Hillsboro is a hard scrawny town on the way from Truth or Consequences, where I used to live, to Silver City, New Mexico..
In the old days Hillsboro was a gold and silver mining collage of wood shacks, shovels, dynamite, barbed wire but today it has lost its luster.
When its precious metals played out, there were copper mines left, but they were shut down too and moved overseas when costs and government regulations became too onerous.
Hillsboro used to have apple orchards and a popular annual Apple Festival that peddled apples, arts and crafts, food and live music but that disappeared after management stole money and absconded to Europe.
At one time, main street here had a biker bar that drew Harley Davidson enthusiasts from Albuquerque and Las Cruces but that attraction closed when the bar’s owner sold the liquor license for a ton of money.
A recent couple, trying to bring magic back to the town, have opened a winery on Main Street, the highway you take to Silver City, but this morning they are packing their belongings and have driven a For Sale sign in the front yard.
Today, becoming gold prospectors,my friend John and I use gold detectors instead of picks.
Working our way up hillsides, we wave our battery powered wands over rocky soil. We have tried the detectors around the house with loose change to practice before getting serious. We haven’t found gold yet but we have found barbed wire, nails, bottle caps, and rusty beer cans.
Tomorrow will be yet another gold hunting day. Expectations will be lower, but hope refuses to die.
Those yesteryear miners were tough S.O.B.’s and more stubborn than their donkey’s.
For every gold nugget, there is a trail of blood, sweat, and tears,
For every dream, there is heartache.
Some got advice from Oprah and when she retired they lost their advice fountainhead. Some find guidance at church. Cable channels are replete with soothsayers, doom mongers, all around screwy prophets who have kind words out of one side of their mouth and dire warnings out of the other. News stands are packed with visions of financial collapse or piles of money waiting to be taken home in a wheelbarrow and all you have to do is buy the $99.99 wheelbarrow.
Some of us have simpler ways to get advice.
At China King, a Chinese buffet on Juan Tabo in Albuquerque, one of the girls brings my bill on a little plastic tray with my own personally picked Chinese fortune cookie.
I open it with a slight crunch and carefully pull out a paper banner with words printed in light blue ink that are fuzzy.
” The answers you need, ” it reminds me, ” are right in front of you. ”
I pay my bill and go back to work full and happy. Since everyone has advice, it shouldn’t be expensive. It is true you don’t have to travel far for answers.
It is knowing the right questions to ask that stops me cold in my tracks.
This 800 square foot frame stucco two bedroom one bath single car garage house has been in the family since the fifties.
It has been a residence for dozens of renters, some good, some bad. Through time, much property maintenance was done that is now being re-done. It rents for seven hundred and fifty a month today when one hundred and twenty five used to give a renter the front door key.
This time the place is for sale to a good owner, someone who has time and money to grow a garden in the back yard, put in rocks and desert landscaping, add another room and a bath. The neighborhood, by San Mateo and Kathryn, is acceptable though you see transients pushing grocery carts down San Mateo towards Wal Mart. The War Zone is a few miles to the east but homes in this Parkland Hills neighborhood still show signs of committed ownership with new windows, landscaping, solar panels.
It brings back ghosts to work here.
I see my dad fixing a front screen door and brothers raking leaves and mowing the front yard when it had grass, decades ago.
Two big Chinese elms occupy the front yard and birds leave presents on my car each day I park here.
I miss my Dad sorely, but this house won’t be mourned when a new owner moves in.
A Sold sign will bring me closure.
There is an old joke about having to look for a cop at the doughnut shop when you need one.
I haven’t seen a man or woman in blue at my Albuquerque Donut stop, but I haven’t needed one either.
While Donut Mart is not Wal Mart, they do have fritters, twists, donut holes, donuts, bagels, glazed, jelly filled delights and specialty treats to meet all your taste bud needs. There are five stores in Albuquerque and all are locally owned and operated by a legal immigrant Pakistani family. It used to be Albuquerque had Winchell’s and Dunking Doughnuts, when you needed one, but they have both died without a proper funeral. The coffee is tasty at Donut Mart, wi-fi is free, bathrooms are clean and the staff is courteous and friendly.
