A New Yorker magazine article once said that to get to the American West from the West Coast, you have to go east. Writer Tom Miller wanted to get as far as he could from the East Coast, without getting to the West Coast. He landed in Tucson, Ariz.

Miller has a good eye and a witty voice in this look at parts of contemporary and historic Arizona as well as New Mexico and a bit of Mexico. Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink: Offbeat Travels Through America's Southwest (National Geographic Adventure Press, $24) is not so much a travel book as a collection of Southwest icons. "Corny and dorky" bolo ties are prominent as is the song La Bamba. Black velvet paintings also are discussed (talk about dorky) as well as the chimichanga, the region's equivalent of creole gumbo or Florida stone crabs. With 580 calories there is no "lite" chimichanga.

The kitchen sink in the title refers to an auction in Texas of Jack Ruby's belongings. Ruby was the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Miller wanted to buy Ruby's kitchen sink, but stepped out to the local Dairy Queen during the auction. When he returned, the sink had been sold for $12. He did, however, get Ruby's can opener for $1.

Miller presents a wealth of information, sometimes rather confusingly -- there is a lot to assimilate -- but always with style. Movie buffs may know that The Milagro Beanfield War, based on the novel by John Nichols, was filmed by Robert Redford near Santa Fe, N.M.ew Mexico. But do they know that Santa Fe is the longest continuously occupied capital in the Americas?

Miller takes the reader to the Pinacate Desert, just over the Arizona border in Sonora, Mexico where four NASA astronauts trained in 1970 for the Apollo 14 lunar flight. It was a good choice, as the desert is as stark and bleak as a moonscape. He also decribes New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo Range or rather lets writer Edward Abbey do it: ". . . those mountains, that land -- you don't get religion from them. They are religion."

Miller himself becomes lyrical when describing the long-lived saguaro cactus. He also eulogizes the town of Bisbee, Ariz., just 10 miles from the Mexican border. It was in this defunct mining town that Michael Blake washed dishes at a Chinese restaurant while he wrote his novel Dances With Wolves.

A San Francisco editor once called Miller to ask him if he could ". . . drive over to Taos this afternoon" for a story. Miller responded saying he'd be glad to do the assignment but not "this afternoon" as Taos was 650 miles away.

Now that I have read Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink, I want to go to Bisbee and the Pinacate. I haven't been to Tucumcari, N.M., for a while either. That's where I bought my favorite skirt, which is made from bandanas. Bisbee to Tucumcari -- no problem. It's only about 600 miles.

- Niela Eliason is a St. Petersburg writer.

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