OPEN LETTER TO BRIAN HAZELWOOD OF THE TEMPE APOLLOS Mr. Hazelwood, Please cease and desist in your unfounded allegations about the Yuma Arroyos. We have never tried to “thwart” the development of the Apollos except on the ball field, where for years your club has outshined us. Your continued insinuations about our team’s efforts to […]
The two women sat in the Yuma GM’s office. The one behind the desk, Roberta Tipitina, crossed her legs and leaned back in the soft chair. The other, Yuma Sun reporter Roberta Umor, leaned forward from a straight-back chair, notebook in hand, and began the interview. UMOR: How does it feel being the first woman […]
“Wait! I’ve never met Goode!” “Hands behind your back.” “Tell them,” Slummings exhorted his companions. “I couldn’t have done it.” “It’s true, officer,” Roberta spoke up, “Goode disappeared long before Mr. Slummings here bought the team. It’s unlikely he—” “At the station, miss. We’ll take your statement there,” the officer said, then turned back to […]
Roberta had the good sense when her alarm woke her at 3 am to check the Amtrak website before crawling out of her warm bed into the cold Arizona winter night. When she learned how late the 3:10 to Yuma would be, she crawled right back into that bed. Unable to return to sleep, she […]
Slummings sat in the snack bar on the lower level of car #3 of Amtrak’s 3:10 train to Yuma, stalled somewhere east of Fullerton and still hours west of Yuma. He had already made the phone call, though he wasn’t confident the office assistant had understood, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was […]
She wasn’t expecting it. It had never crossed her mind. “You could have blown me over with a feather,” she would say later, explaining it to her friends. “A feather,” she would repeat. But at the very moment she heard it from her office assistant Denise, she said nothing. “You’re the boss now!” Denise cried […]
The taxi pulled up to the Camarillo Amtrak station, which was more a platform than a station, and two old geezers grunted their way out of the back seat of the Prius, moaning about their aching joints and sore backs. Mayberry gestured to Slummings to pay the driver, but Taffy just shrugged and opened his […]
“Oh, shit,” Sean said. “I forgot!” He sprinted back onto the hospital grounds, across the quad and through the emergency exit into the Men’s Ward. “Where is it? Where do they hide it?” He was shouting. The few men remaining in the ward looked at him as if he were the mental patient. One of […]
Instead of motorcycles, a linen hamper. Instead of a barbed wire fence, an open gate. Instead of Nazi soldiers, a drowsy hospital security guard. Instead of Steve McQueen, two doddering old men. And yet, the escape of Slummings and Mayberry from the Camarillo State Hospital had the makings of a Hollywood classic. But first, before […]
When Mayberry and the orderly known only as Sean opened the door to exit the men’s room in the Camarillo State Hospital, they expected to see Taffy Slummings waiting for them in the hallway, disguised as a janitor. An old, grizzled janitor to be sure, but the hospital had several antiquarian janitors on the payroll, […]
