Road Trip #24 Back in Texas--Reflections on the Trip

Wayne and I followed I-10 until it hit the ocean and turned right.

     Sunday morning, we had breakfast with Buck and Lynn in Muleshoe and left for Lubbock at eight a.m.  Others might not enjoy the drive from Muleshoe to Lubbock, but Wayne and I found it exhilarating.   The High Plains infects its people with a hunger for the sky and a thirst for open space.  We didn’t talk much, just soaked up the scenery—the ever-present, overpowering sky, a few sand hills, a grain elevator every so often, endless plowed fields, and two or three cattle feeding operations.  No matter where we’d been or what we’d seen, looking at this country filled us with pride and contentment.  We were back in the Panhandle.  “Home” looks different to everyone, but this is what it looks like to us.  We were glad to see it.

     We made the eighty miles to the Pecanderosa Forge before ten o’clock because R.G. Box planned for us to guest star at his Sunday Morning Coffee Clatch.  We met several old friends, drank coffee, told stories, joked, and generally did what older folks do when they socialize.  Fifty years ago, we would have been bored.  At this time of our lives, it was an enjoyable way to spend the morning.

I don't know the young fellow up close on the left, but that's John Bacon with the white hair and moustache and R.G. Box on the stool beyond.  James Eby has his back to us and that may be Garland Weeks pointing his finger in front of Bacon.

     R. G.  rounded up the usual suspects—James Eby, John Bacon, Garland Weeks and several others.  Roy Turner brought his lovely wife, Nelda, who may have been the first female, other than a family member or potential customer, to visit R.G.’s Smithy.  Nelda added some much-needed class to the affair.  James Pope, one of the regulars, didn’t show.  He was confused and forgot all about the coffee and went to a local café instead.  Forgetfulness happens when you get our age. Wayne and I have not aged all that much—we just have prematurely gray hair.

Ratisseau, looking into the distance and telling a spell-binding story to Roy and Nelda.  Note the Iron Roses and Apples on the table in the foreground.  R. G. did these during his "Fruit and Floral" period.  He did the Roses pretty well, and the Granny Smith Apples are OK, but he never learned to do a Red Delicious, Fuji or Winesap.

     After the coffee and visit, John Bacon invited us over to see his new home.  Actually, I pushed him for the invitation, because the house is unique and I take every opportunity to see it when I’m in Lubbock.  I notice new details with every visit and am fascinated by the whole thing.  John and Patricia designed the home and had it built, with John supervising every phase of construction every day. The results are pretty much what anyone with the advantage of world travel, good taste, and unlimited creativity would build.  John and James Eby, a boyhood friend who happens to be a landscape architect, are currently finishing the back yard.  It will be another masterpiece.

     About fourteen miles past Lamesa on Highway 87, near the turnoff to Sparenburg and Patricia, the odometer on Wayne’s pickup said we'd been 5,000 miles since we left my driveway in Kerrville two weeks ago.  I never pass that intersection without thinking of my college friends, Bobby Brown and Donell Echols.  They both live somewhere down that road and have all their lives.  I never see them, but I think about them, and wish we could have a nice long visit and remember our college days. 

     Nice long visits with seldom-seen old friends are great fun most of the time.  Sometimes, however, when I get a long visit with an old friend, it gets to be too long.  I want him to be the person he was forty years ago, and he wants the same from me.  We both end up wanting the visit to end, so we can put each other back into neat little boxes we’ve created in our minds.  Like an old book in the shelves of the library, we can look at it and remember it fondly, without having to go to the trouble of reading and understanding all the latest footnotes and revisions.

     Wayne and I passed through Big Spring, (my dad irritated and embarrassed me by calling it “Big Sprangs” all his life), Water Valley, (the only green spot in the county is the high school football field), and San Angelo.  We were nearing the end of our trip.  We were eager to get home, but saddened because such a great experience was coming to an end.

     I need to get something off my chest.  I can say smart alec things like “Wayne and I have prematurely gray hair,” all I want, but it doesn’t change the facts.  We are three quarters of a century old.  In human years, any way you cut it, that’s old.  We are healthy, active, mobile, and lucky as all get out to be that way.  Some of our friends are still in decent shape, some are not in such good shape, and some are dead.  I can’t help but notice this.

     When I get up in the morning, I take my blood sugar, swallow nine dollars worth of pills, brush my teeth, look at the old man in the mirror and wonder, Is that all there is?  Am I through? Will I just go to the doctor every three months, let him adjust my meds, and hunt around for something meaningful to do with the rest of the day, the week, the year... my life?

     I am not foolish enough to think that I have as much time left as I’ve already used, but I intend to enjoy what time is left.  As much as I’d like to, I don’t expect to splash around in a hot tub with a bevy of naked cheerleaders, but I can have fun in other ways.  That’s the important thing—sight adjustment—adjusting my sights to fit my capabilities.  If I can’t play a furious game of handball, I can ride my bike to the grocery store.  If I can’t write the great American novel, I can peck around on my blog.  If I can’t impress heads-of-state and super-models with my quick wit and incisive remarks, I can write a truculent letter to the editor of a small-town newspaper.

From the right, James Pope, Wayne Ratisseau and myself, enjoying a cold beer and fantastic seafood at the King's Inn, on the shores of Baffin Bay, near Kingsville.

     I can take a road trip with an old friend, and I have lots of old friends.  James Pope joined Ratisseau and me for a mini-trip around Texas last spring.  We explored historic sites, ate Polish sausage—did you know the first Polish settlement in the United States was in Texas in 1845?—and spent a half-day at the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Christi.  We stood in the courtyard where James Fannin, the most inept commander in the Texas Army, was executed. We ate Coconut Meringue Pie at the local café in downtown Utopia, where Robert Duvall hung out as they filmed Seven Days in Utopia.  We sat in the basement of Arkly Blue’s Silver Dollar Club in Bandera, drank beer and listened to great country music as "Open Mike Saturday" went down.

     All that does not hold a candle to splashing around in a hot tub with cheerleaders, but it will have to do.  As my baseball coach said, sixty odd years ago,“Don't ever give up--as long as you’re swinging, you’re dangerous.”

You can tell right away that this ain't Wichita Falls.