Durant, OK

I know where the police station is in Durant. I also know where the jailhouse is. And the phone number of the nearest bail-bondsman (who is the guy you contact to raise the bail to get you out of the jailhouse). This is much more information than I really need about a place that is, after all, merely a rather unpleasant blot on the Oklahoman landscape.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

The waiter at breakfast told me there was an outlet mall in Allen, about 45 minutes north of here on Route 75, so I thought it might be worth a trip for some last minute shopping before I return tomorrow. So, after breakfast, I jumped into my shiny red Pontiac Grand Am (quite a poky little beast, even though, as you know, I don’t worry about such things; and anyway, red doesn’t really suit me). As I headed north on the highway, an idle thought crossed my mind that it would be nice to just keep driving to see where I finished up, maybe thousands of miles later. I’ve had these thoughts before, and one day I’ll do it, just because I can. It’s the sort of thing you can do here that’s just not possible in England, because you hit road-works, or Barnstaple, or some other annoying obstacle. Ever since I read Jack Kerouac in my early twenties I’ve had a hankering to be a hobo (just for a while, you understand – not on a permanent basis), and, of course, the modern equivalent of that is to drive across an entire continent. Ideally, this should be on a Harley, but at my age, practicality cuts in rather rudely to remind me that creature comforts are now more important than image.

But I digress. I didn’t just keep driving after all, and stopped at the mall, where I spent an enjoyable hour. By then it was still only noon, so I decided to get back onto Route 75 and head north, for no particular reason. Not very much time had passed before I saw a woman hitching a ride on the side of the road. I know I shouldn’t do this sort of thing – everybody tells me that – but I just can’t help myself. She was pleasant enough, mid-forties, I’d say, and one-third Choctaw Indian. Brenda (not a Choctaw name, I suspect – well, actually, I know, because I asked her; she must have thought I was a total idiot) was heading back home to Durant, Oklahoma, which was about 45 minutes away. I said I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, so I’d drive her home. And in case it has crossed your mind, as it did mine, it's genetically impossible to be one-third anything.

Naturally, I asked her what she’d been doing in Texas. Apparently, she has an abusive husband. Last night he’d got drunk, dragged her out of the house and beat her up (she had the bruises to prove it), and so she’d called the police, had him arrested, and gone to her sister’s in Texas. Now she was trying to get home, but had no transport and no money. I refused her requests to buy her first cigarettes, and then a diet Coke. I told her I was happy to give her a ride, but that was where it stopped.

We crossed the Red River into Oklahoma’s Chickasaw Nation, and soon pulled into Durant, and she asked if I’d stop by her sister-in-law’s first, because that was where she thought her husband would be after being released from police custody. We stopped by a trailer that was so dilapidated that the only thing that stopped it falling down was the variety of broken-down cars on cinder blocks that surrounded the place, propping it up. There were three rather large guys outside, none of which was her husband; small children somewhere, judging from the toys littering the yard; and her sister-in-law inside, to whom she spoke through the window. I kept the car engine running, just in case.

It seems her husband was still in jail, and she was now struck with remorse, because she really did love him, and wanted to get him out of jail. So would I take her over to the police station? Don’t ask. I did. The police were not very cooperative, this being Sunday, and told her to go over to the jailhouse and speak to them. She got back in the car, and told me what the police had said, in spite of her telling them she wanted to drop all charges, and that she was now back on her medication again. Errrrm … medication? I didn’t ask – the important thing was that she was back on it, whatever it was, and I thought I’d rather not know which variety of currently-suppressed lunatic I might have in the car.

I’m torn here. On the one hand, I want to find out how you go about getting someone out of jail; on the other, since they don’t have any transport, I’m not overly happy about having a medicated woman and her wife-beating husband in the same car as me. Still, I keep my cool, and we go to the jailhouse. They’re not cooperative either, and we have to find a bail-bondsman who will put up the money to get her husband out. Despite offering a “24-hour” service, it seems that Sundays are usually excluded. I know this story seems to be going on a long time, but I’m cutting big chunks out, as we ride backwards and forwards between the police station, the jailhouse and the local gas-station, where she can use the pay-phone to call several bail-bondsman. Note that, at no time during the entire episode, did I leave the car, turn off the engine, or unlock the doors for longer than it took for her to get in and out. I’m not as stupid as I look.

All is to no avail in the end, and she can do nothing until Monday morning. She’s practically in tears as I drive her to her home. I use the word “home” in the loosest possible sense. We enter a neighborhood where I’m, for once, very glad that the car doors lock automatically as soon as you start moving. And here is the sad part. She lives in a trailer almost indistinguishable from her sister-in-law’s, except that it’s at the end of a long street full of trailers, all in an equal state of disrepair. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to live in such conditions, with no transport, no job, and no money except for the meager amount supplied by social security. And I wonder if, under similar conditions, I might be a wife-beating drunk. I hope not, and hope never to find out.

