Deep in the Heart of Texas

In between the Land of Enchantment (New Mexico) and the Sportsman’s Paradise (Louisiana) there is a very large piece of largely flat territory called Texas. Driving across it, as we did recently requires fortitude, patience, and strong survival skills. Texas does not make things easy.

The first thing the driver notices is that Texas highways never cross singly. Five highways come together even in small towns. This produces street signs showing the various directions and highways, generally all posted on one (or at most two) poles. Since all five highways converge within short distances, they produce high speed traffic all changing lanes at once. “I think we missed it” ought to be the state driving song. It’s like the New Jersey joke about their freeways: I can see where I want to be but not how to get there.” In Texas, on the other hand, you can’t see where you want to be. In other states, bridges fly over rivers and railroad tracks. In Texas they fly over other freeways.

Then there are the various exotic sights along the way. In Lousiana and Alabama it is highway patrol cars about every quarter of a mile, sitting in the trees beside the road or lights flashing and pulled up behind some guilty motorist. Amazingly for all that presence, speeding cars shot past us and we were doing five over. In Texas we didn’t see anyone pulled over for speeding but we did find especially fragrant dead skunks every quarter mile who seemed to come out at night to commit mass suicide. We couldn’t miss their sacrifice because the wind never stopped buffeting the car.

Epecially intriguing, however, were the towns along the highway where one stops for the night, if only to rest from the wind and avoid hitting the skunks. We settled on stopping at one (which shall be nameless) and found a motel. It was Sunday. The choices for dining were Sonic, MacDonalds, and a “family restaurant.”
“What’s a family restaurant?” I asked Sid.
“Maybe it has a kids’ menu,” he replied.
“Doubt it,” I said, “bet they don’t serve alcohol.”
We were both right. As it turned out, the town was dry, meaning there was absolutely no place we could have a beer or glass of wine. The motel clerk said we’d have to drive fifteen miles to a town that did permit alcohol but since it was Sunday they would be closed. So, after battling the Texas highways, we were forced to settle in the family restaurant for iced tea and the salad bar, which also looked as if it was at the end of a very long day. It wasn’t long before I realized that everyone in the restaurant was politely trying not to look at us. I was dressed in my Marmot purple ski jacket and felt very Denver city slicker. Added to this was the silence with which people were eating. All that could be heard was the chink of cutlery on china as people methodically ate their dinners.
“This is like the night of the living dead,” Sid whispered to me.
I waited until we were outside to sum up my feelings. I wasn’t kind. As we got in the car, I whispered back to Sid “God-fearing people, salt of the earth, voted for their native son George, and sent their sons to war.” I don’t know why I was so churlish. Maybe it was because I was still smelling skunk.

Then we drove down the road and passed the courthouse with its war memorial. It had the largest memorial I have ever seen in a small town with what looked like hundreds of tiny incised names. My god, I thought, what would the military do without the young men from these small towns? I did have the grace to feel a little bad about my earlier comment. But the guilt didn’t last long when I got back to the motel and found that the wireless access wasn’t working.

I have decided that there are certain portions of the United States that God intended should be flown over. One of those stretches is I-80 across southern Wyoming. Another is southern Idaho where the jackrabbits are said to pack lunch. But you can now add to those the entire northern part of the state of Texas.

The Rear of the Firing Line

Something has happened to me as I now enter my sixty-fifth year of life on this planet. I won’t reach the magic birthday until August, but my body and my outlook are very graphically telling me that life will be different from now on. I never really believed that I would age. Because I’ve had good genes I took my relatively youthful looks for granted. No one told me that those who are slow to age get presented all at once with the bill somewhere down the line.

My bill arrived on my 64th birthday. I woke up to discover that my hair had coarsened, my knees were finally protesting their harsh treatment, that a network of lines had erupted on my neck, the sunspots on my face and hands had suddenly become prominent, and even the skin texture on my face was more like crepe than vibrant, youthful skin.

Despite my self-congratulatory belief that age would pass me by, I was not unduly surprised about all this. After all, that’s why surgeons and botox exist. America’s fascination with personal nip and tuck is just one more manifestation of the total makeover. You can look artificially as young as your wallet will allow you to.

