Lost souls and doomed lovers make pilgrimages to a spot near the corner of South Main Avenue and West Cushing Street, not to pray for divine intervention, for there sure-as-shootin’ is nothing holy about El Tiradito, but rather to wish upon a crumbling adobe monument devoted to what legend has it was an unrequited sinner.
Isn’t that just so Tucson?
No one knows the precise genesis of this city’s so-called “wishing shrine” to El Tiradito (The Fallen One). In fact, more than 100 tall tales have been documented since the late 1800s, most having to do with love gone wrong and copious amounts of alcohol being consumed, but all end violently with hangings or gunshots or well-placed knife wounds. El Tiradito is, really, whatever you want it be, which is why, daily, the burned-down nubs of candles spread out in a semi-circle at the makeshift altar, where crumpled, hand-scrawled notes are tucked into the adobe cracks.
Whimsical, ironic and self-deprecating, yet also charming and steeped in history, the shrine encompasses everything that makes plucky Tucson the much cooler cousin to pretentious, yet strip-mall-saturated, Phoenix two hours north.
Authored By Sam McManis – See the Full Story at the Sacramento Bee
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