4925 Idlewilde S.E. rental business

    This 800 square foot frame stucco two bedroom one bath single car garage house has been in the family since the fifties. It  has been a residence for dozens of renters, some good, some bad. Through time, much property maintenance was done that is now being re-done. It rents for seven hundred and fifty a month today when one hundred and twenty five used to give a renter the front door key. This time the place is for sale to a good owner, someone who has time and money to grow a garden in the back yard, put in rocks and desert landscaping, add another room and a bath. The neighborhood, by San Mateo and Kathryn, is  acceptable though you see transients pushing grocery carts down San Mateo towards Wal Mart. The War Zone is a few miles to the east but homes in this Parkland Hills neighborhood still show signs of committed ownership with new windows, landscaping, solar panels. It brings back ghosts to work here. I see my dad fixing a front screen door and brothers raking leaves and mowing the front yard when it had grass, decades ago. Two big Chinese elms occupy the front yard and birds leave presents on my car each day I park here. I miss my Dad sorely, but this house won’t be mourned when a new owner moves in. A Sold sign will bring me closure.  
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Texas Turkey’s Lunch in Palo Duro Canyon

    Driving back roads through flat dry West Texas prairie, one comes upon mule deer grazing among mesquite trees. They look at you as you pass with dark intense eyes. They are always aware, can turn quick and be gone even quicker, leap over barbed wire fences like child’s play. Deer are handsome animals with deep set eyes, black noses, and ears that are their security. They move freely between Palo Duro Canyon and the ranch and farmland on top where it is windy and exposed and people live. Turkeys are harder to call handsome. This afternoon a group of gobblers appear in the back yard and Alan feeds them lunch. When he reaches into his bucket, grabs a handful of corn and pitches it onto their prairie table, they don’t scatter. He has been feeding them for months and now they come up to his house, onto the back porch, and peer into his living room. He calls them his “Peeping Tom’s”. Animals and people now have relationships. Wild animals have become less wild, less something we eat, more something we befriend. Still, animal’s are wise to be cautious. Human’s easily do inhuman things in a heartbeat. Nature in the canyon is never far away, and neither are humans.
     

Fishing/Palo Duro Canyon Trout fishing in March

    Palo Duro Canyon cuts through Texas like a big spoon in a tub of ice cream at a church social. We load three poles, a tackle box, frozen corn, rubber worms and salmon eggs, and navigate three locked gates to get down to the prime fishing holes. There are some good spots below Lake Tanglewood in the canyon bottom that have catfish, perch, stocked trout, and even bass. It is too early in the year for fish to be biting but we pull in three and throw them back after gently lifting them onto the bank at our feet, carefully removing the hook from their mouths, careful not to get our hands on their bodies, holding them with two fingers slipped under the gills. Catch and release is a new fishing tenet in human history.  In the old days you fished and what you caught ended up in a frying pan with batter and went on your plate with the head on one end and the tail on the other. Now, we throw them back and eat fish sold at the grocery that were raised in fish farms in Vietnam. We fish an hour then track down one of our cousins.  H.B. is working in his garden, in the bottom of the canyon. Questioned, I maintain that Uruguay is a good place to visit, but living there will be worse than where we are when trouble hits the fan. Palo Duro Canyon is one hell of a secure foxhole in a world turning dangerous. In another month it will be warmer and fish in this canyon will be biting better. You can bet we won’t throw them all back. That wouldn’t be natural.
     

Lady Buffs/ West Texas A&M Regional Championships

    Buffalo’s are not small, short, slender animals. In fact, they have a reputation for hardiness, tolerance for adverse circumstances, and supported Indian’s on the Great Plains for hundreds of years. The Lady Buff”s of Texas A&M College in Canyon, Texas are slender and wiry and are playing in the Regional Championships for the NCAA Women’s Division 11 College Basketball, 2015. Last year they went all the way to the National Championship and were beat in the last minutes by only a few points. This season has been dedicated to attaining those lofty heights again. The Lady Buff’s are short, trim, and athletic. They can push the ball down the floor, play ball control when needed, hit outside three’s if the shot is there, and play a great defense that keeps opponents from driving on the basket. They can make free throws and have a bench that can add to the score instead of losing a lead. For this game they are playing an eighth seed and are favored to win the game though nothing is to be taken for granted in sports. Canyon, Texas is a small town outside of Amarillo. The college has a National Champion Women’s Softball team, a volleyball team that went to the elite eight last year, and, of course, a woman’s basketball team that wins a lot more than they lose. Colleges and  women’s sports have been married a long time. This evening fans are decked out with pom pom’s, clap hands, wear buffalo horns and T-shirts, and stomp in the stands complaining about bad calls by the referees, errant passes, and missed free throws. We have our tickets and give our support to the team whether they are down or up. This game is entertaining and, in the end, the Lady Buff’s win handily. . Getting to the championship is hard enough the first time. To go a second time you really have to have something.  
   

