"Roots" Road Trip with my Daughter to Celebrate her Graduation from High School (June, 2002)

Day 1, Austin to Abilene, Texas.

Picked up rental car -- woo-hoo! Two hot chicks in a low, fast car -- our usual ride is a high wheel-base Explorer. Dropped off our two very confused and concerned Boston terriers with my best friend, then hit the road. Arrived in Brownwood at about 3:00 p.m., just in time to hit Underwood's Barbeque for ribs when the lunch line had died down. Consumed melting-from-the-bone, finger-licking ribs, heavenly cold cole slaw and potato salad, home-made warm yeast rolls, sweet ice tea -- if you ever find yourself in Texas, it is well worth even a four-hour detour to sample this legendary barbeque, thought by many to be the very best in our whole huge state! Made it to Abilene to my mother's house by early evening in light rain, and went to bed early, after enjoying seeing the latest of her artistic creations, her gorgeous quilts, and watching the long-range weather forecast on television.


Day 2, Abilene to the Panhandle.



Struck off early in light rain. Dazzled by the sight of miles and miles of tall white modernist windmills, installed high on a bluff outside Sweetwater to generate electricity. The landscape begins to change as one drives north and crosses the Llano Estacado. My 18-year-old daughter has never seen this landscape, and is struck immediately by the plain flat land with its red soil, the color of a flower pot, and the huge sky overhanging it. We outrun the rain by Lubbock, and head into a huge blue sky dotted with little puffy clouds. There are only three categories of sights in the Texas Panhandle. The first: flat, red dirt fields with their plowed rows (no crops to be seen this time of year), and melancholy, deserted, weathered or collapsing wooden farm houses. The second: huge, menacing grain elevators like something from a deChirico painting (that filled us with a comical and unexpected sense of dread). The third: geometric oil storage tanks and pump jacks, working endlessly on the horizon like possessed rocking horses ridden by ghostly, invisible children. The only variation on these three scenes is the inclusion or absence of a few cows or horses wandering around vacantly.

We arrived at Canyon, the first of three of my childhood hometowns we were to visit, in early afternoon, and unbidden tears filled my eyes as we passed first my old church and then the Mayberry-like town square with its brick court house and ubiquitous statue of a fallen Confederate soldier. I had not seen this little town since I was thirteen. I drove my daughter by the two rented houses in which we'd lived, and was relieved to see the brick streets where I once rode my bicycle were still, blessedly, largely unchanged. On our way out of town, we stopped to take quick photos under a three-story high concrete cowboy that once marked a roadside Stuckey's.

Then, we got back on the road to drive the fifty miles to my original and true home town. Our journey took us through Amarillo and down the faded ghost of what's left of grand old Route 66, with its now-abandoned 1930's Bonnie and Clyde tourist court hotels, the infamous Crystal Pistol strip club, and past a faded neon sign with a cowboy, advertising yet another run-down motel, that I had adored in childhood. We rolled up on the outskirts of Borger at mid-afternoon, and I was shocked to see the Pantex refinery stretching out on the horizon just as menacing and black and huge as at it had been in my childhood -- although it certainly seems to have been tamed a little and doesn't belch out the sky full of carbon black it did during my childhood. This is the refinery in which my poor maternal grandfather contracted black lung disease of the eyes after thirty years of backbreaking, filthy labor there. I said to Natasha, "There it is! There's that old son-of-a-bitch!" She laughed. She can't imagine, city girl that she is, the hard, dirty life of my father and uncles and grandfathers there in the oil fields. We stopped a minute to take photographs in front of the only sight Borger has to distinguish it from any of a hundred oil field boomtowns -- the "Chrome Dome" – a geodesic dome built from Buckminster Fuller's designs in the 1950's. And then, it was on to Main Street. I was not prepared for how totally "gone down" my old hometown has become. With the prices of oil and gas falling since the 'Seventies, more than half the town's population has departed. I began to weep almost immediately as I took my own daughter on the walk that had once been a Saturday morning ritual for my Daddy and me. The once enticing stores on Main Street are mostly empty storefronts now, used, it appears, only for occasional flea market sales or strange, evangelical church services. I found the ghost of the red sign with gilded letters that once marked my favorite dime store, M.E. Moses. I found what had been the town's florist and funeral home at the time of my father's death in 1963. I found the original home of my life-long love of the movies, the Morley Theater; judging by the faded posters, it's been closed now for over a decade. The barbershop next door is also long-deserted, and I photographed its tattered, striped awning, threads flapping in the wind. Then I had Natasha walk around the corner with me to the only tall building in my little hometown, the Hotel Borger. It had once been my childhood ambition to return to Borger rich and famous one day and stay just one night there. But the Hotel Borger is now a ruin, abandoned. Signs beside its once gorgeous Bauhaus-inspired front door warn trespassers to stay away. It's been decades since the floor lamps in its lobby lighted the film-noirish magnolia-flowered carpet of its interior. We returned to the car, parked in front of what was once Western Auto, and took a quick drive by the public library, my father's and my favorite Saturday morning haunt.

