Excavated from mounds of reuse that is getting recycled? A simple image that brings up memories of the natatorium, summers spent in the lake water, or even more recent vintage, for me? A decade spent around Barton Springs, in Austin. Fish and swim, best of both worlds?
I’ll return to frivolities, but first, just a notice. I’m not pro-abortion. I’m not anti-abortion. I’m male: I don’t have a say in what a woman does, not on any moral, ethical, or rational sense.
I have no rights, implied, or otherwise, over what happens. The recent ruling is just absurd. Regrettably, that’s what I’ve always thought about the battle. Logic clearly dictates that my gender has no rights to mandate women’s health decisions. Moral, ethical, rational, or even religious.
It’s absurd. I made my decision — it’s not my decision — but I support choice, and that includes, keeping laws, and “scripture” off female body parts.
Seriously, it is absurd.
As an American, as a native Texan, the policy incongruous. The political theatre is beyond despicable.
It’s absurd.
At the beginning of the earnest portion of this career path, I wrote about the changing of the guard, so to speak, as the big planets shifted, and the backwards march through the millennia shifted, introducing the more rational Age of Aquarius, and what I recall pointing out?
The predominant religion, symbol is a fish? The perverted and maligned dogma was going to be replaced, but the “religious right,” which is neither right nor religious, was not going to go away without a fight.
President Biden opined that his religion, and he is a believer, was opposed to abortion. That noted, he also believed that it was fundamental right for a woman to choose. That makes him a great president because he understands, and acts on a transparent belief system.
Separation of church and state.
I owe the masterful author Stephen King an apology. I thought he scripted the last few years, as horrifying as it’s been. Clearly, this is terror on a whole different level.
From King Lear?
’Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind.
The Tragedy of King Lear (IV.i.46)
“Out in New Mexico, people there they treat you kind…”
(White Freightliner Blues)
“New Mexico ain’t bad, Lord, women there treat me kind
White freight liner, won’t you steal away my mind?”
(Steve Earle)
Just a lick. A simple piece of a song, an echo in the canyons of my mind.
“Well, New Mexico ain’t bad, Lord
The people here, they treat you kind
Oh, white freightliner, won’t you steal away my mind”
A quick search of both my material, and what’s freely available online? No real consensus as to the exact lyrics, and some problem with attributions, ranging from Townes van Zandt to Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett. Seems like a common thread therein. Mostly attributed to Townes van Zandt and his erratic genius.
But as a sense of purity, a sense of place?
“Out in New Mexico, people there they treat you kind…”
(White Freightliner Blues)
In Santa Fe, NM, there’s a side street from the square, and two notions. One is the original Cactus Cafe, the “ground zero” for exporting, in style, New Mexico cuisine. Now, more a tourist trap than a real place, I mean, it’s real and all, but the place lacks the appeal of other landmark joints around town. Still, I tend to pass by and nod in appreciation. It was a fashionable, off-the-beaten track joint, back in the early 90’s. 30 years or more?
Down the street from there, there’s a bookstore called “Collected Works.”
202 Galisteo St
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Always good for questions and answers about books. So few stores have true book lovers in them, anymore.
In a mall, just north of the square, walking distance to me, but not everyone, there’s another bookstore that is also a book lover’s delight. Used books, new books, all tumbled together. Luck of the draw, there. Still, obviously, lovers of books, lovers of the written word in all its formats.
Because I was traveling by air, I couldn’t really afford to buy a stack of books. So the favored stop, this trip? Collected Works.
“Out in New Mexico, people there they treat you kind…”
(White Freightliner Blues)
“Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you no stinkin’ badges!”
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Excerpt From
Pink Cake: The Quote Collection
’Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind.
Gloucester in Shakespeare’s
The Tragedy of King Lear (IV.i.46)
#shakespeare
As a clue, a source file.
But the way I remember it? It was a Faulkner quote, attribution, mired, and buried in time.
“The south has produced so many great writers because we lost the war.”
In modern more contentious and litigious times?
“If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate. The ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of little old ladies.”
(Hi Mom!)
I couldn’t find, in a quick search, that as a Faulkner quote, “The south has produced so many great writers because we lost the war.” Instead? Looks like Walker Percy.
Without a quick source, I can’t rely on a vague memory as a verified, fact-checked source. Might be a Walker Percy quote, for all I can quickly dig up, but the sentiment remains, and by his end, awards and all, Faulkner was a dreadful drunk.
He was, depending on source, deeply ashamed at the cultural legacy leftover from the old south, and in the same tone, reverential about the old south, despite that horrible historical blot.
I don’t think he was ever able to reconcile those internal differences. Listening to a client, with her deeply Southern lilt — a gorgeous accent itself? The acknowledgement that Faulkner’s position as royalty might be a little overrated. “A bit wordy.”
I’ll accept that.
I’m always a little leery of revisionist history.
