If you read Cormac McCarthy’s book No Country for Old Men and recently saw the movie by the same name, the propensity to compare the two mediums is unavoidable. Is there a faulty medium for this story or can both capture the bluntness of beating hearts on their last look at why? McCarthy, the master novelist, minimally words the novel allowing the reader imagination to pummel through their own nest of psychological glues to get at what McCarthy so often gets to: ultimately our culture fails when the tick of nature in all of us turns animal.
Masters too, the Coen brothers take, with the spin of the actors and a Marfan landscape, suspend us in the tragedy of the human race. Their celluloid trajectory lights up our brains making all things familiar and that verisimilitude sets up the edgy violence that scrapes against our comfort in culture.
Three of the main characters are Viet Nam vets still physically prime in this 1980 set story. They know how to saw gun barrels, quick load clips and doctor themselves - and there’s a lot of it.
In the movie, Llewelyn Moss, played by the young Nick Nolte type character Josh Brolin, is a welder who lives in a trailer at the Desert Air in Sanderson, Texas. He discovers a drug deal gone bad while hunting Antelope and finds two million cash under a mesquite tree in a satchel fitted with a transmitter. The story is propelled forward by a never ending chase, running the camera crew through the Rio Grande, Eagle Pass, down some choice landscape off Highway 2810 and winding up pool side at a cheap motel in El Paso.
The antagonist is Anton Chugar, rhymes with sugar, a villain nearly as diabolical as Melville’s Captain Ahab in Moby Dick or Judge Holden in McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. His psychopathic ways are governed by the principle that all threats and promises must be acted upon to the ultimate degree. But his will is limited. Chance, he recognizes, is a player in all events, reflecting perhaps, McCarthy’s interest in Chaos Theory, which he studied at the Santa Fe Institute, while writing the novel.
This character’s cold murderous efficiency is played by the sinister Javier Bardem with great finesse. He doesn’t overplay the role, it’s subtle and spooky. Maybe it’s his haircut. The flipping of a coin determines who should live when a victim’s question is correctly posited to him. Marfa banker and first time Hollywood actor Chip Love’s question was wrong and he gets it early in the movie with Chugar’s choice weapon, a gas fired plug machine used in slaughter houses.
Tommy Lee Jones plays a flat old man sheriff but true grit Texan who realizes crime aint what it used to be. He seems to be haunted by the audacity of today’s criminals and at the same time plugged up by some fame he doesn’t deserve. The depth of this character is far more significant in the book, where his narrations and flashbacks give rise to a sense that god has failed him. The futility that he feels as an old man in sparse rugged west Texas and hence the title, triggers what McCarthy might be telling us and what the Coen Brothers did not fail to include; Chugar’s ways reflect a deeper reality.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Kinky Friedman and WOW
A red chard from a once pair of panties flittered on an ash branch near the steps to the Espino Center at the Sul Ross campus on Saturday. At the fountain, skaters hung loose amongst themselves pierced and tattooed, if only Henna and high above in the clouds a dog formed: the giant head puffy and white, stretching slowly, waxing toward – big eyebrows. Then the cigar – the dog smoked a No.2 Monte Cristo.
In the mezzanine the crowd gathered. Books. Voices overheard: “Not war stories, veterinarian stories.” “It’s mostly non-fiction,” “Running hand grenades in boxes of peaches…”
“Is Alpine getting weird?
No, but Kinky Friedman was in town.
It’s about literacy.
“It’s about illiteracy,” The Kinkster corrected.
Way out West Texas Book Fair – WOW, promoted by Alpine’s Rotary Club, brought in the literary stars to raise funds for construction of Alpine’s new library.
“This is going to be the queen of libraries in Brewster,” Kathy Bork, president of the Alpine Public Library, said. “We want it to be Alpine’s living room.”
It’ll triple the size of the present library. And if funds keep flowing, construction of the one story 9000 sqft facility will start in early ’09.
Meantime back at WOW, the funds are flowing: the silent auction is kicking, drinks are pouring and soon the Kinkster will be telling Jesus Christ jokes to a mixed crowd of them that laugh and them that can’t.
Friedman was big on education during his 2006 run for Texas governor. He supported raising teacher’s pay to attract the best talents, in an effort to pull Texas out of the No.1 drop-out rate in the country.
