Las Vegas, New Mexico, Part 1

Las Vegas--no not that one--used to be the most important city west of the Mississippi. That’s what Doyle Daves tells me. Doyle is a retired chemistry professor and, like many New Mexicans, has terrible things to say about Houston up till, a few seconds later, he remembers he’s being rude. He loves talking about his town’s history; loves it so much he seems to forget I’m from Texas after a while.

He runs the historical association on Bridge Street, which is National Street in either direction, but is Bridge Street for the two blocks on either side of the quaint bridge that connects the old town, Las Vegas, and the new town that the incoming Anglos set up in the 1870s to access the railroad, East Las Vegas.

"We’ve been going downhill as a city ever since."

That’s a 140 years of downhill.

"It’s not been easy."

He tells me his family is actually new to New Mexico. "My grandparents moved here in 1913." Again, I tell him as a Houstonian I can’t relate. If your family moved to Houston in 1913, you’d be ancien regime. "Families are old here. Some go back to the 1690s, when the Spanish returned after the Pueblo Rebellion."

The shop is lined with old photos of the town, its ruling families, its formerly great hotels, its history of rodeos and Rough Rider reunions, and a bookshelf of chapbook sized history tomes that Doyle has written over the past 15 years. As an addict I jones up with a few.

He tries to interest me in a display he’s working on about S. Omar Barker, Las Vegas’s own legendary cowboy poet. I google a few verses and quickly lose interest. I get him back to talking about the 19th century again, how the Americans came in and established local rule through the existing families, who were not particularly loyal to Mexico City anyway (click on photo for detail), how the outlaws in these parts were mostly old Confederates and the lawmen old Union vets, how Las Vegas avoided picking up an arts scene like, he rolls his eyes a bit, Santa Fe.

An elderly couple comes in. They’re the Romeros and they want to know if Doyle has anything on Mr Romero’s grandfather. After a couple of questions, Doyle realizes he’s the grandson of the brother of the town’s sheriff and political boss from the 1890s, Secundino Romero. And he’s off on a tear, unloading a treasure trove of anecdotes about Boss Romero’s crooked deals, rivalry with the East Las Vegasans, the corrupt trial where he got a snoopy reporter convicted of murder, only to have the Anglo governor pardon the reporter the next day.

Doyle’s stories swim with pride. How the two towns merged, where the brothels and opium dens were, how violent the town got once the railroad came through and all the gangsters were run out of Dodge City--some years there were over a hundred murders in this town of under 6000. He makes event the economics a love ballad. The two great hotels fought relentlessly over which would house Teddy Roosevelt when he joined the Rough Rider Reunion of 1899. The old Spanish families wrangled over irrigation plans so that every lot access to the river, creating long thin land plots that still shape town built on their remains. S. Omar Barker used his own initials and thus named his ranch "the Lazy SOB." The sheering and wool spinning factory downtown used to see six mile long lines of sheepherders waiting to run their herds through. That factory is abandoned in the old town square now, two doors down from the coffeeshop.

After over an hour in his company I’m convinced I have to come back here, but the day is aging. He directs me to check out the Rough Rider museum before I go, although he manages my expectations. Once I get over there, I see he’s right, but the display on the Chinese laundries is completely fascinating, if too sparse. There were gangsters, businessmen bringing over families after working around the Chinese Exclusion Act, and even a spectacular murder which led to the first Chinese immigrant ever being accepted as a witness in an American court.

This the perfect small American town if you love tragedy.

Littleton, CO

There's no bayous in Littleton, Colorado! What the heck--?

Where do they throw their dead dogs?

(Hanging with Adam and Becky in the mountain burbs)

Santa Rosa Lake

Silence at Santa Rosa Lake

the clouds don’t move; they hold
vigil with the sun and the shadows and heat.
a glass-flat and naked laketop
meditates in its earthbed--
mud and sand and an outer mane
of desert shrubs and siltstone--all silent--
all silent save the hush of wind
through leafless fingers of cottonwood--
all silent--
all silent save intermittent lope of fish to surface
feeding on skeeters,
save the infrequent ruffle of wind
bristling the surface,
save the tenor rasp of a bluetail fly,
grown giant in the desert
and pestering my bared knees,
save the lapping impatience of the lake waves
curling like the lips of a wineglass
on the mudded shore,
save all this, plus the punctuated caw
of a desert raven, high perched and eyeballing my socks, strewn
upon the spiral curves of the cottonwood.
till I see there is no silence in this desert
and never was
once sitting and stillness learn
and absorb the symphony
that whispers away from human eyes

Sleepless in Santa Rosa

My insomnia started about an hour earlier tonight because I'm in the mountain time zone.

