It's impossible to get this right. Mission Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuna was moved to San Antonio in 1731 and completed in 1755, and in the 265 years since then, an immense city has grown up around it, evolving along with the world: transportation evolving from horses to cars and jet planes; communication evolving from letter to radio, to television and internet; and political jurisdiction over the mission switching from Spain to Mexico, to an independent Texas, to United States. And yet, in all that time little has changed at Mission Concepcion itself except for the slow eroding of the bright frescos that once covered the exterior until the water-stained limestone bones became exposed. However, inside, if you were to teleport there right now, you would witness an interior pretty much the same as if your were among the 150 Native American groups brought to the mission in the 1750s. You would be viewing the fresco paintings, which still decorate those same walls with only minor restoration. Never have those walls been plastered over. Never have the paintings been recreated from small existing fragments. No, instead, those cheerful yellow walls have remained unchanged for generations of viewers, many which are members of the congregation of this still operating place of wonder and worship. No wonder the place has been saved as part of both San Antonio Missions National Park and as a World Heritage Site.
The dome and chapel still maintain the original painted fresco
Yet, of course, mentally and spiritually, there is no way to get back and view it as those original Native American residents did. Disease is not wiping out my people, my culture, my history--not yet, anyway. I visited on my own terms, practicing my own religion. I was neither rounded up as many were, nor was I refugee of tribal wars, as many more were. I wasn't forced by either the Spanish nor by desperation to live within walls erected to isolate me from all that I once was. Neither can I experience God as either the Spanish or Native Americans did then, no matter how religious I am, and no matter how strongly I have felt the influence of God in my life. Although I know from personal experience that glimpses of the clear light of the divine are perceptible throughout all ages, we are fools if we believe our connection to the eternal is not colored by our particular experiences here on earth. With all the changes in culture and science, there is simply no way to know God the same way He was known 250 years ago. He may be everlasting and unchanged, but we are not.
Yet, I swear at Mission Concepcion there is enough of that past still floating around in the very air that although not literally transported back in time, one is so keenly aware of different lives, different modes of thinking, different modes of experiencing reality, it is frankly disorienting, and in that moment of confusion, perhaps one slips for moments out of that heavy-domed stone ego "I" and experiences something transcendent.
I know I did, and I didn't expect that at all. While I was at Mission Conception I vanished for brief moments and walked among all humanity.
A pilgrimage to Mission Concepcion is both a religious and a human experience. Where the divine and temporal intersect is where spirituality on earth is found. Throughout history humankind has attempted to give thanks and connect with our source. That is our common human heritage, and Mission Concepcion is simply a profound reminder of what it feels like to be part of the fabric of life.
Marci adding to the human story that is Mission Concepcion
References
City of San Antonio. San Antonio Missions:
Mission Concepcion. 2018. 28 January 2020.
<https://www.worldheritagesa.com/Missions/Mission-Concepci-oacuten>.
National Park Service. San Antonio Missions
National Historic Park, Texas: Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima
Concepción de Acuña. 8 March 2016. 25 January 2020.
<https://www.nps.gov/saan/learn/historyculture/conc_history1.htm>.
After our walk down to the Pedernales River, we headed out for San Antonio, or at least tried to. I took a wrong turn, and we headed in a wrong direction, although it was an amazing one--a back road that ran through a squat forest of scrubby oaks all tangled together, clawing their way over and around low hills. It looked pretty wild for central Texas. We eventually got ourselves turned back around and ended up exiting the wilderness at Johnson City, which although not the way we came into Pedernales Falls State Park, it was at least a place I knew. So, we headed towards San Antonio on U.S. 281, the main road through the Texas Hill Country, and also the best way to generally miss the hills altogether. Four lanes wide in many places, and cluttered with civilization's junk, it will get you through the Hill Country; you just won't see much of it. For that, you need to make use of the side roads like the one we just came off. The Hill Country is an elusive thing, for it's not really made up of hills at all. Rather, the topography is created by the eroded edge of the Edwards Plateau, and so even though "many of the hills rise to a height of 400-500 feet (120 -150 m) above the surrounding plains and valleys" (Wikipedia), one has to be in the right places to see them. You're in them, and then you pop up on top of the plateau, and they're gone. U.S 281 in most places rides a flat line across the top of the plateau and leaves you thirsting for the topography you came looking for in your miserable life amid the flatness that is the majority of Texas.
Or, that's how you experience it as a transplant from Utah wilting away in Dallas. Texans, on the other hand, think of the Hill Country as being something akin to the Himalayas or the Mount Kilimanjaro, an experience that will transform anyone passing through them into something a little more enlightened, a little more Texan. Why the Hill Country is the spiritual center of Texas, I'm not sure. Though lacking topography compared to the states to the west, Texas does boast some pretty rugged ranges, such as the Guadalupe Mountains on the border of New Mexico and the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend National Park. Both ranges dwarf any hills one might happen upon in the Hill Country. One does not have to happen upon the Guadalupe Mountains at all. Like any real range, it is not elusive. It is a wall that can be seen miles off.
Yet, even as a westerner, I've got to admit, there is something significant that happens to your heart in the Hill Country when there is an unexpected turn in the road, and you drop for a while down into a narrow valley with a clear, cool river winding between thickly forested hills. It tricks your mind into thinking you've entered the foothills of some bigger range. You imagine climbing up into higher stuff, where at some point, you will have a breath-taking view of snow-capped peaks.
That never happens, of course. Texas is one big tall tale. Still, there is something about descending into San Antonio from the west that reminds me of dropping into Denver from the west via I-70. I will get to that, but, first I must cover lunch. No trip is truly memorable without a significant lunch stop, which can be almost anything, even a Dairy Queen or a roadside picnic table. The time on the road itself creates the memorable lunch stop.
