My sister is still okay with visitors, and so I’m off again.
Same deal as before: two days down, because why push it, and then the weirdly groovy megalopolis of Austin in the boiling, godawful heat… There’s a new automated toll road on the north side of town, too. I never saw how to pay the 40 cents and didn’t bother last time, but I somehow got a $6 ticket anyway (robot cameras?) that the car rental agency used my credit card to pay without even asking me. Pretty good racket my former countrymen have going there!
Speaking of which, I do dig my U.T. hat. Texas is my alma mater, after all, and I actually got choked up walking around the University Co-op, all awash in memories. They sell virtually everything you can pick up and carry there, all University of Texas Longhorn-branded. There’s even a Longhorn sink strainer. And orange U.T. guitars! Oog.
Besides the huge and overwhelming business of my sister, revisiting the land of my birth after such a long time was quite the head-slapping experience for me. I could do without the mania for paving it over, but you can’t tell Texans what to do. (That may be why Texas governors like to run for president, because they think they already are.)
On this trip as on the last, however, I’m intentionally bypassing my one-time home of Abilene, despite the fine reminiscences of old friend and commenter Ken W. While life seemed normal enough from my teenaged perspective, I later realized just how brutally repressive it was. (Duh!) There’s a certain pride in overcoming the mindset, but still. So instead of contributing to the local tax base, I’m spending the night in nearby Sweetwater. Plenty of cultural repression in that neck o’ the woods as well—I felt the cop-fear driving through last month with New Mexico plates—but it’s smaller, has a nicer name, and the Best Western costs 20 bucks less. Yee-haw!
But Austin is my real home town in many ways, a place where I can be absorbed without losing my integrity. All the years we lived in Maryland, I always felt like “the guy from Texas.” And yet I can’t see myself living in Austin again. TOO HOT, of course, and massively urbanized, promulgating the usual illusions. Now I live in New Mexico, where the terrible beauty of Taos reminds me even more than what’s happening to my sister that we are not of this Earth. Where we sojourn may not ultimately matter, then—imagine that!
So with a somewhat lighter heart and more compassion (it is fervently to be hoped), I shortly hit the road to jump back in the pond before it’s drained. Hello and goodbye, perhaps, and on to new horizons in the time that I have left…
Watch for videos and photos from the trip. There’s plenty of adventure to go around.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Safe trip, John……it’s hot as hhelll out there !!!!!! and here…..and everywhere !!
Well, it’s not hot here, dang it. In the low 80s, dry and breezy. But thank you very much!
I have the oddest feeling that I shouldn’t be going this time. I think that comes from what I really don’t want to face (again) but absolutely must. In any case, I’m going, so we shall see.
You forgot to say….(Or at least I kept expecting it…..)
“HOOK ‘EM HORNS” … as would ANY proud Texan or even ‘Ex-Texan’ – if there IS such a thing……or as the other bumper stickers say….”Don’t Mess with Texas”!! I have relatives in Round Rock just North of Austin…and a cousin who just retired from the Texas DPS…(Highway Patrol) He was actually assigned to governor security when Bush was Governor…..has some GREAT stories to tell about his Faux Paux’s….HA! But I will save those for another time….nothing like peeing off the back porch and setting off the burglar alarm at the governor’s mansion……Oh well….what did you expect? HA – Well – I will pray for your sister, and glad you get another trip to visit with her….and I will look forward to the photo’s on the trip home!! (Perhaps from the Hondo, Capitan, Lincoln areas of New Mexico ??….just sayin’ ?!? hehehe) Regardless…have a safe journey – ‘Space Fan’….(from my favorite radio program – Hearts of Space – Great night time traveling music in the desert!)
Hi Steve!
Thanks for the good thoughts. I’ll have plenty to say, and maybe some good photos. As for the route back this time, I haven’t decided, but I won’t bother driving from Austin to Llano.
I hope you have a safe trip, and as for those toll roads, well, I just don’t use them. I’m old school Austin, and they just tick me off. The travel writer here blogged about the toll charges she’s been running into when in rental cars. Don’t know if it’ll help you, but here it is just in case http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/andersmeanders/entries/2010/07/07/cashless_toll_roads_encourage.html?cxntfid=blogs_anders_meanders. And compared to what she’s run into in Dallas and Denver it sounds like your $6 was a bargain!
Geez, I’ll have to do some research. That toll road (US 183) funnels me right down into where I want to be, dang it. If you’re still here, Mary, what’s the best way to get to the south side of Town Lake (Second St., Barton Springs Rd., etc.) if I’m coming in on US 183 from Lampasas? The old road is freaking awful w/ traffic and red lights… (always was, too!
I associate toll roads with lesser states (like Oklahoma!). Things may have changed a mite since the ’51 Ford and me made that trip to Austin in ’62 to check out the campus.
I’m an Okie and I AGREE KEN!!! Just another way to Gouge and Screw the citizens…..the roads have LONG been paid for…..but as long as nobody complains TOO loudly….keep making us pay!
When you get close, turn the radio to 90.5. KUT (the University radio station) is playing music from the ’70s this week, everyone who played the Armadillo World Headquarters. GREAT fun!
Well, *I* played Armadillo World Headquarters with John Clay and the Lost Austin Band one cold winter’s night sometime in the ’70s! Wonder if the host has some John Clay songs?
But thanks for the tip! I certainly will have a listen..