I am back at lastactually Ive been back for awhile nowso I am writing AT LAST. I even added a couple pictures.....what a whirling swirlin couple o weeks! Whheeew!
Being with my dads side of the family has always made me somewhat uncomfortable, and only because my whole life I only see them about once a year. Its like this side of me that Im supposed to be really close to, but dont know anything about. Last year I found out about all these deep dark family secretes that shocked me and I didnt understand why. I dont really feel any sort of connection with these people other than blood, but I guess blood runs deepor however that saying is supposed to goI just know that family has a whole new meaning to me now, and I really wish I could get closer to them. Like when me and my dad where just driving8 hours of drivingand listening to the radio, I kept trying to talk to him and tell him my issues with the world etc, you know, Im talking deep personal shit here..and then aerosmith comes on and he just turns it up, tunes me out, and starts playing along to walk this way with his fucking harmonica. I got upstaged by fucking classic rock and his harmonica.
So I sat shot gun and concentrated on all the retarded street names there are in texas. Like Harry Hynes, Bruseville, Butts, and Skankin Roador the town of Bogus, that has a Bogus Ford dealershipjust one more thing that lets me make fun of fords again. Like adding the word anal to any fordlike anal escort, anal contour, and my personal favorite anal explorer. hilarious! man.
And then I saw a McDonalds Hotelhow fucked up is that?! It was ssoooo weird looking! Almost like that McDonalds on University that looks like a bankonly it REALLY was a Hotel!!!!
I also drove for a little while.which was illegal for multiple reasonsthe biggest being I have NO license!! But anywayIm going 90 in my dads big ole suv and blastin pistol packin mama when I see the lights. My dad and I just look at each other, scared stiff. But guess what?! I got off with a warning! A written warning! That just said I was going over 70. Either it was my dads scrambler, my out of state expired permit, or the officers beautiful heart mixed with a teaspoon of b.s. and Christmas eve kindness. But man it was for sure lucky as all heck!
We then ate at a good ole Whatabuger, and I realized how lacking Minnesota is in Buffets and how much I felt like a Leningrad Cowboy, doing Americaonly with out playing in bars and caring around a corpse. Minor details.
Christmas was uneventful except for the new record player I got, and painting my 83 year old aunts fingernails, with gold sparkly nail polish. Feeling a fondness for the elderlyrepeating their same tired breaths in between stories theyve told much more than once, though each time the story changes, their heart is the same, and their eyes still twinkle with this knowledge that seems limitless yet befuddled. My grandfather knows what a squirrel smells like from 50 feet, and calls me his angel. I kissed his cheek goodnight and felt the soft loose flesh of 70 years between my lips and felt sorry that I couldnt have witnessed a time when he was stronger. A time when his bones didnt ache and he could hug me like he ment it.
My grandmother is completely different. Shes like this fiery gust that knocks you over and leaves you wondering how you ended up on the ground. She treats her roses with a gentleness necessary for roses, but only for a few minutes before shes onto another task. I watch her sometimes, and she never seems tired or bored. Staying up with me until 2 oclock playing rummicube or skipbo and waking up at 4 to get breakfast started before we go to churcha tradition I have never liked, or gotten used to. I always feel like Im 6 again, with the hard wooden pew digging into my back, and my leggings falling down to my knees and the lace dresses that never stopped itching. or the people I never recognized who seemed to have known me for years, commenting on how pretty I am. The sermon going on for days and the choir never singing songs I knew or liked, until I stood up in my seat, with my black button shoes and belted out the bear went over the mountain as loud as I couldwhich was promptly followed by a hard slap across my behind and my grandmother pulling me out of the church faster than my legs could follow, so she dragged me and left me outside on the steps to watch congregations of ants and rolly polly bugs gather at my feet, praying I wouldnt step on them. Which I never did, if I could help it.
