Barrelling through the Land of Enchantment, we finally make a late-morning stop at the much ballyhooed Clines Corners. A sort of truck stop/elephant's graveyard of tchotchkes combo that heralds its impending arrival on scores of billboards scattered for seemingly hundreds of miles in any direction, Clines Corners has been a Route 66/I-40 landmark for more than seventy years. With rows upon rows of useless, dusty whatnots, clay pots, dreamcatchers--and just about anything else you can think of--it's been a watering hole and re-fueling stop for my family for at least three generations. In fact, on this sunny, bright morning as we traipse through the narrow aisles, it doesn't seem to have changed much since I was last there in 1992. True, the plastic shark jaws are no longer in evidence, but there are jars of Prickly Pear Jelly and boxes of chocolate covered cherries that don't seem to have seen a dust cloth since the end of the last millenium. And there are still stacks and stacks of tee-shirts, plastic sunglasses, shot glasses, leather geegaws, and really, when I think about it, just too damn much stuff to continue going on about. Suffice it to say, the sheer abundance of junk is mind-boggling. Clines Corners, alone, must be supplementing the income of at least half the families in Beijing.
What we're really after, though, is food. There's a mini-Subway located there, but the horde of flies buzzing around the sandwich-making board discourages any further consideration of that option. There's also a little diner with it's own separate kitchen, but you'd better like fried eggs, bacon, and the usual artery-clogging trimmings, because that's about all that's on the menu. Declining the offer to satiate my hunger with a piece of dry toast, I set off across the parking lot while my partner orders the breakfast special of Heart Attack on a Plate. Inside the gas station, I find the usual assortment of candy bars, beef jerky, pork rinds(!), and chips. Finally, partially hidden by the cash register, a small basket reveals a cache of energy bars. Sifting through the dusty pile, I realize that even a lot of these (allegedly) healthy treats are loaded with saturated fat. Spying a Cliff Bar, I wipe off the dust and determine that it is the Carrot Cake flavor that I normally disdain. However, today I'm desperate, so I go for it, opting to wash it down with a full-strength Pepsi (yes, I know how much sugar I just consumed, but, didn't I just say that I'm desperate, dammit, and I'm on vacation, so give me a break!). Back in the Clines Corners diner, my partner is mopping up the last of his breakfast with toast slathered in butter. He eyes my dubious prize and pays for his meal.
* * * * * *
As we cross the border into Texas, the landscape gradually flattens out into the vast sprawl of the Great Plains. The towns here, like most others we've passed, are few and far between. There is a sameness to them that seems to grow more pronounced the farther we travel. The ubiquitous grain elevators, the squat, retro gas stations, the unelegant, roadside cafes with their cratered, dirt parking lots filled with pickup trucks--after awhile, you think, "Didn't we already come through here?" But, of course, these places, these lonely, dusty towns, they are all different, and each has its own distinct personality. I know because I grew up out here in towns just like these, and none of them are the same. As forlorn and desolate as they may appear to a stranger traveling through, these towns are all home to somebody; lives unfolded here and dreams were dreamed just as sure as they were in New York, or San Francisco, London or Singapore, or anywhere else where people come together and make a community.
* * * * * *
West of Amarillo, I spy the Cadillac Ranch a few hundred feet south off I-40. Of course, it's not really a ranch, just a bunch of classic Cadillacs buried nose-down to their back doors in the hard prairie dirt of a field. An eccentric millionaire named Stanley Marsh 3 had it installed as an art exhibit and, over the years, it's developed a certain reputation as a must-see roadside attraction. People are encouraged to spray-paint the cars with graffiti, and at certain times, the cars are completely repainted to reflect special occasions or holidays; for example, they've all been painted green for St. Paddy's Day. When I ask my partner if he wants to stop and see the cars, he declines, so we keep driving until we reach the city limits of Amarillo. As my mind is clicking off the number of relatives I have currently living in Amarillo, I am suddenly startled by the amount of road construction that's going on; the entire city, as far as I can see, looks like it's being re-paved and widened! We stop for gas and then drive to a Schlotzky's Sandwich Shop, which I haven't seen since leaving Texas back in 1999. It's good, although my partner doesn't completely understand my enthusiasm for the sandwiches. I guess you just have to grow up eating Schlotzky's to really appreciate them--sort of like Sonic Drive-In's or A & W Root Beer Stands or Charcoal Ovens, which we don't have in southeast Florida, either.
With the labyrinth of road construction, we, of course, miss the turn we're supposed to take that will lead us northeast of town, through Spearman, Perryton, Booker, and beyond. No, we remain on I-40 for the next hour and a half, searching futiley for a highway that heads north, in the direction of the town where my parents live. Finally, we find the coveted turnoff, which leads us to Pampa, Texas, a town that has changed drastically since my youth. And by changed, I'm talking about the appearance of a number of fast-food chains and hotel/motels. Driving north past Pampa, we find ourselves in the midst of some unsuspectedly awesome scenery. The pancake flatness gives way to steep, treeless mesas and deep canyons, and dried-out riverbeds which serve as highways for meandering herds of lazy cattle. As much as the description sounds the same as what we've already seen in New Mexico and the Oklahoma Panhandle, it isn't; its spooky and unearthly beauty is all its own. Many years ago, friends and I traveled down this highway from Perryton (the next sizable town to the north of Pampa), but I'd forgotten that this little stretch was so astonishingly gorgeous (to me, anyway).
A little further up the road, flatness returned and predominated for the remainder of our trip. Perryton, Texas, the town where I was born, has, roughly, 10,000 people. As we pull onto Main Street, I notice more chain stores--the usuals--that have sprouted up and overtaken the businesses I remember from my boyhood. The old hospital where I was born is long gone, but the movie theater that's been around since at least the 1940's--maybe longer--is still there, and still showing first-run movies. Unfortunately, the Ranger Drive-In, the scene of many happy childhood memories, has gone the way of most of the other drive-in movie theaters out here. Too bad. During any given week, you might see a recent John Wayne western, a Hitchcock film from the fifties, or a brand new British import. Whoever ran the drive-in in those days had eclectic tastes, and I think that probably had a huge influence on my own tastes in films.
Leaving Perryton, we mull over the option of turning east and going through the town of Booker (15 miles away, pop. 1200), the home of a large majority of my mother's family, or continuing to drive north and then cutting back east and, in essence, covering a distance of a little over 100 miles, with virtually no towns to impede our progress. Aware of my inclination to stop in Booker for a prolonged visit with relatives, we decide to continue heading north, eventually reaching my parent's house at around 5 in the afternoon.
* * * * * *
The next day, my partner backs the rental car out of the driveway and heads for Wichita. He's leaving a couple of days before me in order to get home to Florida and get a little grounded before starting his new job the following Monday. My parents and I drive to Darrouzett, Texas, (pop. 320 or thereabouts, and pronounced Dair-zett). We have arranged to meet my cousin, Toad, and his wife for lunch in a tiny restaurant on the western edge of town. Toad has lost weight and looks really good, and seems pleased to receive this news. We're in the heart of "deep-fried" country, so there's not much on the menu for me, although I finally choose the ever-safe, ever-boring, ever-dried out slab of grilled chicken breast which fails to thrill me. Visiting with Toad, however, proves to be interesting, if not thrilling. If his wife and my parents weren't around, he could probably deliver some really good dish. However, good taste and discretion must be observed, so none of the gossip is particularly titillating.
After lunch, we bid adieu to Toad and the wife, and we drive the 10 miles to Booker, Texas. Booker began life as an Oklahoma border town named LaKemp. Many of my relatives who originally settled this part of the country lived in LaKemp and its environs. Around 1918, the railroad was laid about 15 miles southwest of LaKemp, just across the Texas state line. Seeing the wisdom of having their town situated along the railroad, the town's fathers packed up everything, lock, stock, and barrell--buildings, houses, sidewalks, people--and relocated the whole town to Texas. And that is how LaKemp, Oklahoma, became Booker, Texas, in 1919.
Booker doesn't look the same as it did when I was growing up, and even then, it didn't look the same as when my mom was a girl. There were originally trees planted down the center of Main Street, giving the town a shaded, elegant air. Apparently, drivers in those days couldn't avoid hitting the trees because they were summarily yanked out, and the main street widened. The old movie theater was still around when I was little, but I can only remember seeing a couple of films there. Chiefly, what I remember about the movie theater was getting locked in the bathroom and screaming to high heaven for someone to come and get me out. The original drug store is still next door, although without the soda fountain and tin ceiling that were removed even before I got out of grade school. Charlie Hargreaves' wooden barber shop with its colorful pole out front is long gone.
The post office, where my great-grandmother labored as postmistress for more than thirty years, is also gone. I can still remember the sound of her weight creaking on the old wooden floors of that building as I watched her sort mail on hot, summer mornings. She had seven children and many of them still resided, along with their children and grandchildren, in Booker, so her house was always filled with the sounds of plates being passed around a large dining table, of voices raised in animated conversations and clearly defined opinions, of boisterous activity, and of laughter, tears, and love.
Across the street, the bank has enveloped nearly the entire block. There used to a pool hall (which served as my grandfather's second home), and Lehman's Grocery Store--both razed to make way for progress. At the north end of Main Street, my Great Aunt Agatha's husband, Uncle Louie, had the Conoco station for many years; it now sits empty and crumbling.
Nearer the south end of Main, the historic Cochran Hotel once loomed over the better part of a block. Storied and majestic, jammed with many rooms, enormous lobby, a popular coffee shop, barber shop, and beauty salon, the hotel provided a fitting stopover for cowboys and oilmen, alike. Later, during my lifetime, the habitues became a little less monied, as the development of interstate highways found Booker increasinly isolated from the larger, developing centers of commerce. Toad's parents owned and operated the hotel, although it was built in the 1920's by someone else. When I was a kid, I used to tag along with Toad and explore the building. A polished wooden railing on the staircase led to a second floor of long, dark hallways, and high-ceiling rooms with wrought-iron beds, and residents who invariably smoked and appeared to be up to something unsavory, as the faint scent of whiskey trailed in their wake. I had a great, great aunt named Muriel who had come out west during the oil boom of the early 1900's. She was a tough cookie who worked as a prostitute for awhile in the boomtown of Borger (although our family really doesn't talk about that to this day). By the time I knew her, she had long since settled into married respectability, motherhood, and widowhood, and seemed ancient to me, and probably was. I remember her sitting in the coffee shop at the Cochran Hotel, with her colorful skirts and jaunty hats, her wrinkled face powdered and rouged, her mouth made up with bright red lipstick, as she smoked endless cigarettes and held court for her fascinated (and often scandalized) townsfolk. I can also remember my grandfather posting me as a lookout, keeping an eagle eye out for my grandmother or any of her relatives, while he conducted flirtatious tete-a-tetes with various waitresses at the coffee shop. It was only much later, after I got to be 13 or 14, that I realized what he was up to, but by then, I was hitting on the waitresses myself. At the end of the seventies, Booker lost a piece of its history when, one night, the Cochran Hotel exploded, engulfing the entire building in flames and completely destroying it. Miraculously, no one was injured.
* * * * * *
When we arrive in Booker, our first stop is the nursing home, where the last of my maternal grandmother's siblings now resides. My Great-Aunt Thelma, looking exceedingly thin and wan, is, nevertheless, enthusiastic in greeting us. There is some sort of monopoly-money auction going on in the main room and a nurse is surrounded by white-haired people in wheelchairs. Some of these people, my mother tells me, I should know from my childhood, but they no longer look familiar to me, nor I to them, so I don't know who's who and decide against going around the room and introducing myself. I'm having a nice, little visit with Aunt Thelma and really appreciating how lucid she is when she suddenly declares that those people bidding on items in the auction are just "plain foolish". She then proceeds to tell me that these people are paying $100 for a candy bar ("Can you imagine?" she hyperventilates). When my mom reminds her that it's monopoly money and that she should get into the spirit of the game and make some bids, herself, Aunt Thelma looks at her as if she's lost her mind. "I'm not spending $100 on a candy bar or a piece of gum! Do I look like I'm crazy to you?" She says this to me, and I just smile and feel like I've wandered onto the set of a David Lynch film. Aunt Thelma and her husband never had kids of her own, so she always liked me, especially when I was a little kid. I can't think why, because she didn't like many people, especially after you passed the "cute" phase, which, for her, ended when you were 8 or 9. Still, after getting past being seriously pissed off at me for reaching adolescence, she returned to being the funny, fun, generous woman that very few people were ever allowed to see. She's the aunt who turned me on to Agatha Christie, blueberry pancakes, ping-pong, Cocker Spaniels, and to singing verses of "Que Sera Sera" after watching "The Man Who Knew Too Much at--where else--the Ranger Drive-In. Now, I don't know what time zone she's inhabiting, but, even in her befuddled state, I don't want to piss her off. So I smile, and I think how sad it is that certain things have to change, that great-aunts get old when they should forever be singing and flipping blueberry pancakes in the kitchen, and that little boys grow up and go away and no longer have the time to drop in on people who once loomed so largely in their lives. I always think that maybe next time, the next time I come home, I'll make a little extra time to spend down there with Aunt Thelma. But, time always runs out. Always. You don't get it back.
* * * * * *
My grandfather was a huge, if unlikely, movie fan throughout his life, so I (along with my sister and cousins) grew up going to the movies, just as our own parents had done when they were growing up. A sturdy, fun-loving cowboy/rancher who favored boots, big hats, and bigger cars, my grandfather was the ultimate John Wayne fan although, to be honest, he could be happy watching almost any movie. He was also a colorful, charming cad with many girlfriends, and a wife at home who was not much amused by his behavior. They were a perfect example of two people who should never have married. Both came from fairly well-to-do families, and both were spoiled by their parents: my grandmother because she'd been a sickly child and required a lot of attention, and my grandfather because he was the only son, and the inheritor of the family name, as well as the family fortune (his father didn't believe in banks so wasn't much affected when the Great Depression hit). They had three children in rapid succession, and I don't think ever said another civil word to each other during the remainder of their 45 years together. Their rows were legendary, with my mother (at age 5) once climbing in between them to try and tear them apart. Living through the 1930's and early '40's, my grandmother spent much of her time in a lonely farmhouse north of town, raising her children while her freewheeling husband gambled and chased around with other men's wives. He worked, certainly, as it required intensive labor to maintain a ranch that was besieged by dust storms; however, he had a steady supply of hired men that he kept busy while he slipped off to play.
There was never any question of divorce. My grandmother's family was awash in tradition and deep Southern roots. Divorce was an insurmountable scandal (as my grandmother's sister, Virgie, discovered when she rid herself of one Mr. Booth). So she watched their children grow, throwing herself into their lives and into her church, getting more bitter with each passing year. They moved to town when my mother was in high school, and this way, my grandmother (who never drove) could walk to the homes of her sisters and cousins. One by one, their children left home, they married, they presented them with grandchildren, life went on, my grandparents became more estranged. By the time their youngest son was killed at age 27 in a car crash, they pretty much lived separate lives, even though they still resided in the same house (I never knew them to sleep in the same room, much less the same bed). Of course, since there was no emotional connection between them, they could be of no comfort to one another, relying instead on their (then) considerable number of "kin" to get them through, and of course, my grandmother's unshakable faith in her vain and jealous god.
Being completely self-absorbed, it was never in doubt that my grandfather would recover from the shattering loss of his son; my grandmother was a different story. She lived for another 14 years but never got over it. I lived with them, on and off, all throughout my teens, during holiday periods and long summers, when I worked on my grandfather's ranch. I was their oldest grandchild; my mother and I had spent the first two years of my life with them after the army decided to station my dad in Germany, so their house was always my other home. I remember the bitter quarrels that still raged between my grandparents, and I remember her crying, later, and calling me by my dead uncle's name--many, many times. It finally came to me that she wasn't confusing our names--she was still a relatively young woman, and our names were quite different--but she was pretending that I was him, pretending that her dead son was still alive, back home and living under her roof once again. His marriage, the birth of his child, his death, they hadn't happened. He was a youthful teen again, the apple of his mother's eye, the last buffer in a despised marriage. I was aware of this but I couldn't tell her to stop calling me by his name. I let her pretend, thinking it couldn't hurt. When the time came for me to leave, as it does for all kids, I simply left. Although I wasn't going far, I wasn't coming back, not for any long periods of time like before. The implications were clear. She couldn't pretend any more. While the grandson would return for brief visits, the son had gone forever. The game was over.
My grandmother was strikingly good-looking, with cornflower blue eyes that looked liked Elizabeth Taylor's. She was a demonstrative, passionate, immensely loving woman with a quick wit and hilarious sense of humor. But there was always something overwhelmingly sad about her; there was the loss of her son, true, although I believe that, when I was around, she could forget for awhile that he was truly gone, even if I could never, really, take his place. I think, though, it extended beyond just that. I think the sham of her marriage--that really big lie--bled her of happiness first, draining her over the period of years that she and my grandfather busied themselves putting on a face for the community. Not that anyone was fooled. While my grandfather's antics were well-known and much-discussed in the coffee shops and farm stores in town, my grandmother dressed to the nines and held her head high as she walked across town in an endless march to the homes of the people who loved her, the family she trusted. Forever stuck in a time warp, she clung to the beliefs and ideals of a generation of southerners who once dwelled in a land that had fallen long before she was born.