Heading back down Route 75, I stopped at “Dickey’s Barbecue Pit” for a beef sandwich and a medium sweet iced tea. I know what “medium” means in England; in Texas, it means a pint. And I know I’ve said this before, but Texas barbecue is absolutely the best. Probably half a pound of tender, slow-barbecued beef, smothered with barbecue sauce, on a hamburger bun. It’s difficult to suppress a “Yeehaw!” as you take the first succulent mouthful.

I drove through a sudden violent storm, where even the windshield wipers at full speed can’t keep up, and the thunder was deafening. But it was brief, and as I came out the other side into the sun again, there was a wonderful rainbow arcing across the sky. And I couldn’t help wondering if, when Brenda saw a rainbow, she saw the same as me, or whether she saw something else that was forever just out of reach.

Staying local

I’ve pretty much run out of places to go that are within easy reach. It’s not that I haven’t done anything this weekend – just that I haven’t done anything particularly interesting. But there has been a common theme to the weekend (unplanned, as usual) – of playing with my natural sense of normality.

For example, I toured the local thrift shops yesterday, looking for nothing special, and not intending to buy anything (Val will tell you that we already have way too much “stuff”!). Well, I didn’t buy anything, but I did flick through a book of poems by ee cummings (I would have been tempted to buy, except that it was a paperback, and these days, I only buy hardbacks). One poem caught my eye, and I wrote down the first line so that I could look it up on the internet when I got back to the hotel. The text of the poem is attached. A lot of scholarly work has gone into interpreting it since it was written (in 1940, I think), but I prefer to let it play with my mind the way I think it was supposed to. Sometimes we need our conventional way of thinking to be disturbed, so that we open our minds to other possibilities. Witness the punk movement in music that, no matter how un-melodic, upset the musical desert of the late 70s. The same thing happens in art, as well as in social mores, and every sphere of our existence.

I also bought a CD called “Love of Ages” by Sheetal, an Indian musician. The significance of the music is that it is a blend of eastern and western cadences, and sounds, at first, dissonant to our ears. The truth is that Indian musicians do not understand how we, in the west, can manage, musically, without quarter-tones. And that the major 7^th chord, when it was first introduced, a couple of centuries ago, was considered outrageous.

And this morning I watched “Sunday Morning” on CBS. I don’t think there is a British equivalent. It is a “magazine” program, in the Panorama or 60 Minutes sense, but there is no politics; it is the TV equivalent of National Geographic, except that it is not confined to geographic material. Check out http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/07/09/sunday/main13562.shtml that will show you that this morning’s program was devoted to “islands”, from Martha’s Vineyard to Gigha in Scotland to Branson’s Necker Island. And I realized that tranquility is hard to find. It has been cool at night here recently – cool enough for me to sleep with the windows open. The trouble is that the windows are triple-glazed – my room faces onto Highway 183, and is directly under one of DFW’s flight paths. The noise doesn’t keep me awake, but it does wake me up, and I realize how quickly we become inured to sound, how quickly it becomes a backdrop to our lives.

This afternoon, I visited probably the last “popular” local tourist attraction that I haven’t been to before: Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” and Louis Tussaud’s “Palace of Wax”. Both cheesy, but both challenge your sense of what is normal. Many of the so-called “freaks” – the tallest man, the dog-faced man, the ugliest woman – were described as thoughtful and sensitive, which I can quite believe they were.

So did I discover tranquility? I bought (for $1) a CD called “Sounds of the Tropical Rain Forest”. With the air-conditioning on, the windows rolled up, and the CD cranked up, that’s the closest I’ll get around here.

ee cummings poem

 

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

Austin, TX

It would seem that the Dallas Cowboys might be moving to Arlington. I’m sure there are purely financial reasons for this, as Arlington is still in the Metroplex area, less than 10 miles away from where they are right now. There is a pre-occupation among local sports commentators as to whether they should change their name to, say, the Texas Cowboys. To my mind, this is somewhat moot, since they’re currently not in Dallas anyway – they’re in Irving, which is where I’m staying. I can understand that the “Irving Cowboys” conjures up more of an image of a sub-standard building outfit than of a world-class football team, but I would have thought that, if the association with Dallas is good enough for Irving, it should be good enough for Arlington. But then Arlington is no stranger to controversy: when Ameriquest (a Californian finance company) provided major funding for “The Ballpark in Arlington” (home of the Texas Rangers since 1994), they insisted on changing the name to the “Ameriquest Field”. Not a popular idea with the locals. Of course, apart from Iraq, the troubles in Sudan (genocide, ebola outbreak, …) and the cockle-picker crisis in Morecambe Bay, there’s not a whole lot going on, so that what constitutes “news” is relative.