Then we drove the few blocks to the house that was my home from the age of eighteen months until I was ten. This was the main place I wanted my daughter to photograph me standing in front of on our entire journey. As soon as we turned onto my old street I could see we were in trouble; what had once been a poor-but-decent street populated by steadily employed, hard-working home-owners appears to now be populated by dangerous-looking characters (who probably operate illicit speed labs), and packs of feral, barking dogs! My old house, though obviously still inhabited, is much changed -- its righteous white clapboards have been replaced by some kind of manufactured bricks forming a fake facade, the whole thing's been painted rusty brown, and a huge sign warns that "trespassers will be shot"! Worst of all, the two trees my parents and grandparents lovingly nurtured through hard winters, tornados and dirt storms have been chopped down! Natasha was terrified, but agreed to take the photograph I wanted; she set her camera meter readings while safely inside the car, however. I stood in the gutter by the driveway while she quickly took the shot just as dogs began barking and frothing at us from a chicken-wire enclosure across the street. We jumped back into the car and sped off; as we left, I realized the wooden house number sign still hanging from the porch was the very sign my father had made in my early childhood.

We made a quick pass by the other home of my childhood, the apartment complex my father managed and in which we lived at the time of his death. The complex has now been taken over by the city and is a public housing project. I pointed out to Natasha where I learned to ride a bicycle, the playground where I broke my nose, and the unit in which we lived. We drove the few blocks past my now-abandoned elementary school, and on to my grandmother's house. It had fared a little better than the house that once was my parents'; its new tenants have installed a manufactured bay window and plastic siding. But my grandmother's beloved, exotic Mimosa tree has also been chopped down! I thought of all the little unmarked graves of beloved dogs in my grandmother's back yard.

By then it was 5:00 p.m. and Natasha was hungry and cranky, so we did the unthinkable -- we stopped for barbequed ribs for the second day in a row! The second most legendary barbeque in the whole state is cooked at a small place called Sutphen's, established in the 'Fifties by a couple who attended our church. Once again, we dined on phenomenal, fragrant, finger-sucking ribs, cole slaw and potato salad, and huge glasses of sweet tea. This delicious meal, perhaps, partially made up for the afternoon's travails to Natasha.

We got back on the road about an hour later to drive the twenty-seven miles to my father's hometown, Pampa, where we were to spend the night. On the way into town we stopped at the cemetery and visited the graves of my father and all my grandparents. Nobody's left, any more, in the Panhandle, to tend their graves. It saddened me, on Memorial Day, to see all the flags and flowers placed on the other graves by the descendents of their occupants. All I could do was clean the markers of my loved ones a little using spit and my fingertips. And then I lay down on each one of them and had a little conversation and cried a little. (During this interval, Natasha took a walk, reading the names and dates carved on nearby tombstones.) And then I did something I've been meaning to do for years: I took an empty McDonald's Coke cup from the car, and scratched out a handful of dirt from my father's grave. You see, there is no reason for me ever, ever to return to the Panhandle, now that I've made this pilgrimage with my younger child. But, like Dracula, I always wanted a handful of my native soil to take with me everywhere I go. So now I have it.

Then we drove down the road a little to one of the town's two motels; of course, the one in which we stayed was the one which had been the grandest in my childhood. The desk clerk told us we were just in time, that the old place is being closed next week for modernization and renovation. And so, I signed the register and paid for the room in cash as a dusty oil painting of a Spanish conquistador looked on; it is, after all the Grand Coronado Inn. A sign near the hotel's door informed us that movie stars, Presidents and all kinds of oil barons had stayed there. Natasha unlocked the door to our room and was not terribly impressed with its run-down decor and threadbare furnishings. "Kitsch" is not a word that approaches proper description of the place; as she observed, "This looks like a place a drunken rodeo cowboy would bring a whore." Damn straight. We turned the air conditioner on high, brought our luggage in, and triple-locked the door for the night.


Day 3: Pampa, Texas to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We rose early, grabbed a cup of drive-through coffee, and headed down the Woodie Guthrie Memorial Highway for Amarillo, Texas, where we would once again connect to what used to be Route 66. When we arrived in Amarillo, I decided to drive Natasha past the IHOP parking lot where the much-publicized killing of a Goth boy took place several years ago; he was cold-bloodedly run down by a Cadillac driven by a "normal" who was his classmate. Natasha took a photograph. We had a quick breakfast at a nearby cafe with a jukebox; I fed it a dollar and played some George Jones, including "He Stopped Loving Her Today."