When she was 64, she died of ovarian cancer. It was my first year out of college and I had just moved to Oklahoma City. She'd had cancer for a little over a year but had, I thought, successfully fought it. I'd just been to see her in the hospital and, while she didn't look well, I didn't suspect that she was dying. I don't know if it's because no one told me, or if it's because I didn't want to know. But, I really didn't get it, not even after receiving the news from my dad, who called me when I returned from a long night of drinking strawberry daiquiris (which I never touched again). In a state of denial, I made the 200 mile drive in two and a half hours. Pulling up in front of the house that had served as my second home for so many years, I saw the many other cars jamming the driveway and street. It was early May, but a very light snow had, incongruously, started to fall as I walked to the front door. It was only when I saw the wreath, stately and funereal, hanging on the door that the realization of my enormous loss washed over me. I understand now how there are some things that you never get over. You get passed it, you move on, but you never stop missing those you love most. Like every other tragedy and pitfall in life, you deal with it, but this was something that took me many, many years to come to terms with.
My grandfather, to me, seemed unsure of how to respond. The woman with whom he had spent the past 40+ years fighting and ignoring was gone. Coincidentally, this was the same woman who had spent the past 40+ years cooking his meals, washing and ironing his clothes, changing his sheets, and cleaning his house. What was going to happen to him now? I don't know if he was temporarily grief-stricken or simply afraid for his own future, but my grandfather managed to shed some tears throughout the ordeal, as he put his good times on hold. It wasn't long before the chase started up again, however. He took up with the widow of his first-cousin and begged her to marry him, although she had the good sense to decline the proposal. Shortly after that, he moved a different woman into his house, and I don't know if they actually went through the ceremony or not, but in short order, he moved her right back out.
And then, one day, he met the Golddigger from California, a much-married, good-looking, high-maintenance dame, with the looks of a former showgirl and a bank account that reflected her marital endeavors. With dollar signs in her eyes (and lust in his) they stood before a justice of the peace and pledged to love each other in sickness and in health, til death did them part. What she didn't know--in fact, he'd told her quite the opposite--was that my grandfather had managed to run through a good part of his inheritance, and the money generated by his ranching enterprises.
By the time they married, the Golddigger had more money than he did, and when she found out, the shit hit the fan. He had a modest sum in the bank, to be sure, so she wasn't letting him off the hook that easily. Resolving to stay with him until they went through his every last cent, she put on her smiling face as she went about Booker, making friends and endearing herself to one and all. They traveled together, he bought her jewelry, they raced greyhounds. Once she had satisfied herself there wasn't another cent to be had, the Golddigger showed her true colors and moved out of the new house that my grandfather had bought for himself and the new bride to share during their golden years. Obviously, this didn't set well with him, and there was a lot of back and forth going on between them before he got bitten by the snake and, later, had a stroke. At this point, having had more than enough of both my grandfather and of the suddenly stand-offish citizens of Booker, the Golddigger retreated to California.
Unable to care for himself, and undergoing physical therapy, my grandfather entered the nursing home (the same one that Aunt Thelma now resides in), but tried every way he could think of to get out. When my mom's brother (who lives a couple of blocks away) took him for rides, my grandfather would refuse to get out of the car. There was a time, when he still had access to his own car, that he would leave the nursing home, park his car in my uncle's driveway, and sleep there. It was a sad turn of events that some of my grandmother's less charitable relatives ascribed to karma. Or, as they put it, what goes around, comes around.
As his health continued to deteriorate, my grandfather was moved to a hospital in Amarillo, from which he rapidly made his way to a hospice, where the doctors told my mother that "it could be any time". He held on long enough for the Golddigger to get wind of the fact that he was dying and that he may have had a hidden stash of money that he hadn't told her about, and out she came. My mother, all of 5'2" and 92 lbs., stood in the hospice door and told the Golddigger that she'd taken quite enough from our family and that if she wanted to get in that room, she have to get past my mother first. The golddigger retreated, my grandfather died peacefully, and the resultant funeral dinner was awkward, with my grandfather's children, grandchildren, and other relatives crowding a cluster of long tables, while the Golddigger and her brother sat alone. What was funny is that she honestly couldn't figure it out. "I was his wife," she said, shaking her head in amazement that she wasn't accorded any more respect than what was being shown at the funeral. When it was over, she drove off into the sunset with her brother. She was, she said, done with the lot of us.
* * * * * *
At the home of my mother's brother, an uncle who is, physically, very much like his father, we see that his pickup truck is parked in the driveway. In the bed of the pickup truck is the long, very fat corpse of a headless rattlesnake. My uncle informs us that he stopped and killed it in the road earlier that morning. You don't just run over big snakes like that. Not only might they not die, but they can wrap around the axle of your vehicle, and they can get awfully, awfully pissed off when you try and remove them. At least, that's what I always heard. It doesn't take much to get them pissed off, anyway. Back in the early '90's, my grandfather climbed out of his pickup truck in a field and stepped right down on top of a rattler. The snake bit clear through his boot, indirectly resulting in the long, slow decline that eventually led to his death. We spend some time with my uncle and his wife, still pretty but very frail, having spent the past two years battling stage four lung cancer. Every few weeks, she and my uncle climb into the car with their only daughter, and they make the long, ten-hour drive to Houston, where she undergoes her chemo treatments. And, so far, it's all been worth it; she's survived much longer, and done much better, than anyone expected; even the doctors think that it's nothing much short of miraculous. I'm not much one for religion, but obviously something's working, and I'm thankful for that. I also get to visit with their oldest son, my cousin, Mark. He's a couple of years younger than me and just became a first-time grandfather! Normally, I wouldn't be telling it, but my sister--four years younger than me--has a three year old granddaughter, so I've had time to accustom myself to the fact that I'm getting to be of a grandfatherly age, although if you ask me, I will lie to your face and subtract ten years from my actual age. It's always fun visiting with my uncle and his family, but we still need to make one more stop before we leave Booker.
* * * * * *
The Heart Cemetery, just south of town, occupies a smallish, flat, arid piece of land that was once being encroached upon by an ever-expanding prairie dog town. I don't know whether or not the owner of the neighboring land exterminated the prairie dogs (I suspect he did) but it seems that the danger of the little creatures joining departed loved ones has passed. My mother still feels a family duty to visit the cemetery every time she comes to Booker. Well, it's full of our family members; most all of the people who used to join us at my great-grandmother's dinner table when I was a kid now reside there. There are dozens of them, maybe hundreds, all relatives of either my grandfather or my grandmother. You'd think that the henhouse hum of giddy conversations would still be echoing through the cemetery, but it is quiet, and the only movement is that of the wind jostling the American and Texas state flags at the top of the flagpole. I know why my mom comes here, although I can't really explain it. A few years ago, I had driven over by myself to see some relatives. Before leaving town, I decided to drive out and visit the graves of my grandparents. Standing out there alone in the cemetery, with only the wind and the sound of a distant tractor for company, I thought of what a lonely, lovely, peaceful place it was; next to the prairie dog town and the infinite flatness beyond, it was a sweet, dead village filled with beautiful memories and the enduring love of the ages. Jolted back to reality by my mom pointing out the ostentatious and rambling monument to bad taste that a cousin has erected for her recently-departed husband, I steer the car onto the highway and speed away, towards home.
* * * * * *
Back in the little house behind my parent's place, I catch the Andy Warhol flick and drift off to sleep watching "Basic Instinct 2", for which I have developed an unaccountable fondness. The next morning, my dad drives me to Wichita to catch my flight back to Ft. Lauderdale. Neither of my parents looks like they feel particularly well, so I am not feeling good about leaving. After my dad drops me at the airport, I sit and wait for my flight to board. Of course, it seems like I'm sitting there for an eternity, although, in actuality, it's probably less than an hour. On the plane, I make the acquaintence of my seatmates, a friendly, chatty farm couple from western Kansas. They're on their way to Atlanta to visit a daughter, who, it turns out, was once a flight attendant for our airline, Air Tran. As we cruise into Atlanta, we start hitting some turbulence. We circle Atlanta Airport as the clouds grow darker and the plane gets jumpier. The pilot announces that we're diverting to refuel because, what with the gas crisis and all, the planes aren't being flown with full tanks and, well, we're about out of fuel. What? The farm wife next to me widens her eyes and asks me if the pilot just said what she thinks he said. I assure that he did as her fingers dig into the arms of her seat. The flight to Macon takes another thirty minutes, although we spend an additional forty-five minutes circling that airport. We finally land and spend yet another forty-five minutes on the tarmac as our plane is re-fueled.
When we take off to head back to Atlanta, the ominous, black clouds are swirling. We plow into the storm, and the plane jumps like a kangaroo sprinting across the outback. My stomach lurches and I wonder if I'm going to have to retrieve the barf bag from the seat pocket in front of me. After what seems like an eternity, the pilot steers us out of the turbulence and, soon, we're once again circling (a much calmer) Atlanta airport. We circle. And we circle. And we circle some more.
When we land, hours after our original ETA, we are told to hurry up and sprint to a gate that is roughly the same distance as it is from Macon to Atlanta. After hefting my considerably heavy bag through the airport and arriving at the assigned gate, the Air Tran lady informs me that my flight will be arriving at another gate and that I should hurry on over there. "On over there" turns out to be another considerable jog, but I am starting to get irritated and I damn sure don't want to miss my flight and have to stay in the Atlanta Airport. I arrive at the new gate, where I stand around waiting with another group of increasingly agitated passengers. We are then directed to yet another gate, where a different flight will be picking us up at 11:00 p.m. So, we all shlepp over to this gate, a motley crew, indeed, all of us hungry, tired, and bitching at Air Tran's incompetence, and promising to write letters and send e-mails to "whoever is in charge of this fiasco". We are advised to stay in line, as our flight will be arriving any moment. An hour later, we are told that the flight has been delayed by all the stormy weather on the east coast. Thirty minutes after that, when we're informed that we now have to wait on a flight attendant, who is stuck on another flight, there is mutiny in our eyes, murder in our hearts.
I stomp out of line and head for the News Exchange, where I make a futile attempt to buy a vintage sandwich and Coke from the African-American attendant. Shaking her head, she says sorry, she's closing. Disheartened, I walk across the corridor to the Phillips Crab dispensary. As I'm perusing the very limited supply of food, a young African-American man joins me. Suddenly, another woman walks up and tells him to go to the News Exchange Stand because the woman working there thinks that he's cute and wants to sell him a sandwich. Furious, I stand outside the news stand and watch the woman whom I now perceive to be a racist bitch sell the young man a sandwich and a soft drink. Inwardly, I seethe and promise to report this to her superior just as soon as I get back to Ft. Lauderdale. I finally manage to persuade one young woman working at an about-to-close booth to sell me something to eat. By this time, I don't even know what I'm eating; I'm so hungry that it doesn't matter. It's edible and that's all I care about.
Another hour passes, and the mutineers are dangerously close to stringing up the unfortunate Air Tran counter workers, who have called in for support. The extra Air Tran people are now giving us conflicting stories, none of which gel with what their co-workers are telling us, so it suddenly occurs to me that none of them know what the actual cause of the delay is, that they're all lying through their teeth, and that they've been instructed to do so by their supervisors. At some point, the allegedly unaccountably-delayed flight attendant arrives and is greeted by the collective glare of two hundred eyes. We are herded onto the plane well after midnight, and my list of complaints has grown so long that I may need a pen and paper to write them down. I don't want to forget one thing when I call Air Tran and the News Exchange headquarters!
* * * * * *
When the plane lands in Ft. Lauderdale at 2:15 a.m., I am still fuming. Storming off the plane, I harrumph my way past the stewardess as she wishes me a good stay in Ft. Lauderdale. We'll see about that, sister, I think to myself. I am petulant and pissy and unbearable, even to myself. My partner picks me up and, since I have forgotten not only what I ate in Atlanta but the act of eating, itself, I am famished. And there is nothing--nothing--open for the miles and miles we drive along I-95 as we get ever closer to home, and the empty refrigerator inside. When we see an open 7-11, I shriek for my partner to stop. Inside, the least offensive thing I can find is something akin to an Italian hoagie. When I attempt to pay the woman at the counter, I get a lot of attitude. What the fuck is this all about, I wonder? All of a sudden, I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I have never been racist, have never approved of anything that smacks of racism, and I'm on the receiving end of a whole lot of needless bullshit. I decide to add 7-11 to my list as we drive home and I eat the tasteless sandwich. At 3:30 a.m., I finally climb into bed, my mind racing, demanding apologies for all the wrongs, both real and imagined, that I've experienced over the course of that long, endless journey. I want something for all my trouble, goddammit!
The next morning, I am rewarded with a migraine.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Points West, Part 3: Land of Enchantment
The next morning is Sunday and they are planning to have a brief service at Black Mesa. My partner and I, having already said our goodbyes the night before, are driving directly to Albuquerque. Originally, I had planned for us to drive further west of Boise City into New Mexico, on a road that would take us past an extinct volcano, Mt. Capulin, that we could drive up and then hike down into the crater. Then, I reasoned, we would drive on to the town of Cimarron, with it's haunted hotel and cowboy past (my great uncle Garnet once bought a horse here, which he named Cimarron, or Cim); then further into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the Enchanted Circle, some parts of which are evocative of the Swiss Alps, particularly the charming village of Red River. We would pass the skiing resorts of Angel Fire and Eagle's Nest, move on to mystical, literary Taos, and then cut down to Santa Fe and, ultimately Albuquerque. However, since time was limited, I had to 86 the whole Enchanted Circle thing, much to my enormous chagrin. Intending to depart Boise City at 7 a.m., we fill up the gas tank at the nearby Love's at 8:30, and drive down the black hole road to Dalhart. I have to say that Dalhart is a very interesting place that still boasts many old buildings, brick streets, and a colorful past that can compete with the best old cowtowns. Passing through Dalhart, my partner is impressed with the sprawling feed lots that spread across acre after acre, as far as the eye can see. Maybe we caught a good wind because the smell isn't as almighty terrible as it could be. We change to Mountain Standard Time when we cross over into New Mexico, and stop for an early lunch at a truck stop in Tucumcari. My partner opts for McDonald's next door, but I get a semi-healthy sandwich at the truck stop's Subway, served with sass and a flirty smile by a cute, friendly waiter who's from the same Texas town as one of my cousins. Later in the afternoon, it seems like we're approaching Albuquerque forever. I haven't been on this stretch of I-40 since the nineties, and I'm surprised how far the urban sprawl has moved east. We're not even close to the mountains and already there are housing developments and chain motels. When at last we cross the mountain and descend into Albuquerque, we are greeted with massive road construction. Continuing on, the traffic gets heavier, but we finally come to our turnoff on Rio Grande Drive.
* * * * * *
My partner's cousin, although born in Cuba, left early and spent most of his adolescence in New Jersey. He was a teacher in a private school and married a gorgeous New York Italian girl, raised two kids, and seemingly had a good life in an upscale, picturesque Connecticut community. Not so good, apparently, as he divorced the wife once both kids were gone, and wound up, at age 50, marrying a twentysomething year old fellow teacher, and moving to Albuquerque. By the time he was 55, the cousin had two children, ages 3 1/2 and 1 1/2. They also have two chihuahuas, one older than dirt, and the other with the personality of a piranha. The cousin's house is a very nice, very large, modern faux-adobe structure, a southwestern style construction with an enclosed courtyard and a fountain that wasn't working when we were there. Behind the main house, accessible from both the house and a little side yard, is a casita, which is where my partner and I stayed, and is as large as our condo in Florida. After settling in, we discover that the children, both daughters, are direct descendants of Damien, the demon-child from "The Omen". Especially the oldest daughter who, in one particularly dramatic display, repeatedly threw her screaming self against the glass patio doors in a fit worthy of a Hollywood remake. These children are not merely bad; they are truly and simply the worst behaved children that I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. I don't condone corporal punishment for children; I have always felt that, by using violence, no matter how benign, to punish a child, you reinforce violence as a viable method of dealing with people whom you believe to be a transgressor of some sort. Having said that, I think that the cousin and his wife need a good spanking, just a good, old-fashioned butt-whupping for delivering these evil spawn into the world, and then letting the spawn run rampant while they, the parents, politely pass the wine and the Caesar salad, and ask me if I could please speak up since the kids are, well, a little out of control. A little? My ass! Wanting to put some distance between ourselves and the brats, my partner and I decide to go to Old Town (a three minute drive) where we see an old church and some other old buildings, and spend way too much time perusing useless objets d'art in overpriced junk shops. Honestly, Old Town is a very charming and interesting area of Albuquerque and well worth visiting, but I was already traumatized when I got there, and not able to focus on much. Founded in the early 1700's, Albuquerque was a government outpost for the conquesting Spanish, and some of the buildings in the area date back from those early times. There's also a nifty natural history museum nearby, although we didn't make it there on this visit.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, dinner is being served. We are sitting in the back yard and, at this hour of the evening, with the sun still high in the sky, the temperature has dropped to seventy degrees. It is pleasant, briefly, until the children finish eating, and all hell breaks loose. I notice that their mother, our hostess, is constantly on the verge of tears, as a streak of hysteria seems to bubble dangerously near her weary, disheveled surface. It strikes me as profoundly strange that these two people, the cousin and his wife, so genuinely nice, so obviously brilliant, so warm and open, can be in any way related to the two monsters wrought from their loins. With the furies upon us, my partner and I excuse ourselves and head for bed.
