Gene K. Garrison

Gene K. Garrison’s writing career began in 1972, the same year that she moved from Phoenix to the small Southwestern community of Cave Creek. She was working as assistant to the script supervisor on The New Dick Van Dyke Show, a job she describes as “the most fun job I ever had.”

When the show returned to California Gene knew that she wanted to write about the quirky little town that she fell in love with. After all, she had taken several writing courses at local colleges, even though her major was art. She began with an article about an old historic bar. The owner called it “world famous” in his ads. It sold the first time out, a very good feeling for a brand-new writer. Other queries were accepted and her career grew like Topsy.

The editor of Carefree Enterprise magazine, Marg Rinehart, noticed those articles running in the hefty Sunday supplement

magazine and asked her if she would like to write for her publication. She did that for 20 years.

She continued to freelance during that time, founded an art

group, Desert Artists, was a charter member of the Desert Foothills Community Theater, sold real estate, and — wrote books. “I remember a photo my husband took of me juggling hats to illustrate an article I wrote about my hectic schedule.”

The first book was “From Thunder to Breakfast,” a Hube Yates memoir. He and his pioneer family of nine made the arduous trip from Oklahoma to Arizona in two covered wagons in 1914 when Hube was eleven. “I interviewed him in the 1970s. Luckily

for both of us his mind was sharp, and his humor unending.”

Other Garrison books are “Widowhood Happens” which was written because a recently widowed friend talked her into it. She knew from reading Gene’s articles that her book would be

down-to-earth, honest, full of original research, and different from any other book on widowhood that had been written. She was right.

After that she was back into writing about her favorite people—

the characters of Cave Creek. There was an old man who was a squatter. He lived in a small trail and lean-to next to the County Dump, now called a landfill. “I was told, ‘You really ought to interview Leadpipe, but maybe you shouldn’t go right now. Hell’s angels are camping there.” She waited a while before going on that interview — and when she got around to it she took a friend with her. That was just one of the many people she chose to write about in her book, “There’s Something About Cave Creek (It’s The People).

There was a children’s nonfiction picture book, “Javelina (Have-uh-WHAT?” Javelinas are wild pig-like animals that roam the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, and southward into Mexico and parts of South America. Garrison photographed them from her

home and a friend in Sedona, Arizona, Al Brown, supplied additional photos to round out this charming book.

Gene and her husband now live in Sedona, and she’s still juggling writing, photography and art.