ROSWELL TO CORPUS CHRISTI

Bidding farewell to freaky New Mexico, I continued south-southeast to do battle with Texas. This picture is my impression of Texas along my route…miles…and miles…and miles of this and nothing else. For company, I had the insistent yet annoying female voice of my GPS. I'd named her Betty Lou to try and humanize "her" a bit. On occasion, Betty Lou would pipe up with enormously helpful guidance like; "In two hundred and thirty seven miles, turn right". "Um, uh...OK Betty. Whatever you say" I'd think. Finally I unplugged her speaker. I went almost five hours without seeing any substantial signs of life…no houses,  cars, people, nada. The radio offered nothing but static on both bands. It was pretty creepy, so I plugged Betty Lou back in and just accepted her yammering for company.

The few towns I did pass through had...well...personalities removed from my normal day-to-day life. I was left with mental snapshots from each little piece of civilization; bizarre impressions of life in  40-mile towns. "Car-stacking" seemed to be in vogue in Sanderson; old rusty heaps just piled on top of each other. It wasn't like they were in junkyards, they were just...there. The cars were very neatly stacked, as if someone (or something) had taken great pains to keep the creations plumb and square. I admired the careful and apparently practiced eye of the stack builders. Nice job, who-or whatever you are.

In Pecos, the Courthouse is named in honor of Lucius T. Bunton III. Now that is great! With a name like that, I can understand the significance of carrying it out three generations. If I ever get a pot-bellied pig (I've always wanted one), there's not going to be any trouble picking out a name. Now I'm not sure, but I think it might be a legal requirement in Del Rio to drive with one arm out the window holding a cigarette. Even the local sheriff had one going. For that matter, I think that throwing cigarette butts out the window is a southern Texas pastime. Minutiae...the stuff of my existance.

As a side note, I discovered that Texas highway etiquette allows for driving on the shoulder to let people pass. Learning this by example early on, I got into this routine when the occasional vehicle--usually a truck--zipped up behind me and wanted to get by. I'd accommodate them and drift onto the shoulder. I was usually given the "blink-blink" of the emergency flashers; a Texas mobile "thanks". On one of my shoulder forays, I had the misfortune of coming across an abandoned crankshaft lying there on the side of the road. My "passer" was adjacent to me, so I had nowhere to go.

There was an incident that occurred in my childhood that was unbelievably relevant at that instant: A woman had inadvertently driven over a crankshaft discarded a couple of blocks away from my home. The police and firefighters found her car stopped, the crankshaft pinning her lifeless body to the drivers seat. It had come up through the floorboards and impaled her on that quiet residential street. Amidst the circle of onlookers that summer day was an open-mouthed rug rat--yours truly--horrified by the event and the graphic nature of the scene.

That memory clicked frame-by-frame in my mind as the forged steel engine component grew ever closer. I bounced between the shoulder and the adjacent red Texas dirt; trying to get a "bead"--trying to get that metal sucker lined up between the front wheels. I got everything straightened out at the last second and straddled the offending engine part. Waiting for the bang and crash of metal-to-metal contact, I involuntarily sucked my sphincter into my throat and thought about how I desperately didn't want to have a crankshaft run through me out there. Somehow I got it right and missed it. Vowing to name my firstborn after the designer of the Jeep--and the inherent ground clearance provided--I promised myself I'd look a little closer at the road ahead before I pulled off the next time.  I checked real quick for stains on the seat (there weren't any), and thought about how good it was to not have crankshafts pulverize me in the Texas outback. Sometimes little events can prove to be positive events; even if they scare the Armadillos out of you at the time.

I ended up on some road along the Rio Grande. Betty Lou only had information on the United States side of things, so the world to my right was a mystery. It was a digital question mark as to what was out there. Driving along the Texas-Mexico border provided yet another opportunity to realize that there's a lot of empty space out there. That is "John Wayne" country in spades. I spent hours driving through the arid wasteland imagining "The Duke" running cattle through the scrub. It was void of human life.

Every once in awhile however I'd see green and white vehicles--Chevy Suburbans or something like that--slowly cruising along the endless dirt road that paralleled the lonely highway. They were the U.S. Border Patrol folks sniffing out offenders along the border fence line. I guess they get their job done, but considering how few and far between their patrols were, I couldn't help but think that it'd be a snap to get across. Just wait for a few minutes after their passing, and stroll into America. It'd be a fair bet that it would be a very long time before the next patrol showed up.