We depart early the following morning. We're going to take the scenic route to Santa Fe by driving along the Turquoise Trail. After negotiating the early morning traffic, we cross back over the mountain and turn north. Clinging to the hillsides above are neighborhoods of beautiful adobe-style homes, artfully situated among pinon trees and boulders the size of taxicabs. The view from the roadway becomes even more impressive as we pass from the Albuquerque city limits. On both sides of the highway, cars are parked while the occupants stand painting at easels. There is less sprawl out here, as the suburban congestion gives way to breathtaking vistas of high desert and dazzling sunlight. We finally come to a stop in the village of Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid) and not (Muh-DRID), as in the Spanish capital. Madrid is an old coal mining community that once boasted hotels, saloons, and its own minor league baseball team. When the demand for coal lessened, Madrid became a veritable ghost town, idling into a slow, but scenic demise that was halted in the 1970's when it was rediscovered by artists and counterculture types. Although occupying only a mere few blocks along the highway, Madrid is now home to dozens of art galleries, a couple of bed and breakfasts, a tea house, cafes, and a saloon frequented by Harley-driving bikers. Still untamed and pretty much unyuppified, Madrid has an edgier, funkier feel than what is found in the more upscale, sophisticated Santa Fe to the north. When we stop for a quick bite of breakfast, we notice that most of the shops and galleries haven't yet opened, even though it's past ten, and the signs on the doors say that they open at ten. My partner offers that, from the looks of things, maybe they were up all night smoking reefers and hadn't yet managed to get their mornings started. It's that kind of place, and I really liked that quality, where people are independent enough to be on their own time schedule, and not slaves to conformity. My partner ate a muffin and I got a scone from the tiny tea room at a cool, rambling bed and breakfast. Enroute to the car, we stop to chat with a local shopowner who is just unlocking his doors. Speaking with a vaguely European accent he's very helpful when we ask for a cheap place to buy gas. A few miles outside of town, we pull into a gas station masquerading as a western set. The illusion is somewhat shattered when I walk inside and am greeted by a middle-eastern gentleman wearing a turban. Hoping to use the store's bathroom, I finally reach the conclusion that the current occupant, who has barricaded himself inside, is not coming out anytime soon. Either he has some serious issues going on, or he is, quite simply, lying dead across the toilet. I give the attendant with the turban one last look as he shrugs helplessly and I pee-pee dance to the car. With no convenient turnoffs in which to take care of the business at hand, I grimace, and cross my legs tightly, as we continue towards Santa Fe.
The New Mexico State Prison lies just on the outskirts of Santa Fe, on a high stretch of land overlooking a lot of desert. The prison itself looks massive and foreboding, and I remember the unimagineable ultra-violence of the riot that occurred there in the not too distant past: the taking of hostages, and reports of one man having his head taken off by a blow torch, while others were tortured, dismembered, and decapitated. In all, 33 people lost their lives, and another 100 sustained serious injuries. Allegedly, this 1980 riot could have been prevented as the authorities had been previous alerted that something was about to break loose. The fact that they did nothing until the death toll had already started to mount has been the subject of many arguments and much debate.
Beyond the haunting walls of the prison, we cruise into the Santa Fe city limits. We pass blocks and blocks of chain stores--Starbucks, Borders, Pier One, Burger King, Holiday Inn Express, all the usual suspects--before I spot familiar landmarks. It's been fifteen years since I've been to Santa Fe, and in the interim, it has experienced its own urban sprawl. By the time we reach the downtown area, I remind my partner that my kidneys are on overload and that we need to be stopping soon. We park in the city parking lot behind one of Santa Fe's many old churches. I duck into a nearby business and use the bathroom as the burden of the morning's Coca-Cola is relieved from my bladder.
Back out in the sunshine, I gaze at the old plaza, the Palace of the Governors, and the impressive St. Francis Cathedral. Santa Fe is one of the oldest cities in the United States. Although there were organized communities in the area as far back as 1000 A.D., Santa Fe was officially founded in 1610 by Don Pedro de Peralta, the third governor of Nuevo Mexico. Santa Fe served as the capital of Nuevo Mexico, as well as the provincial seat of New Spain. There are several impressive buildings in the area that date back to colonial times, and at least one from the Pre-Columbian settlement (it's now a pizza restaurant!).
Our first stop is St. Francis Cathedral, a circa 1880 church built, not from the usual adobe, but from stone that was loaded in from a quarry near Lamy. A quietly imposing building, the cathedral occupies a block facing the square. Inside, renovations are underway, so our movements (as well as our time there) are limited. Outside the cathedral, there is a long, narrow park where a group of children picnic with a teacher.
Across the street, at the low, rambling, centuries-old Palace of the Governors, dozens of local Native Americans display their wares to tourists in the shaded comfort of the long porch. Propped up on colorful blankets are the ubiquitous turquoise jewelry, beaded earrings and necklaces, silver items, belts, paintings, sketches, pottery--it's a cornucopia of tchotchkes, kitsch, and genuine artistry. I find nothing that I can't live without, although I am momentarily tempted by the kinky looking, black leather wrist snaps setting incongruously amongst the other merchandise.
Further from the plaza, we pass through a few more shops and galleries, and then stop in at the famous La Fonda Hotel. Already old when Fred Harvey, of "Harvey Girls" fame (check out the Judy Garland movie if you don't know what I'm talking about) added a second floor to the property, the La Fonda has, through the years, played host to presidents, foreign dignitaries, and movie stars. Once "the place to stay" in Santa Fe, it now faces stiff competition from other newer, upscale properties, like the Inn of the Anasazi, the Inn at Loretto, and, a little farther afield, the colorful Bishop's Lodge. However, we're not checking into the La Fonda today. My partner's cousin has recommended two restaurants for lunch, and I ask the gift shop manager if he can give me directions. A kindred spirit--Santa Fe is full of my kind--the manager tells me how to reach the Coyote Cafe, a short block and a half away. Once there, we opt for lunching on the rooftop, enjoying the sunshine and startling blue sky. It's also a perfect place to survey the street scene below and check out any points of interest that we may have missed. The cafe is crowded and bustling, but the service is good, as is the food, which appears with surprising swiftness. I put down an enormous soft taco of fish and white sauce, and my partner devours a generous looking pork dish. Everything comes with huge amounts of rice and black beans, and chips with three kinds of salsa. During the feast, my partner's cell phone keeps ringing. We have work being done in the master bathroom back home, and they are calling with hourly updates and bad news.
After lunch, we venture over to Canyon Road, a gently sloping street that once led to the city's water supply. Now, Canyon Road is home to scores of expensive galleries, with a few restaurants and tea rooms sandwiched in between. This is where the serious art collectors come to purchase paintings and scultures. I know this because I find an absolutely magnificent (and very large) painting that I think will look just fine in our living room; with a ceiling that gradually slopes to a height of close to 15 feet, I feel that the painting is an obvious fit, and am willing to shell out a couple of hundred bucks should the need arise. Well, that just goes to show you how much I know about art. The price is actually on the painting, albeit on a tiny tag, easily missed, located at the very bottom, right-hand corner. The gallery's proprietor--another kindred spirit--is nearly called into action to help lift me off the floor after I read the that the price is$85,000.00! That's eighty-five thousand dollars! With as much dignity as I can summon, I inform him that I will check back later, and then hasten from the premises. This is one of the first galleries we stop in, and I cop a serious clue as to what to expect from the others. It goes without saying that we will not be purchasing a lot of art on this leg of the journey.
A little further up the road, we duck into a charming little cottage for herbal tea and homemade cookies. While here, my partner is seized with a sudden case of intestinal distress, prompting his immediate search for the restroom; in the meantime, I am pursued by a wasp that chases me outside into the courtyard. Afterwards, we proceed to a garden full of rock fountains, where we discuss sculpting with an exquisitely pale, fiftyish goth girl who exudes an otherworldly Bride of Dracula vibe. When, finally, we are galleried out, we hike back to the Journey and drive out towards I-25, the expressway that will carry us back to Albuquerque, and to the lair of the hellspawn. On the way out of town, it comes to our attention that we still need to pick up some souvenirs for a few lucky recipients so we pull into the parking lot of a mammoth trinket warehouse that sort of resembles a southwest-style Big Lots. There are rows and rows of every sort of knicknack imaginable, most of which can be had for under $10! This is more like it! Finally, satisfied with the Land of Enchantment coffee mugs and the allegedly size small tee shirt that would comfortably ensconce a Mini Cooper, we head down the road for our last night in New Mexico.
In the casita, I pack everything except what I'll need to get ready for our early departure the following morning. I'd like to get on the highway by 7 a.m. so we can be back at my parent's house by 2. Of course, my partner and I both know that we have a better chance of scaling Mt. Everest on roller skates, but I am ever-hopeful. The shrieking has been underway in the main house ever since we returned from Santa Fe, and, putting on our best faces, we enter into a scene of utter chaos. The cousin's wife, red-faced and bleary-eyed, is clutching the 1 1/2 year old to her bosom and chasing the other hellion, threatening to send her to her room so that she can't interface with us on our last night in town. Oh, please let it be! The cousin, himself, smiles Stepford-like, and looks beyond the unfolding drama, burying himself in the newspaper that he's probably read five times since its arrival that morning. He suggests that we go to dinner at a nearby restaurant, and that his wife remain home with the girls, since they're all "a little cranky". Sounds good to me. However, the wife has other ideas, and she's not about to be left behind in the seventh circle of hell. She orders the eldest child to go put on something appropriate, and the child dons an outfit that might have looked fetching on Madonna circa 1983. When her mother tells her that the ensemble is not going to work, the kid doubles over and begins to scream like a banshee. Inexplicably, the mother apologizes and asks her to please put on something pretty. The daughter reappears in a unit that is even less attractive than the previous one. The parents praise her for her taste and style, and we load into the cars and head for the restaurant.
The Flying Star Cafe is a few short blocks from the house, and is located in a cool, little strip mall that has a nice size book store. A slave to good book stores, I am forcefully dragged past its entrance as we proceed to the restaurant. Once inside, both children make an immediate beeline for the kitchen, disappearing amidst a clatter of pots, and the collective gasps of cooks and servers. Their father races into the kitchen, steering both girls back into the serving area. Once seated on the outside patio, we all enjoy a brief period of relative calm. The Flying Star has a varied and enormous menu so it takes us awhile to make up our minds. I wind up with a sandwich made from marinated and grilled crimini mushrooms, avocado, tomatoes, and caramelized onions on a sourdough roll. I know this because I still have the menu. It is delicious and much too filling to permit my indulging in one of the great looking desserts that are being served at a nearby table. The hellion, on the other hand, demands dessert, so her mother obediently orders some concoction of chocolate and cake and ice cream and whipped cream, and I don't know what else, and I salivate as the evil slurps it down. Once we are enroute to the car, the riotous carrying-on begins in earnest, as each child vehemently protests her insertion into a car seat. My partner and I climb into the Journey and ponder which parent will be the long-term survivor of the ongoing melee. At first glance, one would assume that the father, an athletic 55 (who doesn't look a day over 45) would still be the first to buy the farm, simply by virtue of his age. However, the poor mother--shut away with those daughters, day in and day out, sleepless, haggard, ever on the verge of sobbing hysteria--doesn't appear to be a good candidate for longevity, at least not outside of a mental health facility. When we arrive back at the house, we slip through the little side yard and lock outselves securely in the casita.
I am awakened the following morning by more than the usual din of disorderliness coming from the main house. The cousin's wife screams the name of the eldest child, and then apologizes for screaming. Doors slam, and soon there is a knock on our door. Dressing quickly, I open the door to reveal the red, tear-streaked face of a woman in full mental collapse. Clasping the 1 1/2 year old to her breasts, she clutches the other daughter in a headlock. "The dogs are gone!" she moans.
"What?"
"I let them out in the little side yard this morning, like I always do, and apparently the gate wasn't shut last night, and they got out!" She gives me an accusatory look as the words bubble from her lips.
Uh-oh. I don't remember checking whether or not the gate latched securely when we came in last night and I was the last one through. Shit.
The hysterical woman informs me that her husband is already scouring the neighborhood on his bicycle in an effort to find the dogs, and that she and the girls are taking the car to look. "If we're not back before you go, it was nice seeing you," she snarls, clearly inferring that we will be eternally cursed by the fates if we even think of departing before those dogs are found.
With the search branching out across the neighborhood, my partner and I set out on foot, hoping that we might see something that the others have missed. Of utmost concern to me is the fact that our host's house is located right next to a very busy street--Rio Grande--which merits its own exit off nearby I-40. I squint to see if there are squashed remnants of chihuahua splattered in the road. Seeing nothing, I heave a sigh of relief, and we turn a corner and stroll past a construction sight. Suddenly, I see movement as two chihuahua sized creatures scurry along a fence row parallel to us. My excitement turns to disgust when I determine that they are huge rats, fully capable, I fear, of devouring the hapless dogs. Well, this is a fine kettle of fish. I tell my partner that we'll never get out of Albuquerque now, that we'll be planning (and paying for) a funeral (possibly our own) if those dogs aren't found alive and well. We run across the cousin, who is still frantically roaming the sidestreets on his bicycle. My partner makes it clear that he wasn't the last one to pass through the gate last night (and is thus, blameless), and they both look at me as I apologize profusely. The cousin smiles the Stepford smile and tells me that it wasn't done on purpose, but his words are of little comfort, especially when the wife whirls by in her car, and I catch a glimpse of her broken down face. We go our separate ways again, and I start to sweat, realizing that this is not looking like it's going to turn out well for anyone. Finally, as my partner and I start back towards the casita, the cousin rides up on his bicycle, the dogs tucked securely in his arms. I nearly faint from relief, as does the wife who shows up and loads the dogs into the car with the monsters. When we get back to the house, there is much laughter as our hosts tell me that you have to slam the gate to make sure that the latch catches, a minor fact that they failed to mention upon our arrival. They then relate other times when the dogs ran away, the ensuing hysteria, the relief and feeling of giddy silliness when the dogs were found, and on and on. I absolutely want nothing more out of life than to get the fuck away from there as quickly as possible.
At 9:30 a.m., the cousin stands with his wife and children in their driveway to see us off. Clutching one child to her bosom while headlocking the other, the wife issues a pained smile and tells us it was lovely having us and to come back soon. As we pull out onto Rio Grande Boulevard, I glance back and see a perfect family tableaux--handsome, professorial husband, athletic, young wife, and two beautiful, little daughters standing before a well-appointed, well-maintained home--and I feel an urgency to escape, as if the hounds of hell are about to be loosed upon me. We drive east on I-40 and navigate morning traffic until we cross the mountains once again, and the sprawl of Albuquerque gradually disappears behind us.
* * * * * *
My partner's cousin, although born in Cuba, left early and spent most of his adolescence in New Jersey. He was a teacher in a private school and married a gorgeous New York Italian girl, raised two kids, and seemingly had a good life in an upscale, picturesque Connecticut community. Not so good, apparently, as he divorced the wife once both kids were gone, and wound up, at age 50, marrying a twentysomething year old fellow teacher, and moving to Albuquerque. By the time he was 55, the cousin had two children, ages 3 1/2 and 1 1/2. They also have two chihuahuas, one older than dirt, and the other with the personality of a piranha. The cousin's house is a very nice, very large, modern faux-adobe structure, a southwestern style construction with an enclosed courtyard and a fountain that wasn't working when we were there. Behind the main house, accessible from both the house and a little side yard, is a casita, which is where my partner and I stayed, and is as large as our condo in Florida. After settling in, we discover that the children, both daughters, are direct descendants of Damien, the demon-child from "The Omen". Especially the oldest daughter who, in one particularly dramatic display, repeatedly threw her screaming self against the glass patio doors in a fit worthy of a Hollywood remake. These children are not merely bad; they are truly and simply the worst behaved children that I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. I don't condone corporal punishment for children; I have always felt that, by using violence, no matter how benign, to punish a child, you reinforce violence as a viable method of dealing with people whom you believe to be a transgressor of some sort. Having said that, I think that the cousin and his wife need a good spanking, just a good, old-fashioned butt-whupping for delivering these evil spawn into the world, and then letting the spawn run rampant while they, the parents, politely pass the wine and the Caesar salad, and ask me if I could please speak up since the kids are, well, a little out of control. A little? My ass! Wanting to put some distance between ourselves and the brats, my partner and I decide to go to Old Town (a three minute drive) where we see an old church and some other old buildings, and spend way too much time perusing useless objets d'art in overpriced junk shops. Honestly, Old Town is a very charming and interesting area of Albuquerque and well worth visiting, but I was already traumatized when I got there, and not able to focus on much. Founded in the early 1700's, Albuquerque was a government outpost for the conquesting Spanish, and some of the buildings in the area date back from those early times. There's also a nifty natural history museum nearby, although we didn't make it there on this visit.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, dinner is being served. We are sitting in the back yard and, at this hour of the evening, with the sun still high in the sky, the temperature has dropped to seventy degrees. It is pleasant, briefly, until the children finish eating, and all hell breaks loose. I notice that their mother, our hostess, is constantly on the verge of tears, as a streak of hysteria seems to bubble dangerously near her weary, disheveled surface. It strikes me as profoundly strange that these two people, the cousin and his wife, so genuinely nice, so obviously brilliant, so warm and open, can be in any way related to the two monsters wrought from their loins. With the furies upon us, my partner and I excuse ourselves and head for bed.
