For All the Shit That Happens

The bar was open Thanksgiving evening so I stopped in for a drink after work. Cigars, cigar bars, cigar aficionados are of no interest to me. None. Normally I would avoid such a place.

I went in because I could see only one customer. He was a young Oklahoman with a beard and modern hairdo sipping whisky and smoking a cigar. The bar tender had been adopted and abused repeatedly. The effects of this have carried over into adult life. She said she made a stand up routine out of it which she performs at a bar just down the street.

Another young man comes in. Thirty years old, he said, and free of family commitments today because his ex-wife gets the kids on the holidays, cause he has full custody of them on account of the high school student boyfriend she's keeping company with these days. He's hired a private eye to watch them and provide a report on how many times he goes in or comes out of the house. In and out, in and out, again and again and again.

He talks about a lot of things, but it always comes back around to her 18 year old high school lover. He talks about the AR-15 he's got in his truck right now. He carries. He's licensed to carry. He's carrying now. Everybody he works with in tractor parts sales carries too. It's the Wild West out here, he says.

He's got a 100 round drum magazine for the AR-15 and a special trigger that discharges a round both when you squeeze it and when you release it, doubling the rifle's rate of fire. He carries a shotgun in his truck too.

He's learning about fine cigars lately, appreciating them. He's been smoking them once a week for about 3 months now. He's cultivating an interest, a pass time, something else to do and to think about.

"I almost pulled on that high school sumbitch the other day because he charged my Dad who has a legal disability".

"Everyone carries around here. You have to, because of all the shit that happens".

A Quarter Mile That Way

The dilapidated duplexes at the top of the hill at first glance appear abandoned with plywood where the windows should be. Three semi-wild dogs move swiftly across the semi-arid landscape. They have the shape of domestic dogs, but they're darker somehow and they move in quick, coordinated lethality like a predawn patrol avoiding detection. The duplexes contain a few people squalidly. They also contain drugs and one or two small children.

Meanwhile, you are walking through the hotel parking lot in running shoes without socks, a fleece jacket with nothing underneath, and shorts with a button fly and tie set-up designed for sleeping. You don't venture out in pajamas normally, so this feels transgressive. Outlaw. You wish your nuts felt heavier.

A flock of geese fly over in the low grey sky. They don't really honk like the Canada Geese up North. It's a different sound - strange and foreign, if you like. Exotic, if your prefer. Mindset.

You are looking across the interstate at the TA truck stop. They'll be serving Thanksgiving dinner today if no one else is. Plenty of trucks in the lot. You aren't the only one, but you do slide into self pity effortlessly.

At Stripes, Marcel is dancing at the register.

You say, "Thanks for being here today". 

He smiles, takes out an earbud, "I'm sorry. Wha'd you say, sir?

You say it again, and he tells you it means time and a half for him. You place a plastic packaged raspberry danish on the counter and ask him for two dollars in quarters, if he can spare them from the drawer.

He tells you "not a problem, sir",  counts back your change from the danish with particular alacrity, breaks open a role of quarters on the edge of the counter like a master chef cracking an egg, counts you out two dollars for the laundry, and wishes you Happy Thanksgiving with a wide smile.

You walk back to the hotel, not wearing any underwear, listening to exotic birds cross a low hanging, West Texas sky thinking about what people mean when they say they're grateful.

Wednesday, 3:30 AM

She was right. I can't sleep thinking about the three cases I'll be presenting before a judge in a few hours. I'll just have to go in with what I have. Wing it.

Yesterday, a hell of a wind came up in the afternoon turning the sky brown with dust. A dust storm I guess, not a real haboob, but something to see nonetheless.

Making friends with bartenders around town. It won't take very long to run out of new places. There are feral cats here around the outside of the hotel. People know the hotel by its location, behind the Starbucks, which must still be relatively new here.

An oil boom has raised the cost of living in the area and brought in a lot of men from outside. Douche bags, she calls them, who claim to have a lot of money but don't tip that way. 

