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.
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