Blognor Regis

Desperado

2010-03-08T23:12:00.000-08:00

A poster on a storefront, the picture of a wanted man
He had a reputation spreading like fire throughout the land
It wasn't for the money; at least it didn't start that way
It wasn't for the running, but now he's running everyday

Five minutes drive north of Tombstone, close to the junction of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway and state route 82, I pass a roadside sign with a warning: PREPARE TO STOP AHEAD. Traffic cones either side of me squeeze the lane down to the width of a truck. As I top the summit of a long upward incline I see an orange trailer on the nearside verge about five hundred meters distant. A US flag hangs from a high white pole, with barely enough breeze to cause a stir in the harsh heat of mid-day. Moving at the regulation 15mph speed limit I’m now close enough to read the words ‘US Border Patrol’ on the side of the two four wheel drive vehicles parked in the shade of a roadside shelter.

Up ahead, an officer is bending forward as he talks with the driver of a stationary Toyota through the open side window. The red brake lights flicker, then go off and the patrolman straightens up, motioning the car to move on with a sweep of his arm. He turns my way and beckons me forward. I switch off the radio and take my passport from the glove box, leaving it in my lap.

Despite the early afternoon temperature the officer is bareheaded, but his eyes are shielded behind aviator-style sunglasses. His uniform is pressed and sharp, his manner is loose and amiable. From a sideways glance he could pass for Brad Pitt. He drops down to meet me eye to eye.

‘Hello Sir, what brings you to highway 80 on this magnificent afternoon?’

I look for a sense of irony. There is none. He means it.

‘Oh, I’m just passing through. Came down from Willcox to Douglas this morning, then on through Bisbee and Tombstone’.

‘Did you cross into Mexico when you were in Douglas?' he says, his teeth white against his glowing tan.

‘No, I didn’t have the time’.

“OK Sir, can I see some ID please?’

‘Certainly'. I hand over my passport.

‘Right, you’re a citizen of the United Kingdom', he says, perfect teeth set free once more. ‘Outstanding’.

I have no answer and can only smile meekly as he flicks through the pages until he finds the stub of the green visa waiver form that I completed on the plane coming over. Satisfied, he moves on to the last page, then, with an elaborate magician’s flick of the wrist, hands the passport back to me.

‘Where are you off to next?’ he says, grinning like a college boy out on a spree.

‘Up to Tucson, then Phoenix’, I say, putting my passport back in its place and shutting the door with a slam that has more force than I intend.

‘Well you be sure to enjoy the rest of your stay here in the United States of America. Drive safe and a have safe flight home when it’s time’, he says standing up, his face out of sight.

I take my foot off the brake and ease forward, ‘Thanks, I will’, I say, raising my arm in a gesture of farewell. I keep my speed down until the roadblock is gone from my rearview mirror and only then do I press my foot to the accelerator and turn up the volume on the radio.

The highway is my legacy
On the highway I will run
In one hand I've a Bible
In the other I've got a gun
Well, don't you know me
I'm the man who won
Woman don't try to love me
Don't try to understand
A life upon the road is the life of an outlaw man

Who'd pick a fight with Lee Marvin?

2010-02-24T10:12:00.001-08:00

Douglas, Arizona, is a border town. I pull up outside the Gadsden Hotel around 10.15am after driving down state highway191 from Willcox, passing through Cochise, Elfrida and Double Adobe on the way. The road follows the line of the Dragoon Mountains, where, in the 1860's, the Chiricahua Apache leader Cochise took refuge with two hundred of his people and for ten years waged a guerrilla war against the US army and the settlers of the southwest. In the clear morning light, the mountains stand hard and timeless against the blue empty sky; the spirits of those passed whisper still in the shadows of each hidden canyon and gulley.

Situated a mile from the border with Mexico, The Gadsden stands six stories high at 1046 G Avenue. Originally built in 1907, it fast became home-from-home for cattlemen, ranchers, miners and businessmen in this corner of what was then called Arizona Territory. Rebuilt in 1929 following a catastrophic fire, legend states that Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa once rode his horse up the marble staircase: a chipped step remains as evidence for those who wish to believe in such folk tales. My visit is motivated by an altogether more basic need. I have come to sample the breakfast in the Gadsden's El Conquistador restaurant, renowned as one of the best to be had in Cochise County.

I take my place in the high walled room among a mid-morning scattering of fellow diners; late rising guests, subdued and not long awake, chewing silently while gazing, bleary-eyed, into some private inner space: local businessman taking time-out between appointments, eyes down, scanning newspapers or leafing through documents, jotting down notes; drifting travellers like myself, passing the time here in search of a lost and more glamorous past, chasing ghosts. And this fading hotel has its share of those. Sightings by staff and guests have been regularly reported over the years, made more incredible with each retelling.

Myself, I prefer the story of Lee Marvin coming within a hair of the dog's breadth of a brawl in the Saddle and Spur Tavern. Tossing down the contents of his glass with his pinkie elegantly extended, his sullen eyes drilled the fear of God into his foolish challenger, like he'd done a hundred times up on the big screen. Only this time, he wasn't acting. Then there was Shelly Winters, who, as a young starlet and hopeful pretender to Marilyn's crown, had answered the door to room service clothed only in the brassy confidence of her youth. Both are gone now, into the stuff of legend.

Breakfast over, I step out into the brightness beyond the front entrance of the hotel and turn right towards the border crossing. Unlike some towns I've visited, Douglas manages to hang on to a handful of businesses the like of which were to be found on every main street in thousands of such towns the length and breadth of this country until the 1960's. I walk past a grocery store, a furniture showroom, a ladies and gents clothing outlet, a flooring specialist and a post office. In so many small towns these have been replaced by trashy gift shops, thrift stores and failing cafes. Edge of town shopping malls have killed off retail in the centres of small towns in America, forcing surviving traders to scratch a living from passing tourists while giant Walmart superstores rule supreme and unseen, a short drive beyond the city limits.

The collection of low, bunker shaped buildings and high razor wire topped fences that identify the crossing point into Mexico are in a desolate part of town. Buildings peter out on the wide sidewalk-free streets, the dust blowing across from vacant lots, stinging eyes and catching in the back of the throat. A bunch of US border patrolmen and women are in position, dark featureless shapes in the shadows beneath a canopy that straddles the road, quietly going about their business. A dog is led around each vehicle by its handler, the animal trained to sniff out drugs and explosives. Papers are checked, the barrier raised and vehicles are waved through, highlights occasionally picking out the metal of the officer's weapons. These are dangerous times at the border and the authorities are on high alert and fully armed.

Thousands of people from Mexico cross into the United States every day. They get in line before it's light and they come to work. Then each evening, they return, a full day's work done in exchange for the US dollar. But they spend the night on their own side of the border.

There's something about this place that is giving me a sense of unease. It could be the military presence, the guns, the wire, the dogs, or it may be the thought of all those people passing this way every day, only tolerated for their labour before being forced to return to their country of origin. I'm aware that my view is based on privilege. I am able to work freely in my own country without the need to cross a border in order to earn a living wage. If this were so, my view would likely be very different, grateful for the opportunity to support my family by providing more, however that was achieved.

My head spinning with such thoughts I turn around and head back to the car.

Tomorrow Never Knows

2010-02-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

The parking lot at the Cactus Flower is approaching full. It’s reputation as the best eatery in town is borne out by the rows of cars and pickups drawn up outside this single story building on the western limits of town. I squeeze in beside a battered two-tone Dodge and a gleaming, buffed Ford; black with tinted glass, shiny chrome reflecting the fluorescent neon of a sign, high atop a pole overhead.

As I pass, a dog - a mongrel with a black face and lazy flopping ears – raises its head in the cab of the Dodge, wet nose smearing the glass, eyes showing white, wide open and wild. It doesn’t bark, but sits and watches me all the way to the restaurant door, restlessly shifting its weight between its two front legs. Entering the lobby I’m hit with a wall of sound, heat and smells; spicy food mixed with the babbling clamour of humanity. Waitresses brush past me in a constant stream, manoeuvring swiftly in and out of tables packed with diners; trays balanced expertly on each arm and loaded high with steaming, chilli-hot dishes and ice-cold beers and sodas. The roar of conversation sits just below the steady bass thump and flashy trumpet blare of a TexMex soundtrack, piped in through speakers around the walls.