We drove through the most amazing of towns, Blanco, which has the typical Texas downtown built around a town square with a courthouse plopped down in the center of the green. Except, the downtown looks completely different than most small towns in Texas. It looks like you're in Mexico. This is due to the rough white limestone used to construct the buildings rather than the normal brick. The downtown looks very borderlands old west. Why I didn't stop, I don't have a clue, other than the rumblings in my stomach. I'd glanced around, passing through, and when no food establishment caught my eye, drove on. That, however, was a mistake. The town screams, notice me, I'm unique.
Blanco may look like it belongs in Mexico, but as of 2010, of a total population of 1,701, 88% was white and only 23% Hispanic. Yes, I too noticed that adds up to more than 100%, and still somehow another 1% of Blanco is African American and yet another 1% is Native American, and still another 7% is from other races (Wikipedia). Either such is the complex nature of statistics everywhere, or more likely, such is the complex nature of getting at truth in Texas. Reality in Texas is as elusive as vertigo in the Hill Country.
Still, apparently the Blanco mirage has caught more than my attention. The downtown is a registered historic district due to the unique architectural styles and building materials that comprise it. This is how the part of downtown that caught my eye while driving by is described on the National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet by the National Park Service:
The west side of the square is the most complete commercial row and best represents the architectural diversity of the district. Beginning at the northwest corner, the Cage Building or Lindeman's Grocery (1908, Site No. BC 24) is constructed of rough limestone with load-bearing walls. Immediately south, the Old Theater Building (Site No. BC 25) is in contrast with its smooth, limestone-faced facade from the 1930s rising taller than its neighbors. To its south, two buildings continue this smooth facade at a lower scale. A change in facade material occurs in the next building, the Comparet Building (c. 1880, Site No. BC 28), with its ornate pressed metal upper facade and late-19th-century storefront. The 2-story Masonic Building (1907, Site No. BC 29) returns to the rough limestone facade as seen in the Cage Building. The three buildings completing the west side are constructed of brick and date from the 1920s (United States Department of Interior).
Even that dry, technical description of a legal document is picturesque without any mention of light, shadow or ambiance. We should have parked, got out and had a romantic stroll.
However, since I was thinking with my stomach rather than my head, I stopped when it really mattered. Not only that, I took a picture of what really mattered at the moment, the front door of Hacienda El Charro (Hours: Mon.-Sun, 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.) even though the historic, white-stone facades of downtown were definitely more significant than an aluminum and glass door on a building with the type of siding you find on a shed or modular home. The food, however, was tremendous and very reasonable. I should have taken a picture of that instead. It is, after all, the proper thing to do in this day of social media. I simply failed at everything except feeding my gut.
Hacienda El Charro: very good food in Blanco, Texas
Like, I said earlier, the drive into San Antonio on 281 strangely reminds me of the descent into Denver from I-70 going east. Obviously, it is not as dramatic. The Hill Country is only a few hundred feet higher than San Antonio, rather than thousands, like Rockies rising over Denver, but there is the same mixture of woods, ranch land, rolling hills, and occasional rock outcropping with big homes on the hillside as you near the city. Then the freeway widens, car dealerships and low high-rise office building pop up among the ever more patchier woods until you're in the city. Perhaps that is a familiar scene when approaching most American cities. After all, most American landscapes do have hills and wide river valleys where the cities sit. However, I know very few cities intimately, and they don't follow that pattern. Because Salt Lake City sits at the tiny toes of the Wasatch Front, which rises dramatically to the east, it is approached suddenly when going west. Unlike Denver, there is no long, gradual decent. It is a dramatic drop. You're in mountains, high peaks all around you, and then boom!--the valley opens up, and you're there. On the other hand, if you're approaching from the west, you cross the Salt Flats and a portion of the Great Salt Lake, which is as flat and barren as you can get. Or from the South or North, you follow the valleys, so again, there's no long decline. Reno, you enter through canyons from pretty much any direction but the south, which is a long meadow. From the east El Paso is approached along the long river valley of the Rio Grande and the descent is made long before the city slowly builds. Besides there are no trees for high-rise office buildings to poke their heads above. And Dallas, well in Dallas, there is no such thing as descent or ascent.
So, it's likely dropping into San Antonio is not really that similar to descending into Denver. My mind might have made it seem so because that was closest comparison my mind could find out of the cities I know well. For some reason the brain functions on similes and metaphors even when comparisons are somewhat forced. Terrified of the strikingly new, we move forward safely through analogy. Oh, I can be comfortable with this because it is like that which I know well.
Whatever the approach is compared to, at some point San Antonio clearly becomes a big Texas city, complete with the ring-interstates and little clusters of glass-box skyscrapers reflecting back that big Texas sky, cars merging from every-which-way. Yikes, Texas!
However, the minute you exit the freeway, San Antonio becomes unique again. It is to Texas, what San Francisco is to California, Paris is to France, or Venice is to Italy. It is simply stunningly beautiful. It is a city of light, reflections, stone, culture and Romance. I think one can even safely say without exaggeration that once you've visited San Antonio your life is never quite the same.
We started this particular trip by visiting Mission Concepcion, which I hadn't seen before, and as we approached the towering aged glory I was absolutely stunned at how the centuries melted away and there I stood before some stone demonstration of both wealth and power and simultaneous humility to a power and glory even higher in a place and time I did not understand. I might as well been zipped through a wormhole to the middle ages.