We struck out to Cadillac Ranch (an art project of eccentric millionaire Stanley Marsh 3 -- a row of vintage Cadillacs buried nose-down in a vacant field with their tail fins jutting up), where we planned to take photographs. Cadillac Ranch is significant to me because twenty years ago this Labor Day, Natasha's father and I were married in front of the turquoise automobile. As we approached, we noticed there were a lot of cars parked at the roadside, and film production vans and booms visible in the distance. "Shit!" I opined. "The one day in all history when we planned to visit something *would* be going on!" We decided to brave the activity so that I could get a photo of Natasha in front of the site of her parents' marriage ceremony. When we got up to the cars we learned two documentaries were being shot, due to the fact that a hotel chain has subsidized repainting the buried Caddies. A woman stuck a microphone in my face and asked why we had come out to view the renovation and I explained my wedding story. Immediately the documentary makers and photographers were all over us, and Natasha and I patiently and graciously responded to their questions and signed releases in front of that turquoise automobile. Supposedly there was video somewhere on the web of the events that day.

This occurrence is only odd -- and synergistic -- due to the fact that on my wedding day, nearly twenty years ago, I emerged from the rented limousine to see another film crew and booms on the flat horizon as I made my bridal march down the dirt path. Unbeknownst to us, Stanley Marsh had notified a German television program about our wedding, and their footage was shown on German television, on a program equivalent to America's "That's Incredible!" It was a little strange and sad to have to keep repeating the statement that although Cadillac Ranch has endured and that my now grown-up daughter is the issue of the union formalized there, the marriage ended after seventeen years.

We took our photos, made our exit, and sped down the road toward the New Mexico state line. We were astounded to see a Stuckey's tourist trap still existed there, and at Natasha's insistence, we pulled over for a minute. Natasha was just as thrilled as I once was as a child at the sight of all those cheap, lurid tourist goods -- she joyfully prowled through the pecan logs, the plastic Indian dolls with papooses on their backs, the fake Indian moccasins and headdresses, the scorpions and rattle snake rattles encased in plastic. I purchased a New Mexico map to guide us through the rest of our journey, and she purchased a Route 66 coin purse and matching lighter, and we got back on the road.

We turned north at Clines Corners and began our ascent to northern New Mexico. My daughter had never seen this gorgeous landscape, and she was entranced as the blue forms on the distant horizon grew closer and closer and revealed themselves to be sure-enough mountains. The day was beautiful -- bright and clear. We made good time. I knew we were nearly in Santa Fe when we saw the first adobe houses about thirty minutes outside town.

By early afternoon I was guided by my (sound!) memory of the route from the highway to Santa Fe's ancient plaza, and we were soon checking in at Hotel St. Francis. This hotel, which was known as the De Vargas when I lived in Santa Fe twenty-odd years ago, was once the town's seedy and colorful hotel -- roughly equivalent, say, to the Chelsea -- where bohemian artists resided permanently and rock stars and Eurotrash stayed, and where I myself had honeymooned. When I lived in Santa Fe from 1973-80, people mainly visited the De Vargas to buy drugs. The hotel's now been restored to its previous World War I glory by new owners and has a decidedly European air to it; our lovely and comfortable third-floor room reminded me very much of a room in which I'd spent my time in Venice. The white lace curtained windows swung out on a glorious view of adobe rooftops and cooing pigeons. We freshened up a bit and went downstairs to the small, dark bar, where I ordered a Campari and soda for me and a Coke for Natasha, and then we sat for a few minutes on the hotel's veranda, basking in the bright sunshine, happy not to be driving, making plans for the afternoon.

Then we struck out on a tour of all the places I lived and worked in Santa Fe those many years ago. Santa Fe's a strange place in that the buildings themselves, many four hundred year-old adobes, never change -- just the human tenants and businesses are mutable. We found what had been the Plaza Woolworth's (where my first husband once worked in the soda fountain) now closed-up and vacant. The grocery store I once frequented is now a designer leather boutique! Only the high-end shops that specialize in Indian rugs and pottery and jewelry at exorbitant prices to tourists are still in their original locations and largely unchanged.

Santa Fe now has a Gap and a J.Crew store! I was shocked. When I lived in Santa Fe, it was a sleepy little village populated by a hundred tribes of Native Americans, the Spanish (not Mexican!) descendants of the region's conquistadores, and a motley crew of run-away bohemian Anglos -- beatniks, painters, writers, hippies -- who worked "real jobs" as infrequently as possible. Now I see, sadly, my favorite little town in the whole world is horribly gentrified. It's as if every thirty-year-old dot.com/high tech early-retired millionaire in the whole country's moved there and bought a three hundred year-old adobe casa in the mountains. Hardly anything now seems *real*! Who is buying all that design-y Italian furniture?! Who is shopping at Ann Taylor?! And how in heck did there get to be not one, but two, boutiques selling Japanese goods within walking distance of the Plaza?!

