Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 5

TUCSON, SUNDAY, JULY 6, 1975 SECTION A PAGE FIVE THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR 0 "-wC? A cC Arrr" St Star Mountains Form The Backdrop Of Catalina's Myriad Mobile Size Has Doubled In 5 Years Catalina, Ariz. Growing Town mi Ik I if Ml Helen Willard 4 Zip. Color Price 1 'i Threatened action against him never materialized, said Garner. Garner is equally unimpressed with the efforts of county planners to put together a land-use plan for Catalina and the surrounding area to be known as the Tortolita Area Plan. Scheduled for release later this summer, it will define a zoning plan for the area based on population projections, development -demands and environmental considerations.

Gamer's opinion? "I said as far as I'm concerned they can forget that area plan. They said, 'Well, what are you going to do? I said, 'I'll do anything I want to do as long as I'm big enough to do it'." And then there's the water. Shortly after Gamer bought his waterless land, he dug a well there, hitting water at 215 feet. "Still that," he said "and this well's been pumped pretty heavy. So if it was going to drop, it would show up." The city of Tucson now furnishes the town its water, a fact which Garner has grown to regret.

Catalina no longer gets the water from its own well, he said, and the imported water isn't nearly as good, in his opinion. An oily substance that seeped into the Catalina water system a few months ago hasn't helped to change his mind. Gamer said he may just dig his own well again. "We had some real good water here until the city of Tucson bought it," Gamer complained. "If I'd known they were going to mess it up that way, I'd never sold it, I can tell you that." Another "official" plan that has provoked Gamer's scorn is the long debated land swap still under negotiation that would create a huge state park on the Rancho Romero land south of Catalina.

The park proposal, a substitute for massive development plans proposed by Rancho Romero owner John Ratliff, isn't all that bad, Garner acknowledges. "It would make it (Catalina) build, of course," he said. "But if they'd left Ratliff alone it would have boomed anyway. I think the people got hoodwinked, that's what I think. "They had to save 6 (50 by official estimate) mountain goats (bighorn sheep) up there.

This environmental stuff that's like 'ol Lady Johnson and her beautiful highway. That's stuff for the millionaires, not poor people, and we got a lot more poor people than we do millionaires." By "poor people," Gamer means the "average working man," a group in which he includes himself. "I don't mean those guys who don't want to work. We got a lot of them, too. They wouldn't work if they had a job." "These environmental things are all right," he continues.

"But there's a place to stop. These poor people have gotia live too, ns well as them big shots." Gamer said he wouldn't object if Catalina and nearby developments marched right The Catalina Pi Photos by Art Grasberger View and no place like a park or anything for them to play." E. B. Gamer and his son-in- law donated two choice lots near the highway for the cen ter. A spurt of citizen participation moved the project forward: a baseball diamond and backstop was set up, and after some months, the foundation and block walls of the center were built, a roof con structed and windows in stalled.

But then, enthusiasm waned, and the interior was never finished. For the time being, the project has apparently been abandoned. Broken windows have been boarded up. The baseball diamond has surrendered to tumble weeds. Efforts to get the county to take over the building and expand its uses for a wide range of communi ty services have failed.

Things may be different Gamer predicts, after the town gets big enough to be noticed. Even so, talk of in corporation has apparently never been taken seriously in Catalina. Some talk has arisen recently over organizing a volunteer fire department, and inquiries have been made concerning locating a sheriff's office substation in town. But citizen interest seems to be limited to those goals. Catalina, said Garner, "has done very well, considering nobody would help it." In some ways, though, Gamer and others are troubled by their own predictions of booming growth overtaking their little town.

In one breath, Garner says his vision of thousands more people crowding along the Florence Highway under the shadow of the Catalinas "wouldn't bother me a bit." But then he adds: "I don't want to see it, because I don't want to live in town. That's why I moved out here in the first place. But if it gets too big, I'll do what I' did before, I'll move." Helen Willard leans against her grocery counter and reflects for a moment. More development and more people are bound to come, she supposes. But she's not so sure she likes the idea.

"I should say, she reflected, "being in business. But when I look over there and see the mountains and the view Then I don't know." Deputy Investigates Milk Job In Oregon MILL CITY, Ore. (AP) Judy Stevenson of Mill City went to milk one of her cows last week and found the animal dry. She called the Linn County Sheriff's Office and a deputy was dispatched. He dutifully filed this stolen property report: Quantity: Four gallons.