What I was surprised about was my new outlook on life. It has taken me several months to understand it—if I can really say that I do. But I know that I have changed in some profound ways.

For one thing, I have decided to forgive myself for the real and imagined failures of my life. I am no longer interested in agonizing over the what-ifs any more. I made my decisions, I took my chances, and I want celebrate the things of which I can be proud. I have written two books. They are the best that I can do. I think they say something about what I have learned in life and I hope that they speak to other people. If only my friends read them, then I rejoice in that. I no longer need praise and recognition to validate what I have accomplished in my life. I know now that I will never be the popular writer with the glamorous life that I once dreamed of being. But that was not my destiny and I will be proud instead that I had the stamina and courage to write something only I could do.

For another, I am able to see my parents as human beings rather than as extensions of myself. Life has taught me to have compassion. I know now that I am not responsible for the choices they made in their lifetimes and under very different circumstances. I have lived too long listening to the moralists of the world and apologizing. I never again want to hear others preaching the shoulds and shouldn’ts. They don’t know anymore about what’s right than I do. I have needed to bring judgement out into the light and let it fly away.

For yet another, I recognize that the things that mattered to me before no longer have relevance in my life and probably never should have. I no longer feel the need to justify my existence by hustling to be productive. I spent a lifetime doing that. I was successful in a competitive and fast-paced career. Now I wonder what I thought I was doing. Did I really think I was essential? At the end of her political career, when the British electorate dumped her, Margaret Thatcher remarked that it was a strange old world. We all reach the point in our lives that she’s talking about. It’s that point when suddenly the ways we have found meaning in our lives cease to be. We are left alone then to pick up whatever pieces of ourselves are left. We are told, in effect, to “pick up our brass and move to the rear of the firing line,” as Sid likes to quote.

Some of us will leave behind building and roads named for us. Some will be in history books. Some will leave enduring art. But most of us will leave behind our families to continue on. Often the things we think we will be remembered for crumble in dust along with the scrapbooks we keep of who we once were.

As I turn 65, I help my family as I can and value those who take the time to care about me. That’s why I recently searched for two of my university teachers who made a difference in my life. I was saddened to realize how frail they are, but heartened at the same time by their pleasure at being remembered. I wanted them to know that they had meant something more than tenure and promotions and publications—someone valued them enough to want to tell them so.

That, it seems to me, is the best thing that anyone can be remembered for.

Vertical and Horizontal

The other day I was struck by the difference between the way that Sid and I approach housework. He’s very clear about the fact that he doesn’t feel called by it. I, on the other hand, like seeing things clean.

The other day muddy footprints mysteriously appeared on the carpeted stairs leading up to the bedrooms. We both looked at them and agreed that they should be allowed to dry and then be vacuumed. Since they were Sid’s he eventually got the vacuum and removed the caked mud. But he did only the exact spots. He didn’t do the whole step. As a consequence, each step had a clean spot in the middle of other dust and debris. When I complained about this (I never said I was perfect), he replied that he had done exactly what he set out to. He had cleaned up the mud. And he was right. From his point of view, he had performed what he promised and I was churlishly criticizing the job he had done.

That’s when I put a name to our differences. Sid is doing what I call vertical thinking. He sees a problem and focuses in on it with laser precision. No other problem exists beyond the one he is addressing. I am doing horizontal thinking. I look at the problem in the context of what is going on around it. It takes me more time to do things and Sid believes that I am too easily distracted. Instead of focusing on the mud alone, I’ll look for dust on the rest of the stairs, the wall of the stairwell, the railings, and even the plants on the landing. From Sid’s point of view, I am grossly inefficient. From my point of view, I am thorough.

I think in some ways this difference in attitude carries over into how we look at life. Sid has infinite, vertical patience doing his woodworking, and his model railway in the basement is a masterpiece. He sets himself specific goals and focuses on them until he is satisfied. As a writer, I think horizontally in metaphors and allusions. I write when inspiration hits and may stay up all night if I’m on a roll. Sid would like me to be disciplined to write from 8:00 to 12:00 and then take the rest of the day off. In fact, at a dinner we attended the other night, most of the men agreed with Sid. The women were more likely to favor writing at night after everyone else has gone to bed (and probably taken their needs to sleep with them).