I just had what may be the worst ever "Mexican food" in the whole world in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. The fajitas were made with ground beef. The tortillas were cold & stale. The beans were dry and the rice was a runny. Seriously, runny.

The sopapillas were basically rectangular-shaped breakfast biscuits with a side of dipping honey. But at least the sopapillas were complimentary. I had to actually pay for that thing they called fajitas. I couldn't even stiff them on the tip, because the waitress was kind of nice. Clueless, but nice.

New Mexico otherwise seems like a much nicer place than Texas. Why can they not get their Mexican food right? Lord knows they've had Mexicans there for about 100 years longer than Texas has.

I'm reminded of that Orson Welles soliloquy from the Third Man:

You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Today, at Joseph's Route 66 Diner, I ate cuckoo clocks.

A friend on facebook suggested the mediocrity of Mexican food correlates to population density. Had I stopped in a bigger town, I would not have been to hamburger-based "fajitas". I accept this trade off. The fajita was invented by impoverished people utilizing an unexplored facet of the cow, the skirt-cut, which was long considered an inferior cut, something a butcher tossed aside for his poorer customers. Mother necessity, or rather Madre Necesario, took this castaway, spiced it right, and created a delicate staple. So I have to wonder if it is maybe economic prosperity that results in shitty recipes.

A comparable accomplishment to the fajita is the Scottish Enlightenment. Economics and Moral Philosophy are essentially the fajitas of Scotland. And this is on my mind lately. Had it not been for the devastating poverty, political oppression, and widespread starvation in the mid 1700s, there probably wouldn't have been a David Hume questioning the nature of humanity, bringing the "experimental method of reasoning" to the "science of man" he sought to create. People literally starving to death in the streets during his childhood is largely what motivated Adam Smith to attack the Mercantilist policies of England and the corporate fat cats who profited by Scotland's poverty.

So next time you get a bright idea for a poem or painting or an ethical solution for a moral quandary, be sure and thank a dictator.

Starting from Eastwood

To get ready for this latest trip, I've been reading Walt Whitman. He saved my life once and I feel that, now that things have settled down for me a bit in my autumn years, I owe it to him to pay a little more attention to what the chap was saying.

I've been studying Song of Myself lately, for reasons I'll reveal to my friends and fam eventually, comparing the edits and emendations between the 1855 and 1892 versions of his biggest, famousest, second-most-autobiographical poem--and note that the 1892 version is really the 1881 version because that is when he quit fiddling on it--and there's a painful evolution of the man, despite the career-length timelessness he aspired to.

But for the purposes of setting out on another road trip to find America (and I swear I left it around here somewhere) it's probably more fitting that I spend a moment on Starting From Paumanok, his opening ode, written long after his fertilest years, about setting out on the road to find his country, by which Whitman meant himself.

And finding Whitman is a convoluted process because Walt Whitman was a convoluted dude--despite all his efforts to self-protray as a simple, sweaty workingman's American poet. He wasn't that simple. Being American is a complex job. One has to embody contradictions.

I contradict myself?
Very well then . . . . I contradict myself;
I am large . . . . I contain multitudes.

Tell it, bruh. Tell it.

He wants to tell us being American is just hard work, but only about the sweat part of hard work--not the thinky kind of existential, root-troubling, overcoming self doubt kind of hard work. Look at this ditty (as usual, all Whitman poetry must be shouted out loud to the breezy clouds):

I HEAR AMERICA SINGING
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

If only that were it. If only we could just go back to working all sweaty with earth-wrenching, metal-forging honest labor. America sings now of the office drone, typing in her cubicle, the data analyst's eyes stinging red from staring at a computer screen all day, and the middle manager keeping his resume polished from the insecurity of his job. We feel like we've lost something. We haven't. The carpenter, the mason, the boatman, and the shoemaker all had to struggle for the next job and face the dislocation of the turbulent, plow-jogging American economy--even then.

But it feels good. It feels right to imagine they didn't have to worry about job security back in some golden age, some sweaty 19th century mechanic's job or some assembly line grinder from the 1950s. The past has always been golden. What I like about Whitman is he sees the future is golden too, and the present.

I wanna see the future and the present all golden again too. I want to climb out of this swampy Houston for a fortnight, see some mountains, see some different people, fall in love with ordinary Americans again instead of seeing them as blue and red and yellow statistics on a political approval rating chart. I'm tired of seeing them as white and black and brown culture blocs that only exist in some dry academic rhetoric or the panicky gunsites of a trigger happy cop. I want to see my people in all their hues and all their blues and all their intermittent smiles. I want to see past the grumbling suspicions of television eyes and internet arguments and weavy traffic snarls and credit rating scores and blinking rules rules rules about where you can go and what grass you can't step on.