I take my place in line at the entrance to the dining room. The place is full and there are two large groups in front of me waiting for tables to empty. Being a party of one, I may be here for a while. But I’m in luck. A table for two has just been vacated, and the hostess ushers me forward. I follow as she sweeps past chattering family groups and revelling businessmen, the petticoats beneath the swirling colours of her skirt rustling against her silk covered legs. She leads me to a small table set against the wall. The busboy is just finishing laying-up and I take my seat. He returns immediately with a pitcher of iced water and fills my glass. I thank him and he acknowledges with a short nod. He’s at the bottom of the ladder around here and his is not a job that draws much thanks, so he doesn’t expect any.

A waitress, dressed in the same Tijuana costume as the hostess, appears at my side and hands me a menu. Her name is Maria - it’s confirmed on the badge she wears - and she’s happy to be my server this evening and answer any questions I may have. She has quick black eyes that light up in time with her smile, which appears often and without a hint of being forced. Maria runs through the night’s specials; meatloaf with greens, prime rib-eye and blackened catfish with a salsa sauce. I order the catfish, with cornbread on the side and a cold Mexican beer.

Removing my glasses I take some time to take a look around the room. Without Spanish, to look is all I can do. The table next to mine seats six men. They are dressed for business; pressed shirts, some with ties, dark pants, two are wearing Stetsons. Beside them, propped against chair legs or lying on vacant seats, are document cases and bags bulging with papers. But whatever business they came here to do is now over and they’re in party mood. The cigars are lit, the beers and liquors are flowing and the laughter is loud and frequent, rattling the bottles on the table. One of them has been joined by his son, a boy of twelve or thirteen, who looks unsure and ill at ease, not yet ready to take his place in the bawdy company of his male elders out for a night on the town.

Other children, those in the familiar company of their families, are relaxed and uninhibited, swapping jokes and joining in the joyous exchanges that inevitably end in shared laughter. It would be easy to feel out of place in these surroundings; alone, with no understanding of the language, while all around are passing their time in the company of others; sharing, communicating, touching, loving, just being themselves and for a while, forgetting whatever troubles they may have until another day. ‘Until tomorrow.’ I raise my glass to that.

A painter's life for Ed

2010-02-22T04:20:00.001-08:00

At around 4pm I check into the motel one block south of Main Street. It’s franchised from a national chain, looks no more than ten years old and is clean and comfortable. My room is on the second floor on the inside of the building overlooking a fenced-in pool, which despite being drenched in warm afternoon sunlight, remains empty. Around the edge on the concrete flagstones are five or six white plastic tables with shade umbrellas, matching chairs and a row of loungers, primed and waiting for sun worshipers that have yet to show.

On the walkway opposite stands a cleaner’s trolley. The sound of a local Hispanic radio station drifts through an open doorway and mixes with the drone of a vacuum cleaner as the maid finishes off her last chores of the day. A child appears with a bundle of used towels and dumps them into the large plastic laundry bag that’s attached to the front of the trolley, then disappears inside carrying a fresh supply, crisply folded and piled high on her outstretched arms, the uppermost tucked under her jutting chin. Dropped off by the school bus, the little girl probably comes here every day to help her mother so she can get through early and be home in time to fix her husband’s supper: a family working hard to make it in the land of opportunity.

I shower off the day’s dust and change into fresh clothes. Deciding to plot tomorrow’s route down to Tucson, I step outside to retrieve the Arizona state atlas from the car. The pool is still empty and the maid and her daughter have left for the day. As I’m locking the car, the atlas tucked under my arm, a large white pickup pulls into the space alongside me. The back is loaded with decorating materials; large industrial-sized tubs of paint, brushes, rollers and dust sheets. A large man aged around fifty, thinning red hair, military-style moustache, kitted out in splattered overhauls, swings his legs clear of the sagging driver’s seat and slides to the ground.

‘You lost?’ he says, nodding towards the atlas.

‘Lost? No. Just checking the route between here and Tucson for tomorrow. I thought I may stay off the freeway and take the scenic drive along the border to Douglas and Bisbee.’

‘Good if you can spare the time,’ he says, reaching into the cab to gather a few possessions that lay scattered over the passenger seat. ‘Me, I need to get from place to place quick as I can. Don’t need a map to help me none neither, not after fifteen years of doing this job.’ He anticipates my reply before I get a chance to speak. “I’m a decorator for Sears. Travel all over the country refurbishing the stores and offices, so I know my way round pretty good by now. I just done a store in Tucson, now I’m headed over El Paso way. After that it’s up to Show Low, Arizona.’

‘A lot of travelling. Don’t you get tired of it?’ I say.

‘No, it’s my life now. I took it up when my wife and me split back in 1989 and here I am. It’s not a bad life for a single man, always movin’ on, meeting new folks.‘

‘Do you ever get home?’

‘Once in a while, but these places are my home now,’ he says looking around him, ‘I always stay in one of these if there’s one in town. They’re good value and generally reliable. Got everything I need pretty much and I only sleep in ‘em, all’s said and done. The only thing missing in the smaller places is regular security so that’s why I always take a room where I can park right outside - keep an eye on things. I’ve known guys get cleaned out. Everything took overnight. Fine if you want to paint out your house to look like a Sears store. But I’ve never lost so much as quart can of paint. Been lucky so far I guess. By the way, the name’s Ed, Ed Medel’, he says, offering his right hand, ‘originally from Barstow California, now residing in Lawton, Oklahoma, when I’m not on the road.

‘And I’m Farquhar,’ I say taking his hand, ‘originally from England, but now from wherever my four wheels last took me.’

‘Please to meet you I’m sure,’ he says, ‘And if you’re looking for a good place to eat here in Willcox, ain’t but one place and that’s the Cactus Flower out on the west side of town’. With that, he checks the locked doors of his truck, produces a key-card from the pocket of his overalls and lets himself into number 109.

Returning to my room past the empty pool, I stretch out on the blue coverlet of the bed to study the map. Within seconds I am asleep on the strange pillow of my wanderlust, dreaming of the green shady canopy and high banks of an English country lane on a summer’s evening long ago.

2010-02-22T04:20:00.000-08:00

The wayward wind

2010-02-07T13:08:00.000-08:00

Born Rex Elvie Allen to Faye and Horace Allen on a ranch in Mud Springs Canyon, forty miles from Willcox, Rex grew up to become a popular entertainer known as The Arizona Cowboy. As a boy he played guitar and sang at local functions with his fiddle–playing father until high school graduation, when he toured the southwest as a rodeo rider. He got his start in show business on the East Coast as a vaudeville singer and in 1948 he signed to Mercury Records where he recorded a number of country albums.

In 1949, following in the hoof prints of singing cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Rex made a successful screen test for Republic Pictures and was put under contract. Starting in 1950, Allen starred as himself in nineteen Hollywood western movies. A top box office draw in his day, he played the clean-cut, God-fearing, all-American hero, in his white Stetson, mounted on his faithful horse Koko, with his loyal buddy riding at his side. Buddy Ebsen, who later found fame as ‘Pa’ in TV’s Beverley Hillbillies, played his first sidekick, to be replaced by much-loved character actor Slim Pickens in later movies.

As a boy, all the cowboy heroes I revered were like Rex. Strong, upright, true - and single. Romantic liaisons were fleeting. With the trail into the sunset always close by for a quick and convenient getaway, responsibility and fancy notions of settling down could be left behind as an unfulfilled desire in the heaving, but tightly cupped 50’s bosoms of a string of luckless, deserted females. And the trusty compadre was always just that: a male friend and nothing more, as straight as an arrow fired from an Apache bow, that came only second to a horse in my assorted heroes list of undying loyalties.