Even now in writing this late at night, I am dealing with the cat who thinks that she should be fed and wants to sit in front of the monitor with her head on my hands as I try to type. The vertical solution would be to deposit madame in the hallway and shut the door. The horizontal solution will be to give her some food and spend some time petting her until she tires of the game and probably bites me. I’ve found that cats are very good vertical thinkers.

I don’t know if this is just something about how Sid and I work together. Or whether housework is just one more example of the differences between how men and women like to do things. Although I love generalizations, I know there are always exceptions and that there are loads of women who think vertically and men who think horizontally. Maybe in some situations we all do some mixture of both. All I know is that the next time the house needs spring cleaning, I’ll do the vacuuming myself.

The Never-Never

I don’t pretend to understand economics. National policies make no sense to me when they go against every principle of managing money as I know it. I long ago gave up on the stock market—pure chaos. Investors there behave like a large school of small fish that suddenly and all at once dart off in a different direction even though there’s no apparent reason. Too much jumping around for me. But financing and paying bills—that’s another matter.

My introduction to finance came from watching my mother. She was old school. Her reputation and her honor were at stake whenever she owed money. She told me to pay my bills first before I even paid for food. As you can imagine with someone that careful, she planned out her paydays to the penny.

After she died, I had the task of going through her things. She enjoyed reading murder mysteries and must have believed that if she kept the books long enough, many of them with the impress of a mystery readers club, they had to become valuable. I think she had every one she’d ever read. But she’d done more than read them.

“What’s all that?” my son asked as I leafed through the books. Every inch of empty page in the front and back of the books was covered with columns of figures with dates beside them.

“That’s Mum,” I replied. “She was doing her debts.” That’s what she called it too. She had a little column of numbers for every payday with the dates beside each one of when she expected to be “free.”

There was good reason for her to be so analytic. Credit as we know it today was non-existent. Banks could loan money but only if you had a good relationship with them. Stores and co-ops had a sort of lay-away plan. People called that hire-purchase or, more derisively, the never-never. Mum bought me my bicycle this way. She popped in every week and paid a bit toward the down payment (usually 25-50% of the purchase price) then I got the bike and she paid off the rest.

Because she took such pride in paying on time, she expected her efforts to be recognized. She always got a very nice letter from the merchant with an original bill of sale stamped Paid in Full in large, red letters. It was very satisfactory on many fronts. Mum kept those letters with their red stamps as a set of references. Nowadays of course, our only reward is that the billing stops. I think I would go into shock if any of the banks bothered to thank me for paying off my credit cards.

This history is why I am perplexed by the contradictory economic advice that comes pouring at us. Buy, buy, buy says one school of thought: keep the economy going. Save, save, save, says another school—don’t you realize that you are spending too much, don’t have enough savings, and by buying on credit are leaving a legacy of debt to our children?

It reminds me of the contradictory advice rolling at us from the medical profession—or those who purport to speak for it. Remember all the advice about miracle foods and diets that are supposed to lengthen our lives? And how before long research would appear to say that none of it worked and some of it might actually be dangerous? In case you missed all that, consider the latest miracle cure: pomegranate juice. Supposedly this will prevent cancer and promote all sorts of good things. It tastes like camel pee—not that I know what camel pee tastes like. It’s more what I imagine that it might. Latest research now says that all the good stuff in the juice has been lost when it was processed.

The economists say we shouldn’t try to apply the principles of small economics such as family financing to those of larger national economies. But a smokescreen is a smokescreen and while global investment may be the norm, the foreclosures all around us suggest that the very same principles my mother followed still apply. My mother never trusted people with big ideas and promises. She’d shut down fast-talking salespeople promising convoluted investment strategies she didn’t understand. She was very clear on her goal: she wanted that piece of paper with the big red stamp. I know she wouldn’t have drunk any pomegranate juice—thank you very much—no matter who was pushing it.

That sounds very good to me. I think I’ll go and do my debts.