Item: Milk. Brand: Cow. Location of property when stolen: Inside cow. Great Barrier Reef Greatest coral structure on earth is the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. It is 1,250 miles long.

Homes. With A work on the side. He was laid off in March. Frustrated at efforts to find even a lower paying job at the same mine, Weyant has managed to pick up a few extra bucks on his own. "I hung a sign on the back of my van and started moonlighting, doing repairs on guys broke down along here." When he's not repairing broken radiator hoses, Weyant fills in with his favorite pastime, talking, on daily visits to Richard Burton's Western Auto Store or at Dave Taylor's storefront insurance office along the highway.

Both Burton and Taylor opened their businesses just over a year ago, as did a near by mobile home drugstore and adjacent sandwich shop. An effort to establish a small shopping center in the town so i far has not gone beyond the drugstore and cafe. A filling station, convenience market, and boat shop make up most of the rest of Catalina's commercial development all along the highway. The town's original commercial enterprises, the two local bars, are still in business. One o( them, the Hangman's Tree Bar, next to a former storefront church building since remodeled into law offices, began featuring "topless" entertainment some months ago.

Some local citizens objected, one of whom stopped by one evening to rip away a newly painted sign advertising the attraction. When a Pentecostal church group began holding meetings next door three years ago, opposing social forces came into conflict on Sunday and at midweek. The closeness of the buildings allowed jubilant gospel singing and fiery preaching to carry into the barroom, while on one occasion, an altercation outside the Hangman's Tree sent a beer bottle flying through a church window in mid-service. The church group has since moved "in town" where men of the congregation built their own building, which, along with a Southern Baptist Church, make up the only two church buildings in town. Basically, though, Catalina is a quiet sort of town.

The greatest threat to local law and order is an occasional onslaught of spinning tires, billowing dust, and blaring horns. Hotrodders. Guys like Richard Weyant get put out just thinking about it. "The cops can't do anything about it," Weyant complained. "By the time they get out here, the ones causing the problem are gone." A lack of recreational facilities for its young people is considered to be the community's most pressing problem, according to some Catalina citizens.

A couple of years ago, a group of citizens, including Red and Helen Willard, joined forces to raise funds to build a youth center. The idea seemed popular, and fund-raising activities got off to a fairly good "That was one of the first things I started working on when I moved out here," Mrs. Willard said, "because there were so many young people BRIGHT 'N BREEZY FASHION IN A PAISLEY-PLUS PRINT $26 An exciting look that's as easy to care for as it is to wear, with zip-front styling fluid pleated skirt in bright paisleys set off with an attractive border print. And, premium jersey of Arnel triacetate machine washes, needs little ironing. Navy green, navyginger.

10-20, 1212-24Vz. tucsonian, mall level By BILL TURNER Star Staff Writer Catalina, is perhaps the nearest thing available these days to an Old West boom town. Admittedly, things haven't exactly been booming in the little village north of Tucsn during the past few months of a troubled local and national economy, but prospects are good. The little town on the Florence Highway has doubled its size within the past four or five years. Nearly, 3,000 persons call it home now, and more are coming, although the town itself will never reach more than 6,000 if county zoning plans are retained.

Unlike its predecessors of the Gold Rush days, Catalina's recent history of development has not hinged on the fortuitous discovery of a mother lode. A major factor in its growth, however, is a commodity that is rapidly becoming nearly as precious. It's the view. Catalina is located 23 miles north of Tucson. Its unpaved streets, lined with mobile homes and slump block houses, stretch for a mile or so along the east side of the highway, once a primary route from Tucson to Phoenix.

Just across the road, vacant, state-owned land rolls westward toward the Tortolita Mountains. But it's the view to the east and southeast that overpowers. A colossal fortress wall of rough-hewn granite, craggy parapets reaching into the afternoon clouds, the Catalina Mountains present a panorama of such immense proportions that the eye could never conquer it in one glance. A. B.

Garner, Catalina's elder statesman, bought the land that the town now occupies in 1949, the same year he opened the Oracle Mercantile. By the early 50's, Garner was subdividing his lots along the scenic 15-foot-wide Oracle Rd. and living fairly comfortably. He made it his life's work, you might say. Since selling his store in Oracle in 1957, Garner gave his full attention to Catalina.