Not exactly subtle ...

Poor Nellie ...

On an entirely different topic, you may think that 200 miles is rather a long way to go for lunch. But then you wouldn’t know the whole story. Last time I tried to go to Austin, I got side-tracked at Waco to visit Crawford, the home of one George W. Bush, who could well have done more to sully the credibility of his office than his predecessor. This time I headed straight through Waco, across the Brazos River, and on to Austin. I have to take back some of the more disparaging remarks I’ve made about Texas – Austin is certainly a city I’d want to re-visit. I followed the signs to the Visitor Center, and completely missed it. The second time around, I stopped outside a hot sauce shop (I know … only in America) and asked for directions. I not only found the Visitor Center (where I only wanted to pick up a map anyway) but also found out the area to go where I could pursue my favourite pastime – walking around and people-watching. The area I was in (Sixth Street) boasts “over 100 music venues, historic sites, restaurants, trendy stores, and exciting night clubs, all within 5 city blocks”. It comes alive at night, and I’d love to go there again in the evening, but not alone, simply because it’s an experience to be shared.

So I crossed the Colorado River to an area that’s hip and hippie. On the way, I saw a road sign that preceded the Texas School for the Deaf, saying simply “Deaf Peds”. Maybe it’s just me, but it seemed a little blunt. I suppose, before the Texas School for the Handicapped, they probably have a sign that says “Cripples Crossing”. Texans are probably not best known for their subtlety.Oh, and if you want to visit Nellie, you can't ...

I had lunch at Guero’s (http://www.diningoutwithrobbalon.com/review/gueros/). There was a 20-minute wait, but, as I was alone, they could seat me immediately at the taco counter. Picadillo tacos – nothing like tacos as we know them. They were served in soft shells, with a beef and potato filling, salsa, rice and the inevitable pinto beans on the side. Quite delicious, and washed down with a Corona.

I would have loved to have spent longer walking around, but a minor, errrm, “traffic incident”, persuaded me that it might be better to leave. Quickly.

On the way back, a freight train ran alongside the highway, and it took me so long to get past it that, as soon as I was ahead of it, I pulled off at the next off-ramp, and sat waiting for it to come by (I know … but these are the kind of things I find interesting). It had 5 engines up front, towing 135 wagons, and took 4 minutes to pass me. That may not sound long, but it seems to take forever. As I approached Dallas, I could see the skyscrapers of downtown from 12 miles away – that’s how flat this part of Texas is.

San Antonio is only another 100 miles further on, so I could probably do that in a day if I can get up early enough.

Washday

These thongs are not all they’re cracked up to be. One week is about all you can get, and then you really have to wash them. I’ve been toying with the idea of edible thongs, and doing away with the washing thing altogether – wear them a week, then eat them and start off with a new pair – but I’m still not sure it would be cost effective. Sure, you save on breakfast, but washing powder’s not that expensive. So I still have to work on the economics.

Anyway, for now it’s washday. Nice clean thong to look forward to tomorrow.

This is the reality of extended-stay hotel life. On the plus side, even though there’s only one washer and one dryer in the laundry room, there’s never anyone else using them; on the minus side, there’s never anyone else using them – they all have lives!

It says on the laundry room wall that the wash cycle ($1) takes 30 minutes, and the dryer cycle (also $1) takes 45 minutes. They lie. I put my washing in, come back 30 minutes later, and it looks as though it’s been sitting there, finished, for a while (I sometimes wonder if it’s done any more than dampen my clothes so that it looks as though they’ve been washed – it’s the kind of thing I might do if I thought no-one was watching); so I transfer it to the dryer, come back 45 minutes later, and have to stand around until it decides to stop tumbling. I’ve never had the patience to actually wait in the laundry room and time it myself (but then, since I don’t wear a watch, that probably wouldn’t help much anyway).

So what do I do in between? It’s almost too embarrassing to confess to, even for someone of my age. In my defence, I’d have to say that it’s hardly my fault that “Wheel of Fortune” coincides with my personal wash cycle. There you have it – my secret is out. Once a week I watch (parts of) “Wheel of Fortune”. And it can’t be only me that thinks that “BANKRUPT” comes up far more often than it should if the odds were straight. I keep meaning to watch this show on a regular basis, and record the number of times each position on the wheel comes up, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

I can’t say it’s exciting, but it probably beats going to the Swedish Massage Institute (“all female staff”) just down the road, where their cheapest package would set me back $135. If you don’t believe me, check out their web site, but, be warned, this site is not for the faint of heart (or even normal human beings). It’s nasty.