Cerulean Gallery/Amarillo Show in Amarillo after lunch

    Contemporary Fine Art is the calling card of this small gallery in Amarillo. It’s owners feature works of emerging local, regional and national artists in nine exhibitions a year. They offer personal consulting services and support the community by donating time and money to local causes. Open, just like their sign says they should be, we drop in and enjoy artists and styles shown this March, 2015. We are finished with lunch at Tacos Garcia , a local Amarillo eatery, that serves as close to New Mexican food as we can get in Texas. Your taste for red or green enchiladas follows you wherever you go. The Cerulean gallery has concrete floors, white walls, light, and enough room to make it a comfortable place to see artists up close and personal. There are artists in every community, painting in little studios that are sometimes just a corner of a living room, an easel on the prairie, or a place in a garage with a skylight added for real light. There are artists working late into the night or early mornings before going to day jobs. They know their lines and colors and art history and pursue their dreams even though the odds are against them making money or achieving stardom. Still, lots of us do things out of love that have a murky bottom line. It is hard to see how long a gallery of Contemporary Art can survive in a town of cowboy art, cattle and windmills, atmospheric clouds and long vistas of open space. It is true, though, that art springs from individual hearts and minds so it should be as different as people are different. There should be a place at the art table for everyone, even crazy old Uncle Ed. Alan, Jim, Sondra and I enjoy this afternoon and I never stop looking for Uncle Ed’s portrait in a hidden corner of the gallery.  
         

End of the Road Heading back to the U.S.S.A.

    Every journey has an end. The Mazatlan aeropuerto is small. U.S. Airways charges twice as much for a ticket as they should and the fact the airplane is only half full going down and three quarter full returning tells volumes about the state of tourism in Mexico. Years of gang killings, drug wars, and poverty in Mexico have taken a toll on traveler’s psyches. No one, except the most resolute, would venture across America’s southern border into a country that so many people die trying to leave. A sign in the airport says, “End of the Road.”   Alan, Dave and I are waiting in shorts and T shirts to go back to the United States. Winter is going full blast there. I can see why ancient tribes followed the Bering Strait into the America’s and kept moving till they found more hospitable places to live. Even then each journey had twists and turns and adventurous souls took chances for better results. Mexico has become the third international ring on Scotttreks right hand but us travelers sometime have to go home to catch our breath. Roots won’t keep me from packing my bags again when time, money, and imagination conspire. We are flying back to Arizona where I drive back to New Mexico, Dave drives back to Colorado and Alan drives back to Texas. Living far from friends and family isn’t a viable excuse anymore for not doing things together.  
       

Zona Historico/Mazatlan Historical district of Mazatlan

    There are two city zones that tourists see most in Mazatlan. There is the Zona Dorado where newer hotels congregate and bars and discos service night crowds. The beaches are here as well as ten taxi drivers to every tourist and street vendors selling hats, sunglasses, ironwood carvings, jewelry, fruit snacks, hair braiding, whale and dolphin tours and anything that will make money. Then there is the Zona Historico where you find old adobe homes built by the city’s founders, chic art galleries, restaurants, bars, shops, and boutique lodgings for visitors with money who like to sit on balconies reading French existential novels and sipping red wine. In the plaza just north of the historical district, where our taxi driver drops us, we discover a map of the Zona Historico on a wood sign. Guarded by two pigeons, the mapa gives landmarks, streets with names, shows compass points, and points us in the right direction.  All we have to do to get where we had wanted to be dropped off in the first place is go a little more to the south and west. In guide books it is mentioned that the Zona Dorado and Zona Historico are safe parts of Mazatlan for visitors from the north.  Dave takes a picture of it with his I phone and keeps us where we want to be the rest of the morning. What did the world do before I Phones?  
     