It was profoundly moving, and disorienting enough, that as I exited the car, i-pod in hand, I just kind of wandered around in awe, leaving Marci on her own, not knowing how to approach or what to do before this thing before my eyes. Do I kneel down and pray? Do I prostrate myself and kiss the ground? Do I sacrifice myself before the gods? That, of course, is a bit exaggerated. But it honestly did take me off guard. I was simply not prepared for something so gorgeous. I had thought the River Walk is what makes San Antonio so special. I was wrong. It is at the very least the River Walk and the Missions together. But, I have a feeling that as I make more trips back to San Antonio, I will come to realize it is San Antonio that makes San Antonio so special. It is everything. The hills, the missions, the canals, the foods, the musics, the languages, the literature, the arts, the cultures. San Antonio is one of those special places where various forces compete and combine to create the jewels of human civilization. Who would think such a place would rise out of the jackass-filled flat expanse that is Texas? Not me. But there it is, Rome or Paris, ringed with a white ranch fence with a gaudy ranch gate topped with bull horns leading to it. If, like me, you're strapped on cash, skip Europe and head for old San Antone.
References
United States Department of Interior .
"National Register of Historic Places Registration Form." 5 June
1991. Registration Form.
<https://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/NR/pdfs/91000890/91000890.pdf>.
Wikipedia. Blanco, Texas. 5 January 2020. 24
January 2020. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanco%2C_Texas>.
—. Texas Hill Country. 16 January 2020. 24
January 2020. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Hill_Country>.
Marci looks over the lush landscape of the Pedernales River.
Big, sloppy, black-brushstroke clouds crawled along the horizon as we left Austin. Texas had been receiving an extreme amount of rain over the summer, and it continued into the fall. Although it made the landscape spectacularly lush, I feared we'd end up camping some night in the driving rain. So far we lucked out, but a Texas thunderstorm is not something to take lightly. The amount of wind, electricity and water produced can be profound. As we slowly left the city behind and climbed up into the hills southwest of Austin, I wondered what our day and night would bring. The plan was to quickly set up camp at Pedernales Falls State Park, and then head to San Antonio. We wanted to do the River Walk at night, but we didn't want to set up camp in the dark.
I'd been to Pedernales Falls before with the gang, and I thought I'd have a flood of memories, but I didn't. It was like being there for the first time. Much of that, I think, had to do with my point of reference rather than a deteriorating brain. I am now a product of the west, and from a western perspective, the Texas Hill Country is a scene of verdant jungle-clogged knolls and dells. From my new paradigm, it was just so damn green and overgrown--as well as hot and humid--that it felt like I'd been dropped down on some foreign planet.
When I lived in Dallas, the hill country had the opposite effect. It was the only place nearby where one could see a rock outcropping or any real undulation in the ground surface. There was scrub oak, cacti, and very occasionally, one could even spot a sagebrush. From Dallas, the hill country felt western. Somehow it reminded me of growing up in Utah. When I was there with my friends, I was thrilled to be out west.
Returning from the west thirty years later, it was clear that vision had only been a product of yearning. Though incredibly beautiful, Pedernales Falls is clearly a Southern experience and not a Western one. It is on the wrong side of the dry line, or Marfa front, as it is sometimes called, which separates the moist eastern air of the continent from dry western air. Because of that, even without any notable mountains to create rain shadows, the transition from southern to western flora in Texas is pretty dramatic, and going west on I-10, it seems to occur at a little town called Junction, two hours west of Austin.
Simply put, I could no longer relate to Pedernales Falls as a western experience, and so it seemed to be completely new to me. That freshness ripped it from nostalgia and placed it in its own light. That is kind of nice. Now it isn't a place I experienced with the gang, but rather a place I saw Marci wandering around a lush, almost European landscape, wearing her garden hat, timidly facing the daunting, wild, tangled fecundity set before her. The stark west has forever been replaced by the landscapes of John Constable, western Minimalism demolished by European Romanticism.
It was fresh, lush and lovely.
The clear, usually calm Pedernales River can become a torrent of mud with little or no warning.
After setting up camp, we walked down by the Pedernales River, and what a delightful river it is. The trail was closed with a printed warning of possible flash floods. We ignored the sign--sort of. I didn't travel all that way to not see the river. We were, however very cautious, and as we went down by the river, I planned escape routs up the hillside and kept an eye upstream. There was absolutely no sign of possible flooding, the river as clear and tranquil as can be, but the river is known for rapid rises in water levels, so much so, that sirens have been installed along the river to warn waders of impending doom. I'm not much of a thrill seeker, and so I do take such things seriously.
Still, I'm glad we ventured cautiously down to the water. Although only there a few minutes, those minutes were some of the most memorable of the trip. The landscape was absolutely breath taking in a quiet, lush, relaxed sort of way. I am used to grand, sweeping western landscapes, like the Tetons, but I also really love some of the small-scale intimate landscapes east of the Rockies. Pedernales Falls State Park is one such jewel.
A shock of green neon shooting through a window, Austin, Texas
There are few things I like better than being downtown in the big city at night. I love stone surfaces bedazzled with purple light, a shock of green neon shooting through a window, layers of images mirrored and multiplied. The Juarez night was my world when I lived in El Paso. While other college students crowded inside the clubs dancing below mirrored disco balls and laser lights, I'd be on the street, where the inside and outside worlds bleed together--light and sound bouncing all around; a young woman on the corner, black eyes flashing back the lights, her body gently swaying to the rhythm of an unknown music in the arms of her lover, counter to the heavy beat shaking the walls of Club Reno; an entire chicken spinning on a rotisserie over an open flame in the window of a carniceria. Heat. Light. Motion. Layers of humanity. A photographer's heaven, and a pretty potent place for a young writer also.
