This is the corkboard in front of Old Bisbee’s post office, a community bulletin board that must have hosted an entire ton of staples over the decades. It is a palimpsest of Bisbee’s cultural scene, with new flyers stapled over old, week after week, month after month. In my time here I will confess to paying sometimes more, sometimes less attention to its contents on account of its constancy through many seasons of life. Fading into the background, becoming at times just a part of the scenery, I have taken it for granted—sometimes even while searching for a spot to hang flyers for my own shows!
This blog is fortunate to feature Steve Mormarco’s This Month in Bisbee, a digest of his weekly newsletter This Week in Bisbee. That is a great service, but the above photo presents much of the same information in a visual, three-dimensional form. Stationary though it be, that corkboard is a wheel in motion, a snapshot representation of the passage of time, events, sentiments, the cultural scene and…the transience of it all. The thought occurred to me this week, snapping out of my complacency and making a choice to give it due regard: making a reel consisting of a picture a day for a year would really do it justice.
At least twice in my nearly 20 years as a Bisbonian the sorely-pressed corkboard hosting all these announcements has been replaced, leaving a blank canvas eager for a renewed onslaught of staples and pushpins. Old timers tell me when stapleguns were far less common a communal set of pushpins did the job, recycled and repositioned as old flyers came down and new ones came up.
The telephone poles around Main Street and Brewery Gulch also hold the memories—and the staples—of years upon years of events and announcements. Treated with creosote as a salve against entropy, termites and other bugs, these now bear a sort of makeshift chainmail of staples upon staples, some fresh and gleaming, others blending into the poles’ dark hues under a patina of rust. Unlike the post office corkboard these fixtures do not get such regular maintenance. Instead they accumulate their peculiar armor year by year, splintering over time the outer layers of these forgiving poles.
Well, there was one exception I can recall: about seven years ago, in the idyllic pre-pandemic days there was a man—my mind wants to remember him as a young, barefoot hippie—who decided to give these bulletin-poles some relief. Over a period of several months this man could be spotted, flathead screwdriver in hand, patiently lifting staple after staple after staple, day after day. I think about that guy from time to time. His good deeds had all the permanence of a sandcastle, for by now time and fresh activity erased his efforts. The staples are relentless, coming back over time to pierce the outer layers of softened wood again and again.
Pondering that man and his worthy if futile work, I’ve wondered how much thought he might have given to the work he set out to do. From my occasional busking perch in Grassy Park at the crossroads of Main and the Gulch, I provided a hackneyed soundtrack for his work on more than one occasion, watching him deposit staples carefully in his sack so as not to leave them to pierce unsuspecting feet. What was on his mind, if anything, while he worked? Did he grow weary of stepping on staples himself under bare feet? Or was it something else? After all, each and every staple has a story behind it. Each was consciously slammed into place with intention, to get the word out about some event or other over a period of many years. I would like to think the man pondered these stories as he patiently removed them one by one, contemplating what story each might hold, like a peculiar rosary. Perhaps he was not thinking at all, ensconced in a meditative state unbothered by consideration of anything whatsoever.
These poles, like the corkboard near the post office, have played host to an uncountable parade of flyers, announcements, poetry, rants, pictures, nails, staples and tacks over so many years. And they still do their silent work.
Of course—of course—bigger cities have their flyer-fatigued telephone poles and corkboards announcing this and that. But we’re talking about a town of fewer than 5,000 people in this case. There might be more staples-in-wood-per-capita in Bisbee than in all the rest of southern Arizona combined. I don’t know if that’s true but it sure feels true so…we’re going with it.
Again, take a look at the pictures and see for yourself. Movie night at Central School Project. The Copper Queen Library Spelling Bee is coming up. Breathwork and yoga classes. Craft groups, art gallery openings. Yard sales, missing pet alerts. And of course: music, music, and more music on offer in a dozen-plus venues around town. Stepping back from complacency and into the real, the moving pictures fastened to these fixtures are almost overwhelming in their splendor. There are simply not enough hours in a day nor days in a week for one person to make every Bisbee scene they offer.
But good heavens it’s a scene alright. A big one.
Keith Allen Dennis is a Bisbee writer who, as one of the luckiest boys on the planet, got the chance to actually call this wonderful town home. And luckier still, to live the dream of becoming the songster he was meant to be. Find his music at keithallendennis.bandcamp.com.
