Outdoor museum lures tourists

by Tucson Citizen on Aug. 19, 1999, under Tucson and Arizona


PHOENIX – Maybe it’s the rocket that catches the eye, or the fins of a vintage Cadillac targeting the endless desert sky, or gas pumps that go back to a time when a gallon of gas was a dime.

Then again, it could be the sign peaking above the Black Canyon Highway that lures travelers. ”Jack *** Acres,” it reads.

Some roll into Jack *** Acres for a cold soda, water for a dry radiator or air for a flat tire.

But many come to look. From France, from Germany, from Japan and Toledo, Ohio. Posing in front of this scrappy outpost, shaking hands with the bearded, bespectacled owner, Joe Airdo.

They come to Arizona, says Airdo, for the same reason he came as a teenager, steering his ’63 Bonneville from his home in Chicago across Route 66: to see the West.

Life, of course, was different in the desert around New River 20 years ago when Airdo came to stay. Down the road on the old Black Canyon Highway, the owner of one watering hole used to fire shots into the ceiling – a wild, wild West gesture signaling the bar was closed. If you wanted to get to Cave Creek, you had to be willing to drive a dirt road.

The old saloon has been torn down. Nearby, an outlet mall trying to disguise itself as a Spanish mission hugs the desert. And then there’s Anthem.

New River claims to be the gateway to the Sonoran Desert, but now Del Webb has a stake here with a master-planned community that includes a school, country club and a community center with a rock-climbing wall.

Even an exit with a ”nice Western name,” Airdo says – Desert Hills exit – has been changed to Anthem Way, calling out to American dream chasers.

”What,” he asks, ”are they going to see . . . if the West is gone?”

In a way, Jack *** Acres answers the question, even though Airdo never intended to become a sight to see.

At 19, he owned his own print shop in Chicago. Before he turned 30, the rat race got to him.

He remembered Arizona. After floating through the state in his Pontiac as a teenager, then on his honeymoon with his wife Pamela, he dreamed of living in the West.

”They were very slow here. The banks didn’t even open until 10 a.m. Everybody was still in yesterday – which I liked.”

Airdo has his father to thank for Jack *** Acres. Years ago, the two of them visited a farm outside Chicago called Hawthorne Melody. It had wooden walkways and dirt roads, cows, a stagecoach, a train.

Jack *** Acres was a working gas station and Airdo a mechanic when he bought the place. That’s when he thought of Hawthorne Melody.

The reason he loved that old farm is the same reason some are drawn to Jack *** Acres. It’s a place unlike anything in the big city.

Things to touch, to see, to buy: trunks and wagon wheels so splintered and rusted they look as if they flowed west with the Gold Rush; a ’63 Cadillac Superior Royale ambulance with stretcher; a plastic cactus topped with a cowboy to stick on a car antenna.

Scraps of wood with hand-painted warnings line up on a haphazard fence: ”Keep out – scorpions.” ”Keep out – Gila monsters.” ”Keep out – snakes.”

They pull off the highway with hopes of filling their empty tanks but the pumps might as well be a mirage – they’re dry. They stop anyway, to see this outdoor museum in the West splayed across dust and rock. They buy postcards of Jack *** Acres. Some of the cards never make it to Michigan or Virginia. They are returned to Jack *** Acres, and Airdo keeps every one of them on a shelf behind the cash register.

One greeting written from the desert outpost reads: ”Yes, this is for real folks. I’ve been there. And I have the photos to prove it. Our rental car started flipping out just about in the middle of nowhere and here we landed. The view was worth the crazy company.”

They’ve never seen anything like this before. Neither have the fashion photographers from Elle and Seventeen magazines. The April ’98 Elle used the rocket and one of Airdo’s old Cadillacs as props for a ”Frontier fashion” spread. This April, a Seventeen magazine fashion feature titled ”Cactus Flowers” was shot here, too.

Now, the land he leases is up for sale, and Airdo has plans to move Jack *** Acres – rocket, fins and old gas pumps, tiny vials of fool’s gold, beef jerky and his 15-year-old cat, Bruce – to land he owns along the frontage road winding from New River to Anthem. He’s got the blueprints, a zoning application and a computerized sketch of the new Jack *** Acres. He doesn’t intend to change it much.

Click to expand...