We depart early the following morning. We're going to take the scenic route to Santa Fe by driving along the Turquoise Trail. After negotiating the early morning traffic, we cross back over the mountain and turn north. Clinging to the hillsides above are neighborhoods of beautiful adobe-style homes, artfully situated among pinon trees and boulders the size of taxicabs. The view from the roadway becomes even more impressive as we pass from the Albuquerque city limits. On both sides of the highway, cars are parked while the occupants stand painting at easels. There is less sprawl out here, as the suburban congestion gives way to breathtaking vistas of high desert and dazzling sunlight. We finally come to a stop in the village of Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid) and not (Muh-DRID), as in the Spanish capital. Madrid is an old coal mining community that once boasted hotels, saloons, and its own minor league baseball team. When the demand for coal lessened, Madrid became a veritable ghost town, idling into a slow, but scenic demise that was halted in the 1970's when it was rediscovered by artists and counterculture types. Although occupying only a mere few blocks along the highway, Madrid is now home to dozens of art galleries, a couple of bed and breakfasts, a tea house, cafes, and a saloon frequented by Harley-driving bikers. Still untamed and pretty much unyuppified, Madrid has an edgier, funkier feel than what is found in the more upscale, sophisticated Santa Fe to the north. When we stop for a quick bite of breakfast, we notice that most of the shops and galleries haven't yet opened, even though it's past ten, and the signs on the doors say that they open at ten. My partner offers that, from the looks of things, maybe they were up all night smoking reefers and hadn't yet managed to get their mornings started. It's that kind of place, and I really liked that quality, where people are independent enough to be on their own time schedule, and not slaves to conformity. My partner ate a muffin and I got a scone from the tiny tea room at a cool, rambling bed and breakfast. Enroute to the car, we stop to chat with a local shopowner who is just unlocking his doors. Speaking with a vaguely European accent he's very helpful when we ask for a cheap place to buy gas. A few miles outside of town, we pull into a gas station masquerading as a western set. The illusion is somewhat shattered when I walk inside and am greeted by a middle-eastern gentleman wearing a turban. Hoping to use the store's bathroom, I finally reach the conclusion that the current occupant, who has barricaded himself inside, is not coming out anytime soon. Either he has some serious issues going on, or he is, quite simply, lying dead across the toilet. I give the attendant with the turban one last look as he shrugs helplessly and I pee-pee dance to the car. With no convenient turnoffs in which to take care of the business at hand, I grimace, and cross my legs tightly, as we continue towards Santa Fe.
The New Mexico State Prison lies just on the outskirts of Santa Fe, on a high stretch of land overlooking a lot of desert. The prison itself looks massive and foreboding, and I remember the unimagineable ultra-violence of the riot that occurred there in the not too distant past: the taking of hostages, and reports of one man having his head taken off by a blow torch, while others were tortured, dismembered, and decapitated. In all, 33 people lost their lives, and another 100 sustained serious injuries. Allegedly, this 1980 riot could have been prevented as the authorities had been previous alerted that something was about to break loose. The fact that they did nothing until the death toll had already started to mount has been the subject of many arguments and much debate.
Beyond the haunting walls of the prison, we cruise into the Santa Fe city limits. We pass blocks and blocks of chain stores--Starbucks, Borders, Pier One, Burger King, Holiday Inn Express, all the usual suspects--before I spot familiar landmarks. It's been fifteen years since I've been to Santa Fe, and in the interim, it has experienced its own urban sprawl. By the time we reach the downtown area, I remind my partner that my kidneys are on overload and that we need to be stopping soon. We park in the city parking lot behind one of Santa Fe's many old churches. I duck into a nearby business and use the bathroom as the burden of the morning's Coca-Cola is relieved from my bladder.
Back out in the sunshine, I gaze at the old plaza, the Palace of the Governors, and the impressive St. Francis Cathedral. Santa Fe is one of the oldest cities in the United States. Although there were organized communities in the area as far back as 1000 A.D., Santa Fe was officially founded in 1610 by Don Pedro de Peralta, the third governor of Nuevo Mexico. Santa Fe served as the capital of Nuevo Mexico, as well as the provincial seat of New Spain. There are several impressive buildings in the area that date back to colonial times, and at least one from the Pre-Columbian settlement (it's now a pizza restaurant!).
Our first stop is St. Francis Cathedral, a circa 1880 church built, not from the usual adobe, but from stone that was loaded in from a quarry near Lamy. A quietly imposing building, the cathedral occupies a block facing the square. Inside, renovations are underway, so our movements (as well as our time there) are limited. Outside the cathedral, there is a long, narrow park where a group of children picnic with a teacher.
Across the street, at the low, rambling, centuries-old Palace of the Governors, dozens of local Native Americans display their wares to tourists in the shaded comfort of the long porch. Propped up on colorful blankets are the ubiquitous turquoise jewelry, beaded earrings and necklaces, silver items, belts, paintings, sketches, pottery--it's a cornucopia of tchotchkes, kitsch, and genuine artistry. I find nothing that I can't live without, although I am momentarily tempted by the kinky looking, black leather wrist snaps setting incongruously amongst the other merchandise.
Further from the plaza, we pass through a few more shops and galleries, and then stop in at the famous La Fonda Hotel. Already old when Fred Harvey, of "Harvey Girls" fame (check out the Judy Garland movie if you don't know what I'm talking about) added a second floor to the property, the La Fonda has, through the years, played host to presidents, foreign dignitaries, and movie stars. Once "the place to stay" in Santa Fe, it now faces stiff competition from other newer, upscale properties, like the Inn of the Anasazi, the Inn at Loretto, and, a little farther afield, the colorful Bishop's Lodge. However, we're not checking into the La Fonda today. My partner's cousin has recommended two restaurants for lunch, and I ask the gift shop manager if he can give me directions. A kindred spirit--Santa Fe is full of my kind--the manager tells me how to reach the Coyote Cafe, a short block and a half away. Once there, we opt for lunching on the rooftop, enjoying the sunshine and startling blue sky. It's also a perfect place to survey the street scene below and check out any points of interest that we may have missed. The cafe is crowded and bustling, but the service is good, as is the food, which appears with surprising swiftness. I put down an enormous soft taco of fish and white sauce, and my partner devours a generous looking pork dish. Everything comes with huge amounts of rice and black beans, and chips with three kinds of salsa. During the feast, my partner's cell phone keeps ringing. We have work being done in the master bathroom back home, and they are calling with hourly updates and bad news.
After lunch, we venture over to Canyon Road, a gently sloping street that once led to the city's water supply. Now, Canyon Road is home to scores of expensive galleries, with a few restaurants and tea rooms sandwiched in between. This is where the serious art collectors come to purchase paintings and scultures. I know this because I find an absolutely magnificent (and very large) painting that I think will look just fine in our living room; with a ceiling that gradually slopes to a height of close to 15 feet, I feel that the painting is an obvious fit, and am willing to shell out a couple of hundred bucks should the need arise. Well, that just goes to show you how much I know about art. The price is actually on the painting, albeit on a tiny tag, easily missed, located at the very bottom, right-hand corner. The gallery's proprietor--another kindred spirit--is nearly called into action to help lift me off the floor after I read the that the price is$85,000.00! That's eighty-five thousand dollars! With as much dignity as I can summon, I inform him that I will check back later, and then hasten from the premises. This is one of the first galleries we stop in, and I cop a serious clue as to what to expect from the others. It goes without saying that we will not be purchasing a lot of art on this leg of the journey.
A little further up the road, we duck into a charming little cottage for herbal tea and homemade cookies. While here, my partner is seized with a sudden case of intestinal distress, prompting his immediate search for the restroom; in the meantime, I am pursued by a wasp that chases me outside into the courtyard. Afterwards, we proceed to a garden full of rock fountains, where we discuss sculpting with an exquisitely pale, fiftyish goth girl who exudes an otherworldly Bride of Dracula vibe. When, finally, we are galleried out, we hike back to the Journey and drive out towards I-25, the expressway that will carry us back to Albuquerque, and to the lair of the hellspawn. On the way out of town, it comes to our attention that we still need to pick up some souvenirs for a few lucky recipients so we pull into the parking lot of a mammoth trinket warehouse that sort of resembles a southwest-style Big Lots. There are rows and rows of every sort of knicknack imaginable, most of which can be had for under $10! This is more like it! Finally, satisfied with the Land of Enchantment coffee mugs and the allegedly size small tee shirt that would comfortably ensconce a Mini Cooper, we head down the road for our last night in New Mexico.
In the casita, I pack everything except what I'll need to get ready for our early departure the following morning. I'd like to get on the highway by 7 a.m. so we can be back at my parent's house by 2. Of course, my partner and I both know that we have a better chance of scaling Mt. Everest on roller skates, but I am ever-hopeful. The shrieking has been underway in the main house ever since we returned from Santa Fe, and, putting on our best faces, we enter into a scene of utter chaos. The cousin's wife, red-faced and bleary-eyed, is clutching the 1 1/2 year old to her bosom and chasing the other hellion, threatening to send her to her room so that she can't interface with us on our last night in town. Oh, please let it be! The cousin, himself, smiles Stepford-like, and looks beyond the unfolding drama, burying himself in the newspaper that he's probably read five times since its arrival that morning. He suggests that we go to dinner at a nearby restaurant, and that his wife remain home with the girls, since they're all "a little cranky". Sounds good to me. However, the wife has other ideas, and she's not about to be left behind in the seventh circle of hell. She orders the eldest child to go put on something appropriate, and the child dons an outfit that might have looked fetching on Madonna circa 1983. When her mother tells her that the ensemble is not going to work, the kid doubles over and begins to scream like a banshee. Inexplicably, the mother apologizes and asks her to please put on something pretty. The daughter reappears in a unit that is even less attractive than the previous one. The parents praise her for her taste and style, and we load into the cars and head for the restaurant.
The Flying Star Cafe is a few short blocks from the house, and is located in a cool, little strip mall that has a nice size book store. A slave to good book stores, I am forcefully dragged past its entrance as we proceed to the restaurant. Once inside, both children make an immediate beeline for the kitchen, disappearing amidst a clatter of pots, and the collective gasps of cooks and servers. Their father races into the kitchen, steering both girls back into the serving area. Once seated on the outside patio, we all enjoy a brief period of relative calm. The Flying Star has a varied and enormous menu so it takes us awhile to make up our minds. I wind up with a sandwich made from marinated and grilled crimini mushrooms, avocado, tomatoes, and caramelized onions on a sourdough roll. I know this because I still have the menu. It is delicious and much too filling to permit my indulging in one of the great looking desserts that are being served at a nearby table. The hellion, on the other hand, demands dessert, so her mother obediently orders some concoction of chocolate and cake and ice cream and whipped cream, and I don't know what else, and I salivate as the evil slurps it down. Once we are enroute to the car, the riotous carrying-on begins in earnest, as each child vehemently protests her insertion into a car seat. My partner and I climb into the Journey and ponder which parent will be the long-term survivor of the ongoing melee. At first glance, one would assume that the father, an athletic 55 (who doesn't look a day over 45) would still be the first to buy the farm, simply by virtue of his age. However, the poor mother--shut away with those daughters, day in and day out, sleepless, haggard, ever on the verge of sobbing hysteria--doesn't appear to be a good candidate for longevity, at least not outside of a mental health facility. When we arrive back at the house, we slip through the little side yard and lock outselves securely in the casita.
I am awakened the following morning by more than the usual din of disorderliness coming from the main house. The cousin's wife screams the name of the eldest child, and then apologizes for screaming. Doors slam, and soon there is a knock on our door. Dressing quickly, I open the door to reveal the red, tear-streaked face of a woman in full mental collapse. Clasping the 1 1/2 year old to her breasts, she clutches the other daughter in a headlock. "The dogs are gone!" she moans.
"What?"
"I let them out in the little side yard this morning, like I always do, and apparently the gate wasn't shut last night, and they got out!" She gives me an accusatory look as the words bubble from her lips.
Uh-oh. I don't remember checking whether or not the gate latched securely when we came in last night and I was the last one through. Shit.
The hysterical woman informs me that her husband is already scouring the neighborhood on his bicycle in an effort to find the dogs, and that she and the girls are taking the car to look. "If we're not back before you go, it was nice seeing you," she snarls, clearly inferring that we will be eternally cursed by the fates if we even think of departing before those dogs are found.
With the search branching out across the neighborhood, my partner and I set out on foot, hoping that we might see something that the others have missed. Of utmost concern to me is the fact that our host's house is located right next to a very busy street--Rio Grande--which merits its own exit off nearby I-40. I squint to see if there are squashed remnants of chihuahua splattered in the road. Seeing nothing, I heave a sigh of relief, and we turn a corner and stroll past a construction sight. Suddenly, I see movement as two chihuahua sized creatures scurry along a fence row parallel to us. My excitement turns to disgust when I determine that they are huge rats, fully capable, I fear, of devouring the hapless dogs. Well, this is a fine kettle of fish. I tell my partner that we'll never get out of Albuquerque now, that we'll be planning (and paying for) a funeral (possibly our own) if those dogs aren't found alive and well. We run across the cousin, who is still frantically roaming the sidestreets on his bicycle. My partner makes it clear that he wasn't the last one to pass through the gate last night (and is thus, blameless), and they both look at me as I apologize profusely. The cousin smiles the Stepford smile and tells me that it wasn't done on purpose, but his words are of little comfort, especially when the wife whirls by in her car, and I catch a glimpse of her broken down face. We go our separate ways again, and I start to sweat, realizing that this is not looking like it's going to turn out well for anyone. Finally, as my partner and I start back towards the casita, the cousin rides up on his bicycle, the dogs tucked securely in his arms. I nearly faint from relief, as does the wife who shows up and loads the dogs into the car with the monsters. When we get back to the house, there is much laughter as our hosts tell me that you have to slam the gate to make sure that the latch catches, a minor fact that they failed to mention upon our arrival. They then relate other times when the dogs ran away, the ensuing hysteria, the relief and feeling of giddy silliness when the dogs were found, and on and on. I absolutely want nothing more out of life than to get the fuck away from there as quickly as possible.
At 9:30 a.m., the cousin stands with his wife and children in their driveway to see us off. Clutching one child to her bosom while headlocking the other, the wife issues a pained smile and tells us it was lovely having us and to come back soon. As we pull out onto Rio Grande Boulevard, I glance back and see a perfect family tableaux--handsome, professorial husband, athletic, young wife, and two beautiful, little daughters standing before a well-appointed, well-maintained home--and I feel an urgency to escape, as if the hounds of hell are about to be loosed upon me. We drive east on I-40 and navigate morning traffic until we cross the mountains once again, and the sprawl of Albuquerque gradually disappears behind us.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Points West, Part 2: No Man's Land
There was no way that we were all going to the family reunion in one vehicle. The Dodge Journey, foisted on us by Budget Rent-A-Car, wasn't quite big enough, and my parent's van could hold all of us, but not all of our luggage, too. Besides, I asked my partner, weren't we leaving the reunion and driving out to New Mexico for a few days? I was relatively certain that my sister, her husband, and the youngest of her four children, wouldn't want to tag along, and my parents coming was out of the question. It practically takes an act of Congress to get my mother out of her house these days, and while she was okay with attending the reunion, there was no way on God's green earth that she would venture any further from her front door than what she'd already promised my dad. So, on the morning of our departure, my partner and I climbed into the Journey, my parents into their van, my sister, her husband, and their seventeen year old son into yet another car, and off we went, a caravan heading west on a highway that had once carried me home from college.
* * * * * *
As you drive farther into the Oklahoma Panhandle, the elevation begins to increase, subtley at first, and then with noticeable abruptness as you get closer to the mountains of northern New Mexico. Towns are sparse, their presence announced by majestic, white grain elevators that serve as their skyscrapers, their monuments to commerce and survival in a place that was, not too long ago, dubbed "the great American desert". Traffic is largely limited to varieties of trucks: a few cattle trucks here, the occasional (and ubiquitous) pickup truck there, more trucks hauling machinery to and from the oil rigs that rise incongrously from the prairie floor, like mini-Eiffel Towers. There is road kill on the two-lane highway, lots of it. Vultures and hawks swoop down, grasping pieces of carrion with savage swipes of razor sharp claws before departing back into the hot morning sun. For the most part, people are nice out here. The Panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma are areas where right-wing, Bible-Belt fundamentalism exists side-by-side with a certain lawlessness, if not of deed, then of spirit. Folks there won't ask you to pick a side, they don't have to. You'll know quickly which alliances to form; people are polite but blunt, and rarely misrepresent themselves. Having said that, I can hardly think of a better place in the United States in which to lose oneself, if one truly wants to get, and stay, lost.
* * * * * *
At about 9 a.m. that Saturday morning, we pulled into Guymon, Oklahoma. Just ten miles east of my college stomping grounds, Guymon used to be the place to go for fast-food fixes, movie theaters, department store shopping, and rough trade; it was also rumored to be a major pit stop on the Mexican drug highway. First and foremost a cowtown, Guymon is now equally well-known for its hog farms. As we passed through town that day, I saw flashes of my college past: the truck stop where, as a student, I sometimes ate midnight meals of chicken fried steaks and fries, while shooting the shit with an ancient waitress named Marcella; the vacant building that used to be a movie theater where I first saw "The Exorcist", "The Towering Inferno", "What's Up Doc?", and "Young Frankenstein"; and the adjacent lot that housed the drive-in picture show, where I witnessed less savory fare like "Messiah of Evil", "Six-Pack Annie", and the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", a film whose impact was not slightly diminished by the copious amounts of beer and weed that were being passed around the car.
While my family drove north of Guymon, my partner and I decided to drive on west, so I could see my old college, the scene of several important "firsts" and where one could say that I, arguably, spent the best years of my life. I came to Panhandle State University as one person, and left, four years later, as someone else. Although it would take several years before the person I became would be allowed to have free reign over my life.
