I love my Texas family, but my oh my, I feel like I’m coated in a 1/4 inch of a cheery neon yellow batter. They love their fast food, and I’m going to have to roast them now. Everything’s chicken and french fries. The colour of our meals is yellow and beige. In my head I am running screaming to a nutritionist for an intervention. Dr. Pepper for breakfast and all day long. Coke, anyone? Coke? Coke? Coke? The drink cups of pop are the size of flower pots. We found a paper clip in the bottom of a supersized drink from Whataburger. There is a side of fries waiting for YOU, America!
I crave steamed broccoli, the austerity of short grain brown rice. A baked yam with butter. Two slices of sesame Ryvita crispbread, one with peanut butter (real) and one with honey. I want an apple from a tree not a truck. A glass of good Merlot and a bar of Angela’s Euphoria orange bitter dark chocolate.
We went on a family outing to Dallas last weekend. Riding in a big, red, air-conditioned pickup it’s easy to forget the heat on the other side of the glass. It had to be a six hour trip, to make pit stops for Colette. Compared to the lushness and the accessibility to trees and cool, refreshing oxygen in BC, I realized how difficult it was to find somewhere a little girl could stretch her legs and run around. In the parched grass everywhere there is a thing called stickers. These are little balls of pain. They have a way of getting in your shoe or up your leg and attaching to your clothes. The only way to describe them is a plant version of a spiny sea urchin. They hurt. They go right into your skin. You want to avoid them. And at the rest stops there are ants that bite and snakes in the grass, too.
GOOD MORNING SUNDAY SERVICE AT THE SILVERADO COWBOY CHURCH
The Interstate 20 going east to Dallas was a good road, well-maintained and smooth. It’s very noticeable the number of trucks on the road in comparison to cars. In this neighbourhood I was surprised by how many white pickups there are until I was told that that colour means it’s a company truck. Midland and Odessa are here because it’s an oil patch. These are employees of the oil business, it’s the meat and potatoes of this area (the chicken and fries).
Sitting up in the cab of the truck, gazing out to the sides of the roads, I wanted to let the miles do their magic, and let those hundreds and hundreds of pages of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove series, those cowboys on their horses pushing cattle across this dusty landscape, just materialize before my eyes. They did, I could see them. It was just over a hundred years ago and they’re still there. This overlay of modern day Texas cannot dispel their ghosts; they’re still among the low, sturdy trees called live oak, the cactus growing underneath the mesquite. I know there are ranches and cowboys still, horses and barns and pens full of cattle out beyond the Interstate. I saw windmills, miles as far as you could see; smart to harness the incredible wind power of Texas. And I’d never seen a cotton field before, and there they were. How much history has been picked in these southern fields of cotton. Most of the traffic alongside us were rigs and semis crossing this vast state. I imagined them full of chickens, potatoes, oil, salt and sugar to supply this fast food nation. And the pumpjacks going up and down. They’re on every horizon.
It turns out Larry McMurtry has written a sequel to “Duane’s Depressed” called “When the Light Goes.” I started it last night and it feels different, reading it from right here in Texas, looking around me and seeing exactly the environment he’s writing about. Already on page 24 he’s mentioned Odessa. Ruth and Bobby Lee are talking about where Bobby Lee’s estranged wife Jessica is from. “Odessa, the worse town in Texas for a girl to be from,” Bobby Lee said. “Why’s that?” Ruth asked. “It’s because of the natural gas smell,” Bobby Lee told her. “It comes right up through the cracks in the sidewalk. Odessa girls grow up smelling it and it makes them real snarly.” I love these descriptions. I remember in one of his books he said someone was the kind of rich like diamonds on a dog’s ass. We passed a refinery that held 800 million gallons of oil. The pipelines running to it were dug a few feet under the ground.
WELCOME TO STANTON…HOME OF 3000 FRIENDLY PEOPLE AND A FEW OLD SOREHEADS
Our first stop was a Dairy Queen in Clyde. Nowhere for Colette to run but at the back of it on hot tarmac. Stepping down out of the truck my heart trilled at the sound of birds! Dozens and dozens of them in the live oaks that surrounded the DQ parking lot, cracklings and mockingbirds, what a sound! Texas is getting to me. Underneath its sprawling, macho, careless, rapacious nature there runs a spring of sweetness, a surprising tenderness, an earthy, lusty, lovability that’s showing up in my encounters with strangers on the street, and the effect on me of this exotic vegetation and animal species (and I haven’t even been to the bars yet). The Dairy Queen was full of a lot of grey, ill-looking people. My heart sank at eating more french fries, and I wondered at what point the scales would tip ( choice of words intended) and I would completely undo the health I’d gained from quitting my job and having a glorious, restful, happy summer. There was a large, heavy TV in the eating area, the news was on. I believe it is state law that there has to be a U.S. flag somewhere visible in every public building. In this case it was atop the TV, planted askew in a pot of dusty, fake flowers.
But I’ll remember Clyde, remember the sign that said they had an annual pecan festival. Remember the old-timers, wearing their baseball caps, sitting in front of their meals on crinkled paper, anchored down by blobs of ketchup. And the young employee who really wanted to know more for me than she did, about the way of the cracklings out there in the trees. She was as sweet as pie.
RADIO STATION 94.9 FM…SAFE FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
Our first destination was a suburb of Fort Worth called Euless. When I heard that, it did bring to my mind a little trouble I’ve been having (refer to previous blog called Identity and Place).
But I have to go to bed now, last weekend’s story can wait. I’ve had a head cold for weeks. Being sealed in a house with the doors and windows closed and the air-conditioning running 24/7 is really doing me in. I need to get back to the chill, fresh wet coast and regain my health. But it did rain the other day and it was so exciting. Colette and I got up from our nap and the house seemed so dark. Then thunder! I had a willing initiate in her as we ran out the front door into the street, arms outstretched and faces up. When I saw that it was going to come DOWN, I got us two pieces of pizza and we sat silently on lawn chairs under an awning by the pool, and watched the wind whip the trees in the back alley, and sheets of cold water descend miraculously from a Texas sky.
Good Life
diane
Hello Diane,
I hope this finds you well and happy. I am confident it will find you sassy.
Dorothy and Wendy and I had a grand trip. Archer City was right up there with the best of it. We spent New Years Eve on Riverwalk in San Antonio. Saw the fireworks from across the street from the Alamo.
I am back in the snow of West Virginia. Trying to figure out a way of life.
Thought I’d know by now. Hmmmmmm….
Sincerely,
Ted