Friedman, who will decide after the 2008 election whether he will run for governor in 2010, is touring the state raising awareness for better education, political corruption, alternative fuels and a number of other projects including his Utopia Animal Rescue Farm (over a thousand dogs saved) and the delectability of his new line of cigars: Kinky Friedman Cigars (KFC).
Earlier Saturday, in a soft carpeted lecture room, Drew Stuart moderated a discussion with one of the many literary stars: Joe Nick Patowski, author of the most recent biography of Willie Nelson.
According to Joe Nick, the “bread and butter of the book” came from interviews of the “low art people,” past denisons of the Ft Worth bar scene where Willie hung out in the 195o’s and 60’s.
“Willie was raised in the church, but found salvation in the honky-tonks,” Joe Nick said.
The author suggested that Willie’s road to success was helped along by a not-too-obvious ambitious streak coupled with Texas-sized salesmanship. He sold Kirby vacuum cleaners in his early days and encyclopedias door to door. When Joe Nick went to visit the millionaire guitar-player at his ranch recently, Willie was promoting a device that converts dirty water to clean potable water.
“He was ready to go door to door in the third world and sell them,” Joe Nick said.
Another Willie connection at WOW came about through Mike Blakely, a singer, songwriter, novelist, and the event’s Friday night entertainment at Kokernot. He co-authored a novel with Willie Nelson, A Tale Out of Luck, that’s just been published. The screen play is already underway, likely starring Willie as the guitar- picking police protagonist in post Civil War Texas.
“We wrote the novel in four months. It took longer than that to draw up the contract,” Blakely said.
Marathon photographer James Evans presented his photographs of the Big Bend during another WOW session on Saturday. Evans concluded with a passionate appeal to the audience to be wary of “encroachment,” to “keep Big Bend small,” and to “think in bigger terms than money.” He fights against La Entrada, the Border Wall, and the re-opening of the La Linda Bridge at the Rio Grande.
“We’re a small group with no political clout,” he said, speaking about the relatively obscure political representation this part of Texas has in Austin.
Political activist Bobby Byrd and his wife Lee Merrill Byrd, of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso, presented their story as small publishers who specialize in border literature, including children’s books.
“In a way we’re like movie producers: we put up all the money, do all the intellectual work and sub everything out,” Byrd said. “Publishing is like writing, it’s an act of self-discovery. You’re always finding something new about yourself as you go through the process of putting a book together.”
One of their most recent books, “Ringside View of a Revolution,” is an account of Poncho Via’s revolutionary days in Mexico.
Meantime, the Kinkster held court outside under the shade of the student union building. He lit a KFC.
“Buggers are good,” Kinky said.
He described the manufacturing process of his cigars in terms unrepeatable in this media. Jewford, his partner and side-kick, and instrumental in the process leaned up against a white pillar and said, “But never on Saturday.”
The discussion quickly turned to politics.
“Had 45 percent of the voters voted it would have been a victory, and more voters would have meant a landslide,” The Kinkster said referring to the last Texas governor’s race, where only 28 percent of voters turned out. Kinky placed a solid third.
He especially was concerned about the young vote and Obama’s chances. “If we could allow people to register on the day of voting – there’d be a bigger turn out and a better chance.”
He suggested this year’s presidential race was a hare and tortoise situation and that the tortoise McCain was going to win.
“But even if that does happen, it’ll be better than what we got – ten times better,” he said.
“We’ve got to get the Rednecks back in the Democratic Party and I’m the one to do it,” He blew out a little smoke. “And bring’em all together with the Ron Paulers and the Obamas.”
At the banquet dinner, plates licked clean or half-empty among a dining group of perhaps 150, the Kinkster reminded the crowd of his “slogan heavy” 2006 campaign: the Molly Ivins quip “Why the Hell Not?” and the Willie Nelson take, “You can criticize him all you want, but quit circumcising him.”
And had Kinky been the first Jewish governor of Texas, “I would’ve reduced the speed limit from 55 to 54.95,” he said.
As the evening grew late and the crowd dwindled, some huddled near the windows and looked out beyond the Ash trees, toward the glittering night sky. The book booths were gone and the literary stars were on their way. A mid-August Saturday came to an end - the boosters of the Alpine Library closer to their goal: a place to read, a place to meet , the battle against illiteracy a little more real.
In the mezzanine the crowd gathered. Books. Voices overheard: “Not war stories, veterinarian stories.” “It’s mostly non-fiction,” “Running hand grenades in boxes of peaches…”
“Is Alpine getting weird?
No, but Kinky Friedman was in town.