"I haven't done nothing since," he said in a recent interview at his modest brick home in the heart of town. "All I've done is just sit here and sold lots." More than the money, what Gamer liked most about his land development scheme is that no one thought he would succeed. He still holds a rather outspoken disdain for any official opinion or policy other than his own. As Garner tells it, the man from whom he bought the land 25 years ago was convinced by a report made by a University of Arizona hydrologist that there was no water under the land. Garner's own judgement told him otherwise, He bought the land for about $100 an acre, a figure he multiplied many times over during the re-selling process.

He definitely doesn't like anyone telling him what he can do with his land. On one occasion several years ago, he said, he forged ahead with a house-building project in Catalina after failing to clear n'd tape with county officials. SHOP SUN. 12-5 A. B.

Garner Faye Tilley on up to the base of the mountains on one-acre lots. "I say, let the people who are out here, and the people who want to be, come out here and have a place to live. If you have to cut it into acre tracts to have a place to live, I say, let 'em. It wouldn't hurt the beauty of it a bit." Faye and Albert Tilley were among the first ones to come. When they moved to Catalina 15 years ago from West Virginia, there were no more than a dozen houses and as many mobile homes scattered along the roadside, a bar, a store and a laundromat.

"It's just grown terrible since we've been here," Mrs: Tilley said. "We could just walk back over here in these bushes and kill deer. Didn't have any problem at all." Mobile homes nestle along the washes now. "Most of this has built up in the past six years. All the old people that were here, they either moved off or they died.

We're thinking about leaving 'cause we're used to living out in the country without too many people around us." Red and Helen Willard moved up from Tucson six years ago. Like nearly all the menfolk in town, Red. is a working man. He moved his family to Catalina because of its "country" atmosphere and proximity to his job at the copper mine in San Manuel, over 40 miles to the northeast. Fast approaching retirement age.

Red started a few Take it easy Order by mail or phone. Ph: 795-8010 P.O. BOX 831 Name Address City Please send me the Shelton Stroller. Jim Wellman in Catalina, Red, an ironworker, has been out of work for several months. Unemployment at nearby mines has doubled the number of food stamp users at the store in recent months, Mrs.

Willard said. Although work appears to be picking up again, she said, "There's quite a lot of them that haven't got called back to work, and, of course, a lot of them leave because of that. There's not a whole lot! else to work at other than the mines." The economic slump has slowed Catalina's population growth, which has nearly doubled in the past four years to nearly 3,000 people. Only half the mobile home lots at Bob Murray's Mountain Glory Trailer Park south of town are full. After several months without any new renters, however, things may be about to improve.

Two new tenants signed up last week. Men who have stuck it out, like Jim Wellman, have managed to get by on unemployment benefits. Wellman, a cement worker out of a job for the past four months during a construction slowdown at San Manuel, is hoping for the opportnity to go back to work within the next few weeks. A brother managed to remain on a skeleton crew at the same job. Other men have tried moonlighting to fill the gap.

Richard Weyant, a former heavy equipment mechanic for the Inspiration Copper has done auto repair Quantity I Size years ago in a bait shop business that his wife promised to keep going until he could take it over full time. Since opening, however, Red's Bait and Tackle has expanded to include a small grocery store, the only one in Catalina besides a convenience mart. The U.S. Post Office rents a small corner of the store to handle the rapidly expanding mail service needs of the community. With the nearest other grocery outlet of any size 10 miles away at Casas Adobes, the Willards are planning to build an addition to their store in the near future.

Some steady customers have complained that expansion will ruin the "country store" flavor of Red's Bait and Tackle, but Helen Willard reassures them that the atmosphere will be maintained. Business has been reasonably good, a fact that Mrs. Willard appreciates and regrets at the same time. Country life, she figures, should be slower paced, but the demands of running a small business have changed all that. "I don't have time to enjoy It," she says.

Her only consolation is an after-hours cup of coffee at sundown with a patio view of a muted-color slide show played on the uneven backdrop of mountain peaks and ridges. It's an always changing spectacular that never grows tiring, she says. The extra Income has been a blessing, though. Like a number of other men Use your Steinfeld's Charge, Master Charge, BankAmericard, check or money order. Add 6 sales tax.

$1 charge for1 C.O.D. STEIN FE.