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.

Corn maze

A disappointing day. I can’t complain, because it doesn’t happen often. I’d heard on local TV about a “corn maze” on a farm down near Waxahachie, and headed off there, buying sun-block on the way, because it’s pretty warm round here in July. When I got there, I discovered it was only open in the evenings – this makes sense, if I’d stopped to think about it. You’d have to be insane to wander about in a cornfield in the middle of the day in Texas (something about mad dogs and Englishman springs to mind …).

So I took the scenic route back to Dallas, passing through Avalon (which was definitely not the inspiration for Roxy Music’s hit song) and Italy (there’s a disturbingly dull theme cropping up here, so to spare you a recurrence, here’s a brief, and certainly incomplete, of funny place names in Texas: Gordon, Vernon, Seymour, Chester, Sidney, Smiley, Leroy, Dabney, Tarzan, Happy, Gun Sight, Point Blank, Cut and Shoot, Elysian Fields, Utopia, Paradise, Munday, Friday, Telephone, Telegraph, Energy, Raisin, Oatmeal, Rice, Noodle, Hot Coffee, Kickapoo … I could go on, but I won’t. The very last time I’ll mention the topic is to suggest you check out http://www.floydpinkerton.net/fun/citynames.html.

And so I did what any American does when it’s this hot – I went to the mall. I walked around the food court, but couldn’t find anything I fancied to eat. And around the multiplex, but couldn’t find a movie I was prepared to pay to see.

After a while, I left, and stopped off at Red Lobster, hoping the meal might lift my spirits; it might have done, had not a couple with one misbehaving toddler and one screaming baby not sat in the booth next to mine. I knew I should have gone to Cowboy Church again this morning!

On a completely different topic, you probably know that state license plates in the States typically have their state motto on the bottom, like: The Constitution State (Connecticut), The Empire State (New York), The Sunshine State (Florida), The Lone Star State (Texas). As I came out of the hotel the other morning, the car in the parking space next to mine was from Idaho. “Famous Potatoes”. I’m not kidding. It’s made me even more determined to get to Idaho one day, so I can find out if their tourist brochure is as inspired as their state motto.

Paris, TX

If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t get lost. I’m sure somebody else has already said that, but, if they haven’t, they should have. (As I think about it, this could easily be a philosophy of life – not “should be”, but “could be”). Several times today I’ve had no idea where I was, but I wasn’t lost. It helps if you’re not in a hurry, too. These are certainly basic principles for a road trip.

Oh, and by the way, I know all about Fate – I’ve been there today. Well, through it, really. And it’s definitely not all it’s cracked up to be.

I felt like going to Paris for lunch (as you do), so headed out on Interstate 30 towards Texarkana. I mention the highway names only for Henry, since he loves looking at maps, and I owe him a map of Texas. I pulled off to visit the “Ammo Depot”, since I’d never been inside a gun shop before. I admitted to the owner that I had no intention of buying anything, since I could hardly take it home. This didn’t bother him in the least, and he was happy just to talk about the guns he had for sale. I relinquished his attention when he needed to serve a young-ish female customer who wanted to buy a 9mm Beretta. Scary.

Not the Eiffel Tower

Jesus

Back on the highway, I cut off north on Route 24 towards Paris. I know you don’t want to hear me going on about “Historic Downtown Paris”; suffice it to say I was not disappointed. Does Paris have a replica of the Eiffel Tower? You need hardly ask. It also has, in a very large local cemetery, a statue of Jesus, complete with cross, with his raiments hiked up just far enough that you can see his cowboy boots. There are some who would disapprove of messing with religious icons, but the truth is that we don’t know what kind of shoes Jesus wore, and, in my experience, cowboy boots are very comfortable. To paraphrase the poet Rod McKuen: “It doesn’t matter who you believe, or how you believe, but that you believe”.

At the entrance to the cemetery was a roadside shack: Mike’s BBQ. I have to tell you that, if you’re ever in Texas and want to try real Texas food, forget all the Tex-Mex and fast food chains, and go for BBQ. I had a sliced beef sandwich, which is thickly sliced, very tender, slowly grilled beef, slathered in home-made BBQ sauce, and served in a hamburger bun. Plain iced water, or ice-tea is the preferred accompaniment. A hamburger will never be a match for a real Texas BBQ beef sandwich.

BBQ Hut

Downtown Hugo

Since I was now only 20 miles south of Oklahoma, I headed north to Hugo. I couldn’t decide if the town center was half-renovated, or half-dilapidated. I crossed the Red River into Oklahoma and the Choctaw Nation. (Historical aside: in America’s bloodstained history (no less bloodstained than our own, I should add), Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole tribes to abandon their homes east of the Mississippi and move to the “Indian Territory”, of which Oklahoma is part; this enforced removal is commonly known as the “Trail of Tears”). Then west on Route 70, through Soper, the home of the world champion bull-rider, who hopefully doesn’t live there any more, since it has nothing to commend it. At Durant, I turned south towards Dallas on Route 75, and cut across back to the hotel on Route 121.

A round trip of 250 miles or so, but then it’s not every day you get to say you had lunch in Paris.

Athens and Palestine, TX

Today I went to Athens and Palestine. No, I didn’t have access to the corporate jet, just my rented Chevy Malibu (don’t even bother asking – it’s a car, and it’s brown (oh, it has quite a kick, too – not that I care about such things …)). We should be grateful we come from a small country, so that naming towns is not really a problem. Because if you have lots of towns, you run out of decent names pretty quickly, and finish up with towns called “Mildred”, “Coffee City” and “Lollipop” – I know this because I’ve passed through all three today. The streets in Lollipop have names like Pineapple, Lime, Mint and Raspberry. And all this is true. I imagine that kids who grow up in Lollipop are scarred for life: it’s ok while you’re young and cocooned, but sooner or later you have to venture into the world outside. “Where you from?”. An innocuous question, but it’s probably been answered several times with “Lollipop”, whilst watching the questioner dissolve into helpless laughter before you figure out it’s better to just say: “Oh, a small town in Texas … errm … you’ve probably never heard of it”. By then the damage is done.