Never having done a thorough assessment of the literature of the north versus that of the south, best I can do is accept that part of my family is southern, with a touch of the true southern gothic layered into the mix, just as an added flavor. Like a touch of pepper in a deep-fried batter mix.
It’s there.
Doesn’t make any of this more — or less — right.
Pink Cake: The Quote Collection
It’s a different format from what I recall. No, the settings are familiar, lawyers, crooks, the corrupt south, and death row. Just the structure, like three different tales, say, a hundred pages each, roughly?
Maybe that’s not it, exactly, a novella, an overly long short story, and the titular tale, which might be a short novel in itself.
I’m not sure.
One of my older rules about travel, especially air travel? Always carry a book to read. In the last decade, or thereabouts, I’ve gotten more accustomed to reading novels on a tablet, but this was a Costco book. I started reading in the San Antonio airport, boarded a flight to Dallas, read the whole way, paused to land in Dallas — Love Field — get an expensive breakfast sandwich, then line up for a flight to Austin. Got some Jo’s Coffee in the Austin airport, got back on the same plane, and continued reading while passing over West Texas, with the oils fields looking like cosmic pin cushions from 30,000 feet up. Southwest pulled a fast one, and routed the plane funny like that, but we arrived on time, and I was part way through that last section of the book.
We’ve got a copy of Ford County at home, and I’m pretty sure I read it. I finished the last section, Sparring Partners as the New Mexico coyotes were echoing in the dry arroyo behind the house in Santa Fe.
Airport reading at its finest, I must say.
I was living in Austin, think trailer park in old Austin, must’ve been before that, probably at that old apartment on East Riverside. It was a long time ago, in a student barrio.
I had a $25 ticket from El Paso to Austin. Cheap, really cheap, back in the day. Bubba was picking me up in Austin. I left sunny El Paso, as the trip, the plane, 737 SWA , the route was El Paso, Lubbock, Dallas, Austin. Sunny Monday and late fall desert balmy in El Paso, me probably in shorts, landing with 6 inches of blowing snow in Lubbock, then rain — same weather pattern — Dallas, and waved off on the final approach into Austin. Lined up over the old Flight Path Coffee House, how’s that for old Austin roots?
Last minute? On final approach? Flight diverted to San Antonio, heavy weather.
Walking down the angled corridor, heading to gates 10 and higher? I think about that first time I landed in San Antonio, then called, “Old San Antonio.” It’s a sharp, distinct recollection. Snow on the ground and blowing in Lubbock, might’ve been Amarillo, probably was Amarillo, not Lubbock, there was no plane change, just stop to unload and load passengers. Rain in Dallas, then flight diverted from Austin.
Stepping into the corridor of the San Antonio airport, just long enough to find a pay phone, and call Bubba on his cell, I had to use a phone card at a pay phone. San Antonio to Austin was “long distance.”
“They told us they lost the plane.”
Not lost, just stuck in San Antonio for a few minutes, and I was back in Austin.
Bubba’s version, he got to the airport around six or seven in the evening, and he had a Prince Albert piercing as well as other parts, so his version of walking through a metal detector was always long-winded, with details about what was said about his various metal bits.
Cell phones, truly cellular, were less common, and more a toy for landed gentry, even a luxury. He told the story of fishing the phone out of his pocket, to answer my call, and I let him know I’d be in a few minutes.
His version was the look of shock when he pulled that phone out, as he didn’t look like an executive. Long, long-ass hair, and talking a mile a minute.
“They ground crew brought in a tub with ice and cold drinks, told us to help ourselves, beer and coke, as they couldn’t find the plane. We were going to be here a while.”
After he rang off with me, I’m pretty sure he didn’t stop talking for the extra 45 minutes or so it took us to all clamber back on the plane, and the short ride to the old Austin airport. There was also the assumption, the long hair and phone in his pocket? There as an assumption he was a drug dealer of some sort. Just a radio DJ.
“No ma’am, I play music on the radio, in the mornings.”
Amarillo. I’m guessing that the stops were Amarillo, then Dallas, then Austin (via that impromptu San Antonio detour).
That recollection, courtesy of the downward slope on the San Antonio concourse, in airport, slipping downhill. Plastic boarding passes, that’s an age itself.
Baseball. Baseball brought up Southwest Memories.
Southwest is no longer the spunky underdog, more a major air carrier, and the rebel attitude is less prevalent.
The flight attendant boarding us in San Antonio? I joked and because Bubba said the ground crew in Austin called the pilot a chicken, and the attendant was angrily defending the flight crew’s choice as safety first. Think that’s about the only time I’ve ever seen an adamantly angry Southwest crew member.
The days of hopping on and hopping off planes are long gone, following that slippery slope down the San Antonio corridor.
Ever see Dallas from a DC-9 at night?
Or the wet fuel cell lettering?
“piscantur dux ad astra emeritus”