Night Dolphins/On the Malecon Sunday night in Mazatlan

    On a tip from Pat, at seven thirty this evening, Alan and I pile into a pulmonia and tell the driver – “Dolphina’s por favor …” We are taken, for fifty pesos, to distant communication towers rising into the sky to the south of us. During the daytime these towers are unlit and stick up like red toothpicks waiting for a green olive. During the night their flashing red lights serve notice to drunk ship captains that land and rough rocks are waiting if they don’t leave women alone at their helms. We don’t know where the dolphins are but you have to trust your driver in a foreign country. Our driver is a short man with glasses and a military haircut. We round the south side of a rock fist, partially hiding the towers, and see dolphins illuminated on the Malecon. “When you go back?,” our taxi driver asks. “Un hora.” “I pick you up.” The dolphins are spectacular with lights and jets of colored water sprayed the length of the pool. Mexican families are posing for pictures and street vendors are cooking by the roadside. A kid dressed in a clown outfit entertains a loud attentive crowd by the dolphin fountain. His shoes are ten sizes too big and he wears a little green bowler hat that goes with the bold colors of his green outfit. The audience laughs at his chatter and that is his claim to fame. If you can’t hold your audience you have to get another line of work. Seeing another crowd forming, we walk towards a tall rock by the ocean’s edge and watch a young man walking on top of a fence railing . An English speaking Mexican promoter  jumps on a wall in front of us and introduces his friends – cliff divers traveling to Acapulco. While he promotes, a second tiny diver ascends stairs to the top of the rock, takes the single torch from his friend already there and lights another for his left hand. He then walks on the fence railing using both torches to guide his way. He creeps to the edge of the railing, stops and balances himself, then finally jumps out into space, holding his two arms out with a torch in each hand.  He disappears into the dark water, out of our sight. We look for him to surface but don’t see him as the crowd disperses when the dive is over. The next time we see this performer, he is wrapped in a towel on the street asking for donations from a busload of gringos. True to his word, our taxi driver is waiting for us when we start looking for him. Divers and dolphins, on the same night, is  two for the price of one and a reliable taxi driver, in Mexico, is almost an oxymoron.  
       

Marina Norte Cheap Mexican home on the water

    There are several marinas in Mazatlan. The northern marina tends towards pleasure while the southern marina gravitates towards work.  This Sunday the only event that draws skippers off their boats are NFL playoffs on high def TVs in bars and restaurants close to the water.There are security gates at each boat ramp that lead down to slips where boats small and large are tethered. On Sunday, yacht owners aren’t busy. Some of the sailing craft here, be they sailboats or yachts, cost in the hundreds of thousands. On a window near the bar where Alan, Dave and I have lunch, there are For Sale notes for more modest craft. Someone looking for a cheap place in Mazatlan can buy a 30 foot Bayliner with a diesel engine for eight thousand and park in a slip for twenty four cents a foot per day year round. You have it all – security, socializing, proximity, alcohol, sun, and surf. All in all, this marina leaves the impression that some people have too much money and it needs to be distributed. That thinking, though, needs to be scuttled. It is bad policy to worry too much about what other people have, and how they got it. Only politicians keep sipping from this straw.  
   

Marlin Stew/ The Shrimp Bucket Good for hangovers

    Down near the radio towers, at the south end of the Malecon, is an eatery called the Shrimp Bucket. It is right on the road and if you stick your arm out from a table closest to the rail that separates you from the road, a car will take your arm off your shoulder. From our table Alan, Dave and I can see the Malecon, the beach, a rock hill where San Francisco type homes rise to give the grandest view for miles. After an appropriately long wait in a place where time itself is on a holiday, a waiter brings us a menu that is the same as it was in the 1950’s. There is, after all, no reason to change your Menu when everything on it is something someone once paid money for.  The marlin stew catches my eye. After a large hotel breakfast, a bowl of stew is enough for lunch and if it is good for hangovers it will also be good for a travelers malaise that strikes at some point in every trip where sun, surf, new surroundings, different language, lack of sleep begin to take a toll. Marlin stew is pungent and Mexican. It is packed with peas, carrots, onions, cabbage, green olives, and small reddish bits of marlin. The marlin has a distinct flavor and its taste is softened by queso piled on top of the soup and crackers broken and dumped in the bowl like you did when you were a kid. The stew is hot and spicy and comes with a cold local Pacifico beer. After I finish lunch I want to cross the road, descend concrete stairs to the beach, lie down on a bench under a thatched shelter, take a long siesta, and dream of long winding Kerouac sentences that get lost in their own waves. Us English majors have a thing for well turned sentences, short or long.
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