Category Archives: Memories

The Road

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Navajo Motel, Roswell, NM
Navajo Motel, Roswell, NM

I dream of a different future which might just be possible only if I win a lottery. Or a semi-truck runs over us and a TV lawyer collects a big ol’ settlement.

A house. Built from scratch. In my home state. A meditation/de-stressing center where anyone can go to have some simple peace and quiet and be alone if they want to be or with others if they need community or a therapist or advisor if they need help.

I dream of book ends to my life; the first part of it was New Mexico, so let the last part be the same.

I first hit the road that is US70 when I was a day or two old. A block east to 70/North Main, a right on 70/Second, a left on Wyoming, a right on Juniper and there I was.

I hit the road long-haul when my uncle was killed in Oklahoma when I was six months old. We were due to go anyway for an extended family vacation; it was an extended family funeral with long-term repercussions for everyone. US70 was my first road, and it was often a route of sorrow. Visiting grandparents who were fading away. Watching my grandfather take his last breath after eight hours on US70. Visiting my grandmother after yet more hours on US70 as she, deep in Alzheimer’s, told me a story that made perfect sense to her, about her mother, that was mostly gibberish to me. Our last moments together.

Whether it was Roswell-Duncan or Duncan-Roswell, US70 was the thread that bound the two halves of our lives: Mom’s immediate family in Roswell, her extended and Dad’s family in Duncan. A road ran between them. I knew every spot on the road. An area just east of the Pecos River that I loved and thought of as “my” canyon. The Dairy Queen in Floydada is the halfway point of any trip. Gas stations. Shabby courthouses and dusty, shuttered downtowns every thirty miles in west Texas, ticking off the miles on the road. Vernon, Crowell, Paducah, Matador, Floydada, Plainview, Muleshoe, Farwell. We knew which restrooms were decent.

Dad would light a cigarette every 20 minutes. I’d try to roll down the window, he’d roll it up to a crack, and we’d breathe in the smoke and sigh relief when he put it out. Irritation would again mount as the next one was lit. He would get speeding tickets rather often around Matador, Texas. My sisters got the window seats and I was often squashed in the middle. I would kneel on the floorboard, lay my head on the seat, and sleep. Sometimes, there wasn’t as much cigarette smoke that way. It was like I was kneeling at an altar, the altar of US70, speeding along at 70 mph. With the speed limit often being 55, this would result in attention from the Texas Highway Patrol.

US70 is always two lanes through Texas. It took decades for the 90-mile stretch between Portales and Roswell to be expanded to four lanes. Now it’s smooth and wide and there’s no dangerous passing and the speed limit is 70 and people go 80 because there’s nothing out there. Derelict towns like Elida and Kenna, the Elkins bar, the abandoned schoolhouse from the 1920s, my canyon, the bridge over the Pecos which meant we were 10 miles from Roswell, either our home between 1957 or our destination from 1971.

When we moved from Roswell to Clovis along that road, my sister and I sang “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” over and over in the cab of the U-Haul while Dad was driving. He probably went a little insane and maybe smoked a little more. Another U-Haul along the road in 1974 took us to my 19 years, 10 months, 28 days, and 9 hours of exile in Oklahoma, a suffocating and hard experience for my teens and twenties that I still have difficulty with, for many, many reasons.

Now I use US70 often … going to work, shopping at Target, getting the car washed, going to Publix or Sonic or out to Mt. Juliet, or going into downtown … it’s all along US70. It’s not as mean a road or experience as taking that road to Oklahoma. It’s a kinder/gentler US70 in Tennessee, more benign. US70 West from Oklahoma to Roswell and Ruidoso was always a joy, a mounting excitement at going home. US70 East was always a hated road. It took me down from the Sacramento and Capitan mountains and ushered me back to ugly, flat west Texas and then to hated Oklahoma. US70 East here is just a trip to Kohl’s, US70 West takes us back home. A benign road. A central thread in life.

For my part, they could tear up eastbound 70 and make it one-way westbound only. It would always take me home and I’d never have to leave.

#EmptyThePews

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I posted this elsewhere and on the bird site first, but it also belongs here on 70West.