* * * * * *
Goodwell, Oklahoma, from a distance, does not look like the type of town that is home to a university that has drawn students from both coasts, as well as a few foreign countries. Situated on a flat, dry, desolate stretch of prairie, the town is comprised of a few hundred hearty souls, many of whom are employed, in some capacity, by the university. With around 2,000 students, Panhandle State is the largest educational facility in an area encompassing the Oklahoma Panhandle, parts of the Texas Panhandle, southwestern Kansas, southeastern Colorado, and northeastern New Mexico. The town's main street hasn't changed much since my salad days there. It really hasn't changed much since my dad's salad days, nor probably since its founding in the early part of the 20th Century. There were a few buildings missing, the most prominent being the one that had housed the Jungle, the town's main bar, which we students, technically, shouldn't have been allowed to enter (and frequently weren't). Behind this building was a very large, two story house that was rented by some pseudo-intellectuals who, nonetheless, threw some very good parties; that house was the first place I saw a bong, or tasted a Harvey Wallbanger (my beverage of choice until then had been Annie Green Springs).
At the end of Main Street, we turned left and, in less than a minute, were idling outside Field Hall, my old dorm, and the home-away-from-home where I spent all four years of my college career. Hesitantly, I made my way up the familiar walkway and peered into the glass doors. Surprised to find one of the doors open, I walked up the stairs into the empty lobby, and passed on down a hallway that led me straight to my old room (one of my MANY old rooms, actually). I stood on the threshold and looked in on my past, as the years peeled away.
* * * * * *
Most people attending college out here lived in the dorms throughout their college years. There wasn't much off-campus housing available then, plus there was a communal, familial feel to the dorm; by living on campus, you felt like you were part of a bigger sphere, one that transcended the isolation of the setting. And it's true, I made friends with people from all over the place. Living on campus was also conducive to having experiences that might not otherwise have been available. And yes, I'm talking about male bonding, both in the "Happy Days" sense of outrageous, mostly innocent pranks, as well as in the "Brokeback Mountain" sense of mano a mano, forbidden fruit frolicking. Dorm life provided ample opportunities for untethered glimpses of tempting male flesh. Although the Gay Liberation Movement, with a few exceptions, had not progressed much further inland than the U.S. coastal areas, there was an unacknowledged homoeroticism lurking just below the surface of our dorm's academic studiousness and manchild rowdiness. Naked cowboys regularly prowled the hallways, smoking cigarettes with insoucient cool, as the giddy shrieks of rambunctious jocks echoed from the showers, followed by the electric POP of a towel snapping against wet, bare skin. And, always, there was laughter, deep and resonant and carefree. Did any of us ever laugh like that again?
At the beginning of my junior year, I noticed a change in the weather, a certain Republican uptightness accompanying the new crop of freshmen. That year ushered in a new, subdued attitude that was reflected in the sudden prudery present among many of the new students. Out went the nudity and the wild free-spiritedness that had characterized my first two years at the university, and in came our college's equivalent of the Eisenhower Era.
Some of the best friendships of my life were formed during my residence in the dorm, but I was a social creature, and many of my activities were geared towards cultivating friendships. Most newcomers were rechristened, some unknowingly, when they entered into residence at Field Hall. There was Toad, Jingle Bells, Lurch, and The Mad Bomber, among many others. Toad, much to his chagrin, maintains his nickname to this day, and he's a school superintendent!
Standing in my old dormitory room, the following images marched through my mind like a parade of Polaroid snapshots: running lines with fellow actors preparing for performances at the brooding college theater; learning to sing folk songs, and rock and roll, with a long-haired, straight guitarist, who taught me all about moisturizing, flossing, blow-drying, and cowboy/hippie chic; playing all-night card games in smoky rooms; arguing campus politics (and temperance) with my neighbor, the Vice President of the Student Body; being dangled from a second floor window by my ankles by another friend whom I had pushed too far by taunting his pet owl; talking serious trash with a cousin, who became the one friend in whom I confided everything. And, of course, there was always, always the camaraderie of the showers, in which an observant boy might gain more insights than might have been imagined.
Oddly enough, our dorm mother, the sweet, steely magnolia known as Kate Marshall, was rarely phased by either the nudity or the often racy activities of her "boys". She was probably already well past seventy when I moved into the dorm, but she was a tough one who wore her toughness inside a velvet glove. She was motherly (or grandmotherly) without the guilt and without the penalties--unless you were a slob like me and your room didn't pass weekly inspection. That first year, I got more write-ups on yellow sticky notes than I could keep track of. Finally, she stopped inspecting my room altogether, maybe because she just got sick of writing me up, or maybe because, by the end of that first year, we had established a very friendly bond and she decided to let me slide. No doubt about it, she could have been a hardass and, rightfully so, as she was in charge of keeping order in a house of 200+ rowdy, randy young men, many still teenagers just leaving home for the first time. But Kate wasn't a hardass, that wasn't her nature. One night, I came in from a fierce night of drinking and was, literally, crawling up the stairs to my room. Suddenly, a pair of fuzzy, pink houseshoes appeared on the step in front of me. After establishing that I was simply intoxicated and not, otherwise, endangered or in need of medical care, Kate advised me to take care on the steps and bade me goodnight. On another occasion, she asked me to come into her apartment, where she informed me, in hushed tones, of her suspicions that two boys in the dorm were luring other boys to their room in the basement, plying them with drugs, and......USING THEM, these last two words being accompanied by a dramatic sweep of her hands across her bosom. The reprobates in question were ROTC cowboys, gorgeous and blonde, and they had nicknamed their lair "The War Room". I very much wanted to volunteer my services to determine the guilt of these culprits, but Kate was obviously distraught, and genuinely concerned that I shouldn't fall prey to these beastly appetites, so I simply promised her that I'd make sure not to venture into the basement alone. Despite the rumors, it was never proven that either of these guys were gay, much less engaged in such unsavory activities as forced b & d or male rape (one would think that, had this been true, there would have been something of a commotion coming from the unwilling participants). At any rate, Kate Marshall was the anchor for many college boy storms that passed across the, outwardly, unfluttered surface of Field Hall.
I fell in love in that dorm, for the first time in my life, and with a man, to boot. Having overcome my shock and consternation at actually having sex with a man, I soon acknowledged my true feelings, albeit only to myself, and never to him. Two months later, I was a groomsman at his wedding; I smiled broadly, conveying a joy I did not feel, as he walked his pregnant bride out the door. Following his bachelor party, we briefly (and drunkenly) discussed taking off for his parent's winter house in Mazatlan, ready to fuck off our responsibilities, along with our futures, so that we could spend the next, what--two months?--fucking each other. Even at that age, having reached an intoxicated stage of the evening when anything is possible, we knew better. Somehow, I could comprehend that lust was not really love, and that's what I kept telling myself over and over in the ensuing weeks, as my heart tried to tell me something different. Having found something that I never thought I'd find--something I never really knew existed--and having confronted my feelings, my desires, the possibility that maybe I wasn't who I thought I was--it was gone, and I felt like I'd lost something more than a furtive lover (because he wasn't that, was he, not a lover, just a fuck, a furtive fuck, and I didn't really love him, because men don't love like that, do they?). There would be others, of course, but it was at least a year before I would dive back into that particular pool. In the interim, I decided to devote more attention to my studies (never high on my list of priorities), my girlfriend, the Homecoming Queen, (with whom I had the most chaste relationship of my life) and my other girlfriend, the secret girlfriend, the hyperintelligent, hypersexual actress with whom I enjoyed exotic, ecstatic encounters that later became the fodder for campus gossip. When I eventually took up with the hunky, blonde cowboy, my hetero relationships, along with the gossip, proved to be useful covers, even though I never planned them as such. In fact, there were times when I considered having a future with each girl. And while it could never have worked with the Homecoming Queen--I really did love her, but like a sister--I thought there might have been a ghost of a chance with the actress, because, in so many ways, we were alike, and I did enjoy our sex life. But, of course, in the end, we were too much alike; I liked men just as much as she did, and was smart enough to butt out of her life before I ruined it. Both girls (wisely) married others and moved on.
And speaking of moving on, it was time for the journey down memory lane to end. I took one last look and noted the fresh paint in the rooms, the new desks, different linoleum, the recent addition of ceiling fans. Down the hall, except for brand new paper towel dispensers, the bathrooms remained remarkably, refreshingly unchanged; after thirty-plus years, they still echoed with the drips of leaky faucets, and I could almost hear the hoarse screams of my dorm-mates galloping down the halls, attempting to evade the sizzling snap of the dreaded towel.
Before departing my old campus, we passed the revamped Hughes-Strong Auditorium, where I spent my brief college acting career being shot, pummeled, and poured into Shakespearean pantaloons, and where, on the spooky, secluded third floor, I spent three years of late nights spinning records on college radio station, KPSU. We drove past Hamilton Hall, a main classroom building, where I, along with several dozen other students, had once taken up the ROTC department on their offer to rappel from the rooftop. There was the football field, where we spent many chilly Friday nights in the fall watching the (mostly hulking) Aggies pummel their opponents. We passed the gym, where I'd once attended numerous basketball games, arranged to meet cheerleaders for late night drinking parties, and finally graduated from college during a blistering heatwave that rendered the air conditioning useless. On the other side of the football field, there are now college apartments, three stories of badly needed space that looks, somehow, forlorn in a former parking lot. The library (to which I rarely ventured) is still there, as is the girls dorm and the other classrooms. Then, I saw the student union, which also held the school cafeteria, a dance/party hall, the student governing rooms, and school bookstore. Needless to say, this building was the scene of much socializing. I remembered manning a booth with Jingle Bells as we attempted to sign people up to give blood. A buxom, blonde co-ed, well-known for her voracious sexual appetite, walked up, had a seat on his knee and, much to Jingle's horror, proceeded to bounce herself to orgasm (this was amply demonstrated not just by her vocal ministrations, but by the considerable wet spot that she deposited on his trousers). Jingle Bells was such a proper, dignified innocent that I'm not sure he ever recovered from the experience. He certainly never forgot it, nor did anyone who witnessed that performance. In that building, I learned to do the Hustle and the Texas two-step, listened to Deep Purple sing "Smoke on the Water", smoked Newports and Lemon Twists, voted to enact campus rules that I quickly broke, ditched classes, and plotted a future far different than the one I'm living.
As we came to the end of town and turned west onto the highway, I took one last look at my old alma mater. A middle-aged man moving through time, I waved goodbye to the trappings of my misspent youth, knowing that the youth still exists somewhere within; jealously guarded and forever young, he is the keeper of secrets and retainer of dreams.
My partner clicked on the car's radio and I heard a weather forecaster predicting heat and more heat, followed by the vocal stylings of Fifty Cent.
The spell was broken. Time to fly.
* * * * * *
The first thing you have to know about Boise City, Oklahoma, other than that it is where my dad was born and raised, is the correct pronunciation of the town. It's called "Boy's City", which is exactly how I thought it was spelled when I was a child, and possibly an indicator of my, as yet, undeveloped predilections. Do not ever go there and call it "Boy-zee City", as people will either look at you like you've lost your mind, or shake their heads in disgust before walking away. Either way, "Boy-zee City" will immediately identify you as a stranger, not just to the town, but to that portion of a four state area. So, remember, Boise City is "Boy's City". Period. There are no variations.
The second thing to know about Boise City is that it is the dropping off place at the end of the world, the final outpost at the edge of nowhere. Going south of Boise City towards Texas, one encounters a veritable black hole of remote and seemingly uninhabited flatness that stretches on and on into an infinity of tumbleweed, antelope, and barb wire, and later, as one once again approaches civilization, acres and acres of cornfields. The number of cornfields out here are a relatively new addition to the panhandle. For years, this whole area was part of the "Great American Desert" and was hit particularly hard during the dust storms of the "Dirty Thirties". Entire farms, acres of crops, cars, and even people were completely buried by blowing dirt; dust pneumonia was a common ailment in infants of the era. This was a land that was never meant to be farmed, and wouldn't have been, had it not been for the innovative techniques in irrigation developed during the 20th Century. In some areas, President Roosevelt orders rows of Cedar trees planted to act as windbreaks on the, otherwise, treeless expanse of prairie. In these same areas, the Cedar trees have now taken over, spreading out and greedily overtaking everything in their path. The land south of Boise City, however, is not one of those areas. Trees of any kind are few and far between, and there is no hint of humankind until the cornfields surrounding Dalhart come into sight.
Boise City was founded in the early part of the twentieth century. Two scam artists advertised an "oasis" in the desert, with tree-lined boulevards and fountains and beautiful homes with green lawns. They offered a good deal on this heavenly property, and collected the money in advance. When the prospective homeowners arrived in their new town, they were confronted by a very different reality than what had been presented to them. The scammers didn't get away with it, of course; instead of fleeing the country like many of the West's shady cons before them, they hung around and got caught, spending time in prison atoning for their dirty misdeeds. Despite the obvious mischaracterization of the place, many people chose to remain in Boise City, and a town sprang up, spoking out in four directions from a central axis comprised of a square and courthouse. Soon, there was a hotel, cafes, a movie theater, and a school. There were churches and saloons, a post office and a bank, the usual business that accompany the development of a community. When the double whammy of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression hit, the town and surrounding area was devastated. Married when my grandmother was 16, my dad's parents had ten children and they all lived in a small house in Boise City when the world came tumbling down. In 1935, as farms were being swallowed by dust, and banks were foreclosing on homes, my dad's father died, leaving his mother to raise ten kids alone. The oldest child was 16, the youngest 1. They all worked just as soon as they were old enough. Dad's mother worked at two jobs, beginning at six in the morning and ending at ten at night. With not much education, she waitressed and washed dishes in two cafes in town. The things my dad and his siblings seem to remember most was how hard their mother worked, and how tired she always seemed to be. Even so, she enjoyed going dancing, eventually meeting and marrying a widower with three kids of his own.
During World War II, Boise City became the only town in the United States to be bombed. Apparently, during air force maneuvers, the pilots became disoriented, mistaking Boise City for their target. Luckily, no one was injured, although there was a certain amount of property damage.
Many of my dad's brothers and sisters still live in the area, and it still looks much as I remember it during rare forays out during the sixties. My mom hated coming here, and she's the one who adjudged it to be the "dropping off place". Despite all that, I was always fond of some of my many first cousins, with whom I infrequently played during my childhood. Many of us are scattered all over the United States, so the family reunion offers a good opportunity to reconnect. My dad's mother died in 1969, at the age of 69, but I remember thinking that she must be at least 100. She had tuberculosis and didn't know it until many years later; that fact, plus her otherwise hard life, took an extreme toll on her. She wasn't warm, and I remember being vaguely intimidated by this tiny, 90 pound woman, as she was such a contrast to my mom's mother, a gregarious, hugging, kissing, loudly demonstrative grandmother who, perhaps unwisely, centered her entire life around her grandchildren. The natures of both women were determined by very different upbringings and very different environments and, ultimately, neither survived to see their seventieth year.
* * * * * *
The Townsman Motel lies on the eastern edge of Boise City. It was purchased a few years ago by some people from India, and one immediately wonders how on earth they managed to find their way to this remote part of the world. The Townsman, if nothing else, is immaculately clean and serviceable. Highway workers, oil field roughnecks, and tourists wandering off the beaten path, all find their way here, for stays of varying lengths. When our caravan at last met up and descended upon the Townsman, our party, alone, numbered twelve, and we were dispersed over four rooms. I noted that there was no Dish TV, although by the time I collapsed into bed later that night, I couldn't have cared less.
By heading through Boise City and turning west at the courthouse, you'll see a sign that says Black Mesa is twenty-some miles ahead. Driving along the road, we pass the tiny home of my grandmother, the one she shared with her second husband during the last years of her life, the one I remember visiting when I was a kid. I always liked her husband and thought of him as "Grandpa". A former sailor, he was ruddy and had dark, stiff whiskers that he rubbed against our soft skin, laughing maniacally as we squealed with delight. He was short and stocky and smelled of beer and Old Spice, and he worshipped my grandmother. He kept us kids entertained with picture puzzles, as she sat wearily in her chair holding her tiny chihuahua and watching "The Jackie Gleason Show". That's how I remember them. I loved being around him, but when my grandmother died, we didn't have contact with him again. I don't know what happened, but I was a child and didn't think to ask.
Driving out of town, it truly does look like we are heading into oblivion. It was not yet noon and there weren't even the slightest vestiges of human habitation: no fences or fenceposts, no errant crops, no farms hovering in the misty distance like shimmering mirages. There was roadkill--there is always roadkill. And the rusting pieces of machinery rotting in tracts of prairie that may once, in another century, have been fields. Far off in the distance, it is possible to make out geographical forms jutting upwards, as if trying to leap from this parched patch of earth. I know, for instance, from my childhood that, over to the left, near Felt, where my Aunt Betty lives, is the rocky promontory known as Rabbit Ears. It's distinguishable by the protuberances for which it is named. There's another, as well, but I don't remember what it's called, or if it's ever been named. Further west, one begins to see the mesas and buttes that characterize this area of Oklahoma: the beginning of an Old West that has been canonized in the films of Hollywood stalwarts from Raoul Walsh and John Ford to Sam Peckinpah. In truth, this rugged, unforgiving country of hard beauty and even harder living, has been home to any number of notorious outlaws and desperadoes. One of my mother's great-grandfathers (or great-great grandfathers) allegedly rode with Billy the Kid and was in on some of his more nefarious escapades. Presumably my ancestor survived this association since he later sired a more immediate forefather, and is rumored to have settled into respectability. If, like me, you have family who have lived in this area for several generations, you will, more than likely, be able to find that your family tree has a few less-than-savory roots. A good friend from college was related to the notorious Black Jack Ketchum, an outlaw who was finally captured and hanged in Clayton, New Mexico. During the execution, he dropped from the gallows with such force that his head is said to have popped off. A cousin of mine is related to John Wesley Hardin, the cold-blooded cowpoke who grew so annoyed by the snoring of one of his posse that he shot the man dead. And so it goes.