And so I had myself a sad little case of "you can't go home again" as we strolled the afternoon away and I pointed out to my daughter my charming old apartments, where my favorite bakery had stood, what had been the public library, and all the bars I'd once worked in. Santa Fe is still a beautiful place, architecturally and climate-wise, but it is forever changed now, and for the worse.

We returned to the St. Francis to get ready to meet my one old, old friend who still lives in Santa Fe. We sat on the veranda at sunset waiting for her and when she approached, I realized I would have known her anywhere, although I haven't seen her in twenty years and we only recently regained contact with each other -- thanks, e-mail! We ran into each others' arms like something from an old Clairol commercial, kissing and weeping. Bae is as little changed by the years as I hope I am -- I always called her Cleopatra in my mind. Like me, she still retains her waist-length hair, but the jet-black is now streaked with silver. (I just dye mine red to hide the ravages of time!) Her extraordinary amber eyes are still kohl-ringed, her fine, soft, tanned skin is still unlined, and she wore a fabulous vintage housedress and beaded Turkish slippers. Her wonderful "energy," also, is unchanged; she's still the funny, observant, calm, grounded Earth Mother she always was.

Bae drove us into the ski basin to the Japanese bathhouse we used to frequent twenty years ago -- usually at about midnight, when a group of us was roaring drunk on tannic red wine. It's a spa now and closes at 9:00 p.m., but, other than that, is largely unchanged. Poor Natasha gamely stripped with Bae and me, showered, and donned a raw cotton kimono, and then we tip-toed up a flight of steps to our own fenced, private tub -- roofless, so we could see the mountain stars as they came out twinkling. For the next hour, Bae and I fast-forwarded through twenty years of living, working and going to school, ex-husbands, and the childhoods of our four collective children. Natasha just enjoyed the tub and went out from time to time to take the heart-stopping cold plunge before returning to the heated water of the bath. Bae was good, I must say, and refrained from telling my daughter too many scandalous stories of her mother's wild, beautiful and misspent youth. I had to kick her underwater when she said, "Yeah, your mother was a wild woman and would get naked and roll around with anyone at the drop of a hat -- she didn't ever wear underwear!" To which Natasha drolly responded, "She *still* hardly ever wears underwear."

And then our blessed hour in the tub was up, and, worn out and sleepy, we dressed and drove back into town. Bae took us to the one noodle house that stays open late for steaming bowls of fragrant noodles. Then, exhausted from our long drive and time-traveling, Bae dropped Natasha and me back at our hotel, we crawled between clean white sheets, and went to sleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.


Day Four: Santa Fe, New Mexico

Oh, how I love to stay in hotels. I could spend my life in them, especially the old, genteel ones. I'd ordered room service the night before, and, right on cue at 7:30, a gentle knock at the door awakened me and a beautiful boy brought in a silver tray with white linens upon which a pot of coffee for me and a pot of tea for Natasha rested. Natasha struggled to an upright position, rubbing her eyes and pulling the bed sheets up around her as I signed the ticket. "Now," says I, "*This* is glamour."

We had our coffee and tea, showered, dressed, applied sunscreen, and struck out upon our second day's stroll. We went first to the post office, blessedly exactly where it *should* be and unchanged, to mail dozens of post cards to our friends all over the world. Then we visited St. Francis Cathedral, the 19th century French Romanesque church built by the French Bishop Lamy, title character of Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. I couldn't wait to show Natasha where I used to come in the early dark mornings to stand at the back of the church and hear Mass said before I went to work. (These were back in the days of my idealistic youth, when I still harbored some kind of religious beliefs and found comfort in the rituals, and the incense!, of the Church.) I took her to a side chapel to show her the scariest darned crucifix in the entire world with its life-sized figure of Christ, carved of wood, painted gruesomely realistically, complete with wounds, a human hair wig, and tortured, glassy eyes turned Heavenward. (He's missing several fingers, due to the fact that parishioners a couple of hundred years ago used to lop them off and burn them during times of cholera to ward off Evil.) I also pointed out to her the beautiful wooden statue of the Virgin high up in a niche over an equally beautiful and disturbing statue of Jesus, complete with crown of thorns and bound hands. I regaled Natasha with tales of the Virgin's wardrobe; the faithful parishioners *still* sew clothes for her, and her gown changes for every important religious holiday. It was sad our visit didn't coincide with Corpus Christi, the nearest date upon which she'd be carried through the streets of Santa Fe on a pallet decorated with flowers, accompanied by altar boys bearing candles and banners, and flanked by the Native American parishioners beating their drums. I related the legend that this statue of the Virgin has gold undergarments, and that her lovely, flowing brown curly hair was donated by the most beautiful and pious of the Spanish girls who inhabited Santa Fe two hundred years ago. I told Natasha this Virgin is called Virgen Conquistadora by the locals, and how the priests don't like this. They say, "Finish it! You can call her that as long as you say Virgen Conquistadora de los Carazons y los Almas." (Of the hearts and souls.) Natasha and I dropped coins into the poor box and lit candles there in the chapel. I don't know what Natasha's prayer was for, but mine was one of thanks, to have lived so long to have returned to this chapel with my daughter.