Why my pew has been empty since 1982: A long thread for anyone who may be interested, et al. Perhaps someone may relate or need to hear. Inspired by @C_Stroop and #EmptyThePews on Twitter.

It starts in 1975. I’m 12. A budding little gay boy. At the C. of the Naz., we get a spiffy little sermon, which runs like this: “Speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession!!!” Amens, claps, whistles, “Kill the Devil!”

Fast forward a week later. Someone in charge of our family’s spiritual development decides to follow info bestowed by the Holy Spirit Fairy, an entity which seems to act rather … impetuously. Or at least that was my experience with Him.

The Spirit has moved someone that we must immediately abandon the C. of the Naz., where, remember, I’ve just been told on the authority of the church into which I was born and raised that speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession.

[An aside: 12-year-old me had memorized the 1960 Church Manual so I could know how to perform weddings and funerals because … get this … I thought I would become a C. of the Naz. preacher.]

Given a choice about which church to attend would have been lovely. Alas, it was not to be. I was the young, stupid child who couldn’t possibly be trusted to know what was good for him, spiritually speaking. At best, a “baby Christian.” (These buzzwords sound familiar?)

Actually, after just one hour of being exposed to the new church’s … shall we say, bizarreness and cultish overtones … I’m confident I would have scurried back underneath the skirts of the mother church (of the Naz.) if I had a driver’s license and a car. But I didn’t.

So I wasn’t given a choice. Remember the previous sermon, supposedly delivered by a stern God to CotN Leaders possessed of “Utter Sanctification” and who are therefore qualified to speak on subjects Most Weighty: “Speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession!”

Again, I was 12 years old. Puberty was dawning. Teenage outrage, hatred of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, inflated sense of injustice, and general all-around questioning and boundary-pushing are imminent. I needed constancy. But the Spirit had spoken and must be obeyed.

The next Sunday, we don’t drive over to be with the sanctified who hate devilish tongue-speaking. Instead, we head straight for the new church, an Assembly of God knockoff/alleged “non-denominational.” “We’re going here from now on,” says Parental Dearest.

What happened the first Sunday at the new church to which we had been led by the Holy Spirit? Well, I’ll set the scene one more time: The previous week, the church of my birth told me speaking in tongues is evidence of demonic possession.

This week? FRICKIN’ HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD! JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH! POPE PAUL VI AND ALL THE SAINTS! AND DEAR GOD WHY ARE ALL THESE WOMEN IN EXPENSIVE ULTRASUEDE DRESSES RUNNING UP AND DOWN THE AISLES SCREAMING THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF???!!!!!

Then: The kicker. If I am to understand the main belief point through hours of gibberish, a complete lack of any catechism, no orderly service of any kind, no regular communion, and a multitude of other things, a central belief is this:

“If you do NOT speak in tongues, God is withholding His greatest blessing from you and therefore there is something wrong with you if you don’t immediately babble in tongues in ‘the presence of the Lord.'”

In other words, NOT speaking in tongues was evidence of God withholding his greatest gift from you & you were opening yourself up to … you guessed it, demonic possession. As soon as I hit 16, my pew began to be empty. By 18, only bribery could get me in it. So…bye!

It would take a long thread to describe coming out (yeah, the Spirit got involved there, too), getting away & being an adult in charge of myself & the joys of life since I got myself to #EmptyThePews. Thanks for the inspiration, @C_Stroop and thanks to everyone who read!

Sticky Seats to Sherman

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I used the road and some parallel ones once in 1975 to get from our house in Oklahoma to my aunt’s house in Sherman, TX. My cousins had been staying with us. Our grandparents, in their Ford Torino, took us to Sherman. We spent the night and came back to Duncan.

It was hot. Damn hot. There was no air conditioning. Our granddad would trade cars at the drop of a hat. But a/c was often not part of the deal. Whether in hot and humid Oklahoma or in hot and dry Roswell, there often was no a/c in any of the many cars he traded for.