There are few things Marci likes less than being downtown in the big city at night. She fears the pan-handlers and dope dealers buying and selling the last of all they've got left in this life just to get by. She sees humanity huddled in dark corners, dangers lurking everywhere, a world so unlike the open, red-earth and pinion dominions she experienced growing up in the southwest. She fears an urban downtown at night as much as I fear standing on a sandstone cliff-edge looking nearly 1,000 feet down to a bend in the Colorado River.
Needless to say there was some conflict when we found ourselves walking around Sixth Street in Austin at night. I felt I was home and Marci felt she'd somehow ended up in the very real plot of a true-crime book. I wanted to stay on the street as long as possible, and all she wanted to do was get back to the car, lock the doors, and drive off to suburbia.
I prevailed because I can be a bastard. I don't mean to be. I just am. I need to see. I need to feel. Not participate. I care less about that. I just want to be wide awake in America, the film-strip in my brain running, running, running, as light and music and motorcycle engines rattle and roar. I need to be there taking in light and shadow.
And so we walked Austin at night and we saw. Willie, was there, bigger than life, painted on the side of a building, a rainbow world around him, big as Buddha, a drunk disciple sitting cross-legged leaning back against his thick arms, a couple of motor cycles up front, one black and one neon yellow. Damn. What beauty! And so we walked.
Willie mural by artist and musician Wiley Ross,
East 7th Street and Neches Street
Sixth Street Austin, Texas
Finally, we came to Antone's, a place we could agree upon. We both came specifically looking for the blues. I'd expected to find it blasting from every third bar lining Sixth Street. That is the Austin I remembered from the 80's. I'd only been there once, at Halloween, but I hadn't forgotten it. The street shook as different rhythms oozed out of various one-room clubs and mixed and mingled with the crowd pushing through the street. It was hot; it was electric; I was twenty-one, I think. I had driven down from Dallas with my friend Molly. If I remember right, Phil came along with us. It was wild, it was weird, the costumes were funky, but what I remembered most was the mix of country and blues streaming out of blue-lighted bars. My friends wanted to be pushed down the street with the flow of carnivalesque insanity. I just wanted to find a bar and sit and listen to the blues.
Antone's, 305 E. 5th Street,
former playground f Stevie Ray Vaughan
Sixth Street is no longer that place. Its fame killed it. It has become a place where tourists like Marci and I go to find what they think Austin is. Meanwhile, the real Austin has moved out to places like Rainey Street. I was somewhat prepared for that, and had played with us going to Rainey Street ourselves, but nostalgia won over. I wanted to again experiences the music I remembered pouring out of those compact little clubs like I'd heard that Halloween night long ago.
Part of it might have been that we weren't there on a weekend, but I think mostly Sixth Street has evolved into an upscale neighborhood too expensive for the music that made it famous in the first place. So we left Sixth Street behind, walking.
In the end, the walk was worth it because we found the "Home of the Blues," Antone's. I guess because it was a week day, the club was all but empty. Still, the music was good, very good, and for a bar, the sodas were cheap. We found what we came for--an inexpensive place to experience good music.
I wish I knew the name of the band we heard, but I don't. They were not the scheduled act, and so it was not their name on the marquee that I took a photo of. But there they are below. If you recognize them, let me know. I am a big fan of what to me is The Unnamed Band from Austin's Antone's Home of the Blues.
What I know as The Unnamed Band from Austin's Antone's Home of the Blues
Marci finally enjoying Austin--all because of Antone's
Veterans Memorial Park in Northcrest Lacy Lakeview, Texas.
Ever wonder what happened to Northcrest, Texas? Yeah, me neither. I wouldn't even know there was a Northcrest, Texas had Marci and I not stopped there to have lunch. To be honest, I didn't even know there was a Northcrest, Texas once we did stop there. In fact, I didn't know there was a Northcrest, Texas until just now, looking at Google Earth. In fact, to be honest, there isn't a Northcrest, Texas. Not anymore. There also wasn't one when we showed up for lunch that day. There once had been, but by the time we arrived, it was gone. It vanished in 1998--well, sort of--and we didn't arrive until around 2:00 p.m. on September 12, 2018, our twenty-first wedding anniversary. And so you can see we were far too late to experience Northcrest at all. Well, sort of.