I'm tired of my country. I want to see my nation again. I want to walk on the grass.

And so, starting out from my personal Paumanok, Eastwood Houston, I strike up for a New World; the only New World there ever is. The part of the world I haven't been to yet.

2017

Looks like a new trip is in the works. More to come as the situation progresses.

Cornerstone Church

Sunday, July 28 - Fresno

Bucky: Is there a church around here?

Would-Be Helpful Stranger: What are you looking for? Catholic? Methodist?

Bucky: Oh, whatever. I just wanna hear a sermon.

Would-Be Helpful Stranger:  

---

It's hard, I found out, to work into a casual conversation that you're on the road making a conscious imitation of Steinbeck and therefore you're making it your business to attend a representative American church that you don't have any philosophical allegiance to just like Steinbeck went and attended a representative American church with which he had no affiliation as an exercise in projecting a lot of sociological ruminations onto whatever corresponds to your prefabricated opinions about the emotional value of religion all as an excuse to show off your practiced pseudo-intellectual detachment.

And by "you" I mean "me."

And really, slipping that into a brief exchange with a complete stranger in Fresno, a town where nobody smiles, is quite beyond my social dexterity. But I digress. My real point is that Fresno is a town where nobody knows how to give directions.

I puttered about downtown Fresno in search of a church, asking here and there about where one might be, do you know where, how many blocks is it... I received a charming medley of noncorresponding and geographically ignorant advice about a few blocks there or two more blocks that way and at least three outright lies of how you can't miss it in an Oddyssean saga of zigzagging that will go unrecorded in this space, if only to spare you the trauma of enduring what I went through. I will only tell you the moral of this story and that is this: if you need to ask for directions, do not go to Fresno.

Eventually I found The Downtown Church: A Church Aflame. But this being Fresno, they were shut down and boarded up. So eventually I found right across the street the Cornerstone Church (in the Historic Wilson Theatre) with Pastor Jim Franklin.

The historic Wilson Theatre is a gorgeous art deco cinema house from the 20s or 30s. I was a little underdressed for church—the good jeans and black shirt I'd worn since LA—but so were a number of other church goers. The parishioners' attire ranged from yardwork casual to Sunday best. The church ladies working the theatre lobby tended to more garish ensembles. Think "Mrs a-Whiggins" from the Carol Burnett Show. It was an elegant lobby, with the popcorn stand refurbished to a reception desk facing the the wide glass doors and on either side two swirling conch shell staircases that spiraled up the balcony. If the ornate rug wasn't the original from the Wilson's heyday, it was a suitable replica.

From behind the popcorn counter, a thirtyish church secretary directed the two welcoming church ladies and the two black-tied male ushers to guide traffic. When I made for the theatre doors to go in to the service, the secretary came from behind her popcorn stand.

"You can't go in yet. He's in the middle of a prayer."

From the window in the door, I could see Pastor Jim Franklin walking back and forth on stage like a moving target. He wore a stage mic on his head and was brandishing a sword over his head and talking to the congregation. No, you didn't read that wrong. He clutched a bible to his ribs with the other hand. He didn't look like he was praying. I do not judge, however.

"I think he's finished praying. This is the part I wanted to catch."

"Sir, you'll have to wait for the 11 o'clock show."

"You mean the 11 o'clock service?"

"That's what I said, the 11 o'clock service."

It was 10:40am. I had time to check out the bathrooms. I'm fascinated with bathrooms. The Wilson Theatre had the original decorative tile and quite old toilets. I doubt they dated to the 1930s, but the technology and commode architecture was definitely pre-1960. Commodes were thrones back then; commodes worthy of a great industrial empire, when America straddled the world and California was fresh and new.

When they let us into the theatre for the 11 o'clock showverce, I found myself in a traditional theatre auditorium. Big jumbo monitors hung on either side of the stage and an even larger one hung above center stage. The stage had stark props, an extended hardwood floor, colored studio spotlights against black out curtains, and a rock band set up situated upstage from the pastor's promenading zone. Pastor Jim Franklin was nowhere about. Soothing yet peppy background music backfiltered through the hub-bub of crowd conversations. Singles, couples, and a few families milled about and slowly found their seats. I sat fourth row center and surreptitiously snapped away.

The camera and lights crew wore black collared tee-shirts and khaki pants. They moved around, setting up equipment, testing sound, adjusting light mounts, and positioning cameras. They moved with the all-business detachment of stage techies, undistracted by the lights and the music and the building mood and all the other showbiz elements. The gathering congregation had an enviable variety of people—all races, all ages, all income levels judging from the clothes. I finally put it together. Despite the size—the theatre would only have seated 400 people tops—the Cornerstone Church was a megachurch, a mini-megachurch. I wasn't going to get my sermon today at all. I was going to get a pep talk.

