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Show THE ZEPHYR/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2007 THE DEAD MAN and THE THREE GOSSIPS A quarter century ago, Arches could still see bumper to bumper traffic during the tourist season, but in the winter, the park was all but deserted. Rangers and locals alike breathed a collective sigh of relief when the hordes went home. The superintendent even shut down the entrance station and anyone who wanted to explore the Arches could do it for free, from late October to early March. Ranger patrols were joy rides in the purest and happiest sense of the word. Early 1983 was just that kind of time. Staff was cut to a skeleton crew but a couple seasonals often '_ stayed on as volunteers. And each winter the park was assigned one aid from the Student Conservation Corps. The SCA and the volunteers ran the daily operations. In late February, Ranger Mike Salamacha had stayed on for the winter and was looking forward to a leisurely morning patrol. With him was SCA Jeannie Sifnios. She wanted a ride just as far as Park Avenue, at the top of the switchbacks; then she planned to hike down the Avenue and explore the side canyons west of Courthouse Wash. Mike planned to drive the park road to Balanced Rock and then to the Windows, hike out the trails and be back to pick up Jeannie by noon at the Courthouse Wash bridge. Salamacha savored the silence of this cold late winter morning and knew that in a month, the roads and trails would rumble with the roar of traffic and the whine of travel- ers—he took his time getting back. But he needed to rendezvous with Sifnios so he reluctantly turned the key and pointed the patrol cruiser downslope to the Courthouse Towers and home. When he reached the meeting point, however, she wasn’t there. The SCA didn’t have a radio so there was no way to call her. Mike kept going south when he unexpectedly found Jeannie sprinting down the middle of the asphalt road, toward park headquarters. Mike honked and pulled up beside her. Sifnios was out of breath and could barely speak, but finally she panted, “I found a dead man!” Salamacha, always one to appreciate a good joke grinned and nodded. “Sure you did, We'll never know. But incredibly, not only did they never catch the murderer, they could never identify the victim. Or at least that was always the official story. The man carried no ID and a cross-check of missing persons files failed to reveal anyone who fit the dead man’s description. Finally, authorities surgically removed his hands and shipped them to the FBI lab in Washington. But fingerprint analysis failed to find a match. Eventually the victim was reunited with his fingers and buried in a John Doe grave in Price, Utah. As far as I know, the man’s identity remains a mystery to this day. THE MAN WHO COULD NAME ALL 50 STATES IN 23 SECONDS... WHERE IS ROGER MAKI??? He was a quiet man of unquestionable honor and integrity. A handsome seasonal park ranger, tall and blonde, and totally unassuming, Roger Maki was (and we hope still is) a cornucopia of worthless but entertaining information. He helped make Life tolerable for the seasonals at Arches for several years in the late 70s. Though he may not have invented the phrase, it was Maki who introduced us to the truism, “Life is a shit sandwich and every day is another bite.” He later amended that to, “Life is a shit smorgasbord and everyday is all you can eat.” Jeannie.” “I'm not kidding!” she said. “There’s a dead guy back there, lying in the middle of a wash, below the Three Gossips!” Mike was still skeptical. “Could it have been a dummy or mannequin?” “NO!” she exclaimed. “I know the difference.” Jeannie climbed into the car and together they went back to the Tower of Babel parking lot and stopped. “Come on,” Jeannie insisted. “It’s right up there.” She pointed to a sandy wash less than 100 yards from the pavement. They made their way past some scrub oak and around some cactus patches and into the dry wash. There he was. Roger Maki was (and we hope still is) a cornucopia of worthless but entertaining information. He helped make Life tolerable for the seasonals at Arches for several years in the late 70s. “Well I'll be damned,” Mike swore. There on the ground, sprawled on his back in the middle of the wash, lay the dead man. He did look like a dummy at first. Or maybe a mummy. The dry desert air had partially preserved him. His skin was shriveled and cracked and critters, ravens mostly, who rose heavily from the site just moments before Mike and Jeannie arrived, had recently discovered his eyeballs. Black empty sockets were all that remained. He wore a T-shirt and pale blue jeans that were unzipped. Mike found a ball cap up He could name all 50 states in 23 seconds. Roger was always trying to get a permanent job with the federal government and applied constantly. Consequently, he’d memorized the addresses of every national park, national forest, and BLM district office in the United States. He knew who won the Oscar in 1937. He was the Man who knew Everything. the wash but the man had no shoes, just white athletic. socks. Salamacha called the visitor center and in minutes, Sheriff Nyland and his deputies But where is he today? were on the scene. They carefully loaded the body-into a bag and transported it by ambulance to Salt Lake City for an autopsy. What they learned shocked us all. Sometime that winter, perhaps as early as Christmas week, this man had been taken 2 f Where is Roger Maki? None of the ‘old gang’ at Arches knows what became of him. This is one mystery I want solved. If you know Roger Maki and can lead me to him, contact this publication immediately and we will give you a complimentary Zephyr subscription for an indeterminate length of time. Come back Roger! to the site where his body was found, and shot once, in the back of the head, with a .22 calibre hand gun. He must have died almost instantly. We speculated that it might well have been Christmas week, almost 12 weeks earlier, when the moon was full and walking off road without a flashlight would have been possible. Whoever the killer or killers were, they might have made him remove his shoes, to limit his ability to escape. And if they knew the park at all, we wondered if this particular location had any particular significance. Had this man talked too much? Had he seen things he was not supposed to know about? In his last moments, had the killer pointed to the ghosty silhouette of the towering sandstone towers and said, “Do you know what they call those rocks? Those are the Three Gossips...people who shoot their mouths off... so now there's gonna be four gossips, pal.” There are other stories, other mysteries, like the mysterious communist who roamed Courthouse wash, invoking the memory of Che’ Guevarra, or the case of the cobbled petrified sand dunes, or...was it real, or fake? The naming of Tillie’s Nipple. But they must wait for another time. Until then, watch the rocks. LOOK TO THE FUTURE! THIS YEAR I$ TOAST! GET READY FOR 2008 GET YOURSAT' BACK OF BEYOND BOOKS ORORDERONLINE: WWW.CALEN DARS.COM A WE HAVE CALENDARS FOR EVERY IMAGINABLE OCCASION & TOPIC. : EVEN THOUGH 2008 ISA LEAP YEAR, THERE WILL BE NO EXTRA CHARGE FOR THAT EXTRA DANG. FEB 29 1S ON 17 US! |