Besides this being the tale of our anniversary lunch date, this is also the tale of three cities: Lacy, Lakeview and Northcrest. It's an incredibly uneventful story, but I like those types of stories best of all. If I could write a great novel--and I can't, for I never finish what I start--rather than having some climatic plot, I'd develop a plot similar to the topography of a good slice of Texas. I'd start with as much excitement as a grain field outside Amarillo can conjure up, and then I'd slowly fizzle out the action unit it ended flat as a mosquito-infested salt marsh along the Gulf Coast. Rather than killing off characters, I'd just have them doze off while reading travel books about places like Lacy, Lakeview and Northquest, and I'd just never wake them up. They'd spend eternity slumbering on couches or love seats, heads turned sideways, snoring and spitting slobber over delicately embroidered pillows. There'd be lots of flies buzzing on screen doors. Perhaps there'd be a plant sitting in a window above an old ceramic sink filled with shucked corn. There'd most definitely be an old toilet with hard water stains in an add-on bathroom that has a green ceramic-tile and pink and purple daisy-print wallpaper on the walls. Yet, the greatest action in my great American novel would be Mother turning off the television each night for family prayer and Dad saying "Shit" as he steps in dog crap on the front lawn on his way in from working at the gas station just down the block. I like my fiction real. There should be thousands of uneventful hours to read about and only a few pages dedicated to exciting moments such as taking little Andrew to the emergency room after he stepped on a nail and drove it deep into the heal of his right foot. After reading my book, people would be more than ready to face their own tedious lives with enthusiasm. Northcrest would be the ideal setting for such a revolutionary novel. Perhaps the opening scene would not be all that different than our own drive into town:
Under a big blue Texas sky with big blotchy, slightly scattered rain clouds, the Browns exited I-35 to enter what had once been Northcrest, Texas via E. Crest Drive, a four-lane strip of asphalt that quickly narrowed to two. Our two protagonists, if they could be called that, were relatively hungry. Steve, the husband, in fact felt famished, but then he usually did after hours on Texas highways, boredom gnawing the inside of his gut like a wild dog cleaning out a cow carcass and climbing out blood-faced to smile at the hot, Texas sun and that one passing farm truck. Marci, the wife, too was hungry, but determined not to admit it. Stopping for food would lengthen the hours between WiFi hot spots. She could wait, she thought, until the motel in Austin. Outside, on the left, placed at a diagonal, facing both the frontage road and E. Crest Drive, was a gas station with four regular pumps under a blue-gray metal canopy and a separate pump for diesel off to the side. Behind that was a convenience store with dark tinted glass mirroring the acres of black asphalt out front. There were a few scattered cars headed to or leaving the pumps and a long-nosed semi-truck with a sleeper and a flat-bed trailer parked off to the right, between the gas station and a corrugated metal Family Dollar next door. Beyond that was Bush's Chicken, and that was the end of the business district. The Browns were fine with that. School teachers, they were used to being poor. They needed no fine eating establishment. Vacation, for them, even one celebrating twenty-one years of marriage, was having a good picnic in a park. In fact, they were looking for a picnic table at that exact moment. Marci had seen a sign. It had said, Veterans Memorial Park. Together, the Browns had deduced there just might be some picnic tables there. And so the courageous couple ventured forth down this long, straight lane edged with a sidewalk on the right and an irrigation ditch on the left with long, bushy, uncut grass along the edges. The houses all faced the cross streets, only their boring, windowless brick ends facing E. Crest Drive, the primary route of our pilgrims' progress. And so it continued, block after block, until our courageous couple happened upon a time-tormented white stucco garage of sorts with little bits of what once had been red trim clinging to rotted wood for dear life. The company name was faded beyond recognition, but Commercial Lighting... Janitorial Supplies could clearly be made out. Oddly enough, there appeared to be a customer, for there was a car out front. Behind the debilitated ambitious enterprise stood a tall metal tower and Marci announced, "According to my GPS, the park should be somewhere around here."
At this point we'll break with our narrative. Once again I have failed to follow through with a complete story. Perhaps a travel book is better suited to the situation at hand anyway.
Behind Something, Something Commercial Lighting... Janitorial Supplies is the ugliest park dedicated to our men in uniform that I have ever seen. Rather than hiring an architect, the city officials must have done the sensible thing and had the town's kindergarten students draw up site plans and awarded the best one with a contract, I assume paid in full prior to ground-breaking with such and such amount of lollipops as recorded in the town's minutes.
And you know, I loved it. I truly did. Rather than trying to unify the grounds with the elements and principles of design, they just made this sort of loop with concrete--somewhat square, somewhat diamond-shaped, a little bit oval, and then squiggled here and there, and then they just plopped things down almost randomly, but not quite. On the north side of the park are four covered picnic tables, all rigidly perpendicular to the back chain link fence, the only geometry in the park. Everything else is just tossed upon the green. Sort of in the center, but not really, is a formal garden with two granite stones set upright like the twin-towers which they memorialize. Instead of doing something insanely conventional like placing them in the center of an octagonal plaza with walkways converging on it from all sides of the park, you know, like you'd see in Rome or Washington D.C., they placed the main feature in the park in a little alcove in a waist-high wall of hedges along a curvy path that is not reached from the side of the park facing town, but rather from the side facing away from town. Residents have to walk around the park, and by Something, Something Commercial Lighting... Janitorial Supplies and then along a highway without sidewalks to reach the main gate. Cows, on the other hand, if they break through the fence of the field across the highway, can walk right in. It's quite interesting. Rather than consume volumes of paper trying to describe it, I've supplied a visual below. The only things the picture doesn't quite capture are the bright blue benches randomly spaced along the walkways. You'll have to fill that detail in yourself.
Veterans Memorial Park viewed via Google Earth.
Note, the main entrance faces a highway and fields (top)
while the secondary entrance (bottom) faces town.
However, here's the great thing about art: it's all relative. Although grandma's painting of Texas bluebonnets, a barn, a dirt road, and what is supposed to be a live-oak tree is complete garbage alongside an Edward Hopper, compared to a Thomas Kinkade, her painting is actually quite nice. And, to be honest, even a Kinkade jigsaw puzzle is somewhat enjoyable to look at while putting it together Christmas day--although admittedly much funner to destroy after you're finished. So too with gardens. Although the now defunct town of Northcrest (or it's replacement town, Lacy Lakeview) did certainly manage to build one of the ugliest monuments possible in remembrance of their veterans' service, it is still a beautiful place in an odd non-artful sort of way, simply because it is, after all, a park, and all parks add some grace. One cannot go wrong by opening up some green space and providing a few picnic tables. Although a good architect could render earth-shaking spirituality from such a plot, even having your kindergarten class (or Thomas Kinkade) design your park cannot do too much harm because in the end, all parks are beautiful.
. . . . .
Some of the most joyous moments of writing this book occur not while writing about what I actually experienced, but rather, in the tidbits of information I've gleaned in my limited, lazy-man's Wikipedia research along the way. For instance, if I'd never started writing this book, I'd never know there was a Twitty, Texas, even though such a fact seems obvious with all the twits there are in Texas. Likewise, I wouldn't know about the long, uneventful legacy of the three communities, Lacy, Lakeview and Northcrest, which I'll get to in a minute.