The museum given over to a celebration of Willcox’s favourite son is well worth the three-dollar entrance fee, crammed with exhibits spanning his illustrious career. Exotic rhinestone outfits tailored by Nudie of Hollywood, customised pearl-handled pistols, beautiful hand tooled saddles, movie posters, comic books, album covers, photographs, videos and even a full scale replica of Koko, his knightly steed. But the prize for the top exhibit has to be awarded to the work of art that is the sensationally coiffured head of the charming lady who sold me my entry ticket. Reaching astonishing heights of tonsorial engineering, its magnificence is a wonder to behold. She is though, a victim of her own excess, trapped, not daring to venture out. For on the other side of the door is a vicious and merciless prairie wind that will rip her hair-do apart in seconds. Life out here on the range, where the deer and the antelope play, can be mighty hard.

Louisa's homemade apple pie

2010-02-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

I drive out of the hill country and return to the desert, the land dropping away southwards, towards Mexico. Rounding a left hand bend ten miles short of Lordsburg, I’m presented with a panoramic view of the town below: a scattering of low buildings and power lines strung out along the I-10; its own path marked by a line of trucks crawling east and west across the flat, brown, sun-hammered plain, the morning light flashing from glass and metal, like Morse Code. In the far distance, faint and shimmering through the haze, the high peaks of mountains that lie across the border, their feet in the cool, meandering waters of the Rio Grande.

Lordsburg, like many towns in the States, sounds bigger than it is. The name suggests something stately, even regal. I imagine a town square, green lawns, a grand civic building at its centre, granite built with a Capitol dome, columns, a couple of Civil War cannon flanking the entrance. I find something else: a huddled collection of flaking clapboard and adobe buildings; empty lots and dust-blown streets, seemingly empty of people, except those hidden from view in the dark shadows of a passing car or pickup.

But I’m not disappointed. There’s something heroic about these small desert towns, defying logic and refusing all reason by stubbornly hanging on to 100 years of history and tradition under a burning sky. The land that surrounds them wants only to reclaim what has temporarily been taken, forever probing the perimeter, blowing in through cracked windows and under doorways, using wind and sand to wear down walls and rain to wash away loose shingles from the rooftops and turn nails to rust. But, the brave ones hang on; pioneer settlements, populated by the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of pioneers. Then there are the new settlers, immigrants from the south, speaking Spanish and here to carve out a new life with a future for their children.

I find the entrance to the I-10 and slip up the westerly ramp in the direction of Tucson, check the wing mirror and accelerate into the nearside lane, tucking in between two thundering rigs. Wanting to make up time, I pull out and watch the needle on the speedometer climb to 80mph; 5mph over the legal limit on this stretch of road, but I figure that it’s worth the risk out here. Close to the state line I pass a ghost town, a sagging jumble of brown timbered ruins just off the freeway on the old highway, but I keep on, heading for my next stop – Willcox, Arizona.

It’s after mid-day by the time I come to a halt outside of The Rex Allen Cowboy Museum. Glad to be off the freeway, with its ruthless cut-throat trucks and crazed speed freak cars, I cruise silently through the deserted outskirts of Willcox. With the window down, I breathe in some fresh desert air, the strong hickory wind whipping up the dust into miniature twisters and thrasing the trees around with a wild whooshing violence.

Before I take a look inside the museum that’s dedicated to this town’s most famous son, I set off down the street in search of food and something to wash it down. Starting early and missing out on a Bear Mountain Lodge breakfast, all I’ve had today is a stale gas station cinnamon roll and a luke-warm ‘styrene coffee. About fifty yards down, past a clothing store, a gift shop, hairdressers and a realtor’s office, I come to Louisa’s Kitchen.The front porch has a couple of tables, wooden chairs and an old hitching rail in the street out front, worn shiny and smooth, but unused now. Parked alongside is a farm truck full of dents and rust with sacks of potatoes and cardboard egg boxes loaded in the rear. A cat, sprawled across the cafe entrance, lifts it’s head, yawns and stretches, claws extending before slipping away to find another resting place away from troublesome strangers.

Pushing through the screen door I step inside. The place is part café, part antique, and part thrift store. Down one side is a counter serving a selection of coffees, homemade cookies, pies and cakes. On the other side and in the room out back are touristy knick-knacks, native jewellery, local souvenirs and all manner of second hand items cleared from attics, garages and the houses of deceased relatives for a thirty-mile radius. Behind the counter is a fifty-year old Harley rider with a limp. His head is shaved shiny clean, he wears a goatee on his chin and two silver earrings share one ear lobe. He looks up when I enter, a friendly smile showing two rows of perfect teeth. The woman he’s talking to, late sixties, but probably seventy-three or four, joins him, smiling a silent welcome. She has loosely cropped white hair, tapered into a thin weather-browned neck, her face age-lined, but bright and alive from a life spent on the land: her land. Dressed in faded working denims she has just delivered fresh laid eggs and is taking her leave, speeded by my arrival; not an unfriendly act, but removing herself so that I can place my order without interruption.

‘So long Marty, I’ll be around again on Tuesday. Call me before if you need extra. Say ‘Hi’ to Louisa’. And with that she was gone, the truck taking her back to the farm.

‘Hi, what’ll it be?’ beams Marty as the sound of the engine fades, carried off by the wind, ‘There’s what you see along the counter here and the beverages are up on the board.’

‘Thanks’, I say, reading through the selection on the chalkboard over his head, ‘I’ll have a cappuccino and a slice of that apple pie there’.

‘You can get cream or ice cream with that’, offers Marty, ‘ we’ve got strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, maple…’

I jump in, ‘Vanilla ice cream please.’

‘Do you want chocolate sprinkles on your cappuccino?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Cream?’

‘No, that’s fine’.

There was something askew about this large man, in his black teeshirt with biker emblems and black leather waistcoat, busy on the server side of the counter, fixing me a frothy Italian coffee and a slice of pie on a hot afternoon in Arizona; somehow made more poignant when he occasionally struggled to manoeuvre his shortened leg around in the confined working space back there. Ian Dury’s ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’ came instantly to mind, as songs do.

Looking around the room, in search of distraction, I spot a painting on the wall behind me, done in oils. It’s a portrait of Marty in his motorcycle leathers. I use it as a chance to break the silence. ‘Like the portrait. That’s you isn’t it? ‘

He looks up; seems pleased with being disturbed. ‘It most certainly is. Done about a year ago by a local artist. A very talented lady.’

I nod in agreement.

‘She was in here for a coffee one time and asked me if I’d sit for a portrait. I was happy to do it. It’s not every day someone wants to paint your picture. Now, it was apple pie with the coffee wasn’t it? He pushes a large cup of foaming cappuccino towards me across the counter. ‘Sugar and spoons are in the tray there’.

I carry the pie and coffee outside and find a table away from the swirling wind. Traffic criss-crosses the train tracks opposite. A ball of tumbleweed hurtles past, getting wedged under the front fender of an old Cadillac parked twenty yards down the street.

‘That apple pie was real good’, I say, returning my empty plate and cup to the counter fifteen minutes later.

‘Thanks, but I can take no credit for myself’, says Marty, looking up from a newspaper, a small pair of silver rimmed spectacles clinging to the end of his nose, ‘that was Louisa’s handywork, my partner in crime around here.’

‘Well you pass on my compliments to the cook. And say, I was thinking of checking into the motel for the night, can you recommend anywhere good to eat around here - for dinner that is?

‘There is only one place’, says Marty, removing his glasses and buffing them with the hem of his teeshirt, ‘ and that’s The Cactus Flower out on the edge of town. Take a left out here at the junction, left at the stoplight and it’s about half a mile on the right hand side. Can’t miss it.’

‘Much obliged. And be sure to mention the pie to Louisa’.

Outside, squinting into the brightness, I retrace my steps to find Rex Allen, The Arizona Cowboy.

One too many mornings

2010-02-02T04:21:00.000-08:00

Whereas Vernon is deliberate and measured in manner, taking time to form a response (this maybe, in part, due to his partial deafness; Vernon wears a hearing aid), Barbra is excitable and verbose. She has a childlike, wide-eyed enthusiasm that pours forth and envelops any listener in the liquid, clinging tones of her hypnotic voice. Words are delivered breathlessly with perfect annunciation; her eyes wide open as if in constant wonder at the words that leave her mouth. Unlike Vernon, her real interests are to be found indoors: amateur dramatics, musicals preferably and singing in a women’s choir, an offshoot from church membership. Barbra and Vernon are nice people, difficult to dislike and I have no reason to try hard to do so.