Next, we went next door to Loretto Chapel, with its "miraculous" wooden staircase. It's another French Franciscan church and modeled after Ste. Chapelle in Paris -- very French and white, like a wedding cake, compared to St. Francis Cathedral, which is darker and more like Notre Dame. I think Loretto's used these days only when novices are taking their vows. Natasha really liked the gilded plaster 19th century Stations of the Cross statues in niches down the length of the chapel. Legend has it that neither the architect nor the nuns realized until the chapel was nearing completion that there was no way to build a staircase to the choir loft inside the stone church, and that a lowly ladder would have to be used instead. Then, a young itinerant carpenter showed up, and constructed a spiral staircase that fit perfectly; it contained not a single nail. Its pieces were so ingeniously engineered that it held itself together solely with pegs and gravity. The day arrived when the nuns were to pay the agreed-upon fee to the mysterious itinerant carpenter, yet he never appeared to collect his payment. Opinions differ as to whether the Carpenter was Jesus himself, or his earthly father, St. Joseph.

Having done our spiritual duties, we hiked up Canyon Road. When I lived in Santa Fe, it was home mainly to not-too-serious "artists," mainly former WWII GI's who'd settled there in the 'Fifties as beatniks and liked to fart around with art supplies and hire attractive female life models to pose for them. You know -- like Gene Kelly in _American in Paris_ -- and all of these old satyrs thought they were Picasso. None of them really expected to live off their art, and to say they ran "art galleries" would really be too strong of a term for their sloppy, ad-hoc displays. If some gullible tourist gave them $50 for a sloppy oil painting of picturesque Indians they called it a good week. Times have changed. Canyon Road is now "real" galleries from one end to the other -- multi-thousand dollar (bad!) bronze statues by people who went to Art School now dot the narrow, nearly impassable street. Four-star restaurants replace what used to be little better than saloons where one could while away the afternoon drinking sangria or tequila shots. After a few blocks, Natasha queried, "Remind me why we are here?" and I had to agree and laugh. We turned left on the next connecting street we passed, and headed back to the Plaza. On our way we passed the magnificent four-hundred-year-old adobe house whose basement I once inhabited when I was just the age my daughter is now -- unchanged and beautiful as ever.

Now, I must admit here a terrible, shocking aspect of my character. I love to shop -- browse, window shop. I'm not as bad as, say, Patsy, on "Absolutely Fabulous" -- with whom I am sometimes unflatteringly compared -- but I'll say this: I've been all over the world and my favorite way to soak in the culture of a country is not, as one might expect, in art galleries and museums, but, instead, by shopping the local scene. And I'm a very snotty shopper in my own way. No designer labels or status logos for me, thank you! Just take me to the funkiest, low-down places the locals shop, the hard-core, scary flea markets and bazaars, and I'm ecstatic. My daughter has inherited this genetic trait from me, so we agreed that the best use of the rest of our day would be to go first to the bank to cash in some traveler's checks, and then proceed to SHOP. Which we did.

We went first to a place I used to adore. It's a gift shop called Doodlet's, and it's in the same space it's been in since the 'Forties. In my day, it was run by a crotchety, huge, ancient, long-white-braids, dirndl-wearing Bavarian matriarch, Frau Ruthling. Now her elderly daughter runs the place. Natasha and I shopped in ecstasy for the small, kitschy items so near and dear to our hearts. For $20 US I left with a pin of the Sacred Heart, a tin crucifix, a small print of Anima Sola (my personal symbol -- a long-haired, manacled woman, burning in Purgatory), an Anima Sola floaty pen, and a sparkly modular plastic 'Sixties heart ring. Natasha fared equally well: among other things, she picked up a rubber heart with nails driven through it. Natasha was eager to shop for jewelry, beads and Mexican tin, so we got into the car and I drove her out to the most hard-core Mexican kitsch place in Santa Fe, Jackalope. (A jackalope is the mythical animal resulting from the union one full-moon-night of a jack rabbit and an antelope -- it's said to sing with the haunting human voice of a siren when the moon is full.) This turned out to be a brilliant idea. Natasha spent about $30 US and left with, among other things, two strings of turquoise heishi, a string of fresh-water pearls, and a Dia de Los Muertos mobile. I fared equally well, acquiring for $40 US a large Mexican tin triptych mirror, and a Tolaveras ceramic cross.