First, however, here's a commitment to myself in writing: if I ever do get this book published, and if I ever sell more than ten copies, I will donate 10% of my royalties to Wikipedia. Yes, it may not be real research, and yes all historians would scoff at even attaching that word research to whatever it is one does while googling articles on Wikipedia, but that nonprofit organization opens up worlds of information to lazy armchair intellectuals like myself. And although it may not always be 100% accurate, it's a lot more accurate than if we just sat in our armchairs and made up the facts ourselves. So, here's a plug for the democratization of knowledge made possible by Wikipedia--the primary source of information in this book other than my own experience. And even when their editors don't catch all the mistakes, Wikipedia articles are still far more factual than anything on Fox News. Now to the story of Northcrest Lacy Lakeview, Texas, which if my source is correct, is all true:
If you're picturing a lake viewed through fine, lacy pine bows, or dangling Spanish moss as the source for the town's name, get that image out of you're head, because you're wrong. The name comes from two separate towns that later merged. Lacy, which came first, is named for "William David Lacy, who sold lots in the 1800s" (Wikipedia). According to Wikipedia, Lakeview "named for its location near spring-fed lakes," although I personally witnessed no sign of water, not even in the park drinking fountain. The article goes on to say that both towns were "stations along the Texas Electric Railway, also known as the Interurban which ran between Dallas and Waco" (Wikipedia).
The article goes on to say that "neither town grew quickly" and that "by the 1940s the combined population of the two communities was barely 120 with four businesses" (Wikipedia).
So, in 1953, in desperation (I added that loaded word to liven up this exposition), the two communities combined. Although this did ignite growth, the town reaching 2,000 inhabitants by the 1960's, all the growth was residential, as the town became a bedroom community of Waco.
In further desperation (again, my words), the community of Northcrest (where our fabulous park sits) merged with Lacy Lakeview, which allowed the former three communities "to qualify under Texas law for home rule status" (Wikipedia).
Now, if like me, you don't have a clue what "home rule status" is, thanks to Wikipedia, I can tell you. "Home rule" basically means that those ruling over you now consider you significant enough to now rule yourselves. I'm assuming, in this case, it now meant the new larger Lacy Lakeview was now significant enough to have either a town council or a mayor or both. And what a blessing! Without them, who would there have been to approve having the town's kindergarten class design the Veterans Memorial Park?
An uneventful story, but if it never happened, Marci and I would never had a memorable 21st anniversary lunch in a town that no longer exists. The world may not know where Northcrest, Texas once was, but I, on the other hand will never forget, even though I just learned about the town writing this. May the residents of this bedroom community continue their sleepy lives blissfully forever. And if the boredom of the Texas landscape ever eats out your guts on your journey between Dallas and Austin, well drop by for an enjoyable picnic in the nation's ugliest Veterans Memorial Park. And if you didn't pack a lunch, you can always stop by Bush's Chicken and get a bucket to go. I'm sure they could use your business.
Such a lovely, homely park. Do stop by.
References
Wikipedia. Lacy Lakeview, Texas. 9 September
2019. 30 December 2019.
When my youngest son Everest was in kindergarten he came home one day bursting with joy. His friend Brandon had invited him over to play. The problem was we didn't know where Brandon lived. We lived in a rural area of the Navajo Nation and almost all of the students were bused into school, often down long, muddy lanes before the bus even reached pavement. Early on in the school improvement process, when we had officials from the department of education visit, we put them on the buses so they could experience a tiny slice of the daily reality of our students. There was simply no way to understand our school without first understanding those muddy, rutted roads. Everest's friend could have lived down any of hundreds of such roads in a twenty-mile radius. There was simply no way for us to get him to Brandon without knowing where to go. He was heartbroken when I explained the situation to to him.
The next day, walking to school with him, I said, "Now get his phone number so that we can call his parents and find out where he lives." He optimistically departed from me once we entered the school, running down the hall joyously towards class.
After school, he announced that Brandon had invited him over again. "Okay, what's his number?" A look of horror passed over his face. It turned out that Brandon didn't know his own phone number. It had not sunk in deep enough to Everest that this was a crucial detail. I guess he thought I'd say something like, "Oh Brandon doesn't know his phone number; well, let's do this instead." This went on for days. It tore me apart inside. We finally sent Everest to school with a paper with our phone number. "Now give this to him. Tell him not to lose it. Have him call us."
One Saturday we came home late from Gallup. There was a message on the answering machine. "Everest, can you play?" That was it. There was no return number, and we didn't have caller ID. And so the painful plot continued. I don't remember how we got it resolved. However I do remember the day I finally got my youngest son over to his friend's house to play as one of the most joyous moments I have ever experienced. I knew just how important a friend could be, not only as a person, but as a symbol, a rite-of-passage, a sense of well-being. Our society openly shows it is thus so for girls, through movies and television, but not for boys. Girls go through emotional ups and downs as they navigate the world of friends and growing up, so the media portrays. Boys just magically walk around in gangs of five or six tossing a football back and forth between them as they walk through quiet, little towns. They talk of sports and girls, but there is no real attachment to their friends, no highs, and no heartache. Just tossing footballs and pranks.
However, I knew Everest's excitement personally. Even though I was much older, I felt it the first day Jim decided to hang out with me. I don't remember at all what we did. I just remember the excitement I felt when I saw his brown hatchback drive up. He was more than a friend. He was a symbol. In my mind, the hell I was going through in high school was over. He got out of his car, and walked across the street wearing dark sun glasses and a Police Synchronicity concert t-shirt with the arms ripped off. He was clearly cool. And in a way, I was right, the inferno was over. I had survived it. It's not that anything would change at school, but it no longer mattered. Jim was in college. He was well liked. He didn't gain popularity by putting others down. He did it simply by being himself. He seemed completely uninterested in being popular. I think the reason becoming his friend was so important to me is that I knew he had nothing to gain from it. That was important to me. My few friends were amazing, but they were either socially ignored at school, or like me, outright tormented. We were all good friends, but we were good friends out of necessity. Jim was a symbol that I could just up and walk off the battlefield of high school mentally even as the war continued to wage on all around me.