There are still traces of the old west here, but it is a far older west than that presented by images of outlaws and wagon trains. Next to the site of our family reunion, there are petroglyphs carved into the cliffs by a prehistoric hunter-gathering society that once populated the area. Nearby, there are also dinosaur footprints preserved in the dried mud of an ancient riverbed, graffiti etched by members of Coronado's ill-fated expedition for the Seven Cities of Gold, and the infamous mummy's cave. More a shallow indentation in the rocks than an actual cave, the mummy's cave once yielded the preserved remains of a small boy who had been dead for around 4,000 years. The body eventually made its way to the PSU Museum, where I once saw it on display in a glass case. Lying in a fetal position, he still had a head full of dark hair, teeth, and finger nails, and a face like a mud pie. Once was enough for me to see the poor, little mummy, who exuded a creepiness that sped my exit from the museum. I don't know why people still want to hike up the grueling incline to get to the mummy's cave. There's not much there anymore, and it's filled with bat guano, and it smells.
* * * * * *
The Black Mesa campgrounds are actually about a 10 minute drive from Black Mesa, itself. We arrive around noon, just in time for lunch. Normally, due to the large size of my dad's family, I expect to see more than one hundred people at these reunions. This year, there are a little over half that many. All the surviving brothers and sisters are there--eight, in all, plus quite a few of their kids. I greet my cousin, Ladonna, with a warm hug. I haven't seen her since 1989, and we were once very close. She's living in Denver with a great husband; her daughter didn't make it down, but she's an aspiring actress who's had small roles in "Nip/Tuck" and several other television shows and movies. Ladonna's sisters make their way over to me and we also hug. And then my cousin, Jan, from San Antonio, comes over, looks at my feet, and raises her eyebrows, nodding for me to look down. I do, and am shocked to see a scorpion on my boot (I had the foresight to pack hiking boots rather than sneakers, a lesson I've learned from previous trips). I kick the critter away but he's already dead; he must have somehow been crushed in all the hugging. My cousin, Jan, picks him up and ponders whose food tray to put him in. I like it that Jan hasn't changed much since we were kids. I spot Jan's brother, Paul, who, like their father, seems to harbor a genuine dislike for most of humanity, and rarely ventures past the county line. I ask him if he's ever been out of the area, and he says that he once went to L.A. and had never seen so many people, and hoped never to see that many again. He says that cured him of wanting ever to go anywhere. My dad's brothers and sisters are doing well, for the most part. Betty and Nellie are in different stages of Alzheimer's, a family disease that has already claimed the life of one sister. My Aunt Phyllis, the world traveler, is funny and still sparkles with intelligence. She tools across the U.S. and Mexico in an RV, with only the companionship of her dog. Ladonna's father, Don, looks good but I immediately establish that he can't hear a word that I'm saying. Don was the ornery uncle, the one I most enjoyed when I was a child, because one could get away with just about anything and he wouldn't tattle. As we prepare for lunch, everyone joins hands as my cousin, Clay, the minister, says grace. I can't look at Clay without remembering that he once thought he was Underdog and tried to fly from his top bunk. Better the top bunk than the rooftop, since Clay went crashing to the floor, sustaining surprisinly minor injuries. I look around for my cousin, Leslie Gail, who was gorgeous the last time I saw her in 1989. Leslie Gail is an artist, something of a bohemian, and somewhat anti-social. At every family reunion, she pitches a tent away from the rest of the family, comes in for meals, visits briefly, then returns to her tent. Someone tells me that she is here, but, for the life of me, I can't find her. She allegedly shows up a couple of more times throughout the day but, as in past reunions that I have attended, I am not afforded so much as a glimpse. For me, she remains as elusive as Sasquatch.
After lunch, my sister, her oldest daughter, my partner, and I decide to drive over and climb up Black Mesa. The road from the campsight is picturesque, other-worldly. Mesas surround the small village of Kenton, Oklahoma, which still has its original general store, though not much else. We pull into the mesa's parking area and my sister immediately heads for the steep face. It is obvious that she is planning to scale the face of the mesa, rather than taking the meandering trail that twists around for approximately four hours before leading a patient hiker to the top. Oh no, her daughter exclaims, we're NOT going up that way! So we meander around the trail for awhile, passing lounging cattle who eye us disinterestedly as they chew whatever it is that they are chewing. Finally we hear voices and spot my youngest nephew, and the minister's son high atop the mesa. Just below them, not quite at the top, are my sister's husband, my niece's husband, my oldest nephew, and my niece's 3 year old daughter. My niece freaks and wonders aloud just what the hell they're thinking taking her child up there! She immediately forgets her discomfort and concerns for her own personal safety, and begins walking up the face of the mesa, my sister trailing her, both of them clacking noisily in their flip-flops. My partner and I follow as I eye each rock and bush carefully for rattlesnakes and scorpions. Once in shouting distance, my niece informs her husband not to take another step towards the top, to bring her daughter down NOW! He obliges and everyone starts back towards the bottom. But, I figure since I'm halfway to the top, I may as well continue. However, with everyone else out of sight, I stop at the three-quarters point, realizing that if I should get bitten by a snake, or fall and break a leg, I'd be stuck way up there by myself, and it would be awhile before I'm found. I promptly make by way back to the base of Black Mesa, where we load up the Journey and head back to the reunion.
My cousin, Karen, from New Jersey, is sitting with her husband at a picnic table watching some of the older boys play horseshoes. A few years back, when I was in New York at a theater conference, Karen and her husband rode the train over and took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (since they are members, admission was free), and through Central Park, and we had a great day together. I had missed them last year when I was in New York, so it's good seeing them again. My other cousin, Mary Sue, who is a force of nature, and lives in Iowa, makes it late to the reunion. Mary Sue is funny and super-smart and very, very outspoken; she's also organized and always willing to take charge of any situation, no matter how dire. I have long known that Mary Sue is a very good person to have on your side. She reminds me a lot of my sister. Indomitable is the word that immediately springs to mind.
It seems like I am doing a lot of smiling and talking, which normally would be exhausting, but I realize I'm having fun. I really like my cousins, most of them anyway, and the day seems to slip away quickly. Suddenly, it's after 9 p.m., and time for our party to head back to town and the Townsman Motel. So off we go, three carloads full of dirty, tired people, and when we finally pull into the motel parking lot, we realize that we have forgotten Dad. It seems that everyone thought that he was riding with someone else. Luckily, he has his own van still at the reunion. The question is, can he see well enough at night to find his way through that perilous country back to town. In the back of my mind is another question, of equal concern. Dad has been diagnosed as being in the very early stages of alzheimer's, although the only symptom I've noticed is that he sometimes asks the same questions two or three times. We decide to give him a few minutes. I'm going to shower and if he isn't back, my oldest nephew and I will drive back out and find him. By the time I climb out of the shower, my dad is back and already in bed in the motel room next to mine. Whew! Since he was raised in that country, he could probably find his way with his eyes closed. But still....
* * * * * *
As you drive farther into the Oklahoma Panhandle, the elevation begins to increase, subtley at first, and then with noticeable abruptness as you get closer to the mountains of northern New Mexico. Towns are sparse, their presence announced by majestic, white grain elevators that serve as their skyscrapers, their monuments to commerce and survival in a place that was, not too long ago, dubbed "the great American desert". Traffic is largely limited to varieties of trucks: a few cattle trucks here, the occasional (and ubiquitous) pickup truck there, more trucks hauling machinery to and from the oil rigs that rise incongrously from the prairie floor, like mini-Eiffel Towers. There is road kill on the two-lane highway, lots of it. Vultures and hawks swoop down, grasping pieces of carrion with savage swipes of razor sharp claws before departing back into the hot morning sun. For the most part, people are nice out here. The Panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma are areas where right-wing, Bible-Belt fundamentalism exists side-by-side with a certain lawlessness, if not of deed, then of spirit. Folks there won't ask you to pick a side, they don't have to. You'll know quickly which alliances to form; people are polite but blunt, and rarely misrepresent themselves. Having said that, I can hardly think of a better place in the United States in which to lose oneself, if one truly wants to get, and stay, lost.
* * * * * *
At about 9 a.m. that Saturday morning, we pulled into Guymon, Oklahoma. Just ten miles east of my college stomping grounds, Guymon used to be the place to go for fast-food fixes, movie theaters, department store shopping, and rough trade; it was also rumored to be a major pit stop on the Mexican drug highway. First and foremost a cowtown, Guymon is now equally well-known for its hog farms. As we passed through town that day, I saw flashes of my college past: the truck stop where, as a student, I sometimes ate midnight meals of chicken fried steaks and fries, while shooting the shit with an ancient waitress named Marcella; the vacant building that used to be a movie theater where I first saw "The Exorcist", "The Towering Inferno", "What's Up Doc?", and "Young Frankenstein"; and the adjacent lot that housed the drive-in picture show, where I witnessed less savory fare like "Messiah of Evil", "Six-Pack Annie", and the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", a film whose impact was not slightly diminished by the copious amounts of beer and weed that were being passed around the car.
While my family drove north of Guymon, my partner and I decided to drive on west, so I could see my old college, the scene of several important "firsts" and where one could say that I, arguably, spent the best years of my life. I came to Panhandle State University as one person, and left, four years later, as someone else. Although it would take several years before the person I became would be allowed to have free reign over my life.
* * * * * *
Goodwell, Oklahoma, from a distance, does not look like the type of town that is home to a university that has drawn students from both coasts, as well as a few foreign countries. Situated on a flat, dry, desolate stretch of prairie, the town is comprised of a few hundred hearty souls, many of whom are employed, in some capacity, by the university. With around 2,000 students, Panhandle State is the largest educational facility in an area encompassing the Oklahoma Panhandle, parts of the Texas Panhandle, southwestern Kansas, southeastern Colorado, and northeastern New Mexico. The town's main street hasn't changed much since my salad days there. It really hasn't changed much since my dad's salad days, nor probably since its founding in the early part of the 20th Century. There were a few buildings missing, the most prominent being the one that had housed the Jungle, the town's main bar, which we students, technically, shouldn't have been allowed to enter (and frequently weren't). Behind this building was a very large, two story house that was rented by some pseudo-intellectuals who, nonetheless, threw some very good parties; that house was the first place I saw a bong, or tasted a Harvey Wallbanger (my beverage of choice until then had been Annie Green Springs).
At the end of Main Street, we turned left and, in less than a minute, were idling outside Field Hall, my old dorm, and the home-away-from-home where I spent all four years of my college career. Hesitantly, I made my way up the familiar walkway and peered into the glass doors. Surprised to find one of the doors open, I walked up the stairs into the empty lobby, and passed on down a hallway that led me straight to my old room (one of my MANY old rooms, actually). I stood on the threshold and looked in on my past, as the years peeled away.
* * * * * *
Most people attending college out here lived in the dorms throughout their college years. There wasn't much off-campus housing available then, plus there was a communal, familial feel to the dorm; by living on campus, you felt like you were part of a bigger sphere, one that transcended the isolation of the setting. And it's true, I made friends with people from all over the place. Living on campus was also conducive to having experiences that might not otherwise have been available. And yes, I'm talking about male bonding, both in the "Happy Days" sense of outrageous, mostly innocent pranks, as well as in the "Brokeback Mountain" sense of mano a mano, forbidden fruit frolicking. Dorm life provided ample opportunities for untethered glimpses of tempting male flesh. Although the Gay Liberation Movement, with a few exceptions, had not progressed much further inland than the U.S. coastal areas, there was an unacknowledged homoeroticism lurking just below the surface of our dorm's academic studiousness and manchild rowdiness. Naked cowboys regularly prowled the hallways, smoking cigarettes with insoucient cool, as the giddy shrieks of rambunctious jocks echoed from the showers, followed by the electric POP of a towel snapping against wet, bare skin. And, always, there was laughter, deep and resonant and carefree. Did any of us ever laugh like that again?
At the beginning of my junior year, I noticed a change in the weather, a certain Republican uptightness accompanying the new crop of freshmen. That year ushered in a new, subdued attitude that was reflected in the sudden prudery present among many of the new students. Out went the nudity and the wild free-spiritedness that had characterized my first two years at the university, and in came our college's equivalent of the Eisenhower Era.
Some of the best friendships of my life were formed during my residence in the dorm, but I was a social creature, and many of my activities were geared towards cultivating friendships. Most newcomers were rechristened, some unknowingly, when they entered into residence at Field Hall. There was Toad, Jingle Bells, Lurch, and The Mad Bomber, among many others. Toad, much to his chagrin, maintains his nickname to this day, and he's a school superintendent!
Standing in my old dormitory room, the following images marched through my mind like a parade of Polaroid snapshots: running lines with fellow actors preparing for performances at the brooding college theater; learning to sing folk songs, and rock and roll, with a long-haired, straight guitarist, who taught me all about moisturizing, flossing, blow-drying, and cowboy/hippie chic; playing all-night card games in smoky rooms; arguing campus politics (and temperance) with my neighbor, the Vice President of the Student Body; being dangled from a second floor window by my ankles by another friend whom I had pushed too far by taunting his pet owl; talking serious trash with a cousin, who became the one friend in whom I confided everything. And, of course, there was always, always the camaraderie of the showers, in which an observant boy might gain more insights than might have been imagined.
Oddly enough, our dorm mother, the sweet, steely magnolia known as Kate Marshall, was rarely phased by either the nudity or the often racy activities of her "boys". She was probably already well past seventy when I moved into the dorm, but she was a tough one who wore her toughness inside a velvet glove. She was motherly (or grandmotherly) without the guilt and without the penalties--unless you were a slob like me and your room didn't pass weekly inspection. That first year, I got more write-ups on yellow sticky notes than I could keep track of. Finally, she stopped inspecting my room altogether, maybe because she just got sick of writing me up, or maybe because, by the end of that first year, we had established a very friendly bond and she decided to let me slide. No doubt about it, she could have been a hardass and, rightfully so, as she was in charge of keeping order in a house of 200+ rowdy, randy young men, many still teenagers just leaving home for the first time. But Kate wasn't a hardass, that wasn't her nature. One night, I came in from a fierce night of drinking and was, literally, crawling up the stairs to my room. Suddenly, a pair of fuzzy, pink houseshoes appeared on the step in front of me. After establishing that I was simply intoxicated and not, otherwise, endangered or in need of medical care, Kate advised me to take care on the steps and bade me goodnight. On another occasion, she asked me to come into her apartment, where she informed me, in hushed tones, of her suspicions that two boys in the dorm were luring other boys to their room in the basement, plying them with drugs, and......USING THEM, these last two words being accompanied by a dramatic sweep of her hands across her bosom. The reprobates in question were ROTC cowboys, gorgeous and blonde, and they had nicknamed their lair "The War Room". I very much wanted to volunteer my services to determine the guilt of these culprits, but Kate was obviously distraught, and genuinely concerned that I shouldn't fall prey to these beastly appetites, so I simply promised her that I'd make sure not to venture into the basement alone. Despite the rumors, it was never proven that either of these guys were gay, much less engaged in such unsavory activities as forced b & d or male rape (one would think that, had this been true, there would have been something of a commotion coming from the unwilling participants). At any rate, Kate Marshall was the anchor for many college boy storms that passed across the, outwardly, unfluttered surface of Field Hall.
I fell in love in that dorm, for the first time in my life, and with a man, to boot. Having overcome my shock and consternation at actually having sex with a man, I soon acknowledged my true feelings, albeit only to myself, and never to him. Two months later, I was a groomsman at his wedding; I smiled broadly, conveying a joy I did not feel, as he walked his pregnant bride out the door. Following his bachelor party, we briefly (and drunkenly) discussed taking off for his parent's winter house in Mazatlan, ready to fuck off our responsibilities, along with our futures, so that we could spend the next, what--two months?--fucking each other. Even at that age, having reached an intoxicated stage of the evening when anything is possible, we knew better. Somehow, I could comprehend that lust was not really love, and that's what I kept telling myself over and over in the ensuing weeks, as my heart tried to tell me something different. Having found something that I never thought I'd find--something I never really knew existed--and having confronted my feelings, my desires, the possibility that maybe I wasn't who I thought I was--it was gone, and I felt like I'd lost something more than a furtive lover (because he wasn't that, was he, not a lover, just a fuck, a furtive fuck, and I didn't really love him, because men don't love like that, do they?). There would be others, of course, but it was at least a year before I would dive back into that particular pool. In the interim, I decided to devote more attention to my studies (never high on my list of priorities), my girlfriend, the Homecoming Queen, (with whom I had the most chaste relationship of my life) and my other girlfriend, the secret girlfriend, the hyperintelligent, hypersexual actress with whom I enjoyed exotic, ecstatic encounters that later became the fodder for campus gossip. When I eventually took up with the hunky, blonde cowboy, my hetero relationships, along with the gossip, proved to be useful covers, even though I never planned them as such. In fact, there were times when I considered having a future with each girl. And while it could never have worked with the Homecoming Queen--I really did love her, but like a sister--I thought there might have been a ghost of a chance with the actress, because, in so many ways, we were alike, and I did enjoy our sex life. But, of course, in the end, we were too much alike; I liked men just as much as she did, and was smart enough to butt out of her life before I ruined it. Both girls (wisely) married others and moved on.