Suddenly the lights dimmed. The jumbo monitors on the sides went black. The music swelled. Then up on the widescreen above center stage a commercial came on. It was a commercial for the Cornerstone Church. Pastor Jim looked out from the widescreen and told us about the love of God and the inner power of the light. He didn't say anything I could've disagreed with. The commercial closed with a sincere good-bye from Pastor Jim, followed by a montage of generic slogans about joy and belonging. Everyone in the theatre seemed to feel the joy and belonging. The stage lights rose up, revealing a choir and small rock upstage and a row of pretty, sharply groomed lead singers downstage. A keyboardist, Pastor Jim's wife I figured later, led the celebratory music from stage left and a pretty blonde saxophonist jazzed up the flashy ensemble from stage right. The music swelled.

The six lead singers sang about what a friend they had in the Lord. They summoned us all to our feet. The beat was jazzy, percussive, at times almost surf-guitar in its drive. Pastor Jim's wife raised one hand, the saxophonist wailed, and the music shifted tone to a rock power ballad. It was another song, but with a lot of the same lyrics. One of the leads stepped forward and had a solo. The Lord guided him, he sang. His song repeated some of the slogans from Pastor Jim's opening commercial. He was strikingly effeminate. My instinct was to snicker at this, a suppressed gay guy singing lead at a Christian church. But I was the asshole; I was the hypocrite. I saw nothing the whole service to suggest the Cornerstone Church was down on gays. They didn't seem to hate anybody. They didn't seem to condemn anything. It was all just love, love, and more love all service long. The Lord gives me this, the Lord saves me from that. They never even mentioned Jesus. It could have been any Lord. A Jew, a Buddhist, a fifth-level magic user with a Spell of Belonging could have sat through this showverce, clapping along with the joy, and not been offended.

There were more pop songs about God and the spirit and everybody's life making sense. There were duets and trios and more solos from the lead singers. They finished with a song about armor, based on the "Armor of God" verses from Ephesians. It was the first hint of any Bible quoting I'd seen all service. One guy sang about the Belt of Truth and strapped a gaudy gold belt around the blonde woman standing center stage. The other woman singer sang about the Breastplate of Righteousness and slipped a fake chainmail vest over the blonde's head onto her shoulders. There were verses about the Shield of Faith and the Helmet of Salvation, each with the singer similarly adorning the blonde model up front, each made from cheap cloth or cardboard and emblazoned with cheap gold-colored foil. Then one of the ushers came out with a sword, a real saber with visibly sharpened edges. Instead of handing it to the blonde woman up front while the choir sang about the Sword of the Spirit, the usher raised up the sword and then chunked it, Excalibre-like, into the solid wood floor. A splinter flew up. He'd thrust it hard enough for the sword to stand alone, statue still, gashing into floor of the Church. No one sang a joyous verse about the Vandalism of Entertainment, but the Lord protected them with this just as well.

Now the Pastor's wife stilled the singing and the joying from her keyboard and, at last, Pastor Jim came out. He gave a quick little prayer about God opening our hearts. Then he set into the sermon. But as I feared, it was just a pep talk. He made all the moves of an inspirational speaker. He was good at his job. He warned us against fear and against worry and about the need to bring God into our hearts. He yanked the sword from it hardwood and swung the sword over his head. He earned a murmur of praises and amens when he called it the Sword of the Spirit.

He wanted each of us, each one of us here today, to make a commitment to the Lord and sing his praise. I kept waiting for a hint about what the commitment was for. But this God wasn't for anything. And apart from evil and worry, this God wasn't against anything either. He called for anyone in the congregation who felt so moved to come forward now and make a commitment to the Lord. Come on, come on, I know there's more of you, yes, God was out there in the audience right now, touching someone's heart, calling them down. A dozen or so people came down, sons and sisters and husbands, and bowed their heads in the well of the theatre, and asked God into their hearts. This Lord just wanted me in Heaven and didn't seem to ask much from me in return, not even gratitude. But give a God some credit, he and Pastor Jim at least got Fresno to smile.

The service was over. We all walked out into the sunlight. The sky was a perfect blue overhead. The storefronts of Fresno were still boarded up. But my spirits were up and my step was light. I'd killed an hour and the good mood lasted for at least an hour after that. There wasn't any hypocrisy and there wasn't any con job going on. This was not a bait and switch. Pastor Jim Franklin was selling God, pure and simple, and it wasn't weighed down with anything like an ethical code to live by or a hint of something sinister dragging me into the sin the world. I could go on drinkin' and whorin' and writin' unrhymed poetry and this God still wanted me up in Heaven. I went ahead and dropped a few coins in the collection plate. The Cornerstone Church had earned my business.