And I did. The moment I saw Jim walking across that road, sun glasses on, keys dangling in his fingers, my high school days were over. I was leaving that stupid dumb ass world behind and becoming what I always wanted to be in the first place, an adult. I wouldn't graduate for a few more months but the hell was over, because I refused to any longer participate in a system that put me down. The jabs and scoffs no longer touched me; they rolled off like water from a raincoat.
Why I needed Jim as a friend to make that leap, I don't know, but I did. I needed someone to tell me through their actions that I was worth knowing. My other friends couldn't do that. We were good people, but I knew they needed me as much as I needed them. Our friendships were forged through survival, not choice. At least that was my perception then. Once I was mentally free from the stupidity of high school, I realized they were just as cool as Jim. But it took that rite-of-passage in order for me to rip off the blinders that had been forced upon me.
For being so important to me, I discarded Jim's friendship rather easily. I guess I wasn't yet the adult I thought I'd become. Jim and Andrea moved in with each other. They had a cute, little loft apartment. For whatever reason, things did not go well. When it became clear there was conflict in their relationship, I convinced myself that since I was friends with both of them, there was no reason to choose sides. I could hang out with Jim, and I could hang out with Andrea. There was no reason for us all to be together. Of course, I was lying to myself. What I was really trying to do was move in on my friend's girlfriend. Andrea was a good friend too, and even though my tactics were slimy, we got to know each other better in the process.
But I got it wrong. Andrea never did love me, but even if she had, it wouldn't have changed things. The world has it wrong also. I know that when people say, "All is fair in love and war" they are being ironic. They aren't saying that things are really fair in love and war. They are saying that rules are thrown out when it comes to matters of the heart--love and hate--those two polar passions. But, as they say it, they are also implying that it is justified. They're excusing it, saying "everyone is human" or "it's only natural."
The world has it wrong. We are not born to become human. We become human to be born again as something divine. Mortality, if experienced correctly, is schooling for perfection. The people we all admire in this life--Gandhi, Mother Theresa, the Buddha, the Dali Lama--that's what they get that the rest of us don't. They understand that the natural man isn't natural at all. It's an illusion. The ways of the world don't lead to happiness. Overcoming the ways of the world does. Disciplining the mind, the heart and the soul leads to freedom. Giving into natural lusts--whether they be food, flesh, or drink--leads to addiction, to captivity. Freedom is a reward of discipline. Bondage is a result of succumbing to desire. What people like Gandhi get that the rest of us don't is that the illusion is both real and unreal, simultaneously. What I desire now is indeed real, and the fact that I am experiencing that emotion doesn't make me evil. However, there is a super-reality beyond it that is more real, that provides a greater reward. If one is tired of being overweight, that brownie-fudge, chocolate-smothered sundae is most definitely still real, but the enjoyment of being free from the burden of the extra weight becomes more real. Putting others before your own desires becomes the ultimate reward for those losing the weight of the world. The reward is not necessarily anything tangible that arises out of not giving into desire, although that does often happen. Rather, it is freedom from the constant need of the ego screaming "feed me" that is the ultimate reward. That is why Christ said he was the bread of life. Spiritual transformation diminishes the constant craving of the natural man, which left unchecked, devours not only everything around it, but ultimately the self. There is no way to constantly give into desires and remain happy.
Sin is real. So is repentance. I might as well do that here.
Jim, I'm sorry. I definitely exploited the tensions between you and Andrea for personal gain. That is not what good friends do. For a while, I definitely was not your friend. Furthermore, not only was I exploiting you, I was also exploiting Andrea. I was not her friend either, although I did get to know her better. One should not manipulate people to make them part of one's life. Those who truly understand happiness realize that not all is fair in love and war. The minute love is not fair, it is no longer love. Desire, sure. But desire is not always love. And war. Well, war is war. Those who truly know love, don't believe in war--not that war is not real; they just know that it's the scum on the lens of the telescope that blots out the ultimate reality from being perceived. That's why Gandhi and his troops knelt down before their enemies. They refused to engage in anything less than who they were born to be--not only for themselves, but for their enemies too because divine potential is no respecter of persons. They didn't want their enemies defiling themselves either.
When I exploited the tensions between you and Andrea, I was definitely engaging far below my divine potential. I betrayed both of you, and to both of you, I am truly sorry. That you still consider me your friend just exemplifies the incredible person you are.
My friend Marsh has attributed his life's happiness to Braum's Ice Cream. That is because his wife Andrea and their two kids are all products of Braum's Ice Cream. Not literally, of course. I once found a piece of glass in a carton of Braum's Ice Cream. Scary. Not the norm. Finding a person in a carton of Braum's Ice Cream--especially a whole, unharmed person--would be something completely different. That would involve physics as incomprehensible to logic as the trickle-down-theory is to economics. How do you get a person to occupy a space obviously too small for them and retain molecular connectivity? How does a cat tossing his hard-earned mouse up in the air to an eagle passing-by better his lot in life, other than, perhaps, keeping the damn bird from devouring him too? These questions astound me.
Not really. Well, maybe the one about the cat and the eagle does. But after the first sentence, that paragraph up there is pretty much all gobbledygook--the type of rambling garbage my friends and I would spend hours videotaping each other saying as we laughed hysterically late into the night. All this, mind you, occurred without pot or booze. "Braum's Ice Cream is the best" was the refrain we threw in to hold those low-quality Monty-Pythonesque rip-offs together.