Generational

He was loud and an asshole, frankly, making threats and talking shit, being lewd toward the women. People started discreetly moving out of the way. That is, all except for the older man with the long grey beard wearing a tee shirt that read, "I Am A Wrecking Ball".

He walked calmly over and sat directly across from the younger, larger, louder man. His shoulders were relaxed, and there seemed to be just the hint of a grin under that beard. 

Pecos

Yesterday, a drive to Pecos. Sunny day and up to 80 degrees, down I-20 through Stanton, Midland, Odessa and out into the Permian Basin filthy rich in petroleum, natural gas and potassium. I passed Sandy Hills State Park and marked it as somewhere to return to, saw a sign for the Texas Pecos Trail and thought that's something I need to look into, saw signs for Kermit, New Mexico, El Paso, and had the urge to keep going. The Davis Mountains came into view on the southern horizon. Small dead coyotes along the shoulders of the highway mingled with ribbons of truck tires and plastic hung up in the scrub. The closer we got to Pecos, the more trash there was along the roadsides. It's all pump jacks, tanks, pipes. tracks, flares, drilling rigs, trucks, man camps - oil boom.

The Pecos River is what I wanted to see. I glimpsed it crawling under the highway, hardly more than a stream, winding it's way through the oil fields. A personal injury lawyer had taken out a billboard bragging about a 10 million dollar settlement he'd won for a client blown up in an oil field explosion.

Pecos was quiet on Sunday noon. A desert town, again with the trash and old cars and pieces of things strewn all around. Rodeo grounds - home of the first ever rodeo - and real tacos at the gas station/market for $1.20. Found a Mexican seafood place very far from the sea and giggled to myself about them probably serving Pecos perch. Stopped in for fish tacos and a Chelada. Made a friend from Cleveland who came down here after being laid off from her Assistant Principal's position. Said she always wanted to drive a big rig. She lives in one of the man camps. She told me she just keeps to herself and works 4 weeks on and 2 weeks off. She's working on her Ph.D on line at night. She was dressed up in big gold hoop earrings and necklace in that dark place with it's Mexican futbol on the TV and short Mexican men under baseball caps all packed into the picnic table seating.

Come On Now

You don't come to a place for a short stay and start judging everybody.

It's not cool to be a Massachusetts liberal suggesting a better way of life to West Texans after being in their homeland for two and a half days.

People wear cowboy hats here, and they mean it. It's not some ironic hipster affectation. It's the real deal.

I saw my first Trump hat during the lunch rush at the Whataburger in town today. The place was packed with high school kids on a field trip wearing their blue embroidered Future Farmers of America jackets. The man was probably 80 years old and he knew a lot of the older people in the restaurant. There were Mexican men breaking for lunch, and Mexican women eating with their children. The old man in the hat looked at me on his way to a table. I avoided his eyes feeling hot embarrassment on his behalf. He wasn't obnoxious. He's a community elder. What does Trump mean to him?

Saturday evening at the H.E.B. is a cluster fuck with everyone rushing the place in oversized trucks and SUVs in a small parking lot made for standard sized cars. It's like 50 to 100 aircraft carriers pulling into port at the same time. I managed to maneuver my own battleship into a space out on one of the edges, miraculously without hitting anything.

On my way out of the store, I heard a ruckus and saw several cars and trucks stopped at the entry/exit to the lot. A helmetless Harley Davidson rider had been knocked down, or dumped his bike trying to dodge an interloping pickup. I walked up close to make sure the man wasn't pinned under the bike. Thankfully, he was on his feet and apparently unhurt.

Originally, I'd thought I'd go out for a beer or two. After all, it's my first Saturday night in a new town, but after the H.E.B.,  a quiet night in the hotel room sounded just right.

Ay Que Bueno!

She said to her mother, "pork sausage, turkey sausage..." with a big smile,  as happy as a little girl on Christmas morning.

I had just come in from a short shuffle through the frosty morning and wasn't feeling too good.