It’s about literacy.
“It’s about illiteracy,” The Kinkster corrected.
Way out West Texas Book Fair – WOW, promoted by Alpine’s Rotary Club, brought in the literary stars to raise funds for construction of Alpine’s new library.
“This is going to be the queen of libraries in Brewster,” Kathy Bork, president of the Alpine Public Library, said. “We want it to be Alpine’s living room.”
It’ll triple the size of the present library. And if funds keep flowing, construction of the one story 9000 sqft facility will start in early ’09.
Meantime back at WOW, the funds are flowing: the silent auction is kicking, drinks are pouring and soon the Kinkster will be telling Jesus Christ jokes to a mixed crowd of them that laugh and them that can’t.
Friedman was big on education during his 2006 run for Texas governor. He supported raising teacher’s pay to attract the best talents, in an effort to pull Texas out of the No.1 drop-out rate in the country.
Friedman, who will decide after the 2008 election whether he will run for governor in 2010, is touring the state raising awareness for better education, political corruption, alternative fuels and a number of other projects including his Utopia Animal Rescue Farm (over a thousand dogs saved) and the delectability of his new line of cigars: Kinky Friedman Cigars (KFC).
Earlier Saturday, in a soft carpeted lecture room, Drew Stuart moderated a discussion with one of the many literary stars: Joe Nick Patowski, author of the most recent biography of Willie Nelson.
According to Joe Nick, the “bread and butter of the book” came from interviews of the “low art people,” past denisons of the Ft Worth bar scene where Willie hung out in the 195o’s and 60’s.
“Willie was raised in the church, but found salvation in the honky-tonks,” Joe Nick said.
The author suggested that Willie’s road to success was helped along by a not-too-obvious ambitious streak coupled with Texas-sized salesmanship. He sold Kirby vacuum cleaners in his early days and encyclopedias door to door. When Joe Nick went to visit the millionaire guitar-player at his ranch recently, Willie was promoting a device that converts dirty water to clean potable water.
“He was ready to go door to door in the third world and sell them,” Joe Nick said.
Another Willie connection at WOW came about through Mike Blakely, a singer, songwriter, novelist, and the event’s Friday night entertainment at Kokernot. He co-authored a novel with Willie Nelson, A Tale Out of Luck, that’s just been published. The screen play is already underway, likely starring Willie as the guitar- picking police protagonist in post Civil War Texas.
“We wrote the novel in four months. It took longer than that to draw up the contract,” Blakely said.
Marathon photographer James Evans presented his photographs of the Big Bend during another WOW session on Saturday. Evans concluded with a passionate appeal to the audience to be wary of “encroachment,” to “keep Big Bend small,” and to “think in bigger terms than money.” He fights against La Entrada, the Border Wall, and the re-opening of the La Linda Bridge at the Rio Grande.
“We’re a small group with no political clout,” he said, speaking about the relatively obscure political representation this part of Texas has in Austin.
Political activist Bobby Byrd and his wife Lee Merrill Byrd, of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso, presented their story as small publishers who specialize in border literature, including children’s books.
“In a way we’re like movie producers: we put up all the money, do all the intellectual work and sub everything out,” Byrd said. “Publishing is like writing, it’s an act of self-discovery. You’re always finding something new about yourself as you go through the process of putting a book together.”
One of their most recent books, “Ringside View of a Revolution,” is an account of Poncho Via’s revolutionary days in Mexico.
Meantime, the Kinkster held court outside under the shade of the student union building. He lit a KFC.
“Buggers are good,” Kinky said.
He described the manufacturing process of his cigars in terms unrepeatable in this media. Jewford, his partner and side-kick, and instrumental in the process leaned up against a white pillar and said, “But never on Saturday.”
The discussion quickly turned to politics.
“Had 45 percent of the voters voted it would have been a victory, and more voters would have meant a landslide,” The Kinkster said referring to the last Texas governor’s race, where only 28 percent of voters turned out. Kinky placed a solid third.
He especially was concerned about the young vote and Obama’s chances. “If we could allow people to register on the day of voting – there’d be a bigger turn out and a better chance.”
He suggested this year’s presidential race was a hare and tortoise situation and that the tortoise McCain was going to win.
“But even if that does happen, it’ll be better than what we got – ten times better,” he said.
“We’ve got to get the Rednecks back in the Democratic Party and I’m the one to do it,” He blew out a little smoke. “And bring’em all together with the Ron Paulers and the Obamas.”