Yet, in a sense, Marsh is right, the story of us as a group began at Braum's Ice Cream. He, sentimentalist that he is, took it a step further, and formed a family out of the deal, but without a doubt, there would be no us as a gang without Braum's.
What I remember most about working at Braum's is dried ice cream stuck to the arms. What I remember second most is the sound of Jim belching out Bruce Springsteen songs in the cooler. It would be a low, somewhat off key dinner music--where you think you recognize the tune but just can't quite hear it well enough over the clanking of dishes and conversation to name it--and then someone would open the glass door to grab a carton of milk, and out it would come, Jim singing Springsteen in all his working class passionate glory--
The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely (Springsteen)
I don't remember Jim singing "Thunder Road" or any other particular song. I just remember Jim behind the glass doors of the cooler belching Springsteen at the top of his lungs. And for a kid whose days in school were pure hell, there was magic in the night, flipping burgers at an ice cream shop on Main Street of a bedroom community of that giant spiraling wheel of light and glory erupting out of the cicada-heavy, heat-rattled plains of central Texas called Dallas.
There was Jim. There was Andrea. There was Phil. Phil once asked Andrea who she'd invite over for Thanksgiving dinner if she could invite over anyone in the world. She looked up, light brown eyes beaming under dark brown bangs, under that regulation chocolate-brown Braum's cap, dimples denting both sides of her mouth: "Sid Vicious." Phil thought that was hilarious. I don't think I knew who Sid Vicious was at the time. I'd just learned who Springsteen was. I'd just learned who U2 were. Peter Gabriel was just a name. I had no clue who the Sex Pistols were. This was all new to me. But, when Phil told his story, I got it immediately. Even with her punked-out hair, which could be any color or style on any given day, Andrea had a small town, quiet sweetness about her. Sid Vicious--it was clear just by his name--didn't possess those same qualities. So, in my mind, I saw this demure proper girl gleefully answering the question affirmatively with "Sid Vicious."
There were more than just my good friends at Braum's. Hazel, the assistant manager, was an older woman, probably in her mid-sixties. Most of the employees didn't like her. She got after them when they didn't do their jobs. She could sometimes be grumpy, but I got that. Working fast food is hard work. Nobody in their sixties should have to do such a job. It made sense to me that by the time 11:00 p.m. rolled around, she'd start barking at people to hurry up. I was beginning to really internalize that there are two Americas. My parents worked very hard for the fortune they later lost, but that hard work paid very well in life-dividends--a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood, a nice car, and most importantly, the prestige that automatically comes with "arriving". But Hazel worked just as hard, perhaps harder, and all that she had to show for it at the end of the day were tired feet and a worn out ego. It just didn't seem fair.
Then there was Sheri, the manager. She must have been more patient, for everyone liked her. She was younger, perhaps in her late twenties, early thirties. She had a memorable smile because she had one blackened tooth. She probably hated it, but it gave her a distinctive look. I think she probably had a not-so-secret-crush on Jim, but was older than him. Whether she was married or dating, who knows? Work creates these little worlds where you spend hours and hours with people you hardly know anything about, and yet, in some ways, you know them very well because the many hours of proximity. You know their hand movements, their laughter, the tone of their voice, their smiles. You know what music they like, what food they eat, if they pick their teeth, or burp, or fart, and yet, often you don't know anything about where they go after the last light is shut off, the glass door is locked, and everyone either walks to their cars or out into the night.
Phil didn't work at the Main Street Braum's long, which is good, because if he had, Marsh probably would not have become part of the gang. It can't be ruled out completely. He lived just two houses away from Phil, but typical of the suburbs, Phil didn't know Marsh even though they were neighbors. Marsh also went to the same high school as Andrea, but typical of high schools with two or three thousands students, you don't know everyone at school. It was a different world than the small town in which I grew up. Phil transferred to a store closer to where he lived, and Marsh worked there too, and that's how we all met.
I wish I had something grand to say about Braum's, but like so many significant things in life, I don't, other than to say that outside my home, it is the first place I ever really felt accepted. Jim was clearly cool. That was very important to me then. All my previous friends had been social outcasts like myself. We turned to each other out of desperation. I'm not sure what Jim saw in us. He was in college. We were in high school. He had lots of friends and a steady girlfriend, and we did not. So, I'm not sure what was in it for him, but I'm grateful for his friendship. He made me realize a world did exist outside the ridicule I received at school.
Mostly, though, I remember Braum's the way you remember home or a favorite vacation spot. I remember the sensory details. The stainless steel counter gleaming under the fluorescent lights, six or eight hamburger patties on the grill sputtering little droplets of grease, the hissing sound of a wire basket of frozen fries dropping in the deep fryer, and the cloud of steam that would rise afterward. There were also the not-so-pleasant details: taking the grease trap out when it was overflowing, sliding around on a greasy floor, dumping a third of the grease down one paint leg; fronting the freezer in the summer, when you have no coat and are used to ninety degree temperatures outside; scrubbing grease between floor tiles. Mainly, however, I just remember feeling at home, especially cleaning after hours: the music , the friendly ribbing, the determination to be done by 11:00 and not finishing until after midnight. Everyone worn-out, saying goodbye as the last light was shut off and the doors were locked. I remember walking home dead tired, somehow strangely satisfied. I'm glad I still don't do that type of work, but I'm glad I experienced it.
Although I prefer Blue Bell, as an experience, Marsh has it right: Braum's Ice Cream is the best. And their commercials from the 80's, where Ernest got his start, weren't bad either.
References
Springsteen, Bruce. "Thunder Road." Born
to Run. 1975.