If I were a cop I would be sitting here too at a big round table writing reports and listening to my Sergeant rile about my last traffic stop, the one where the driver of an old Chevy pickup with trash in the back had warrants and I took him to booking for processing and was out of service for two hours while the city was burning.
I have dropped internet at home and instead of spending thirty five a month for internet I now spend sixty for hot coffee and another sixty for doughnuts.
Even though I like coffee and doughnuts and wi-fi, this change is not looking like a good deal.
Driving back roads through flat dry West Texas prairie, one comes upon mule deer grazing among mesquite trees.
They look at you as you pass with dark intense eyes. They are always aware, can turn quick and be gone even quicker, leap over barbed wire fences like child’s play. Deer are handsome animals with deep set eyes, black noses, and ears that are their security. They move freely between Palo Duro Canyon and the ranch and farmland on top where it is windy and exposed and people live.
Turkeys are harder to call handsome.
This afternoon a group of gobblers appear in the back yard and Alan feeds them lunch. When he reaches into his bucket, grabs a handful of corn and pitches it onto their prairie table, they don’t scatter.
He has been feeding them for months and now they come up to his house, onto the back porch, and peer into his living room.
He calls them his “Peeping Tom’s”.
Animals and people now have relationships. Wild animals have become less wild, less something we eat, more something we befriend.
Still, animal’s are wise to be cautious. Human’s easily do inhuman things in a heartbeat.
Nature in the canyon is never far away, and neither are humans.
Palo Duro Canyon cuts through Texas like a big spoon in a tub of ice cream at a church social.
We load three poles, a tackle box, frozen corn, rubber worms and salmon eggs, and navigate three locked gates to get down to the prime fishing holes. There are some good spots below Lake Tanglewood in the canyon bottom that have catfish, perch, stocked trout, and even bass.
It is too early in the year for fish to be biting but we pull in three and throw them back after gently lifting them onto the bank at our feet, carefully removing the hook from their mouths, careful not to get our hands on their bodies, holding them with two fingers slipped under the gills.
Catch and release is a new fishing tenet in human history.
In the old days you fished and what you caught ended up in a frying pan with batter and went on your plate with the head on one end and the tail on the other. Now, we throw them back and eat fish sold at the grocery that were raised in fish farms in Vietnam.
We fish an hour then track down one of our cousins.
H.B. is working in his garden, in the bottom of the canyon.
Questioned, I maintain that Uruguay is a good place to visit, but living there will be worse than where we are when trouble hits the fan.
Palo Duro Canyon is one hell of a secure foxhole in a world turning dangerous.
In another month it will be warmer and fish in this canyon will be biting better. You can bet we won’t throw them all back.
That wouldn’t be natural.
In Canyon, Texas there is a relic from the fifties that overlooks the freeway that plows through town.
This giant statue of a cowboy is known as “Big Tex”. He has been here as long as townspeople can remember and civic leaders have started a fundraising effort to save him from the dust bin.
The story goes that he used to be associated with a western clothes store that has since been torn down. The owner let Big Tex stay on the property because it would have cost too much to remove him.
Big Tex used to have all his fingers and real levi’s specially made for his twenty foot legs. He used to have a shiny hat and you could see a twinkle in his eyes. Tethered down with pipe, like a Gulliver, the elements and time have taken their toll and he needs a new wardrobe and a new lease on life.
The most recent notch on his gun came when Sports Illustrated dropped by for a visit and had one of their models pose with him for their famous “Swimsuit Issue”. What sports and swimsuits have in common is selling magazines and generating interest. Lots of Texans like their sports and lots of Texans like their swimsuit models. Put them together and you have a rising revenue line.
I think I see one of his fingers move when I am taking his photo, but, on a second glance, decide it is just my imagination.
Life, often, gets a whole lot bigger than imagination.
Buffalo’s are not small, short, slender animals. In fact, they have a reputation for hardiness, tolerance for adverse circumstances, and supported Indian’s on the Great Plains for hundreds of years.