At the banquet dinner, plates licked clean or half-empty among a dining group of perhaps 150, the Kinkster reminded the crowd of his “slogan heavy” 2006 campaign: the Molly Ivins quip “Why the Hell Not?” and the Willie Nelson take, “You can criticize him all you want, but quit circumcising him.”
And had Kinky been the first Jewish governor of Texas, “I would’ve reduced the speed limit from 55 to 54.95,” he said.
As the evening grew late and the crowd dwindled, some huddled near the windows and looked out beyond the Ash trees, toward the glittering night sky. The book booths were gone and the literary stars were on their way. A mid-August Saturday came to an end - the boosters of the Alpine Library closer to their goal: a place to read, a place to meet , the battle against illiteracy a little more real.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Texas Longhorn Museum
Under a moonless sky, longhorn aficionados stood on the patio of the Old Lajitas Trading Post as the Texas Longhorn Museum officially opened Saturday night in Lajitas with a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by Rita Yates, widow of third generation longhorn rancher Fayette Yates.
Fayette’s grandparents Ira and Ann, namesakes of that famous conjuncted Texas town, Iraan, bought cactus-studded country along the Pecos River in 1915 and barely survived with their nine children until 1926 when black crude bubbled out of their ground. Instantly endowed, they focused on their first love, ranching, and their favorite breed, the endangered Texas Longhorn.
Shipped over the Atlantic in the belly of Spanish Galleons, the longhorn was introduced to the Americas at the port of Vera Cruz, Mexico in about 1521. Gnarly and un-keen to be domesticated, many feraled and worked the low shrub and cactus country with their long legs and nearly hairless bellies north and west to Texas. Multiplying profusely in a fenceless land, they used their horns to fend off predators like the big cats and grey wolves of that time. They became part of the territory, and their hides originally black from Spain, mutated, turning out brindles, speckles, reds and whites, that blended with the earth and rock. They became regular denizens in northern Mexico and were known as “Corrientes,” a Spanish word meaning “common.”
At the age of twelve, in post-civil war Texas, Ira ran his first longhorns up the Goodnight-Loving trail to Dodge City where buyers bid cattle, primarily for tallow and hides, because meat and refrigeration had not yet co-mingled successfully. Up to 1890, it’s estimated that 10,000,000 of the feral beasts were rounded up by free-lancing cowboys and driven north to the slaughterhouses.
New breeds gened into existence with more grease and larger hides. These hybrids such as Charolais, Hereford and Santa Gertrudis displaced the pure Texas Longhorn, quickening its route to oblivion.
Ira’s son, Cap, born in 1886, and buried in a rock mausoleum, allegedly standing up, near the top of a peak in the Glass Mountains, served as an important link in the family effort to preserve the Texas Longhorn. Finding few pure strains in the southwest, Cap traveled to Mexico and rounded up descendants of those first four-legged Spaniards that walked down the ship’s gangway nearly four hundred years earlier with the Conquistadores. Cap’s eventual 1500 strong longhorn herd became the seed stock for most of the Texas Longhorn living today.
Cap’s son, Fayette Yates, continued the family tradition, keeping records, becoming the first charter member of the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America and collecting horn specimens that were revealed Saturday night at the Old Lajitas Trading Post.
What other state would have a museum dedicated to cow horns?
That night under the patio’s ramada the two piece “Bent Lovehandles” band covered country songs, while the beer flowed. With the ribbon cut, longhorn lovers herded into the old adobe, to discover walls covered head to toe in skull racks, pure horns and stuffed bevos taking half a room.
There are over five hundred sets of horns in the five room museum, excluding the bathrooms where you can also find them. There are longhorn light fixtures and longhorn paper dispensers but the toilet itself is white porcelain.
Steers are the biggest part of the collection. Once castrated, nature perhaps pacifies the neutered beast by allowing their horns to grow extreme, some with spans beyond a big man’s stretched arms. It is a great display of calcium but I am later informed that it’s not only the horn cap that is similar to our fingernails in mineral content. Inside the horn cap is bone, calcified bone, that protected a vestibule of blood, long since drained, that would under certain conditions light up from a St Elmo’s fire, a devilish turbine of static, electrifying a herd of cattle, trailing through a dark desert, in a primal display of nature’s authority. I stepped back from the wall and looked for the shrimp cocktail.