I said my farewells last night. To Louis and Denise, Larry and Jean, George and Betty, Guy and Hilary and finally, Vernon and Barbra. There was no exchange of address as we had all met up a long way from home, with very little chance of crossing paths again, not by chance anyway. Fate has thrown us together and circumstance will part us, each of us either returning to, or moving on from - back to our private lives in our private worlds. To say I will miss them is misleading. I’ll miss the company, the conversation, but I’m ready to go, ready for a new day, new encounters.

It’s barely light as I step outside. Stillness hangs in the air, no breeze to stir the trees. The first birds of the morning dart from branch to branch, soundless, getting familiar with the day. A mule deer raises its head from the pond twenty feet away, long ears twitching, and moves away, unhurried but aware. I pick up my bags and walk to the parking lot, taking care to step on the sawn off logs that form the pathway. Only when I reach the gravel do I make a sound. The trunk springs open in response to the button pressed on the ignition key and I swing the bags inside. Before I start the engine I check the map that lies open on the passenger seat. Satisfied that I have the route committed to memory, at least until I join the Interstate 50 miles to the south, I reverse and switch the shift to ‘drive’.

Passing through the gate a quarter of a mile on I snatch a glance into the rearview. The first glow of deep orange is highlighting the east wall of the hacienda. Time is already slipping away from me. I reach the public road and turn right towards downtown. The first traffic of the day is on the move, catching the early rays of the sun in the chrome trim. I follow a two-tone Ford truck down the lane past single-story homesteads, a dog sounding the alarm as we pass, leaping up onto the kitchen stoop, its legs getting tangled in the chain that holds it back. I pull up alongside the pickup when we reach the state highway that cuts trough the town. The driver wears a baseball cap, worn threads hanging down around the brim, a cigarette glowing bright in the gloom of the cab as he takes a drag. Then he’s gone with a roar, turning right as I go left. I take the next right at the lights and I’m on my way to Lordsburg and the I-10. A song comes through the airwaves on the local radio station:

It's a restless hungry feeling
That don't mean no one no good,
When ev'rything I'm a-sayin'
You can say it just as good.
You're right from your side,
I'm right from mine.
We're both just too many mornings
An' a thousand miles behind.

A table for five anyone?

2010-01-30T23:54:00.000-08:00

‘Did you see anything?’

‘Some mule deer’, I answer, ‘making their way down to the lodge for their evening treats.’

‘Many birds?’

‘Nothing I recognised, but you could’ve probably put names to them.
A slow smile lights up Vernon’s eyes and then spreads right on through him as he nods in acknowledgement of my gentle flattery. He zips up his windcheater against the cool evening air and turns to look up the hillside, anxious to move on.

‘Think I’ll head up there and take a look’, he says, tapping the binoculars that hang around his neck, ‘although it’s still a mite cold for the migratory birds to be this far north.

I watch him walk away as he moves swiftly along the single track that winds through the dried-out meadow of last summer’s Rudbeckia and up into the trees beyond.

Vernon has driven down from Michigan with his wife Barbra for a week’s bird watching, but the weather here has been unseasonably cold and the smaller birds, insect and seed eaters, are still south of the Rio Grand, waiting for some spring warmth to draw them across the border. He’s disappointed, but is trying his best not to show it, filling time by signing up for a day-long ranger tour of the surrounding Gila National Forest and also visiting the massive crater in the mountainside east of town where copper has been gauged, blasted, shipped out, used up and since abandoned by the mining companies, leaving a scar you can see from space.

I‘m staying at Bear Mountain Lodge, about three miles out on the northern limits of Silver City. Set in 178 acres, the original adobe hacienda dates back to the 1920’s and was then run as a ranch, cattle grazing on the surrounding slopes. But any grass was soon cleared and the juniper pines that now cover much of New Mexico moved in, making the continued raising of livestock unviable. The owner, not wishing to leave, opened the house to paying guests, provided bed and breakfast and turned the land over to whatever wildlife settled or passed through. When she died, with no close blood relatives she ensured the future sanctity of the land by leaving it to The Nature Conservancy, who remain as its present owners.

Meals at the lodge, breakfast and dinner, are served in a communal dining room and the staff ensure that the atmosphere is friendly and informal. This, together with the distance from town and a common interest in ecology and the environment, encourages greater interaction than is usual in the anonymous, transient world of chain motels and hotel lodgings. As Farquhar, the mystery Englishman, I’m much in demand as a table guest and in the lounge afterwards, although my first evening meal here was taken alone, providing the opportunity to listen to all surrounding conversations masked by the pretence of reading a book. It was Orson Wells who said that dining alone will hold no stigma or be a cause for loose gossip and unwelcome speculation if one’s attention is given over to the activity of reading intently while one eats. It works. But, when, next morning I neglected to take my book into breakfast I was soon engaged in discourse and have had no call to take the paperback beyond the confines of my room again.

Aside from Vernon and Barbra, there’s Louis and Denise, also from Michigan, Larry and Jean from New York State, George and Betty from Illinois and Guy and Hilary from California. Tact and diplomacy are put severely to the test as I juggle the requests to join one table or another without appearing to favour one above the rest. Balance is possible and cordial relations are maintained by joining one or more of the eager couples for coffee in the lounge after the meal is completed, thus ensuring that I am seen to spread my favours evenly.

Conversations range wide and far, covering everything from conservation, terrorism (or ‘tourism’ as pronounced by George Doubleya), drought, immigration, through to a performance of The Who at the LCP in 1968 and the fact that fish and chips don’t come wrapped in newspaper any more. Fascinating stuff. And they can’t get enough of it. Tonight it’s blackened catfish, a dinner date with Vernon and Barbra and possibly Larry and Jean if we can get the big table. My mouth is watering in anticipation.

Thar's silver in them thar hills

2010-01-25T22:12:00.000-08:00

The rain won’t catch me now. Since leaving Las Cruces the sky in my rear view mirror has gone from blue/black to clear blue. This is no cause for silent celebration in these parts, where, as the guy in the gas station store informs me, there has been no precipitation since December. Then it was only a flurry of snow that didn’t amount to much.

He offers no thoughts on a cause or a solution, just adds it to a list of reasons that has convinced him to sell up and move back to east Texas where his son lives. He and his wife have run the place for four years now, but the business is in decline and it’s time to cut and run if he can find a buyer. He seems frail and vulnerable, his hairless bare arms pale and blue-veined sticking out from a short sleeved shirt, his grey watery eyes focussing on something far distant from behind the thick lenses of black framed spectacles. His words slow, then finally peter out, his story told. I thank him and without thinking to reason why, I offer my hand to be shaken, which he does, his own hand strong and calloused from a lifetime’s hard toil. I can still feel his grip as I step out into the sunlight.

His is a story that I see repeated in every hamlet, town and city that I pass through. Abandoned businesses litter this country from coast to coast; a lonesome trail of broken hopes and shattered American dreams. Sometimes its as if whole communities have just upped sticks and moved on, leaving empty homes and stores, to fall piece by piece back to the earth from which they have sprung. In the vastness of this land, it’s as though this is the natural thing to do; if it’s not working here, pack up, move on and start again someplace else. The wind, rain and sun will take care of that which is left behind, until there’s just a trace in the weeds and half-grown trees, with a scattering of bent rusted nails, flaky remains of corrugated iron and charred wood to mark the spot.

I start to climb, leaving the open grasslands and pass into the round topped hill country that characterises much of New Mexico, as seen in the paintings of Georgia O’ Keefe. Small twisted pines, spaced widely at a regular distance, grow on the slopes, getting more numerous and taller the higher I go, until finally the hills disappear under a thick covering of dark green. It’s in a valley below these peaks, in Grant County, that I find the old mining town of Silver City.

Fifty miles short of Truth and Consequences

2010-01-24T23:07:00.000-08:00

Now moving north on Interstate 25, I consider driving up to Truth and Consequences before heading for Silver City. I have no good reason to do so. Indeed, it will take me out of my way, but everywhere on this trip is ‘out of my way’, which is, after all, the sole purpose of my being here: to go to places that I have no reason to be in, to pursue each whim and fancy as it occurs to me. And so it is; the only reason I wish to go to Truth and Consequence is that I like the name, nothing more than that. But if it wasn’t for an NBC television and radio producer called Ralph Edwards, this small New Mexican town would be known by the name of Hot Springs and I’d be driving west, not north.