My cousins, Jeff (my age, around 12) and Jamie (around 6) kept the windows open and sweated. My grandparents fussed at each other. She would ask a question, he would snap an answer, a short, sharp bark, almost like a command. His responses to her would often get like that. Either minor irritation or outright hostility, like in that baking car 100 miles along 70 East and down to Sherman. We arrived damp and 10 pounds lighter. The cousins were glad to get to their own rooms.

I slept in Jeff’s room. Jamie bugged us as usual. Jeff and I sometimes fought. Sometimes, as a little brother myself, I would side in solidarity with Jamie in his interminable war with big brother.

The seats were sticky. We wore shorts. T-shirts. Tennis shoes. I think we had comic books. My uncle was a manager of a Wacker’s five and dime (Texas/NM/CO/OK version of Woolworth). My aunt, my mother’s youngest sister, did many things. There was fun, but mainly heat and humidity.

Having just moved to the very humid land of the Cross Timbers from the very dry atmosphere of the High Mountain Desert lands of New Mexico, the mid-70s were a damp, dripping, mildewing, moldy, miserable, mess. We went to school in stiff new clothes to classrooms that didn’t have air conditioners. Just like my grandfather’s Ford Torino.

Once along the way, there might be a stop for a coke and a restroom break, but if there was, I don’t remember it. Maybe when we went south from 70 at Ardmore to Gainesville, TX, just across the Red River border, where we switched to US 82 to Sherman. Maybe.

I remember 70s chemical-smelling seats in the back, Jeff leaning out one window, me out the other, Jamie slumping over us in the middle.

140 miles. About two hours and 15 minutes. Roasting, baking, basting in our own juices. Granddad, you couldn’t find a car among the stock at Valley Chevrolet that was a used Ford with a/c? You love to haggle, why’d it have to be about white walls than climate control?

I tried my technique of kneeling in the floorboard and lying facedown on the seat. God knows the fumes I was breathing from that sticky plastic coating. We slept fitfully, started scraps of our own. I listened to the brothers and silently thanked an ostensibly higher power that I was a little brother by five and seven years to teen sisters with no little brother to fight with myself. Jeff and Jamie on Mom’s side of the family and Jeff and Mike on Dad’s warred constantly. Bruises were given to each other often.

Older and bigger, Jeff and I would bike away through the cemetery by their house leaving Jamie alone among the tombstones, panicking. I tried not to be too much of a snot, but then I was a bit of a snot as a little brother, so sometimes it was just fun.

One year, Granddad had surgery. Aunt Pat came to Duncan, picked up Mom and scooted back to 70 West to Roswell. For some reason lost in time, Jeff got to go. I had to stay with Jamie. He loved my dad, his Uncle Marion, just like every other kid. And Dad paid him plenty of attention, for reasons that would later become apparent. Then I found the sting of jealousy. I was a loner kid, happiest alone, but hey, I’m YOUR kid, Dad, he’s NOT. It reinforced my gratitude for not having a little brother. We fought some, made up. It was a long week. He had fun. Parts I enjoyed, parts were filled with injustice and indignation.

The surgery successfully passed, the sisters came home. Jeff got to go to the hospital and be the center of attention. Jamie left, I went back to lonerism. Reading a book. Being left alone. That was my shtick. There wasn’t room for cousins or constant play or parents. Me, a book, maybe a little hike in the backwoods pretending to be an army or marching band, waving a flag.

It might sound like I hated my cousins. Au contraire! I loved them and enjoyed getting together (and still would), but sometimes, when you’re a kid, you fight and love and hug and roll in the dirt and get in trouble and tease and troll the younger ones, get dismissed by the older ones. But all my cousins are well-beloved still.

But always, for whatever family reasons, there were sticky trips, with beloved cousins sweating as much or more than you, where the tarmac of US 70 West seemed to be taffy. Soft, gooey, surely sticking to the tires. The smell of asphalt in the summer of West Texas is an enduring memory. It’s used in Six Flags Over Texas and it bakes there too, creating a smell that is unforgettable.

Just as unforgettable as my grandparents’ plastic seats in their Ford Torino, running down the road, a torturous journey shared with my favorite cousins.