Having had such great luck shopping, we turned our sights toward making our one true cultural foray while in Santa Fe, the incredible Folk Art Museum. We spent a couple of hours drooling over the museum's phenomenal collections of every toy ever known to mankind made everywhere in the world. The museum was nearly empty, so we had it to ourselves and could make all the wisecracks and giggle all we wanted to without being overheard. My most favorite things: the 19th Century French paper theaters, once sold inexpensively like a set of paper dolls, for children to assemble and play with at home. My very favorite had the name "Ambigu" and pictured women in a Turkish harem. My second favorite thing was a strange installation of dolls in a doll house; a series of Mexican tourist dolls waited upon a small plastic Anglo baby doll, (obviously) sick in a big iron doll bed, with a small toy doll of its own beside it to comfort it. A miniature religious print of an angel hung over the bed. One of the Mexican dolls stood beside a basin in which a piece of toast soaked in water. It was a scene equaled only by Edward Gorey in its piquancy, and I cannot *wait* to start on a drawing of this subject. Natasha was much struck by the terrifying wax dolls, and by a strong Mexican mermaid wrestling a shark -- she was installed in a scene with other ceramic mermaids greeting sailors as they sailed by in antique toy boats. If any of you finds yourself in Santa Fe, this is my "cultural" recommendation: skip the absurd, chi-chi galleries of Canyon Road and the musty, rusty Palace of the Governors. Head straight to the Folk Art Museum, and the Wheelwright Native American Museum, both in the same complex out Old Santa Fe Trail. You will not be disappointed in the museums' holdings, and they sit amid beautiful mountains which still house a Franciscan monastery. If you are very, very lucky and can arrive at Vespers, you'll hear the songs of the monks drifting down.

So, after a hard day of shopping, we returned to our hotel to shower and get ready to meet Bae for dinner. Bae and I had a hard time deciding where to dine, since both of us had been poor hippie girls "back in the day" and certainly not able to sample Santa Fe's four- and five-star restaurants then. Eventually we settled on a place that's been run by the same family for sixty years -- upscale, but not annoying. Bae arrived at 7:00 p.m., and the three of us walked the few blocks from the hotel to Sena Plaza, where we enjoyed margaritas (straight up, shaken over ice and strained, as is the Santa Fe tradition) and a wonderful meal of blue corn enchiladas and green chile and posole. On our way out I pointed out the second floor office in Sena Plaza where the law firm I worked for was then housed, and regaled Natasha with tales of La Llorana, the weeping woman who searches the huge old rambling casa for her lost baby. (I used to hate to be the last one left at work in the evenings, because I often thought I heard her cries and glimpsed her shrouded form in the shadows of the courtyard.)

Then, a little tipsy and giggling, we headed to the grand old La Fonda Hotel, where I was day bartender for a time, waiting on customers such as Walter Matthau, the brothers Coppola, Joni Mitchell, Rock Hudson, etc., etc. The La Fonda is a grand old war-horse, and has a gothic sense of timelessness about it -- like the hotel in The Shining. Nothing ever changes here. A hundred winters with fires burning in the fireplaces have totally smoked-up the hotel's interior, but all the original 1920's murals and frescoes of Flamenco dancers, bullfighters, Kachinas, etc., are still intact. I was happy to see that none of the original folk-art painted flower decorations on the hotel's interior hallways has been obliterated. We took the ancient elevator up to the fifth floor and emerged at La Fonda's rooftop bar, just in time to reminisce a little more and drink snifters of Napoleon brandy as the fiery sun sank below the horizon and the evening turned cool. It's beautiful up there, with the whole adobe village of original Santa Fe and its twinkling lights spread out below you.

Eventually we returned to our hotel so that Bae could get up in time to go to work the next morning -- she's a conservator of photography with one of the local museums. Natasha was exhausted and fell into bed. I felt restless and locked my daughter in the room and went on a solitary moonlit prowl to the Plaza, by then quiet and deserted. A million memories flooded over me as I walked. It's funny, how memory resides so completely in my nose. Santa Fe, to me, is the smell of cedar and sage, of smoke coming from ancient adobe fireplaces. It's where, probably, I spent the most vibrant and happiest days of my youth.

Eventually I decided I could sleep, but I stopped first at the hotel's dark and intimate bar for the day's final cup of coffee. Outside, on the veranda, I overhear the conversations of a new generation of kids from all over the U.S. who've arrived at Mecca Santa Fe just in the past few months. The girls, who are about Natasha's age, wear sari skirts and midriff tops, showing off tattoos; they have dred locks or tiny rows of corn-row braids. The snatches of conversation I catch betray that they, like Bae and me thirty years ago, have come to Santa Fe to escape perceived or real restrictive life-styles in far-removed locations. Poor little sweeties. They'll slave at tourism-related service jobs a few months, share a tiny, over-priced apartment with five others, and, hopefully, come to their senses and return to college. Bae and I weren't such quick studies; it took us many more years to build up a resistance to Santa Fe's seductive and fatal charms. But, I suppose, the two of us have turned out okay, considering our detours.