Out of nowhere, I saw some orange cones herding any passing vehicles toward a little shack perched next to the road. I slowed to a stop, and a Border Patrol Officer materialized and walked up to my window. He looked in the Jeep, smiled, and said "Looks like you're traveling alone today." "Yessir" I said. "Been driving since Washington State." He walked around, looked at my license plate and laughed. "Ya'll pretty far from home, son" he drawled. I laughed too, and said "Yeah, a long way from home, and a long way from being acclimated to this heat!" It hadn't been so bad at highway speed, but now I was toasting. Another laugh from my new pal, and a warning borne of experience; "Yep, and it's gonna get even hotter" he cautioned. We talked for several minutes about nothing in particular, wiping sweat from our respective brows. He was interested in my GPS, so I gave him an impromptu demonstration of the Garmin "StreetPilot." He thought it was a pretty cool toy.

After a bit, I said "Well, I'd better be getting out of here". "OK, ya'll have a nice trip" he said. He turned around and walked back towards the relative shade of his government-issue Border Patrol shack. He stopped, turned around, scrunched up his face, and gave me a concerned look. "Ya'll, have a mighty fine stay heah in Texas, ya heah? " he said. Pausing for just a second he turned around, looked at me again and added, "And do sumpthin' 'bout dat head of yaws, boy...it look lak someone bin fryin' pancake on dat big ole' shaved thang. DAMN!" He chuckled, turned around, and disappeared into his lair. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw what he was talking about. Gawd. Too much sun.

It's funny, but I really enjoyed my brief visit with the Border Patrol guy. Judging by how interested he was in just shooting the breeze, I think he probably enjoyed it too. I imagine it gets pretty quiet sitting out there for days on end. It's probably a welcome thing to just jaw with some traveler for a spell, even if it's some freak in a Jeep from the Pacific Northwest. I left the little inspection station behind me, accelerating down the empty highway. I watched it shrink to a dot in the rearview mirror, then disappear behind a gentle rise in the road. I looked around at the endless open space and questioned whether that brief encounter really happened. I think it did, but maybe my brain just made it up out there in the brush. Stuff like that happens.

The AM radio had finally come alive, but the stations were all coming from south of the border. My Spanish wasn't good enough to keep up with the rapid-fire banter of the DJ's, but I listened anyway, for no particular reason. I found myself giggling and singing that 80's Wall of Voodoo song "Mexican Radio" ("I'm on a Mexican...whoa, whoa.... radio") for hours on end to pass the time.  Starting to annoy myself (and seriously question my lucidity) I shut up and stared out at the horizon--wondering what was out there. Barbequed iguana, perhaps?

 I ended up in Corpus Christi as the sun set behind me. The Gulf of Mexico and Laguna Madre were out there as I drove into town, but I couldn't see any sign of them. I've never gotten used to looking over my shoulder at a sunset, then turning my head and looking out at a dark sea. Growing up on the left coast, I know that the sun always sets over the water. It's the stuff of many stories and legends from my early life. I can't count how many times I've watched old Sol dip into the mighty Pacific on it's journey around the globe. Seeing an inky black body of water with light behind me has always struck me as being fundamentally skewed.

I decided that Corpus Christi was a butthole, so I made a point of getting through that town in a hurry. It’s trying hard to be the next MTV hot spot, but it ain’t makin’ it. I drove through the financial district; strategically nestled a couple of streets in from the beach, and tried to figure out why I decided I wanted to pass through this town in the first place. I guess it's got it's good qualities; everything does. I was struck by the false, intentionally plastic nature of the area I was driving through. I wondered if the diligent urban planners had gotten what they envisioned when they sat through the endless planning meetings and laid that whole movie out. I hope so.

Driving around--lost again, I ended up in a real  bad part of town. I was trying to find my way back onto the gulf highway from downtown, and inadvertently ended up in some crack neighborhood. Every fence and every corner had a monument identifying someone who had been shot there. I really didn’t want to be a member of that club, so I made it my near-term goal in life to get way far from that part of town. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the yellow brick road out.  Back on the highway, I headed to Goose Island State Park and spent the night out on the Gulf. I liked it there.

Once again, local signage caught my eye. I saw one park sign that read, "WARNING - Do not approach, annoy, or feed the Alligators!" ??? FEED? Shoot...I'd already lined up another camper to take a picture of me with a "Ballpark Frank" between my teeth hunkering down to tempt it to take a bite. "Look mom! No head!" I guess the very presence of the aforementioned sign pretty much guarantees that someone, somewhere had tried it. Maybe there's some truth to the stories I read in the "Darwin Awards" e-mails I get. Man, that sign cracked me up...

Anyway...

Some folks came over that evening and said they noticed my license plate (the "fer'-in-er" again) and were curious as to why someone like me was way out there. I told them what I was up to, and got the typical "Heah's a boy who don' have all his peas in da pod" look. We shot the breeze for a bit, and ended up talking, laughing, and sharing stories into the wee hours of the morning. It was a great evening. They were warm, accommodating, and a truly good time.  Their gulf coast frankness and congeniality were a blessing to experience.

Heading out early the next day, I spent my time eyeballing the coastal eccentricities of the Southeast Texas gulf. It was kind of cool, in a “Southeast Texas gulf” sort of way.

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