The town’s original name provided a clue to its main source of income; tourists seeking the healing properties of the naturally heated mineral baths to be found in the area. But it had not been fully developed as a recreational resort, its potential somewhat lost among the hundreds of other ‘Hot Springs’ to be found all over the United States.

Then in 1950, Ralph Edwards, on the 10th anniversary of the Truth or Consequences radio programme, called his staff together and said, "I wish that some town in the United States liked and respected our show so much that it would like to change it's name to ‘Truth or Consequences’". On hearing the proposition, the New Mexico State Tourist Bureau relayed the news to the manager of the Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce and the news spread like a prairie fire. Here was an opportunity to advertise the city and it's resources free of charge. Better still, no longer was this town to be confused with that ‘other one’ in Arkansas and the others throughout the nation (California alone has more than 30 towns called Hot Springs).

So, in a special city election, 1,294 of the town's residents voted for the change to Truth or Consequences. But, 295 area residents opposed the change and a protest was filed, so the city returned to the polls and again voted - by a margin greater than four to one - to go ahead with the name change.

Almost 14 years later, in January 1964, the question went to the people again and they voted to keep the city's unique name. A fourth election was held on August 18, 1967, and once more a majority voted to keep the name Truth or Consequences.

By the time I reach Las Cruces there is the first sign of a change in the weather. The sky up ahead is beginning to fill with cloud, the kind that is thrown up thousands of feet, forming towering castles in the air. I take an exit off the freeway and come to a halt on a patch of gravel close to where the road crosses a railroad track. There is a small church on the other side of the crossing, with two Mediterranean Cyprus’s grown to identical heights either side of the brick-built porch. The sun, not yet covered by cloud, is lighting up the mountains on the horizon in detailed relief, the air coming through my open window clear and clean, with the smell of rain on it.

My hands on the steering wheel, I push back, stretching my aching limbs, my eyes closed in a rush of weariness. I reach for the DeLorme State Atlas on the passenger seat, already open to the correct page. With the prospect of a gathering storm, I decide to skip Truth or Consequences and find a route that will take me cross country toward Silver City - with a hot shower, some food and the promise of rest. But before I start the engine, there is a photograph to be taken; a picture of the moment to use as future evidence that I am here, fifty miles short of Truth and Consequences, a town that, like me, had changed its name to bring about a new beginning.

Drive on driver

2010-01-24T00:44:00.000-08:00

It’s been five days since I was on an interstate and it’s taking a while for me to adjust. Trucks thunder past with the hammer down, their chrome exhaust stacks flashing, buffed to a blinding shine by the owner/drivers from Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama; hauling loads to all points west. My compact saloon rocks as the volume of speeding metal and cargo displaces the air like a ship carving a passage through the waters of the ocean and I’m left, tossed aside and wallowing in the wake of these monster roadsters.

If the trucks are the full-ahead battlewagons of the road, then the pickups are the destroyers - the greyhounds. With all the power and weight concentrated upfront, growling under the hood, the Dodge Ram badge acts like a ship's figurehead, butting and battering a way through. Diving from lane to lane, they spare no-one in the ruthless race to the front. Then come the family SUV’s, the occasional sports model, and if I’m lucky a classic Corvette or Mustang, their guttural engine note bringing back the spectre of Steve McQueen, scorching his rear wheels in Bullitt. But these are rare on the interstate, their drivers preferring to stick to the state highways and country roads. Next are saloon cars of all make, shape, size, colour and condition. And bringing up the rear, slow-moving farm wagons, listing crazily on worn-out suspensions, weighed down with produce or machinery. The drivers of these, stoic and resigned, have both hands firmly on the wheel, freebie baseball caps carrying the names of local wholesale suppliers worn high on their round, closely-cropped heads.

I’m on my way up to Silver City in New Mexico, passing El Paso on route. I’m making good time on the I-10, but need a comfort halt at a state truck stop. The facilities are new, kept clean by a uniformed attendant, who is presently sitting on the brick wall of a raised shrubbery while he directs an arcing stream of water from a bright yellow hose. A trucker of oriental origin approaches him and begins to mime the action of taking a drink from the end of the hose. Is this mute manoeuvre due to a lack of English or just an attempt to raise a smile? Whatever the reason, it fails to shift the expression of stony-faced, bored officialdom and the attendant silently points out a standpipe some twenty-five yards away. The driver bows in formal thanks and in a couple of minutes is back with two large plastic water containers that he fills under the tap. Thirsty work, I guess, driving a truck.

The city limits of El Paso start to appear twenty-five miles out from the centre of downtown. The interstate is flanked on both sides by the usual visual chaos of commercialism that marks the boundaries of most towns and cities in the United States. Gas stations, lodgings, retail units, diners, restaurants, bars, liquor stores, drive-in banks, automobile showrooms, truck part pit-stops, lube change and tire sales, thrift stores, souvenir shops, malls, laundromats, firework outlets: all on the strip and all out to grab attention in the cut-throat competition for customers. Although a blight in the urban landscape, with seemingly very few limits applied by local planners and environmentalists, these forests of neon lit shapes and names have come to symbolise this country and much that it stands for: the unabashed and unbridled pursuit of wealth and happiness as laid out in the Bill of Rights.

Forty minutes on and to the left is the centre of El Paso. The main point of entry to Juarez on the other side of the Rio Grande is marked by a giant flag in the green, white and red of Mexico, billowing slow and stately above the rooftops. The traffic has slowed to a crawl as it snakes its way forward on the elevated section of freeway that takes me through this part of the city. I pass massive junctions, roads flying, curving and diving in all directions above and below, like giant unravelled knots of concrete and reinforced steel, somehow managing to be beautiful and brutish at the same time. It takes concentration to drive here, but as I start to climb the slope that marks the northwestern city limits, the local traffic begins to fall away and the lanes become clearer.

Within twenty minutes I cross the state line and after ten days in Texas, the friendship state, I drive into New Mexico, land of enchantment.

Marfa my dear

2010-01-23T03:47:00.000-08:00

As I wait to check out of the motel, there is a couple ahead of me. The man, tall, skinny, greased black hair swept back off his face, is dressed in black tee shirt, jeans and careworn cowboy boots. His Aviators are pushed back onto his head while he puts a signature to the list of billable charges that have just chattered out of the printer. His companion, a woman of around the same age - late twenties by my reckoning – is telling the duty receptionist, Donna, that they’re heading back to San Francisco from attending the South by Southwest music festival in Austin. After detouring down here to take in Big Bend country they hope to make it home with just one more stop over, possibly Needles on the Arizona /California border. Without referring to a map, I know that leaves them some considerable way to go if they’re to do it before nightfall.

Twenty minutes later I’m on Highway 90, heading north towards Marfa. Today I’m moving on. I press the button to switch on the car radio:

One morning I woke up and I knew that you were gone.
A new day, a new way, I knew I should see it along.
Go your way, I'll go mine and carry on.

The sky is clearing and the night has gone out.
The sun, he come, the world is all full of light.
Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice but to carry on.

The road ahead is empty, stretching out as far as I can see. On mornings like this, with the sun picking out every detail in sharp golden relief, the sky bright, the air chilled and fresh, these are the days when it feels like I can drive forever, leaving all behind with only the future waiting for me someplace up ahead.

I cruise silently through Alpine and pass a train on the edge of town that is getting on for a mile long. Hauling imports in from the Pacific coast to destinations in the east, the freight containers are loaded onto flatbed wagons, the names of the shipping lines overwritten and reclaimed as their own by the nocturnal graffiti artists of the San Diego freight yards.

I take breakfast in Marfa at a small, comfortable place that looks like a regular house from the outside, with tables on the porch, a front yard, a gate and brick pathway. Inside, the homey theme continues; a kitchen to the rear with adjoining rooms laid out with mismatched tables and chairs, a sagging sofa, books on shelves to pick out and read, a rack of vintage clothing to buy. I order at the counter, fresh orange juice, pancakes with fruit and maple syrup, then take a block of wood with my order number etched into it and find a seat in the next room.