Day Five: Santa Fe to San Angelo, Texas.

The gentle knock of yet another beautiful boy awakes us and we start our day, once again, with room service coffee and tea. We shower and dress and start to get our stuff together, since we'll be checking out soon. Since this day promises to be a little unpredictable, we head off for breakfast at the French bakery located in La Fonda's ground floor. This was the place I stopped by in the morning for coffee between Mass and going to work in the law firm for years. All my French friends spent stints working there, and it was a virtual home base for me. Nothing has changed, except, possibly, the Provencal fabric that makes up the window curtains. The fireplace is still there, as are the enigmatic, empty nichos for invisible or kidnapped santos. We ate warm croissants and drank more coffee among the locals who still seem to congregate there to read morning papers before starting their days. Our waitress told me I looked like "the married woman in The Tao of Steve, only prettier. You know, short bangs, long hair." This reference was completely lost on me. I like to think I look a little like the lovechild of Bettie Page and Loretta Lynn.

We'd arranged to join Bae at her work to meet her boyfriend and hook up to go to the Tesuque flea market before we left town. We checked out of the hotel and drove up to the institute where Bae works in the ski basin -- marvelous modernist mansion, donated by some rich benefactor to the non-profit organization. Natasha took the view camera and busied herself making scenic shots of the mountains while Bae introduced me to some of her co-workers. We then tracked down her new love, a co-worker with whom she's just moved in -- at his country house. She had warned me that Marcus was handsome, but, man! I didn't know physicists ever came in that kind of packaging! (Like me, the marriage that produced Bae's two daughters ended two years ago, but bitterly, in Bae's case. Her Cleveland architect ex-husband retains primary custody of the children, based upon his superior earning power. So it's good, at menopause, that Bae has this sweet new love to console her at least a little bit.) Marcus has long, soft sandy locks pulled back into a pony-tail, green eyes, and the legs of a runner --he's wearing shorts. He's polite, attentive and grave, but has a twinkle to his eyes. He's twelve years younger than Bae. Good on her! I am so happy for them. She confided last night that she tells him all the time he looks as if he is covered in honey -- and it's obvious he's crazy for her.

So Bae and I retrieve Natasha from her photographing and get in the rental car and head out past the glorious Santa Fe Opera amphitheater to the Tesuque Flea Market, which Bae promises is exactly my kind of shopping. She's right! Immediately I score the silver Zuni cuff bracelet I coveted (priced at $100 on the Plaza) for $28, a simple, silver bezel-set turquoise ring for $10, and tiny turquoise and silver studs for $2. Bae wants to show me the place where she and Marcus recently purchased rugs for his country home, so we trudge down gravel aisles between the vendors' tents. She takes me to Omar's booth, festooned with carpets and tapestries from Turkey, India and the Middle East. I'm in heaven. My Gypsy nomad enzymes are all a-titter. I could stay there forever! But, alas! A magic carpet is not on my current shopping list, so I soon set off by myself to swoon over antique wooden blocks for batik printing, African sandals, colorful ceramic basins from Mexico, and a world of other treasures. When I next catch sight of Natasha, she's purchasing an incredible fuchsia sarong with block-printed cranes on it. We drink lemonade sold by a vendor with big glass jars full of colorful liquids -- it's a blindingly white sunny day in the high altitudes. Bae has only about an hour to spare, so we regretfully soon cut short our shopping expedition to deliver her back to her work. Many hugs and kisses are exchanged before Natasha and I consult the map and head out of Santa Fe. It has been so good to see Bae after these twenty years; both of us remark how it seems only days have passed. She promises to visit us in Austin soon, and we promise to return to Santa Fe during the snowy winter season.

By a little after noon we are back on the road. Good-bye, mountains! Good-bye, adobe architecture! I tell Natasha to turn around and take one last fond look back for me. I can't stand to do it myself.

And then, the heart-breaking, back-breaking long journey back to Austin begins. Natasha confides immediately that she is beginning to get homesick for her own bed, and she wants me to hurry, to drive straight through the night so that we get all the way home in one day. She calculates different possible routes. I'm thinking to myself that it's impossible, no matter how she figures it. I'm thinking to myself, I'm too old, too tired, and my night vision is too poor to chance this. I'm thinking, I'll need to smoke and pee, she'll go to sleep on me once the sun goes down. But, aloud I say, "Well, I'll *try*." The trip back home's a blur, as return journeys always are, with their sad, anti-climactic quality. There's no anticipation left. There's just drudgery, and hundreds of tedious slow miles to drive, once the vacation's over.