The Texas Twist, as it is known, is part of the art of the horn. “Twisted like taffy,” John Galle a former director of the Texas Longhorn Registry and a friend of the late Fayette Yates, said.
Studied closely you can see the growth lines in the horns spiraling laterally from the poll: stretching, bending, twisting, out and up.
“Bass Brothers bred for the longest horns on their south Texas ranches,” he said with a quirked eyebrow. “They got’em long but they didn’t have the twist.” He put his hand to his mouth and lowered his voice. “That don’t count.”
Together we searched for bull horns and find only three in the collection. They have a slight hook, curved forward at the tips and are short in comparison to the steers and cows.
“Imagine those matadors.” Galle pumped his fist into his stomach.
In the main room a set of horns curved backwards like a ram, but wider and more irregular, the right horn higher with a tight curve and the left horn truncated abruptly – a Texas Twist gone mad.
“Lightening,” Galle said.
Some of the horns on display are over a hundred years old, but most, much younger.
“I knew this one,” Frank Sharp said. He is a Texas Longhorn breeder with a ranch outside of Brownwood.
He follows the growth line of the horn from his old friend as it double twists to the tip. Then he pulls the horn cap off and shows the white underneath.
“You can always tell if the caps are original,” Sharp said. “They have to fit just right.”
In front of the roast beef I met Rita Yates and asked if it’s true that her father-in-law Cap Yates was buried standing up in a mausoleum inside a mountain.
“Standing up?” She questioned. “I don’t know about that. I mean why?” She searched my face for an answer then said, “But he is buried in a rock mausoleum in the Glass Mountains.”
She shows me a painting, signed, Eva Lena Hill, 1960. A blue-gray triple peak shaped like a cathedral centers the oil painting with a white caliche road leading up to a dark cleft in the limestone just below the peaks and in the brush below a white longhorn feeds. “That’s where he’s buried,” she said, pointing to the cleft. “They were digging his hole before he died.”
I headed toward the bar. There’s a lot of tucked in shirts and big belt buckles, women in tight fitting blue jeans and a few children overcome with the adult curiosity in horns. Dallas oil man, host and proprietor of the collection and owner of the Lajitas Resort , Kelsey Warren, mingles in blue jeans and a crisp white shirt. The ever-ready operator of the resort, Edwin Leslie, stands near the door with a walkie-talkie at his mouth. A young UT Austin student explains to me how his English professor is using Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor and guide for students to find themselves. And later amongst the longhorns I hear someone mutter, “Personally I’m a Hereford man.”
Out on the patio, the Modelo’s cold, people are visiting, and the band is playing “Whisky River.” The sweet scent of wet creosote floats in the air. Straight out, across the river, a Mexican mountain looms dark and a night hawk dips below a floodlight. And briefly and assuredly somewhere a longhorn bawls. Texas.
Fayette’s grandparents Ira and Ann, namesakes of that famous conjuncted Texas town, Iraan, bought cactus-studded country along the Pecos River in 1915 and barely survived with their nine children until 1926 when black crude bubbled out of their ground. Instantly endowed, they focused on their first love, ranching, and their favorite breed, the endangered Texas Longhorn.
Shipped over the Atlantic in the belly of Spanish Galleons, the longhorn was introduced to the Americas at the port of Vera Cruz, Mexico in about 1521. Gnarly and un-keen to be domesticated, many feraled and worked the low shrub and cactus country with their long legs and nearly hairless bellies north and west to Texas. Multiplying profusely in a fenceless land, they used their horns to fend off predators like the big cats and grey wolves of that time. They became part of the territory, and their hides originally black from Spain, mutated, turning out brindles, speckles, reds and whites, that blended with the earth and rock. They became regular denizens in northern Mexico and were known as “Corrientes,” a Spanish word meaning “common.”
At the age of twelve, in post-civil war Texas, Ira ran his first longhorns up the Goodnight-Loving trail to Dodge City where buyers bid cattle, primarily for tallow and hides, because meat and refrigeration had not yet co-mingled successfully. Up to 1890, it’s estimated that 10,000,000 of the feral beasts were rounded up by free-lancing cowboys and driven north to the slaughterhouses.
New breeds gened into existence with more grease and larger hides. These hybrids such as Charolais, Hereford and Santa Gertrudis displaced the pure Texas Longhorn, quickening its route to oblivion.
