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.
Before you reach Amarillo, following I-40, you look to the right and see a series of Cadillac’s stuck in Texas dirt in the middle of an unplowed field.
In the old days the Cadillac’s used to be natural, like they came from the factory. They had huge fins, power windows, custom paint jobs, real rubber tires, chrome that would make any car buff salivate. You looked out in the field and the vehicles looked like they had come back down to Earth, like errant arrows, and buried themselves into the soil as far as their momentum would carry them.
On most days you see tourist cars clustered by a little turnstile and see tourists themselves following a wide path out to the cars where they pose for pictures, touch the cars to see how they feel, kick where real tires used to be. The Cadillac’s have been covered with so much graffiti that they are now hardly recognizable.
At the entrance to this entertainment is a little sign that informs you that ” This is not a National Park, Pick up your own Trash.”
This diversion is a brainstorm of an eccentric Texas oil man, Stanley Marsh. There have been not so nice rumors about his sex habits but he was a patron of the arts and how often does anyone create a Texas Landmark that has ended up in coffee table books all over the U.S.? It is unknown exactly what snapped in this man’s mind when he was having barbecue ribs on his back porch shooting Lone Star beer cans with a 45 pistol, but now we have a lasting spectacle that wasn’t here before his epiphany.
Men do all kinds of crazy things and, for the most part, they don’t need a reason. In Texas, the Lone Star State, you are still free to speak your piece and act out your fantasy’s.
If everyone buried a Cadillac halfway into their backyards, we wouldn’t be standing here taking pictures, shaking our heads, getting mud on our shoes.
It’s people who do things no one else would, that we remember the most.
Back in Albuquerque two months, the travel itch started at my right big toe and is working its way up to my right kneecap.
Life since Matzatlan has meandered and it isn’t until a brother’s invitation is offered that I have a chance to scratch my latest travel itch.
On the road at four in the morning, I can’t yet make out shapes of road cuts as I weave my way along the freeway between them. There are road signs waving at me to slow down and I see hints of sunlight struggling to break through the darkness that envelopes me. The instrument panel on my little chariot reminds me it is time to stop for gas and food.
Just outside of Tucumcari, New Mexico, following the old Route 66,I know there are several truck stops waiting for me to pull in..
They both offer travelers gas, a restaurant, a place to stock up on snacks..Though they cater to truckers, their doors are open to everyone, and, in a pinch, a tired traveler can catch a nap in the parking lot with a coat thrown over his head to hide light from huge signs that advertise to those whizzing by, going both directions across our country.
There is no reason to stick around Tucumcari when Albuquerque or Amarillo is only a short hop, skip, and jump away. You don’t need to drive through a whole town when all you need is a piece of it for a bite to eat, a bathroom break or a place to walk your poodle. Freeways created drive by towns and moved us into a different sense of time and space where the country is something to be traversed as quickly as possible, not something to be relished like a sweet piece of hard candy.
After several months home in Albuquerque, my brother’s invitation to visit comes as a welcome relief.
I never want moss growing between my toes.
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