My grandmother says this never happened. She reminds me again and again how I once said that she was the only one to ever let me eat after midnight, or when I was 10 and she did my hair up in little pin curls and I cried because it wasnt the size curl I wanted. I remind her of when I was 13 and had just discovered fairy dust and she wanted to let me know that fairies might not be real, I wanted to let her know that god might not be real. She didnt talk to me for a week after that.
But now it never happened.
This whole entry is going on much longer than I imagined, and I havent even talked about the little prop plane I rode on to get to texas and the more than dense air flight attendants who forgot where the plane was going. Or even how insanely ridiculous airport security has becomethough Im sure most of you know this anyway.
And Sivacrom, here is the d.l on texas.
texas is all pretty much the same, but if you really want to experience it, I suggest taking a roadtrip. driving aimlessly through the flatlands and debating the formations of longhorn cattle during mid afternoon while the mesquite trees whisper something to the tune of Jim Malloy and his Range Riders singin "take me back to my boots and saddle"....stopping when the urge strikes you and sleeping beneath the great big texas sky while the stars twinkle your wishes and the coyotes play you their lullaby. then you can wake in the mornin and have good ole southern made biscuits and gravy and know that it feels good to be alive.
but , really I have mixed feelings about texas, there is this sad sort of happiness I feel whenever I am there. its like finding a bird with its wings clipped. this unimaginable freedom with limitations and hardships, farmers with bloody hands who have lost everything and women with tear stained faces and no one to hear them cry. I don't even know if any of this makes sense...but basically texas folk are strong s.o.bs and I wouldnt have it any other way.
Being with my dads side of the family has always made me somewhat uncomfortable, and only because my whole life I only see them about once a year. Its like this side of me that Im supposed to be really close to, but dont know anything about. Last year I found out about all these deep dark family secretes that shocked me and I didnt understand why. I dont really feel any sort of connection with these people other than blood, but I guess blood runs deepor however that saying is supposed to goI just know that family has a whole new meaning to me now, and I really wish I could get closer to them. Like when me and my dad where just driving8 hours of drivingand listening to the radio, I kept trying to talk to him and tell him my issues with the world etc, you know, Im talking deep personal shit here..and then aerosmith comes on and he just turns it up, tunes me out, and starts playing along to walk this way with his fucking harmonica. I got upstaged by fucking classic rock and his harmonica.
So I sat shot gun and concentrated on all the retarded street names there are in texas. Like Harry Hynes, Bruseville, Butts, and Skankin Roador the town of Bogus, that has a Bogus Ford dealershipjust one more thing that lets me make fun of fords again. Like adding the word anal to any fordlike anal escort, anal contour, and my personal favorite anal explorer. hilarious! man.
And then I saw a McDonalds Hotelhow fucked up is that?! It was ssoooo weird looking! Almost like that McDonalds on University that looks like a bankonly it REALLY was a Hotel!!!!
I also drove for a little while.which was illegal for multiple reasonsthe biggest being I have NO license!! But anywayIm going 90 in my dads big ole suv and blastin pistol packin mama when I see the lights. My dad and I just look at each other, scared stiff. But guess what?! I got off with a warning! A written warning! That just said I was going over 70. Either it was my dads scrambler, my out of state expired permit, or the officers beautiful heart mixed with a teaspoon of b.s. and Christmas eve kindness. But man it was for sure lucky as all heck!
We then ate at a good ole Whatabuger, and I realized how lacking Minnesota is in Buffets and how much I felt like a Leningrad Cowboy, doing Americaonly with out playing in bars and caring around a corpse. Minor details.
Christmas was uneventful except for the new record player I got, and painting my 83 year old aunts fingernails, with gold sparkly nail polish. Feeling a fondness for the elderlyrepeating their same tired breaths in between stories theyve told much more than once, though each time the story changes, their heart is the same, and their eyes still twinkle with this knowledge that seems limitless yet befuddled. My grandfather knows what a squirrel smells like from 50 feet, and calls me his angel. I kissed his cheek goodnight and felt the soft loose flesh of 70 years between my lips and felt sorry that I couldnt have witnessed a time when he was stronger. A time when his bones didnt ache and he could hug me like he ment it.
