Being a Desert Rat

How to be a Desert Rat and like it
By JOHN HILTON

There are as many deserts as there are people in them, just as there are as many worlds. Being a “Desert Rat” is like being a lover, for the desert is like a woman with a million faces.the desert in bloom like a Paris postcard.

Her flowery make-up in the spring is like a your chorus girl. There’s real beauty there if you can get past the sand verbenas and cloying perfume. Most visitors see only the surface charm. She’s in a flirting mood then is anybody’s girl. If you want to be a “stage door Johnny,” you can pay a high price for a cheap thrill and feel a bit silly afterward, carrying home a mass-produced flashy painting of the desert in bloom like a Paris postcard.

The desert possesses a rich dowry and some woo her for that alone, but the money leaves a bitter taste with a secret hatred for its source. For business reasons or to cover up their frustration, such persons may try to act and talk like real desert rats, but it won’t work! Even if they ride silver-saddled Palominos, wear embroidered shirts, teach their butler a western drawl and serve champagne in tincups.

Anyone can be a desert rat who can see and love the beauty of the desert in all her moods. There’s beauty and wild music in a desert sandstorm. The lightning and thunder of a summer cloudburst are the flashing eyes — the emoting and tears of a high-spirited, beautiful actress “putting on a scene.” They are soon over. There’s beauty in crisp cool winter mornings and hot sultry summer afternoons, but most of all there’s the intimate beauty of being alone with her on long walks on lying on her warm breast on balmy summer nights counting the stars in her hair — listening in the silence to your own heartbeat as it matches hers.

Being a desert rat and liking it is like being in love — you just can’t help it.

First published in Desert Rat Scrapbook, Winter 1946-47