And speaking of moving on, it was time for the journey down memory lane to end. I took one last look and noted the fresh paint in the rooms, the new desks, different linoleum, the recent addition of ceiling fans. Down the hall, except for brand new paper towel dispensers, the bathrooms remained remarkably, refreshingly unchanged; after thirty-plus years, they still echoed with the drips of leaky faucets, and I could almost hear the hoarse screams of my dorm-mates galloping down the halls, attempting to evade the sizzling snap of the dreaded towel.
Before departing my old campus, we passed the revamped Hughes-Strong Auditorium, where I spent my brief college acting career being shot, pummeled, and poured into Shakespearean pantaloons, and where, on the spooky, secluded third floor, I spent three years of late nights spinning records on college radio station, KPSU. We drove past Hamilton Hall, a main classroom building, where I, along with several dozen other students, had once taken up the ROTC department on their offer to rappel from the rooftop. There was the football field, where we spent many chilly Friday nights in the fall watching the (mostly hulking) Aggies pummel their opponents. We passed the gym, where I'd once attended numerous basketball games, arranged to meet cheerleaders for late night drinking parties, and finally graduated from college during a blistering heatwave that rendered the air conditioning useless. On the other side of the football field, there are now college apartments, three stories of badly needed space that looks, somehow, forlorn in a former parking lot. The library (to which I rarely ventured) is still there, as is the girls dorm and the other classrooms. Then, I saw the student union, which also held the school cafeteria, a dance/party hall, the student governing rooms, and school bookstore. Needless to say, this building was the scene of much socializing. I remembered manning a booth with Jingle Bells as we attempted to sign people up to give blood. A buxom, blonde co-ed, well-known for her voracious sexual appetite, walked up, had a seat on his knee and, much to Jingle's horror, proceeded to bounce herself to orgasm (this was amply demonstrated not just by her vocal ministrations, but by the considerable wet spot that she deposited on his trousers). Jingle Bells was such a proper, dignified innocent that I'm not sure he ever recovered from the experience. He certainly never forgot it, nor did anyone who witnessed that performance. In that building, I learned to do the Hustle and the Texas two-step, listened to Deep Purple sing "Smoke on the Water", smoked Newports and Lemon Twists, voted to enact campus rules that I quickly broke, ditched classes, and plotted a future far different than the one I'm living.
As we came to the end of town and turned west onto the highway, I took one last look at my old alma mater. A middle-aged man moving through time, I waved goodbye to the trappings of my misspent youth, knowing that the youth still exists somewhere within; jealously guarded and forever young, he is the keeper of secrets and retainer of dreams.
My partner clicked on the car's radio and I heard a weather forecaster predicting heat and more heat, followed by the vocal stylings of Fifty Cent.
The spell was broken. Time to fly.
* * * * * *
The first thing you have to know about Boise City, Oklahoma, other than that it is where my dad was born and raised, is the correct pronunciation of the town. It's called "Boy's City", which is exactly how I thought it was spelled when I was a child, and possibly an indicator of my, as yet, undeveloped predilections. Do not ever go there and call it "Boy-zee City", as people will either look at you like you've lost your mind, or shake their heads in disgust before walking away. Either way, "Boy-zee City" will immediately identify you as a stranger, not just to the town, but to that portion of a four state area. So, remember, Boise City is "Boy's City". Period. There are no variations.
The second thing to know about Boise City is that it is the dropping off place at the end of the world, the final outpost at the edge of nowhere. Going south of Boise City towards Texas, one encounters a veritable black hole of remote and seemingly uninhabited flatness that stretches on and on into an infinity of tumbleweed, antelope, and barb wire, and later, as one once again approaches civilization, acres and acres of cornfields. The number of cornfields out here are a relatively new addition to the panhandle. For years, this whole area was part of the "Great American Desert" and was hit particularly hard during the dust storms of the "Dirty Thirties". Entire farms, acres of crops, cars, and even people were completely buried by blowing dirt; dust pneumonia was a common ailment in infants of the era. This was a land that was never meant to be farmed, and wouldn't have been, had it not been for the innovative techniques in irrigation developed during the 20th Century. In some areas, President Roosevelt orders rows of Cedar trees planted to act as windbreaks on the, otherwise, treeless expanse of prairie. In these same areas, the Cedar trees have now taken over, spreading out and greedily overtaking everything in their path. The land south of Boise City, however, is not one of those areas. Trees of any kind are few and far between, and there is no hint of humankind until the cornfields surrounding Dalhart come into sight.
Boise City was founded in the early part of the twentieth century. Two scam artists advertised an "oasis" in the desert, with tree-lined boulevards and fountains and beautiful homes with green lawns. They offered a good deal on this heavenly property, and collected the money in advance. When the prospective homeowners arrived in their new town, they were confronted by a very different reality than what had been presented to them. The scammers didn't get away with it, of course; instead of fleeing the country like many of the West's shady cons before them, they hung around and got caught, spending time in prison atoning for their dirty misdeeds. Despite the obvious mischaracterization of the place, many people chose to remain in Boise City, and a town sprang up, spoking out in four directions from a central axis comprised of a square and courthouse. Soon, there was a hotel, cafes, a movie theater, and a school. There were churches and saloons, a post office and a bank, the usual business that accompany the development of a community. When the double whammy of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression hit, the town and surrounding area was devastated. Married when my grandmother was 16, my dad's parents had ten children and they all lived in a small house in Boise City when the world came tumbling down. In 1935, as farms were being swallowed by dust, and banks were foreclosing on homes, my dad's father died, leaving his mother to raise ten kids alone. The oldest child was 16, the youngest 1. They all worked just as soon as they were old enough. Dad's mother worked at two jobs, beginning at six in the morning and ending at ten at night. With not much education, she waitressed and washed dishes in two cafes in town. The things my dad and his siblings seem to remember most was how hard their mother worked, and how tired she always seemed to be. Even so, she enjoyed going dancing, eventually meeting and marrying a widower with three kids of his own.
During World War II, Boise City became the only town in the United States to be bombed. Apparently, during air force maneuvers, the pilots became disoriented, mistaking Boise City for their target. Luckily, no one was injured, although there was a certain amount of property damage.
Many of my dad's brothers and sisters still live in the area, and it still looks much as I remember it during rare forays out during the sixties. My mom hated coming here, and she's the one who adjudged it to be the "dropping off place". Despite all that, I was always fond of some of my many first cousins, with whom I infrequently played during my childhood. Many of us are scattered all over the United States, so the family reunion offers a good opportunity to reconnect. My dad's mother died in 1969, at the age of 69, but I remember thinking that she must be at least 100. She had tuberculosis and didn't know it until many years later; that fact, plus her otherwise hard life, took an extreme toll on her. She wasn't warm, and I remember being vaguely intimidated by this tiny, 90 pound woman, as she was such a contrast to my mom's mother, a gregarious, hugging, kissing, loudly demonstrative grandmother who, perhaps unwisely, centered her entire life around her grandchildren. The natures of both women were determined by very different upbringings and very different environments and, ultimately, neither survived to see their seventieth year.
* * * * * *
The Townsman Motel lies on the eastern edge of Boise City. It was purchased a few years ago by some people from India, and one immediately wonders how on earth they managed to find their way to this remote part of the world. The Townsman, if nothing else, is immaculately clean and serviceable. Highway workers, oil field roughnecks, and tourists wandering off the beaten path, all find their way here, for stays of varying lengths. When our caravan at last met up and descended upon the Townsman, our party, alone, numbered twelve, and we were dispersed over four rooms. I noted that there was no Dish TV, although by the time I collapsed into bed later that night, I couldn't have cared less.
By heading through Boise City and turning west at the courthouse, you'll see a sign that says Black Mesa is twenty-some miles ahead. Driving along the road, we pass the tiny home of my grandmother, the one she shared with her second husband during the last years of her life, the one I remember visiting when I was a kid. I always liked her husband and thought of him as "Grandpa". A former sailor, he was ruddy and had dark, stiff whiskers that he rubbed against our soft skin, laughing maniacally as we squealed with delight. He was short and stocky and smelled of beer and Old Spice, and he worshipped my grandmother. He kept us kids entertained with picture puzzles, as she sat wearily in her chair holding her tiny chihuahua and watching "The Jackie Gleason Show". That's how I remember them. I loved being around him, but when my grandmother died, we didn't have contact with him again. I don't know what happened, but I was a child and didn't think to ask.
Driving out of town, it truly does look like we are heading into oblivion. It was not yet noon and there weren't even the slightest vestiges of human habitation: no fences or fenceposts, no errant crops, no farms hovering in the misty distance like shimmering mirages. There was roadkill--there is always roadkill. And the rusting pieces of machinery rotting in tracts of prairie that may once, in another century, have been fields. Far off in the distance, it is possible to make out geographical forms jutting upwards, as if trying to leap from this parched patch of earth. I know, for instance, from my childhood that, over to the left, near Felt, where my Aunt Betty lives, is the rocky promontory known as Rabbit Ears. It's distinguishable by the protuberances for which it is named. There's another, as well, but I don't remember what it's called, or if it's ever been named. Further west, one begins to see the mesas and buttes that characterize this area of Oklahoma: the beginning of an Old West that has been canonized in the films of Hollywood stalwarts from Raoul Walsh and John Ford to Sam Peckinpah. In truth, this rugged, unforgiving country of hard beauty and even harder living, has been home to any number of notorious outlaws and desperadoes. One of my mother's great-grandfathers (or great-great grandfathers) allegedly rode with Billy the Kid and was in on some of his more nefarious escapades. Presumably my ancestor survived this association since he later sired a more immediate forefather, and is rumored to have settled into respectability. If, like me, you have family who have lived in this area for several generations, you will, more than likely, be able to find that your family tree has a few less-than-savory roots. A good friend from college was related to the notorious Black Jack Ketchum, an outlaw who was finally captured and hanged in Clayton, New Mexico. During the execution, he dropped from the gallows with such force that his head is said to have popped off. A cousin of mine is related to John Wesley Hardin, the cold-blooded cowpoke who grew so annoyed by the snoring of one of his posse that he shot the man dead. And so it goes.
There are still traces of the old west here, but it is a far older west than that presented by images of outlaws and wagon trains. Next to the site of our family reunion, there are petroglyphs carved into the cliffs by a prehistoric hunter-gathering society that once populated the area. Nearby, there are also dinosaur footprints preserved in the dried mud of an ancient riverbed, graffiti etched by members of Coronado's ill-fated expedition for the Seven Cities of Gold, and the infamous mummy's cave. More a shallow indentation in the rocks than an actual cave, the mummy's cave once yielded the preserved remains of a small boy who had been dead for around 4,000 years. The body eventually made its way to the PSU Museum, where I once saw it on display in a glass case. Lying in a fetal position, he still had a head full of dark hair, teeth, and finger nails, and a face like a mud pie. Once was enough for me to see the poor, little mummy, who exuded a creepiness that sped my exit from the museum. I don't know why people still want to hike up the grueling incline to get to the mummy's cave. There's not much there anymore, and it's filled with bat guano, and it smells.
* * * * * *
The Black Mesa campgrounds are actually about a 10 minute drive from Black Mesa, itself. We arrive around noon, just in time for lunch. Normally, due to the large size of my dad's family, I expect to see more than one hundred people at these reunions. This year, there are a little over half that many. All the surviving brothers and sisters are there--eight, in all, plus quite a few of their kids. I greet my cousin, Ladonna, with a warm hug. I haven't seen her since 1989, and we were once very close. She's living in Denver with a great husband; her daughter didn't make it down, but she's an aspiring actress who's had small roles in "Nip/Tuck" and several other television shows and movies. Ladonna's sisters make their way over to me and we also hug. And then my cousin, Jan, from San Antonio, comes over, looks at my feet, and raises her eyebrows, nodding for me to look down. I do, and am shocked to see a scorpion on my boot (I had the foresight to pack hiking boots rather than sneakers, a lesson I've learned from previous trips). I kick the critter away but he's already dead; he must have somehow been crushed in all the hugging. My cousin, Jan, picks him up and ponders whose food tray to put him in. I like it that Jan hasn't changed much since we were kids. I spot Jan's brother, Paul, who, like their father, seems to harbor a genuine dislike for most of humanity, and rarely ventures past the county line. I ask him if he's ever been out of the area, and he says that he once went to L.A. and had never seen so many people, and hoped never to see that many again. He says that cured him of wanting ever to go anywhere. My dad's brothers and sisters are doing well, for the most part. Betty and Nellie are in different stages of Alzheimer's, a family disease that has already claimed the life of one sister. My Aunt Phyllis, the world traveler, is funny and still sparkles with intelligence. She tools across the U.S. and Mexico in an RV, with only the companionship of her dog. Ladonna's father, Don, looks good but I immediately establish that he can't hear a word that I'm saying. Don was the ornery uncle, the one I most enjoyed when I was a child, because one could get away with just about anything and he wouldn't tattle. As we prepare for lunch, everyone joins hands as my cousin, Clay, the minister, says grace. I can't look at Clay without remembering that he once thought he was Underdog and tried to fly from his top bunk. Better the top bunk than the rooftop, since Clay went crashing to the floor, sustaining surprisinly minor injuries. I look around for my cousin, Leslie Gail, who was gorgeous the last time I saw her in 1989. Leslie Gail is an artist, something of a bohemian, and somewhat anti-social. At every family reunion, she pitches a tent away from the rest of the family, comes in for meals, visits briefly, then returns to her tent. Someone tells me that she is here, but, for the life of me, I can't find her. She allegedly shows up a couple of more times throughout the day but, as in past reunions that I have attended, I am not afforded so much as a glimpse. For me, she remains as elusive as Sasquatch.
After lunch, my sister, her oldest daughter, my partner, and I decide to drive over and climb up Black Mesa. The road from the campsight is picturesque, other-worldly. Mesas surround the small village of Kenton, Oklahoma, which still has its original general store, though not much else. We pull into the mesa's parking area and my sister immediately heads for the steep face. It is obvious that she is planning to scale the face of the mesa, rather than taking the meandering trail that twists around for approximately four hours before leading a patient hiker to the top. Oh no, her daughter exclaims, we're NOT going up that way! So we meander around the trail for awhile, passing lounging cattle who eye us disinterestedly as they chew whatever it is that they are chewing. Finally we hear voices and spot my youngest nephew, and the minister's son high atop the mesa. Just below them, not quite at the top, are my sister's husband, my niece's husband, my oldest nephew, and my niece's 3 year old daughter. My niece freaks and wonders aloud just what the hell they're thinking taking her child up there! She immediately forgets her discomfort and concerns for her own personal safety, and begins walking up the face of the mesa, my sister trailing her, both of them clacking noisily in their flip-flops. My partner and I follow as I eye each rock and bush carefully for rattlesnakes and scorpions. Once in shouting distance, my niece informs her husband not to take another step towards the top, to bring her daughter down NOW! He obliges and everyone starts back towards the bottom. But, I figure since I'm halfway to the top, I may as well continue. However, with everyone else out of sight, I stop at the three-quarters point, realizing that if I should get bitten by a snake, or fall and break a leg, I'd be stuck way up there by myself, and it would be awhile before I'm found. I promptly make by way back to the base of Black Mesa, where we load up the Journey and head back to the reunion.
My cousin, Karen, from New Jersey, is sitting with her husband at a picnic table watching some of the older boys play horseshoes. A few years back, when I was in New York at a theater conference, Karen and her husband rode the train over and took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (since they are members, admission was free), and through Central Park, and we had a great day together. I had missed them last year when I was in New York, so it's good seeing them again. My other cousin, Mary Sue, who is a force of nature, and lives in Iowa, makes it late to the reunion. Mary Sue is funny and super-smart and very, very outspoken; she's also organized and always willing to take charge of any situation, no matter how dire. I have long known that Mary Sue is a very good person to have on your side. She reminds me a lot of my sister. Indomitable is the word that immediately springs to mind.
It seems like I am doing a lot of smiling and talking, which normally would be exhausting, but I realize I'm having fun. I really like my cousins, most of them anyway, and the day seems to slip away quickly. Suddenly, it's after 9 p.m., and time for our party to head back to town and the Townsman Motel. So off we go, three carloads full of dirty, tired people, and when we finally pull into the motel parking lot, we realize that we have forgotten Dad. It seems that everyone thought that he was riding with someone else. Luckily, he has his own van still at the reunion. The question is, can he see well enough at night to find his way through that perilous country back to town. In the back of my mind is another question, of equal concern. Dad has been diagnosed as being in the very early stages of alzheimer's, although the only symptom I've noticed is that he sometimes asks the same questions two or three times. We decide to give him a few minutes. I'm going to shower and if he isn't back, my oldest nephew and I will drive back out and find him. By the time I climb out of the shower, my dad is back and already in bed in the motel room next to mine. Whew! Since he was raised in that country, he could probably find his way with his eyes closed. But still....