The food is some of the best I’ve had so far and I settle the check to the sound of ‘Marty Robbins Gunfighter Ballads’, the warped scratchy vinyl spinning at 33rpm on an old portable deck perched on the counter top. I leave with a slim-fit Fifties western style shirt with pearl buttons bought to celebrate the occasion, ‘The Streets of Laredo’ playing me out of the door.

The early morning town traffic soon drifts away at the perimeter and I find myself the only traveller on the road once again. It was on these flat grasslands, that in the Fifties, the location shots for the movie ‘Giant’ were filmed. Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, it has passed into folklore as being the last movie James Dean made before driving himself to death in his silver Porsche Spyder on September 30 1955, at the junction of Highway 46 and 41 in California. Dean was on his way to race meeting at Salinas airport, when on a downgrade approaching Cholame, estimated to be travelling at 85mph, he crashed head-on with a large Ford black and white coupe.

Recalling an iconic image of Dean, stretched out in the back of an open car, boots resting over the front seat, cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, gloves in hand with a brooding Hopper style gothic mansion in the middle distance on the horizontal prairie, I catch site of a building about three miles distant. No mansion this, but a small, square construction with a flat roof; nothing remarkable to set it apart, except it being the only building in view on this vast Texas ranchland.

As I pass, I get a flash of store windows, some kind of display and a name on the façade. I check the mirror before pulling onto the verge and turn the car around. I park and get out into the quiet stillness of this remote place, the only sound my boot heels crunching in the gravel. The type on the building reads ‘PRADA MARFA’. Through the plate glass window are women’s shoes and bags perched on plinths of varying size. Is this some kind of joke? To the side is a plaque mounted on a concrete column. This replica store is an art installation, conceived and built by a gallery in Marfa: inspired and all the more unexpected given its location.

Back on the road, I approach Van Horn, an untidy truck-stop town that sprawls either side of the junction where Texas Highway 90 joins Interstate 10. With the outer city limits approaching I come up behind a motorcycle and sidecar. As I close the gap I recognize the couple from the motel lobby earlier this morning. He leans back, legs out straight in the Harley riding style, red bandana whipping in the warm breeze; she sits upright in the open sidecar, one arm draped over the bike’s passenger seat, her hand resting flat against his back. It seems to me the most romantic of images, this couple, close and touching, otherwise silent except for the steady beat of the engine, eyes fixed on the forward pathway, the tarmac passing under their wheels on the westward trail home:

Where are you going now my love?
Where will you be tomorrow?
Will you bring me happiness?
Will you bring me sorrow?
Oh, the questions of a thousand dreams,
what you do and what you see,
Lover, can you talk to me?

Every picture tells a story, don't it?

2010-01-22T02:42:00.000-08:00

Time is unstoppable and incessant. We talk of past, present and future, but there is really only past and future. In the instant that we recognised ‘now’, marked by the blink of an eye or a finger click, it is already behind us.

To take a photograph is to record a fraction of time. In the instant the shutter closes, that moment is already history. Every picture taken is unique; an event guaranteed never to be repeated due to the irreversible progression of time. In a photograph time becomes visible, preserved to claim a place in eternity.

Each of us who has ever taken a photograph has done so, in part, to make sense of the passing of time in our lives. When we look at the pictures we have taken we impose sense and meaning on what could otherwise have been a succession of incomprehensible and chaotic moments, passing unrecorded and destined for oblivion.

What is it then that moves someone to press the button on what appears through the viewfinder in front of the camera? The answers to that are as endless as the millions of photographs taken around the world every second of every day. Every picture is the result of a desire by the taker to record what their eyes are seeing and preserve it. For me, it can be winter sunlight falling on a wall: a hotel stairwell: a car abandoned in the summer weeds: the back of a cab driver’s head; a man stretched out asleep on a window ledge; steam rising from a manhole cover: a bunch of balloons caught under a gate. But it is about more than what I see; it is what I feel. The act of picture taking is fulfilling a need. Without it I would not feel complete.

Photographs are a window to the mind and more significantly, the spirit and will of the photographer. They can be full of joy, melancholy, grief, wonder; every human emotion can be on view. And every picture tells a story, with each new viewer creating his or her own version of the tale that lies within. But the true story is that of the picture taker.

So it is, in search of new stories, that I come to accept Hilde’s invitation and climb the steps of the boardwalk in front of the Big Sky Gallery. An ‘open’ sign hangs in the window below a poster announcing an exhibition: ‘BIG BEND. A collection of photographs by James Vernon’. A tinkling bell announces my arrival, quickly silenced when the door slams shut behind me. Hilde is on the telephone, seated at a table at the back of the room. She waves in greeting, and then uses the same hand to beckon me over. Still talking, the phone tucked under her chin, she hands me a printout of the exhibits, nodding in answer to my silently mouthed ‘thank you’.

The twenty or so photographs arranged around the walls are all black and white. There was a time, not so long ago, when black and white was thought of as the only true medium for ‘serious’ photographs. Colour photography was regarded as a gaudy, brash and trashy; OK for the masses snapping away with their cheap Kodak’s, but not worthy of serious consideration by professionals and aesthetes. Then William Eggleston and his followers changed all that and blew away all that prejudice and stuffy nonsense, giving us a new art form with their colour prints. But despite this, or maybe because of it, black and white photographs retain a sense of gravity and depth: they’re the real thing in a tinted Technicolor world. They have a timeless quality about them, but one that inevitably places them somewhere in the past. It’s not by chance that film directors often depict past events in the stories they tell by switching from colour to black and white.

As I walk around I see the rear view of a man seated in the front of a vehicle, a Stetson on his head, his neck criss-crossed by deep lines from a lifetime spent working under a punishing sun. I see a freight train crossing flat grasslands under a black storm cloud, rain sweeping earthwards, blown sideways by the wind. I see the feet of a dancing couple, caught in the air, young and weightless, not yet grounded by age and responsibility, he in Wranglers and boots, she in white ankle socks and swirling skirt. I see a hawk in the instant it has taken flight from a wire fence, half of it already out of the frame, too quick even at 125th of a second. I see Hallie crossing the parking lot at the Stillwell Store, the sun overhead, beating down as she walks with her Old Testament staff past a child’s pedal car.

‘What do you think?’ Hilde is off the phone.

‘I like them. Does he do his own printing?’

‘Yes,’ Hilde replies, walking from behind her desk across the painted wooden floor.‘He’s got a place here in town… there’, she says, pointing out through the window, ‘that new place, across the railroad tracks. He’s set up a darkroom, as well studio space’. The building is a modern, single story, metal clad construction with a pitched roof, silver and shiny in the bright morning light. It looks like a warehouse on the moon.

‘Is he local? I mean, does James come from around here?’ I ask.

“No, he moved here from Chicago about ten years ago. He came down on an assignment for a magazine, fell in love with the light, the space and the folks around here, and decided he’d like to stick around’.

‘I can see why’, I say, casting my eyes around the walls, ‘ He’s got himself an interesting cast of characters living in a wonderful setting. Can’t miss with that combination’.

‘The talent helps a little’, Hilde says, turning to face me, a small frown combining with a half smile, a touch irritated by my last remark.

I laugh, ‘Yeah, I know. Trouble is you can never have enough of it. It’s not something that you can buy or acquire; need to be born with it, like perfect skin or blue eyes’.

‘But these days, given the money, those things can be fixed’, says Hilde, ‘so far at least surgery can’t implant talent, but just about anything else can be changed’.

‘Including a name’, I say, finding the sudden need to study the outstretched fingers of my right hand.

BRMC on the trail of Travis

2010-01-20T23:42:00.000-08:00

When Harry Dean Stanton, as Travis, came out of the desert with that red baseball cap pulled down tight on his head, dressed in a brown pin-stripe suit, dusty and hanging off him like a scarecrow, eyes blazing with fever staring straight ahead, walking like a wind-up doll along the ties of the railroad track, half crazy, driven on by a thought-dream of Natassja Kinski as Jane, turning around in her pink sweater with a look that could stop time itself and cause all who saw it to melt, it was here; somewhere close to where I now stand; somewhere between me and the blue distant hills, pale in the midday sun’s glare.