The Lady Buff”s of Texas A&M College in Canyon, Texas are slender and wiry and are playing in the Regional Championships for the NCAA Women’s Division 11 College Basketball, 2015. Last year they went all the way to the National Championship and were beat in the last minutes by only a few points. This season has been dedicated to attaining those lofty heights again.
The Lady Buff’s are short, trim, and athletic. They can push the ball down the floor, play ball control when needed, hit outside three’s if the shot is there, and play a great defense that keeps opponents from driving on the basket. They can make free throws and have a bench that can add to the score instead of losing a lead. For this game they are playing an eighth seed and are favored to win the game though nothing is to be taken for granted in sports.
Canyon, Texas is a small town outside of Amarillo. The college has a National Champion Women’s Softball team, a volleyball team that went to the elite eight last year, and, of course, a woman’s basketball team that wins a lot more than they lose. Colleges and women’s sports have been married a long time.
This evening fans are decked out with pom pom’s, clap hands, wear buffalo horns and T-shirts, and stomp in the stands complaining about bad calls by the referees, errant passes, and missed free throws.
We have our tickets and give our support to the team whether they are down or up. This game is entertaining and, in the end, the Lady Buff’s win handily. .
Getting to the championship is hard enough the first time. To go a second time you really have to have something.
Contemporary Fine Art is the calling card of this small gallery in Amarillo.
It’s owners feature works of emerging local, regional and national artists in nine exhibitions a year. They offer personal consulting services and support the community by donating time and money to local causes.
Open, just like their sign says they should be, we drop in and enjoy artists and styles shown this March, 2015. We are finished with lunch at Tacos Garcia , a local Amarillo eatery, that serves as close to New Mexican food as we can get in Texas. Your taste for red or green enchiladas follows you wherever you go.
The Cerulean gallery has concrete floors, white walls, light, and enough room to make it a comfortable place to see artists up close and personal. There are artists in every community, painting in little studios that are sometimes just a corner of a living room, an easel on the prairie, or a place in a garage with a skylight added for real light. There are artists working late into the night or early mornings before going to day jobs. They know their lines and colors and art history and pursue their dreams even though the odds are against them making money or achieving stardom. Still, lots of us do things out of love that have a murky bottom line.
It is hard to see how long a gallery of Contemporary Art can survive in a town of cowboy art, cattle and windmills, atmospheric clouds and long vistas of open space. It is true, though, that art springs from individual hearts and minds so it should be as different as people are different.
There should be a place at the art table for everyone, even crazy old Uncle Ed.
Alan, Jim, Sondra and I enjoy this afternoon and I never stop looking for Uncle Ed’s portrait in a hidden corner of the gallery.
Just down the frontage road from the Cadillac Ranch is the Cadillac Ranch gift shop.
It is before nine in the morning so it isn’t open but they have a sign out front that encourages lollygagging.
This gift shop is presided over by a twenty foot tall cowboy sporting a big hat. He waves to freeway tourists and wears a bright yellow T-shirt that says “2nd Amendment Cowboy”. Texas, a sovereign state, can withdraw from the Union when they wish and if you have guns you are more than welcome to sit a spell.
The fact there is a gift shop in the shadow of the Cadillac Ranch isn’t surprising. In Central and South America you have knick knack shops in front of most major cathedrals. In Egypt, you have little stands selling miniature pyramids and King Tut dolls close to Howard Carter’s greatest discoveries.
In the shadow of the 2nd Amendment Cowboy are three old Cadillac’s. Driving one is Willie Nelson. Elvis waves from inside another. The 2nd Amendment Cowboy’s smaller twin brother pilots the third car.
I will come back because I would love to have a little statue of a Cadillac buried into a cigarette lighter, or a 2nd Amendment Cowboy lamp for my living room table.
You can bet, as the day warms up, there will be the sound of target practice close by.
When you pull the trigger, in Texas, you want your bullet to hit what you are aiming at.
No self respecting cowboy would be caught without his artillery.
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