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Points West, Part 1: Rolling Into Red Carpet Country
It was two weeks ago today that I hit the road running at the ungodly pre-dawn hour of 5:00. With bags already packed, showers taken, and duties designated to a handful of friends and neighbors, all my partner and I needed to do was roll out of bed, jump in our clothes, load our things into a car, and take a leisurely 25 minute drive to Ft. Lauderdale Airport for a 6:40 a.m. flight to the hinterlands. Yes, it sounded easy, even for two notorious latecomers such as ourselves, and with the prep work completed in advance, there was no reason why we shouldn't arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare. And yet--even though everything seemed to be going according to plan, even though the car taking us to the airport was mechanically sound and making perfectly good time, even though there was a mere smattering of traffic on I-95 at that hour--it all seemed to be happening in slow motion. The rest of the world moved with its usual cadence and rhythms while we slogged through Karo syrup. I can't explain it but, when we arrived at the airport, the guy at the counter told us that we may have missed the window of opportunity allowing us to board the flight; in other words, despite our best efforts, we were late. The counter guy was able to check us in--by the skin of our combined teeth, no less, and because we weren't checking any luggage--and we went hurtling through the airport towards the Air Tran flight already boarding for Wichita. More about Air Tran later. Much more, I promise.
We were flying out west for a week-plus tour of duty with my parents, combining this with my dad's bi-yearly family reunion on the New Mexico border, my partner's visit with his cousin in Albuquerque, and a stopover for me in Texas with my mom's side of the family. My parents live at the very beginning of the Oklahoma Panhandle, a short drive from Texas, and within spitting distance of Kansas. That being said, they are also approximately three and a half hours from the nearest major airports--Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and Wichita--placing them in the exact middle of nowhere. To be precise, they are in what is known as "Red Carpet Country", I guess either because of the friendliness of the natives or the red dirt prevalent in that area of Oklahoma. At any rate, reaching them is a bit of a haul.
As there apparently are no direct flights from Ft. Lauderdale to Wichita, Amarillo, or Oklahoma City, we laid over in the Atlanta Airport, a place for which I have no love. Although I've heard many good things about Atlanta, the city, Atlanta, the airport, is a vast, hostile labyrinth full of treacherous obstacles and the least accommodating service workers this side of South Florida. Luckily, our time there passed quickly, and soon we were loaded aboard yet another Air Tran flight, this time bound for the city of Wichita.
The largest city in Kansas, with a metropolitan population of just over half a million people, Wichita was recently voted, in one poll or another, as one of the top ten places to live in the United States. Because of the number of aircraft manufacturing facilities, and the presence of McConnell Air Force Base, it is known as the "Air Capital of the World". Even so, I have always found the city's lack of skyscrapers puzzling, and a little bit disconcerting.
As expected, the economy car that we had reserved at Budget's online site turned out to be a Dodge Journey, which is about the size of a tank. The chipper Budget woman at the counter explained that the economy cars were all taken, but we were getting an upgrade at no extra charge. After no small amount of discourse, in which my partner futiley attempted to explain that, with gas hovering at $4 a gallon, a free upgrade to a gas-swilling tank was not an acceptable trade, we loaded our bags into the Journey and set off for Points West, towards the High Plains, and home.
* * * * * *
The thing about Kansas is this: it has maybe the cleanest highways of any of the fifty states, which is a good thing, considering the huge distances between its towns and cities. During the 180+ mile drive from Wichita to my parents' house, we may have passed through four towns. So, a passenger in a vehicle traversing these roads will spend a good deal of time looking out the car windows at these clean roadways, and the many farms beyond. Kansas towns are also extremely neat and well-kept. Largely developed during the cattle drives of the 1800's, these town's are proud of their heritage, and a traveler is apt to see many old dwellings that are in remarkably pristine condition. There are trees in these towns, green lawns, and lots of American flags waving in a breeze that never seems to stop.
When we went through the town of Greensburg, Kansas, we got a reality check. The site of a particularly vicious tornado last year, Greensburg was practically wiped off the map. I had been through the town a couple of months after the tornado, and it, literally, looked as if an atomic bomb had been detonated. Century old buildings had toppled, homes were flattened, trees uprooted and torn apart--and yet, mercifully, with the modern early warning systems that are now in place, few people had lost their lives. There had been an eerie stillness in Greensburg when I went through the year before. Now, it appeared to be coming back. There was new construction going on, a sense of purpose among a surprising number of people we saw going about their business. To be sure, the evidence of destruction was still rampant, but there was also hope, and there was obvious progress being made in the town's reconstruction.
Following Greensburg, we turned south and proceeded through a long stretch of nothing as the High Plains country surrounded us, affording us unlimited vistas of prairie and purple, treeless hills. In the far distance, we could see a stark reminder that we were entering a new, energy-efficient age. Spreading across the hills like a line of determined soldiers, were dozens of eight-story tall wind turbines, reportedly used for generating electricity to places as far away as New York. With a little luck, my mom later informed me, she would have some of these on her land within the next couple of years. Apparently, they produce a lucrative income to the landowners.
Arriving at my parents' house at the approximate time I'd given them--a miracle that I still haven't quite figured out--we dumped our bags in the "little house" out back and busied ourselves catching up on family gossip. The little house is a two room guest house that has a working bathroom and a non-working kitchen. The bedroom/living area is cooled by a free-standing air conditioner that has a hose attached to the outside window. It sucks the moisture out of the air outside and does a nice job of cooling the inside of the house, except when the water bucket fills up and the cooling mechanism shuts off. Consequently, the water bucket requires frequent emptying during the hotter times of the day.
We went over to the home of my sister and her family and did a quick look-see of the garden, which was surprisingly bountiful, given the lack of rainfall they've been experiencing. The only problems seemed to be a preponderance of squash, which was out of control, and the taste that the local deer had developed for the okra.
This town, where my family moved a year after I graduated high school, is not particularly beautiful, clean, or well tended, but then, Oklahoma towns aren't like Kansas towns. This town is old, and on some famous trail--maybe the Chisholm Trail--and is still used by many truckers hauling cattle to Dodge City, and the sprawling feedlots of the southwest. Main Street is a couple of blocks long and there aren't many businesses left open. This part of the country was hit hard by the oil bust of the early eighties, and gradually, people drifted away to start new lives in other places. There's one old building on Main Street that's been vacant for almost as long as I've had family there. It's a three story building that takes up the better part of a block. Once there was a bank in it, as well as a dentist's office, domino parlor, and a dress shop, all long gone to the ravages of time and change. A few years ago, my sister bought this building with the intention of restoring it and turning it into a bed and breakfast inn. Along with a historical structure and the crumbling woodwork and the broken skylights, my sister also got a ghost in the deal. She was in the building alone and cleaning out the area that had been the dentist's office one hot, summer day when she felt something cold on the back of her neck. She turned around to see this older gentleman wearing a white smock standing behind her. He then proceeded to vanish before her eyes. It gave her something of a turn but my sister is an indomitable spirit and not one easily cowed. She co-habitated peacefully with the ghost until she finally realized that the cost of restoring the building would be far more exhorbitant than what she'd originally planned, and sold it. However, on some occasions, the ghost was seen in the upper window--the dentist's office--by passersby on the street below. Before she sold the building, my sister and one of her daughters were digging through a pile of old newspapers and came across his picture. He had once been the town's dentist and his office had been in the building.
On the morning after our arrival, we drove to the small ranching community of Freedom, Oklahoma, which is notable for having a (tiny) Main Street in which all the businesses have log cabin-type facades. Just outside of Freedom is Alabaster Caverns, which snakes into the earth for three quarters of a mile, and is the largest natural gypsum cave in the world that is open to the public. Of course, there's alabaster there, too, in different colors, including the rare, black alabaster. As the temperature was 104 degrees outside, the interior of the cavern was enticing, maintaining a constant temperature of fifty-eight degrees. There are also several different species of bats in the caverns, and I'd briefly hoped to see their nightly exodus as they emerged en masse to feed on the many insects in the area. After exiting into the inferno outside the caverns, I only wanted to sit in front of air conditioning turned up on high.
Back in the little house, where the portable air conditioner's water bucket had filled up, the temperature hovered at around 100 degrees. Upon our return, this required my immediate attention, preempting anything else I thought I may have needed to do. Once the little house had cooled off--some five hours and another bucket emptying later, we settled down for bed with the nifty invention known as Dish TV. I'm not a big television watcher, so watching Dish TV was an unusual and unique experience for me. With several hundred channels, you can choose to watch anything your little heart desires, or you can drive yourself crazy trying to select something from the sheer abundance of programming. I almost succeeded in doing the latter before settling down with, of all things, "Basic Instinct 2", which I think was a selection made out of sheer exhaustion. Trashy as it was, it managed to catch my interest before I inexplicably fell asleep. The following week in the little house, I managed to see Andy Warhol's "Flesh for Frankenstein" (actually directed by Paul Morrissey) before decamping back to Florida. I have to say that I was shocked at the level of realistic blood and gore present in a movie produced in the early seventies. It was well ahead of its time and rated X when it was released. Udo Kier, who will apparently appear in almost any movie offering a paycheck, played Dr. Frankenstein, and Monique Van Vooren, a Euro starlet who parlayed her notoriety into some serious social standing, played his wife. Despite the bloodletting and copious nudity, the movie was somewhat boring. Joe Dallesandro, as a randy servant, looked really good, although his New York accent was a jarring contrast to the Transylvanian setting, and the accents of the European cast. Whatever happened to him, anyhow?
The next morning, we rose early to set upon our journey to my dad's family reunion on the Oklahoma/New Mexico border. That would involve navigating most of the Oklahoma Panhandle, and entering into a world that is also known as No Man's Land. As it turns out, there's a reason for calling it No Man's Land.
We were flying out west for a week-plus tour of duty with my parents, combining this with my dad's bi-yearly family reunion on the New Mexico border, my partner's visit with his cousin in Albuquerque, and a stopover for me in Texas with my mom's side of the family. My parents live at the very beginning of the Oklahoma Panhandle, a short drive from Texas, and within spitting distance of Kansas. That being said, they are also approximately three and a half hours from the nearest major airports--Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and Wichita--placing them in the exact middle of nowhere. To be precise, they are in what is known as "Red Carpet Country", I guess either because of the friendliness of the natives or the red dirt prevalent in that area of Oklahoma. At any rate, reaching them is a bit of a haul.
As there apparently are no direct flights from Ft. Lauderdale to Wichita, Amarillo, or Oklahoma City, we laid over in the Atlanta Airport, a place for which I have no love. Although I've heard many good things about Atlanta, the city, Atlanta, the airport, is a vast, hostile labyrinth full of treacherous obstacles and the least accommodating service workers this side of South Florida. Luckily, our time there passed quickly, and soon we were loaded aboard yet another Air Tran flight, this time bound for the city of Wichita.
The largest city in Kansas, with a metropolitan population of just over half a million people, Wichita was recently voted, in one poll or another, as one of the top ten places to live in the United States. Because of the number of aircraft manufacturing facilities, and the presence of McConnell Air Force Base, it is known as the "Air Capital of the World". Even so, I have always found the city's lack of skyscrapers puzzling, and a little bit disconcerting.
As expected, the economy car that we had reserved at Budget's online site turned out to be a Dodge Journey, which is about the size of a tank. The chipper Budget woman at the counter explained that the economy cars were all taken, but we were getting an upgrade at no extra charge. After no small amount of discourse, in which my partner futiley attempted to explain that, with gas hovering at $4 a gallon, a free upgrade to a gas-swilling tank was not an acceptable trade, we loaded our bags into the Journey and set off for Points West, towards the High Plains, and home.
* * * * * *
The thing about Kansas is this: it has maybe the cleanest highways of any of the fifty states, which is a good thing, considering the huge distances between its towns and cities. During the 180+ mile drive from Wichita to my parents' house, we may have passed through four towns. So, a passenger in a vehicle traversing these roads will spend a good deal of time looking out the car windows at these clean roadways, and the many farms beyond. Kansas towns are also extremely neat and well-kept. Largely developed during the cattle drives of the 1800's, these town's are proud of their heritage, and a traveler is apt to see many old dwellings that are in remarkably pristine condition. There are trees in these towns, green lawns, and lots of American flags waving in a breeze that never seems to stop.
When we went through the town of Greensburg, Kansas, we got a reality check. The site of a particularly vicious tornado last year, Greensburg was practically wiped off the map. I had been through the town a couple of months after the tornado, and it, literally, looked as if an atomic bomb had been detonated. Century old buildings had toppled, homes were flattened, trees uprooted and torn apart--and yet, mercifully, with the modern early warning systems that are now in place, few people had lost their lives. There had been an eerie stillness in Greensburg when I went through the year before. Now, it appeared to be coming back. There was new construction going on, a sense of purpose among a surprising number of people we saw going about their business. To be sure, the evidence of destruction was still rampant, but there was also hope, and there was obvious progress being made in the town's reconstruction.
Following Greensburg, we turned south and proceeded through a long stretch of nothing as the High Plains country surrounded us, affording us unlimited vistas of prairie and purple, treeless hills. In the far distance, we could see a stark reminder that we were entering a new, energy-efficient age. Spreading across the hills like a line of determined soldiers, were dozens of eight-story tall wind turbines, reportedly used for generating electricity to places as far away as New York. With a little luck, my mom later informed me, she would have some of these on her land within the next couple of years. Apparently, they produce a lucrative income to the landowners.
Arriving at my parents' house at the approximate time I'd given them--a miracle that I still haven't quite figured out--we dumped our bags in the "little house" out back and busied ourselves catching up on family gossip. The little house is a two room guest house that has a working bathroom and a non-working kitchen. The bedroom/living area is cooled by a free-standing air conditioner that has a hose attached to the outside window. It sucks the moisture out of the air outside and does a nice job of cooling the inside of the house, except when the water bucket fills up and the cooling mechanism shuts off. Consequently, the water bucket requires frequent emptying during the hotter times of the day.
We went over to the home of my sister and her family and did a quick look-see of the garden, which was surprisingly bountiful, given the lack of rainfall they've been experiencing. The only problems seemed to be a preponderance of squash, which was out of control, and the taste that the local deer had developed for the okra.
This town, where my family moved a year after I graduated high school, is not particularly beautiful, clean, or well tended, but then, Oklahoma towns aren't like Kansas towns. This town is old, and on some famous trail--maybe the Chisholm Trail--and is still used by many truckers hauling cattle to Dodge City, and the sprawling feedlots of the southwest. Main Street is a couple of blocks long and there aren't many businesses left open. This part of the country was hit hard by the oil bust of the early eighties, and gradually, people drifted away to start new lives in other places. There's one old building on Main Street that's been vacant for almost as long as I've had family there. It's a three story building that takes up the better part of a block. Once there was a bank in it, as well as a dentist's office, domino parlor, and a dress shop, all long gone to the ravages of time and change. A few years ago, my sister bought this building with the intention of restoring it and turning it into a bed and breakfast inn. Along with a historical structure and the crumbling woodwork and the broken skylights, my sister also got a ghost in the deal. She was in the building alone and cleaning out the area that had been the dentist's office one hot, summer day when she felt something cold on the back of her neck. She turned around to see this older gentleman wearing a white smock standing behind her. He then proceeded to vanish before her eyes. It gave her something of a turn but my sister is an indomitable spirit and not one easily cowed. She co-habitated peacefully with the ghost until she finally realized that the cost of restoring the building would be far more exhorbitant than what she'd originally planned, and sold it. However, on some occasions, the ghost was seen in the upper window--the dentist's office--by passersby on the street below. Before she sold the building, my sister and one of her daughters were digging through a pile of old newspapers and came across his picture. He had once been the town's dentist and his office had been in the building.
On the morning after our arrival, we drove to the small ranching community of Freedom, Oklahoma, which is notable for having a (tiny) Main Street in which all the businesses have log cabin-type facades. Just outside of Freedom is Alabaster Caverns, which snakes into the earth for three quarters of a mile, and is the largest natural gypsum cave in the world that is open to the public. Of course, there's alabaster there, too, in different colors, including the rare, black alabaster. As the temperature was 104 degrees outside, the interior of the cavern was enticing, maintaining a constant temperature of fifty-eight degrees. There are also several different species of bats in the caverns, and I'd briefly hoped to see their nightly exodus as they emerged en masse to feed on the many insects in the area. After exiting into the inferno outside the caverns, I only wanted to sit in front of air conditioning turned up on high.
Back in the little house, where the portable air conditioner's water bucket had filled up, the temperature hovered at around 100 degrees. Upon our return, this required my immediate attention, preempting anything else I thought I may have needed to do. Once the little house had cooled off--some five hours and another bucket emptying later, we settled down for bed with the nifty invention known as Dish TV. I'm not a big television watcher, so watching Dish TV was an unusual and unique experience for me. With several hundred channels, you can choose to watch anything your little heart desires, or you can drive yourself crazy trying to select something from the sheer abundance of programming. I almost succeeded in doing the latter before settling down with, of all things, "Basic Instinct 2", which I think was a selection made out of sheer exhaustion. Trashy as it was, it managed to catch my interest before I inexplicably fell asleep. The following week in the little house, I managed to see Andy Warhol's "Flesh for Frankenstein" (actually directed by Paul Morrissey) before decamping back to Florida. I have to say that I was shocked at the level of realistic blood and gore present in a movie produced in the early seventies. It was well ahead of its time and rated X when it was released. Udo Kier, who will apparently appear in almost any movie offering a paycheck, played Dr. Frankenstein, and Monique Van Vooren, a Euro starlet who parlayed her notoriety into some serious social standing, played his wife. Despite the bloodletting and copious nudity, the movie was somewhat boring. Joe Dallesandro, as a randy servant, looked really good, although his New York accent was a jarring contrast to the Transylvanian setting, and the accents of the European cast. Whatever happened to him, anyhow?
The next morning, we rose early to set upon our journey to my dad's family reunion on the Oklahoma/New Mexico border. That would involve navigating most of the Oklahoma Panhandle, and entering into a world that is also known as No Man's Land. As it turns out, there's a reason for calling it No Man's Land.
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