With Ry Cooder’s soundtrack playing in my head and echoing in my heart, I walk off the road for a way, the low scrub viciously clawing and scratching through the thin protection of my denim jeans. Some of the cactus is in spring flower, flaming bright red against the azure sky. I take photographs, knowing that I won’t capture it. Instead I stand, quite still, in the silence, my imagination empty of any picture except the one I’m seeing. The moment, remembered, will last longer than any photograph.

I catch up with the Harley riders at the gates of the park. They’re gathered in the parking lot the other side of the pay booth; dismounted and taking a break before setting out to explore the back roads and trails. I pay for a pass and get my welcome pack from the ranger, cheery and polite in her crisp uniform, pressed and creased along the regulation folds. I stick my receipt to the windscreen with the strip of sellotape provided and move on.

The day is heating up now, so I drive with the window open. Insects drift in and out, buzzing around the cabin, but with nothing to keep them, they soon move on. Buzzards ride the thermals overhead, scanning the ground for road kill or the remains of a fresh carcass left after the coyotes have had their fill. Occasionally I catch a mass of them in my path, pulling and tearing at broken bundles of bloody fur until I get so close I can’t miss, but then they take off, just high enough so they don’t get hit before settling about their work once more.

I drive down to Hot Springs Village, which lies at the bottom of a valley, hidden away in the verdant strip that plots the course of the Rio Grande. There’s not much more than a store, restrooms and an RV park. I stock up with water and move on. Taking my time, with frequent stops, I skirt the Chisos Mountains and head towards a wall of cliffs that tower like a huge fortress, the river a moat at its base. With the sun behind, the rock face is in deep, dark shadow, brooding and formidable. Even natural defences as seemingly indestructible as this are no match for the power of water; the Rio Grande has breached the battlements, cutting the deep groove that is the Santa Elena Canyon, mysterious and misty in the afternoon light.

Leaving the park on a rock-strewn dirt road, I traverse its twenty mile length cursing my decision, in fear of a blow-out with every jagged stone and criss-crossing stream bed. This hired Chrysler saloon is not built for such punishment. My head pounding from the concentration I finally reach a two-lane blacktop.

My third and last encounter with the bikers is in a resettled ghost town just off TX118 close to Study Butte. The abandoned settlement has been brought back from the dead by people looking to start anew, out here, surrounded by desert, three hundred miles from the nearest large city. Making good the crumbling adobe foundations, homes are rising on the brown slopes, knocked together with nails from recycled wood and corrugated iron; inspired and driven with the desire for an alternative lifestyle that is rooted in the hippy ideals of the sixties.

The Harleys are lined up in front of the general store like horses at a hitching post. The riders, spread out on benches and chairs along the length of the raised veranda, are tipping back bottles of ice-cold Bud to wash the dust from the their dry throats, the setting sun glinting on the brown glass. Here they sit, taking the last pleasures from what the day has left to offer. With this scene playing out to its close, I turn the car around and head up the 118 to the sound of a slide-guitar.

Rebels with a cause

2010-01-20T03:28:00.000-08:00

‘Farq for short. That’s what I should have said’, I think, as I step off the boardwalk and press the remote button on the key fob. The indicators blink twice as the car unlocks itself. I’m still grinning as I slide in behind the wheel. The joke belongs to an age that should be far behind me, but the juvenile is still alive and well in my life; except now I’m selective about when I choose to let it loose. This occasion has not been one of those times. I mean, I plan to see more of Hilde, at least once, later at the gallery and who knows when I might bump into her again someplace else? This town is a size where it‘s inevitable that if a person sticks around for a while, to meet someone only once is against all the odds.

I put the key in the ignition and start the engine. With my foot on the brake, I move the automatic shift from ‘park’ to ‘reverse’ and check over my right shoulder. I lift my foot and the car eases back silently into the road. Straightening up, I turn and check the mirror before I engage ‘drive’ and switch my foot to the accelerator.

Today my plan is to drive into Big Bend National Park. Due to its location, tucked away down here in southwest Texas, far from major interstate routes, it’s one of the least visited parks in the United States. This bears out: once I’m out of town I drive down there on an empty road.

It stays this way until I’ve done about twenty miles. Then, appearing in my rear-view mirror, I catch sight of blazing headlights; ten or twelve in number but still a way back. Motorcycles. And coming on at speed. For today is Saturday and this is the time when men and women answer the call of the pioneering spirit of yesteryear and get on the road to feel the wind blow through their hair. Hair that has grown white with life’s experience; allowed to grow long, swept back in a ponytail; or not shaved and worn as a full beard. With fringed black leather jackets, bright bandanas, cowboy chaps, they ride the trail like the James Gang in search of a train or the Clanton Boys heading into Tombstone for a showdown with the Earps. They’ve traded their horses for Harleys: old outlaws out on a spree; out for a spin.

They’re right behind me now: Caution, things seen in your mirror are closer than they appear. I indicate right, slow and pull over close to the verge. The leader sweeps past, raising a hand in thanks as he accelerates away. His gang follow; two, three, four-five-six, seven, eight-nine and then ten; chrome flashing, engines growling.

I watch them go as I pull back into my lane. Like a mirage, their shape breaks up and the road turns into a river, rippling in the heat as the day warms. Then they’re gone and I envy their easy maverick ways, their old-fashioned manners and the men’s deep voices that rumble from somewhere deep inside. For these are not the wild ones, not the devil’s angels riding out from hell to ravage and plunder. They come from the suburbs, every weekend, to chase the American dream before it’s swallowed up forever, buried under concrete, corporate conformity, apathy and federal meddling.

Long may they live. Long may they ride.

New morning

2010-01-19T09:32:00.000-08:00

I wake to the brightness of a new morning. The darkness of the previous night is gone, replaced by joyous birdsong. Returning to the Burnt Biscuit, I am ready to start the day with the finest breakfast Jerry has to offer. Finding the table in the window occupied, I take a seat in the rear, next to the counter.

From the conversations I catch around me, the other diners are mostly locals, fuelling up for the day ahead. The talk is accompanied by cutlery scraping on thick china plates, a whirring fan and Jerry’s low bass chuckle as he exchanges wise-cracks with a couple of working men while he refills their mugs with steaming black coffee. A country music station plays soft through two battered speakers positioned on a high shelf over an old bleached-out photograph of a Union Pacific freight train crossing a silver girder bridge. Funny how the reds always fade first, leaving mostly blue.

‘What’ll it be?’ asks Jerry, his large frame blocking out the florescent light that burns above me. I order two eggs, sunny side up, hash browns, two links and bacon, done burnt and crispy in the American way. Wheat toast will come on the side with jelly. That’s jam to me. ‘And to drink?’ adds Jerry, already in motion towards the counter. I ask for orange juice and coffee. Jerry brings these over directly then returns to set the griddle sizzling.

I look around the room, conscious that my accent has caused a ripple of curiosity, but not enough to raise a conversation directed at me. This I don’t mind. I’m more of a listener than a talker at this time of day, or at any time come to think of it. The younger of the two working men, a kid of around eighteen years dressed in jeans and t-shirt baring the word GIANT, is talking to a woman, fifteen years or so his senior. His words are delivered with the easy familiarity of knowing her well. He’s asking after the whereabouts of someone called Ed, who, it soon becomes clear, is his partner: both of them players in a local band. He needs to get in touch with Ed as they’re due to perform this weekend in some bar called Poison Ivy’s in Alpine.

The older guy stands up to go, reaches a sunburnt hand into his shirt pocket and brings out a couple of crumpled bills, a ten and a five, tossing them down amongst the wreckage of smeared plates and empty mugs. He tips the brim of his cowboy hat in the direction of the woman and in three steps is through the door into the sunlight outside. The kid looks up and pushes back his chair.

‘OK, we’re on around ten, but come early, we’ll catch up some more then’. Thanks Jerry, take care y’here’.

Jerry waves a free hand while the other tends my order, not stopping to look around as the screen door clatters shut. I flash a glance at the table opposite and intercept a look from two clear green eyes coming back my way. I nod a silent greeting.