By the way, you probably already know the joke about the wagon train, back in pioneering days, that is surrounded by Indians. They circle the wagons (as you do) and manage to fight off their attackers with only one casualty; as he lies dying, surrounded by the other pioneers, he has one last request: “When you get where you’re going, please name the town after me”. “Sure we will, Mr. Buquerque”.

anyway, as you’ve probably gathered, Athens and Palestine (pronounced Palesteen) are both in north-east Texas – so is Paris, and several other similar, no doubt, but I didn’t want to go overboard. The only disadvantage of going in this direction is that you have to pass Dallas. I don’t know if there’s an architectural equivalent of dyslexia, but, if there is, the Dallas town planners suffer from it. The buildings in, say, New York City, are different, but they fit together. Dallas is an architectural rag-bag.

On the way to Athens, I picked up a hitch-hiker (I know … I shouldn’t do this sort of thing … it’s dangerous, you don’t know who they are … yada yada yada). It was very hot, and he was clean and sober. Turns out he had a mini-stroke last night, and the ambulance took him to Baylor Hospital, in Dallas (this is the best-known local teaching hospital, and has an excellent reputation). After he’d been there 5 hours, and still not been seen by a doctor, he tried to stand up, found out he could, and checked himself out. The ambulance wouldn’t take him home, so he made his own way. He’d worked for a gas company for 13 years, hurt his back, and could no longer work. He has no family that he gets on with, no plans for July 4^th, and is trying to move from a house next to the “town sweat”, where he’s kept awake at night by cop cars chasing down drunks (I hadn’t heard the expression “town sweat” before: it’s a cheap bar in the center of town). As I said, he was clean and sober; not very talkative, but pleasant when he did. I’m glad I picked him up.

You’ve heard me say before how similar American small towns are, so I don’t know really why I choose places to go to that all look the same: Arby’s, Taco Bueno, Pizza Hut, Waffle House, Jack In The Box, Churchs Chicken (no, I didn’t miss the apostrophe – they did), Ducks and Bucks Taxidermy. Well, ok, you don’t see the last one quite so often, but it’s not unusual. But, of course, it’s the journey, and not the destination. The countryside in that area is beautiful. The main roads are similar to the southern part of the Garden State Parkway, near Cape May: wide tree-lined grass verges, green and voluptuous. The lakes (and I passed several) are truly Texas-sized – more like mini-oceans, with the opposite shore almost on the horizon. At this time of year, the roadside is peppered with firework stands (they’re there all year, but only allowed to be open for two weeks before July 4^th and New Year).

I stopped at the East Texas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens. There was only one other car in the parking lot. It was delightful to walk the forest trails – almost like being back at home, except for the heat and the constant backdrop of cicadas. The other car belonged to a young couple that I thought exercised considerable restraint until after I left, though it was obviously difficult. Perhaps they couldn’t afford to rent a room.

I stopped for lunch at a small roadhouse between Athens and Palestine: Judy’s Kountry Kitchen, in the city of Poyner (pop. 237). I know – hardly a city. Sticky plastic tablecloths that certainly discourage elbows on the table. I ordered sweet iced-tea, catfish, fries and pinto beans – in Texas, you get what we call baked beans at BBQ joints; elsewhere, it’s pinto beans. The waitress offered tartare sauce, and I acquiesced. It came in a refillable squeezy bottle that was also sticky – sticky from the many hands that had squeezed it before mine. Luckily, I have a strong constitution.

On the way back, as I approached Dallas, I noticed a night club set back off the highway: “Stallions. Ladies only Wednesday – Sunday”. I wonder what kind of club that is?

Fahrenheit 9/11

It’s been blisteringly hot today. 96’F (36’C). Too hot even to go down to the pool – it would probably be like swimming in gravy anyway. Flags everywhere are flying at half-mast. I’d like to think this has nothing to do with Marlon Brando’s death, but I suspect it has.

I worked this morning, even though it was Saturday, and to reward myself I went to see Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”. The usual multiplex I go to watch movies, on Route 635, wasn’t showing it (I guess it’s controversial, so some will choose to ignore it), but I found it playing at the Grapevine Mills Mall. I understand why it won an award at Cannes – it is candid and revealing, sometimes humorous, sometimes appalling, but always honest. It’s not often that the audience claps to commend a particular scene in a movie, and, in this “movie”, that happened several times.

I came away with a profound sense of sadness, but not for the obvious reasons. I shared the sorrow of the mother who had lost her son – he had joined the army because he thought it was the right thing to do; tears welled up at the sight of young Iraqi children with their limbs or faces torn apart; I sympathized with the soldier (still on active duty, but currently Stateside) who would face jail rather than go back to Iraq to a war he didn’t believe in; and I was angry at the corruption evident within both the government and the directors of the large companies that are growing fat from Iraq’s despair.

Those were not the reasons for my sadness. I feel like I think a drug addict must feel when they finally realize they are addicted – helpless. I didn’t want to come to this party, but it snuck up on me, and, now I’m here, I can’t do anything about it. It’s just too late. History is full of atrocities that “will never happen again”. But they do, though they return cunningly disguised.

We live in a world that has completely lost its sense of direction. I’m looking around for someone to blame, but there’s only me here …