Just yesterday, I was looking at the same breakfast items complaining internally about the poverty of choices.

Douche bag.

Reunion In Absentia

Didn't know where we knew each other from
But we both double took that last time we saw
One another in mutual darkness trying to remember
Who the other one was out there in the world of light.

It claimed you soon after that and when I heard I remembered
Who you were under the sun way back then so seeing you
Now is a little chilling, honestly, you reminding me here
That I am next.

Arrival

Landed in the flat brown sunshine of Midland-Odessa and made my way to the compact rental car I'd reserved a few days ago. It turns out to be a Chevy Silverado Super Cab. Oil country. Not a lot of EVs or hybrids around here.

A drive to Big Spring across the dry, brown, plain listening to Pat Boone's 50's show on satellite radio. Oil derricks, refineries (I think), railroad transport operations, possible drilling stations intermingled with cotton fields and, out along the far horizons, giant wind turbines lined up for miles.

I had the lunch special at a misplaced Cajun seafood place - a pound of boiled shrimp, potato, and corn. The Mexican waitress asked me what I wanted to drink, and I asked for a Lone Star.

"My favorite kind of beer", she giggled. A lovely flash of white teeth and black eyes. This is her family's place, I thought.  She opened the beer for me, asked me if I wanted the cap.

Unpacked my stuff at the hotel. Let the shower run for awhile to take some of the wrinkles out of my shirts. Opened the curtain to a fourth floor view of an old water tower, a gutted building with its twisted metal roof rusting in long strips on the ground. Flat and brown all the way out to the hospital at the base of the mountain where I'll report for work in the morning.

Out on my own to the Spanish Inn for a Tex Mex dinner. Another family run place, but this one has deep roots here. A patron tells one of the older waitresses he saw her daughter the other day out at her new job. She didn't want to work at the restaurant anymore apparently. They're taking about the younger generation of females - how they do their make up. The man asks what this thing is with girls shaving off their eyebrows and replacing them with a thick black line. He says they look like they have burnt french fries across their foreheads.

Outside, a cold dusty mist has blown in from somewhere. Feels as though the temperature has dropped 20 degrees since I landed. People are complaining about it. There's something about this I am experiencing for the first time.

I have a headache so stop to buy a bottle of water at a convenience store trying to get used to the extra length of the pickup while parking.

A woman under a hood walks by me singing, jittery, sizing me up as I stand there trying to select a drink. After my transaction, I see her in the parking lot with the hood of her SUV raised. She appears to be trying to pour water into the radiator. She is rocking back and forth, putting her eye down close to the radiator's open mouth. Her car looks stuffed with a one bedroom's worth of belongings. She is spilling water, noticing me, smiling, pointing in recognition from the store just a minute ago, whipping her head around. Meth.

I'll be here for two weeks or more.

Big Lake

Traveling again to Texas, but somewhere new this time, and for several weeks. It'll be good to go again.

Gonzales

True, I'm distractible and frequently lack follow through. I spend a lot of my energy doing what characters did in the old cartoons when they're getting ready to take off - sort of pull back, run madly in place in a blur while the sound effects man goes nuts, then launch like a shot in a puff of smoke. That's what I'm doing now instead of getting shit done. 

Where I've Been

Since the last time, November's come in and stripped the trees bare, made the skies grey, sent the temperatures down to as low as ten degrees.

I went to Texas, came back again, bought heating oil (before it ran out this time) and paid the bills.

I spent some time with each of the kids, sang karaoke, made a friend who treated me right and made me grateful.

I stood in front of muchisimas statues of Nuestra Señora de Santa Muerte in that Dallas bazaar the tornado just barely missed, watched the first snow flakes fall here at the highest point between the Berkshires and the East Coast, endured a couple of tedious and uncomfortable flights, and gathered the shiny frequent flyer miles feeling like a sucker with a sore ass all the while.

I talked to a girl armed with a pink can of mace through the car window, and later, to some other people about another girl who shattered on the sidewalk.