We’re in Phoenix, which is a megalopolis. You can drive in a straight line in the Phoenix metropolitan area for two solid hours and never run out of metropolitan area.

But much of Arizona is not just rural but virtually devoid of people. Scrub desert, dry as dust, where a very few hard-scrabble folks try to scratch out a hard-scrabble living.

You can be on a lonely old road at night and not see a car in either direction. There are no street lights, since someone would have to build, pay for and maintain them. There are no lights at all, and you will never know what it feels like to be shipwrecked or stranded alone on the moon until you look in vain in every direction for any sign of the works of man.

And then, far off in the distance, there’s a light. Just a glint at first, but it seems to grow brighter as you draw nearer. You can drive toward a light like that for half an hour, so thick is the darkness. And then you’re upon it. And then, just like that, you’re past it.

What was it? An electric sign. For what? A lonely little cowboy roadhouse. And what did the sign say? “Dancing, Saturday Nights.”

That’s real life in the real desert.

Here’s a Reason.TV story about authorities in Pinal County trying to shut down a little desert road house — for the crime of allowing its patrons to dance outdoors.

There’s a bit of speculation in the video that calls to mind the Lincoln County War — but that’s a different desert in a different state…

Hat tip: Thomas Johnson.

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