‘Morning’, she replies, through a broad smile, the kind that lights up the whole face using every muscle, not just those around the mouth, ‘ looks like the start of a beautiful spring day’.

Before I can get out a reply Jerry presents my breakfast with a clatter of plates,

‘More coffee?’

‘Oh yes please’, I say sounding more English than ever.

‘I guess you’re not from Texas’, says the woman, taking a sip of iced water.

‘No, I’m from England’, I answer, somewhat unnecessarily to my mind, but American ears are not always as fine-tuned as those of us Brits when it comes to pinpointing foreign accents. I’ve frequently been identified as Australian, sometimes Canadian, once, a little bizarrely, as Icelandic. Jerry reappears with the glass coffee pot and refills my mug, the interruption giving me time to take in a wide, strong face, medium length light brown hair brushed back off the forehead, a white shirt open at the neck to reveal a discreet gold pendant, black slacks, flat shoes: the dress of a business woman ready for a day’s work.

‘What brings you to Marathon all the way from England?’ It’s a little off the usual tourist track’, she says, eyebrows raised as if to invite an answer.

‘Well, to be totally accurate, the real answer to that is Wim Wenders’, I say smiling, ‘ It was the opening scenes of his movie Paris Texas, shot around Big Bend, that first brought the area to my attention. And as I’m a complete sucker for dusty desert locations, here I am’.

‘Did you go up to Paris?’

‘No. I thought about it, but when I did some research I found out that they never actually filmed in Paris and to be honest, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot going on there. Maybe it would have been nice to get a shot of the town sign, you know, population 3,542 or whatever, but it would have meant quite a detour just for one photograph’.

‘So, what is it about the desert?’ she says, folding her paper napkin and smoothing it flat.

‘Oh, I guess it’s the contrast from my usual surroundings. The quiet. The isolation. And the space. It’s hard to find in the crowded little island I come from. I mean, yesterday I drove for thirty minutes and didn’t catch site of one vehicle in my rear view mirror. I just couldn’t do that at home, probably not even in the wilds of Scotland, not anymore’.

‘Well, if it’s isolation and space you want, you’ve come to the right place. Oh and by the way, I’m Hilde Cunningham,’ she says, offering her hand. ‘I run a gallery here in town. If you’re into photography drop by. I’m exhibiting work by a local photographer right now, you may find it interesting. Hang on, I’ve got a card here somewhere.

She lets go of my hand and flips open a leather wallet that lies on her table, pulling out a business card. I reach across and take it. Big Sky Galleries. Paintings, Prints,
Photographs. 110 Highway 90 West. Marathon. Texas.

‘Thanks, I’ll definitely call in. Oh and I’m Farquhar’, I say, placing my hand flat against my chest as if the gesture will help to convince myself, ‘Just call me Farquhar’.

Darkness at the edge of town

2010-01-18T05:27:00.000-08:00

The day is starting to fade. With everything beyond the dark shadows turning blood-red in the evening light, I take a slow walk back to the car. As I open the driver’s door the stored afternoon heat pours out into the cooler air like a blast from hell’s kitchen.

I head out of town across the railway tracks with no destination in mind. The road takes me past scattered dwellings, their yards littered with unwanted family possessions: fluorescent kid’s toys, broke-backed sofas, rusted vehicles with flat tyres sunken on busted springs, obsolete refrigerators with no doors. Three kids, in baggy raggedy clothes, shout out as they bounce a ball around a basketball court, brown weeds, running to seed, pushing up through cracks in the concrete. At the place where the buildings run out, a pale track leads to the town cemetery, neat and trimmed through the arch holding white wrought-iron gates. Then there’s just fenced-in fields of scrub and stunted trees. A windmill stands next to a water tank. With no wind to move them, the iron blades flash bars of reflected sunlight across the hood of the car and into my eyes as I drive.

A half a mile on I see a half-grown javelina - mistakenly called a wild pig by some –rooting around in the vegetation on the verge. It doesn’t look up as I coast past. I fear for its life out here within the range of humankind. The road runs out two miles ahead, leading me into a community park by a small lake of blue clear water. I park the car in the empty parking lot and walk past brown painted picnic tables and blackened barbecues to the water’s edge. Swallows swoop and dive, taking unseen insects on the wing. A white dog - some kind of crossbred miniature curly haired poodle, out of place in this harsh country setting - gives me a wide berth as it takes itself for a walk, sniffing out its territory.

The words on a stone monument mark this place as the site of a fort, built in the 1850’s to block the old Comanche War Trail into Mexico. Each spring, warriors would leave their hunting grounds on The Salt Plains in the Texas panhandle and travel south to reap a grim and bloody harvest, their trail a mile wide, beaten flat and shiny by the hooves of their painted ponies. The Comanche would return four months later, thirty miles to the west to avoid Mexican army blockades on the south bank of the Rio Grande. They came baring dripping trophies, driving hundreds of stolen horses before them and dragging their captives behind, destined for a life of human bondage as slaves.

Then the US Department of War erected a string of forts out here in the wilderness and the annual Comanche migration was ended forever. Thirty years later, in a canyon to the west of present day Amarillo, Quanah Parker, the last Comanche war chief, surrendered his people into the hands of the Federal authorities. To demonstrate their power, the army of the United States left the Comanche pony herd screaming and dying in the dust, their throats cut. Their fate sealed, warriors described as the best light cavalry the world led their families to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on foot.

Returning to town, I draw close to the spot where I’d seen the javelina. A pickup is drawn up in the brown grass at the side of the road, parked askew, the driver’s door left open wide. The gun rack in the rear of the cab is empty. As I draw alongside, I hear the pig-like squeal of a wounded animal and the thrashing sounds of pursuit in the undergrowth over the wire fence. My earlier fears for the wild creature have been realised and the hunter is moving in for the kill. The peace of the day’s closing is haunted by thoughts of painful death as I drive towards the darkness falling at the edge of town.

Lost and found

2010-01-17T03:36:00.000-08:00

That feeling in the late afternoon, when the sun is low and hot, burning my arm that's draped along the open car window as I blow into town, dust drifting across the railroad tracks, long shadows pointing into the east, that's when I know I'm somewhere else, lost in the vast spaces of the West. The dirt and gravel crunches under the weight of the tyres as I bring the journey to a pause, the car rocking gently to a stop as I pull on the handbrake. Silence is complete with a turn of the key that kills the engine. Then a dog barks, someplace in a far off yard, a warning to the new stranger in town. The hood pings as the metal, hot from the 350 miles that brought me here, starts to cool.

Time to get out, stretch, yawn, take a look around. Nothing much is moving in this place, except for the flag, the stars and bars, 'Old Glory', flapping from its pole outside the post office. I take off my hat and pass the back of my hand across a creased brow before tipping it back on with a flick of the wrist, pulling it low to make a shadow for my eyes.

I walk past some working pickups, parked and angled into the wooden sidewalk. The boards creak and moan as I step up and move toward the sign that says Shirley's Burnt Biscuit Bakery. The menu outside says, 'read before you enter'. I make sure this is done and pull open the screen door to pass into the darkness within. Before the door can slap shut behind me, the old guy with the red baseball cap who had been sitting outside follows me in. There's no need for greetings as he's already nodded hello, working a match from the corner of his mouth. It's still there when he asks 'What can I get you?', as he eases himself past me to take his place behind the counter. I order from memory and take a seat close to the window.

The chef, who I would later know as Jerry but never call him that, busies himself with my order, working fast, doing something that he'd done a million times for people like me that come in tired and in need of short time renewal, served up on a plate, hot and plentiful with a mug of coffee to wash it down. As Jerry chops, slices, spreads and pats, the griddle spitting into life, I stretch out and watch the dust falling through the sunlight's beams around the legs of the tables and chairs that surround me. Dust that had been sand blasted from the rocks of ages in the desert beyond and carried on the wayward wind to settle on the floor under my feet for a while, before a breeze through the open door, or some movement inside sweeps it up and carries it on till the very end of time itself. That's how I feel right now. As small as a speck, broken off from the world, to be taken wherever fate should decide.