they didnt know a thing about all its hokum and bunk , the pageant of cowboys , conquistadors and padres , the overgrazed meadows , the monstrous kachinas , the patina of haciendas , the dusty roundups , the stallions stampeding and the fortunes made with massive machines and ball bearings crunching , crunching , all the time crunching the mountains with mighty western hammers , hammers much mightier than any sissy eastern hammers , pounding out ore , pounding by the hour , hour after hour , smashing the ore to smithereens , smelting it and pouring it into wiggling troughs of shimmering bubbles to be skimmed and fired and molded into shining ingots and later to be cast into statues of cattle and cowboys , padres and conquistadors searching ever more for their golden mines , of all of that , of the great meaningless circle of copper , cotton , cattle and commerce and the meager cultural history of their woe-begotten native state , of the larger meaning or lack of meaning of arizona .