Well, no, I don't mean that the little western town of Chloride in Arizona has ghosts, though wouldn't that be neat?
Chloride is a ghost town in regards to it being virtually empty, the boom of it's gold-mining days are long gone, no-one really cares about it anymore.
Half a dozen of us were on a daytrip from Vegas and we called in on Chloride. In wild west times, there was no highway nor highway signs to direct weary travellers to the nearest town. So, the first letter of the name of the town was painted or hacked onto the rocky terrain high above a town, to let riders know there was a town nearby. Chloride has a big letter "C" above it.
The weird thing is, I kept thinking I was in New Zealand. Definitely Arrowtown. It was the verandahs above the walkways that did it. And the wooden-built structures.
It was in Chloride where I experienced bigotry and racism from an elderly pakeha male resident. I was all by myself, noone anywhere around. This guy shambled up to me and immediately proceeded to rant about how America was going downhill and all because of certain people getting certain things they shouldn't be getting. These people were getting too big for their boots, he told me, in terrible descriptive language. He said that he could hardly wait for another President to be elected.
I was absolutely stunned, and shaken. I all but ran away from him back to the tour van.
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