El Paso, TX Part 2

El Paso, TX is home to one of the largest military bases in the world, Ft. Bliss. This multi–national base spans portions of Southern New Mexico, and I’m unsure if the base’s reach includes the historical White Sands missile range.

Usually arriving, but departing, too, I’ve seen several German, and at earlier career points for me, just West German military, training in our desert, and more recently, there were — I think — Arab counterparts. Allies, obviously.

Random observations, there was an annual “First Sergeants” gathering, usually in August. I would encounter hordes of NCOs arriving, usually out of uniform, but there’s an air and martial stance most of those career non–coms carry. It might be possible to peel a ranking non–com out of his — or her — uniform, but gratefully, the military presence is always unmistakable.

Part of El Paso’s charm, forever linked with active military — and some retired. Seems that portions of El Paso’s history are of a military nature.

A landmark, to me, no longer there? Old El Paso Truck Stop. It was a frequent stop, for a spell, for breakfast, the hearty kind of calorie/cholesterol laden meals, with industrial coffee, the stuff of legends. There tended to be a long line of big rig haulers parked there, too. It was where the airport road — that I knew — intersected that massive East—West juggernaut, the I–10.

Interstate 10, runs from East Coast to the Left Coast, right through the heart of Texas. Hooks a left and turns northwards, in both San Antonio and El Paso. It’s that hook, around the Franklin Mountains, always a weird little excursion.

On the east side, parked on the south edge of the freeway, there’s where the truck stop used to sit. Etched in my memory is a smokey essence of faded and scarred Formica topped booths, Naugahyde–covered benches, strong Latin women lifting huge plates of food.

It’s where I got introduced to what became a mainstay in my diet, a shredded beef and egg mixture. Topped with typical Mexican flavors — peppers, tomatoes, and onions.

The old truck stop.

Odd point of interest? I used to have category in the old weblog called El Paso Truck Stop

I graduated High School in southern New Mexico. I finished the college and university degrees in Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona. Perhaps a decade or more of my life I’ve been in and around the American Southwest, so I feel — completely — at ease in the high desert. El Paso, as a new extention, 25 years ago, just seemed like a natrual fit. Cactus, brown hills, hard dirt, sand, a single, lazy river wending its way along, the heavy Spanish influence?

Around El Paso

There’s a “404” image I’ve saved, and preferred, over the years. Anthony, TX/NM — the town sits on the line. The 404 is a state highway, I’d guess. The image, though, in old web terms, 404 was the “File not found” error code. Although, these days, we’re all much more inventive.

The huge military presence isn’t always drunken debauchery, soldiers, and good times. From more than two decades of SWA flights in and out of that airport, one image stands out, a single time when I was in line at security, behind a group of wounded warriors.

For all the zen training and new age, “Love and light?” Doesn’t matter where one is on that scale of peace and path of non–violence, we must respect our military, active, present, past, and passed. But most important? The wounded.

That was one of the times apparent sadness of the scene really bothered me, the raucous and joyful soldiers with missing arms and legs, burned faces, plastic body parts replacing sacrifices made — and those are only the visible scars.

Adds an elegiac tone.

That somber, sober sense pervades some parts of the land.

There’s always Las Cruces, NM, too. Think I’ve worked — maybe — three different locations there, headshops as I like to think of them, not dissimilar, to my residency at Austin’s rock shop.

To the east of El Paso, one of the first items that caught my attention, the roping drone. Fifteen years slide by in a blink, and the symbol is still present. Now, it’s been a few more years, but my wager is the symbols is still outlined against the big sky, east of El Paso, years later. Between Marathon and Alpine, if my notoriously bad memory serves well–enough.

The West Texas landscape always inspires me, and El Paso serves as a focal point for those strange energies.

If I understand — correctly now — the name is El Paseo del Norte, which means it’s the furthest north pass beween the east and the west. From the West Side of El Paso, where I’ve stayed the last decade or so, to the East Side of El Paso, where I’ve worked, the last decasde or so, the Interstate cuts along the Rio Grande and its border with Mexico, the squalid and splendid images of Ciudad Juarez clearly visible. My mobile phone — during these years — tended to be AT&T, and funny, to me, as the East–West juggernaut carves its serpentine course alongside the old mountains, Old Mexico not more than a quarter mile distant?

For years, maybe all of the Double–Aughts? My phone would ping, around the corner, as the mountainous terrain cut–off US cell service, suggesting I was in International Roam mode.

“Some additonal charges may apply,” as the fine print says.

Infuriatingly funny to me, as I never left the States. I was always in the US. Stupid “cell” service.

The Borderlands are a place unlike any other. Of that I am sure. Similar to my old worlds, but just different enough.

Gonna cross the Santa Fe Bridge
Got a pocket full of quarters and a fake ID
Sip a little poison on the Juarez side
There’s bones in the ground singing way off key
Gonna cross the Santa Fe Bridge
Got to walk fast keep between the lines
Nobody flinch when shots ring
Out stealing a young souls vital signs

Undertakers look like crows
Red eyed and dressed in black

Ray Wylie Hubbard, “Down by the River”
off the Ruffian’s Misfortune album.

“Undertakers look like crows
Red eyed and dressed in black”

Down by the River – Ray Wylie Hubbard

The Ruffian’s Misfortune – Ray Wylie Hubbard