We took the Roswell route, which provided at least a few moments’ comic relief, with all its alien-motif billboards, restaurants and other advertising. At nightfall I tanked up on gas and downed a cup of coffee at Big Spring, Texas, psyching myself up to drive all night without stopping again. As I predicted, Natasha began to fight her impulse to drop off to sleep once it was truly dark. We'd listened to every single CD we brought along on our journey, and the car's radio brought in only static. So, once again, I put on my favorite Nine Inch Nails. Then the night turned black and eerie -- like driving on a lost highway -- no other cars, just the safety stripes on the road illuminated by the car's headlights. Natasha dozed. The car rolled along. We passed an enigmatic sign which read, "Cannibal Draw."

I love road trips for all the road signs you see along the way -- all the names of streets you'll never traverse, all the names of towns you'll never visit. Since I didn't have Natasha to talk to any longer to stay awake, I decided to try thinking. These are the things I thought about:

1. Bae. Bae must be the reason I know about Chock Full of Nuts coffee. How the hell else would a girl from Texas know about Chock Full of Nuts? It's a New York Thing. Thank God for Bae. Without her, I'd never know about a lot of things -- what a bris is, for instance.
2. Natasha. I love how at home she is in her own body. She was definitely the wet dream of the Northern New Mexico low-riding vatos, with her Sophia Loren body and curly long flowing hair and bright green eyes. Coyote ("co-yo-TAY"), they yelled. That's what they used to call me, too, at her age. Coyote. A term that implies a maybe-stuck-up, hot, part-Anglo Latin chick. Of course, they don't literally *call you* that. Coyote is something boys scream out the window of customized cars, accompanied by whoops of aie-yi-yi!!! I'm so glad I had the chance to take this road trip with her, just the two of us. Things I've recently learned about my daughter: she prefers to consume three square meals a day, at a regimented time, over snacking spur-of- the-moment when hunger strikes. She prefers to sleep in her own bed, rather than a strange one, unlike her old mother. She's fonder of things that are familiar than things that are unfamiliar --also unlike her old mother. She misses her friends.
3. I definitely need to get a boyfriend. Last night I had a weird dream about detached-from-man, cartoon-character penises, not bloody or implying previous Lorena Bobbitt violence, with little smiley mouths on their heads and no eyes or noses, like friendly skinny water balloons or large jelly beans. They were in a glass jar, and you could buy them. They were so cute, with their smiling mouths! Doctor Freud! Calling Doctor Freud! Could this just mean I miss my vibrator, discretely left back home in Austin?
4. I *have* driven this god-forsaken route before. Twenty some-odd years ago I drove the female love-of-my-life back down this road to Texas, to the truck stop cafe where her mother worked in her old hometown. My then lady-love had moved from Texas to Santa Fe to live with me. We were going to be openly "a couple." But she couldn't stand to break her mother's heart over her sexuality. And so I delivered her back to Texas. And then I drove most of the way back to Santa Fe in tears.

I continued to think, and I continued to drive mindlessly. At about midnight, I summonsed Natasha from her napping and told her we had to stop for the night. We were then approaching San Angelo. We passed a Denny's, where we stopped and had breakfast at midnight, and then I drug my tired old ass back into the car and down the road to a nearby Motel Six. We lugged our stuff in, I left a wake-up call for 7a.m., and both of us crashed instantly.


Day Six: San Angelo to Austin, Texas.

Homecoming day! I get to see my doggies again! I get to get out of the car! My ass gets to wake up again, and my poor knees can uncramp once I unfold my long legs for good!

We got on the road at 7:00 a.m. and struck out on a beautiful, quiet clear morning. I set the cruise control at three miles above the 75 mile- per-hour speed limit, and we made great time. About an hour outside of Austin we began to notice droves of Harley drivers on the roads – a rally, evidently. And then -- thank you, Jesus! -- the sign that announced we had finally arrived inside Austin's city limits. I confided to Natasha that the only time I pray is when embarking on air plane flights or starting out on road trips, and that I was indeed sincerely thanking sweet little baby Jesus, not big, bloody, guilt-inducing Jesus, for bringing the two of us back home safely.

By noon we were all the way, all the way, all they way home. By 5:00 p.m., I'd picked up the dogs, returned the rental car, been to the grocery store, dropped off and picked up the photographs and washed the dirty road trip clothes.

We covered a lot of ground in six days, and I had a plethora of thoughts and sensations, as you see from my accounts. I guess I'm glad to be home. I don't know, though. I really love the freedom of traveling, the invisibility of being "unknown" and the comfort that allows. I like traveling, as an introvert. I have no identity. No one knows me, no one tries to speak to me. It's a way to perfect the "aesthetic of 'lone,'" I suppose.