Ira’s son, Cap, born in 1886, and buried in a rock mausoleum, allegedly standing up, near the top of a peak in the Glass Mountains, served as an important link in the family effort to preserve the Texas Longhorn. Finding few pure strains in the southwest, Cap traveled to Mexico and rounded up descendants of those first four-legged Spaniards that walked down the ship’s gangway nearly four hundred years earlier with the Conquistadores. Cap’s eventual 1500 strong longhorn herd became the seed stock for most of the Texas Longhorn living today.
Cap’s son, Fayette Yates, continued the family tradition, keeping records, becoming the first charter member of the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America and collecting horn specimens that were revealed Saturday night at the Old Lajitas Trading Post.
What other state would have a museum dedicated to cow horns?
That night under the patio’s ramada the two piece “Bent Lovehandles” band covered country songs, while the beer flowed. With the ribbon cut, longhorn lovers herded into the old adobe, to discover walls covered head to toe in skull racks, pure horns and stuffed bevos taking half a room.
There are over five hundred sets of horns in the five room museum, excluding the bathrooms where you can also find them. There are longhorn light fixtures and longhorn paper dispensers but the toilet itself is white porcelain.
Steers are the biggest part of the collection. Once castrated, nature perhaps pacifies the neutered beast by allowing their horns to grow extreme, some with spans beyond a big man’s stretched arms. It is a great display of calcium but I am later informed that it’s not only the horn cap that is similar to our fingernails in mineral content. Inside the horn cap is bone, calcified bone, that protected a vestibule of blood, long since drained, that would under certain conditions light up from a St Elmo’s fire, a devilish turbine of static, electrifying a herd of cattle, trailing through a dark desert, in a primal display of nature’s authority. I stepped back from the wall and looked for the shrimp cocktail.
The Texas Twist, as it is known, is part of the art of the horn. “Twisted like taffy,” John Galle a former director of the Texas Longhorn Registry and a friend of the late Fayette Yates, said.
Studied closely you can see the growth lines in the horns spiraling laterally from the poll: stretching, bending, twisting, out and up.
“Bass Brothers bred for the longest horns on their south Texas ranches,” he said with a quirked eyebrow. “They got’em long but they didn’t have the twist.” He put his hand to his mouth and lowered his voice. “That don’t count.”
Together we searched for bull horns and find only three in the collection. They have a slight hook, curved forward at the tips and are short in comparison to the steers and cows.
“Imagine those matadors.” Galle pumped his fist into his stomach.
In the main room a set of horns curved backwards like a ram, but wider and more irregular, the right horn higher with a tight curve and the left horn truncated abruptly – a Texas Twist gone mad.
“Lightening,” Galle said.
Some of the horns on display are over a hundred years old, but most, much younger.
“I knew this one,” Frank Sharp said. He is a Texas Longhorn breeder with a ranch outside of Brownwood.
He follows the growth line of the horn from his old friend as it double twists to the tip. Then he pulls the horn cap off and shows the white underneath.
“You can always tell if the caps are original,” Sharp said. “They have to fit just right.”
In front of the roast beef I met Rita Yates and asked if it’s true that her father-in-law Cap Yates was buried standing up in a mausoleum inside a mountain.
“Standing up?” She questioned. “I don’t know about that. I mean why?” She searched my face for an answer then said, “But he is buried in a rock mausoleum in the Glass Mountains.”
She shows me a painting, signed, Eva Lena Hill, 1960. A blue-gray triple peak shaped like a cathedral centers the oil painting with a white caliche road leading up to a dark cleft in the limestone just below the peaks and in the brush below a white longhorn feeds. “That’s where he’s buried,” she said, pointing to the cleft. “They were digging his hole before he died.”
I headed toward the bar. There’s a lot of tucked in shirts and big belt buckles, women in tight fitting blue jeans and a few children overcome with the adult curiosity in horns. Dallas oil man, host and proprietor of the collection and owner of the Lajitas Resort , Kelsey Warren, mingles in blue jeans and a crisp white shirt. The ever-ready operator of the resort, Edwin Leslie, stands near the door with a walkie-talkie at his mouth. A young UT Austin student explains to me how his English professor is using Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor and guide for students to find themselves. And later amongst the longhorns I hear someone mutter, “Personally I’m a Hereford man.”
Out on the patio, the Modelo’s cold, people are visiting, and the band is playing “Whisky River.” The sweet scent of wet creosote floats in the air. Straight out, across the river, a Mexican mountain looms dark and a night hawk dips below a floodlight. And briefly and assuredly somewhere a longhorn bawls. Texas.
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