the right of Phoenix, my city, there was a double city called Miami/Globe. It struck me to be strange that a city had two names, like Minneapolis/St. Paul, so I 20 yrs later I remember that toy globe and said, "Miami? That must be near Globe?" At that moment, she would have married me. "Wow, You!! You know where that is? Geeez! That's cool!" The "You" she called me was very Kathy Bates.

So, she proceed to tell me her story. I'll retell in somewhat short form.

She was born into an immigrant family from Yugoslavia, in, of all places, 120 degree East Central Arizona. Now, if you don't know much about Arizona, no one is from East Central AZ. You probably have met or know or have relatives from Phoenix or Scottsdale, or went to school in Tempe or Tucson, or collected new age rocks in Sedona, or went to the Grand Canyon in the North, or drove through Flagstaff or Winslow on the 40 Fwy, or the South on the way to Mexico or Texas, or even the western part near California or Lake Havasu. BUT, I have never met ANYONE from Miami, AZ. Its on the way from Nowhere, AZ to Nowhere, New Mexico.

The perfect spot for some desperate Yugoslavians to settle and start breaking their backs in the copper and salt mines of AZ.

Turns out that the age old race struggle between the Serbians and the Croations (not sure if the Muslims followed to AZ too), that most Americans never knew about until the 1990s, followed those peoples to this tiny pocket in the Southwest U.S. and instead of Wyat Earp or John Dillinger, the feud was between these two Slavic nations battling for the right to sweat and die on the most arid land in our country for little or no money.

She continued to say that the dividing lines were clear. One people lived in Miami and one in Globe. Period! And if you crossed into the others' territory, there was trouble. This feud in Arizona in many generations old. Long, long before the "Bloods" and "Cripps", the Yugo playground wars date back at least 4 generations. She said most folks in her family live to be around 100. Her grandfather, 98, says that her great grand mother, lived to 104, "...just cause she was too mean too die." She says that they are still so grateful to have escaped the genocide/battles of their homeland, that they will work 14 hour days mining salt or dynamiting for copper, and on weekends, sip good old fashion U.S. lemonade and talk shit about their arch enemies in the "other" town.

I asked how she ended up in Las Vegas. She said, that her father, became an expert at opening new mines. So, he was transferred to Nevada to start up a new mining location. He eventually grew totally disconnected from his family, drinking his nights away after the long hours, and longer years. After her parents' divorce, he moved out and she moved to Las Vegas at 18 in search of anything, but where she had come from. Las Vegas is a great place to get lost, of course. But, she sounded like she was considering going back to Miami, as she thought out loud, "I wonder if I'm mean enough to live as long as my great grandma? Well, my grandma is still alive and she's like 90. I guess that'll do. Besides, mmmmm, I sure do like her lemonade!"

Xander Smith - 7/16/07