My grandmother is completely different. Shes like this fiery gust that knocks you over and leaves you wondering how you ended up on the ground. She treats her roses with a gentleness necessary for roses, but only for a few minutes before shes onto another task. I watch her sometimes, and she never seems tired or bored. Staying up with me until 2 oclock playing rummicube or skipbo and waking up at 4 to get breakfast started before we go to churcha tradition I have never liked, or gotten used to. I always feel like Im 6 again, with the hard wooden pew digging into my back, and my leggings falling down to my knees and the lace dresses that never stopped itching. or the people I never recognized who seemed to have known me for years, commenting on how pretty I am. The sermon going on for days and the choir never singing songs I knew or liked, until I stood up in my seat, with my black button shoes and belted out the bear went over the mountain as loud as I couldwhich was promptly followed by a hard slap across my behind and my grandmother pulling me out of the church faster than my legs could follow, so she dragged me and left me outside on the steps to watch congregations of ants and rolly polly bugs gather at my feet, praying I wouldnt step on them. Which I never did, if I could help it.
My grandmother says this never happened. She reminds me again and again how I once said that she was the only one to ever let me eat after midnight, or when I was 10 and she did my hair up in little pin curls and I cried because it wasnt the size curl I wanted. I remind her of when I was 13 and had just discovered fairy dust and she wanted to let me know that fairies might not be real, I wanted to let her know that god might not be real. She didnt talk to me for a week after that.
But now it never happened.
This whole entry is going on much longer than I imagined, and I havent even talked about the little prop plane I rode on to get to texas and the more than dense air flight attendants who forgot where the plane was going. Or even how insanely ridiculous airport security has becomethough Im sure most of you know this anyway.
And Sivacrom, here is the d.l on texas.
texas is all pretty much the same, but if you really want to experience it, I suggest taking a roadtrip. driving aimlessly through the flatlands and debating the formations of longhorn cattle during mid afternoon while the mesquite trees whisper something to the tune of Jim Malloy and his Range Riders singin "take me back to my boots and saddle"....stopping when the urge strikes you and sleeping beneath the great big texas sky while the stars twinkle your wishes and the coyotes play you their lullaby. then you can wake in the mornin and have good ole southern made biscuits and gravy and know that it feels good to be alive.
but , really I have mixed feelings about texas, there is this sad sort of happiness I feel whenever I am there. its like finding a bird with its wings clipped. this unimaginable freedom with limitations and hardships, farmers with bloody hands who have lost everything and women with tear stained faces and no one to hear them cry. I don't even know if any of this makes sense...but basically texas folk are strong s.o.bs and I wouldnt have it any other way.
VIEW 18 of 18 COMMENTS
Every vacation I took while I lived down there was back to Minnesota. I missed this place terribly. When the movie Fargo came out, I ached inside (and dreaded my Lubbock chums always asking me to talk like the characters from the movie...)
But, when I was back in Lubbock over the Holidays, I was a little nostalgic. Texas *is* different, and it's kind of special. The reason I left was because it never was *home*...I was always an Expat "Yankee". But it was nice to see things you don't see up here. It was nice to have a Whataburger. It was WONDERFUL to go to Ralph's Records & load up on used CD's (their prices are so much better than Cheapo up here). Listening to KTXT again was so refreshing. I like it this way, when I can go there 2-3 times a year, but not stay.
I don't miss the conservatism-without-a-cause mentality. I don't miss the subtle racism that exists still, even in Lubbock. I don't miss litter everywhere.
And, oh yeah...love them Texas names! Don't forget Scoggin-Dickey Chevrolet in Lubbock! (love the lewd sound of that name). And remember H-E-B grocery stores were named after the founder, Harry E. Butts. Speaking of naming things, why does Texas name everything after people? Lake Alan Henry. Lake Ray Hubbard. The Marsha Sharp Freeway.
OK, I'm just rambling now...