Home bases take different looks.
They can be hotel rooms, bungalows, RV’s, tents, apartments, houses, townhouses.They can be overlooking the Atlantic in Uruguay, lost in the Andes, on Caribbean shores with palms and yachts, standing on stilts in a Louisiana bayou.
Scott’s newest home base is a townhouse in Albuquerque, the ” breaking bad” city.
In view of the Sandia Mountains,my landscaping is very low maintenance. The two car garage has room for storage. There is an extra bedroom and bath for guests. Covenants prohibit inoperable cars parked at the curb, red front doors, loud parties, Pets are allowed and H.O.A. fees are a couple hundred a year. There is no clubhouse, golf course, swimming pool, or security gate.
There is nothing eternal about a home base. Plains Indians used to drag their homes behind them to the next camp, following herds of buffalo so thick you could walk on their backs.
Living out of a suitcase, as liberating as it seems, is never as free as it appears.
Now, I hang the key to my drawbridge by my coffee maker on the kitchen counter.
Why I’m getting ready for another trip is a question I can’t answer with one post.
Bennett’s Amusements moves in the day before an event, fences off their area at the Festival, back up huge equipment trucks, rides, and promotions. Agile carnies pick up wrenches and assemble a superstructure of steel connected by hundreds of feet of electric cables to a main generator run by diesel gas. Plain ole country dirt turns into an amusement venue.
In this circus there aren’t any animals or strongmen, no bearded ladies or human freaks. These are all protected species now, and midway visitors in 2017 are mostly interested in rides created by country bumpkins with time on their hands and a love for machinery.
Bennett’s, a small time outfit, moves across country, handling amusements in fields, shopping center parking lots and county fairgrounds.The king of the circus, Ringling Brothers, shut down last year and all that is left of the industry is ma and pa operations like this one.
Kids, these days, don’t run away to join the circus. Many just want to sing rap, get interviewed on television, and drive a nice muscle car..
I don’t know what is coming to replace Bennett amusements but it is not likely going to be something I like.
What people do to amuse themselves tells you who they are.
McDonalds was one of the first corporate giants to infiltrate American communities with cheap hamburgers, fast food, employee training programs, marketing strategies, toys for the kids, drive up windows, extended operating hours. You can dine in any corporate or franchise store and get sameness.
McDonalds leapfrogged across the United States leaving stores wherever its arches touched ground. Their business formula is so profitable the company has planted its logo worldwide and a generation of kids choose Egg Mc’muffins over frosted flakes.
Now Mickey’s has a new employee – the Big Mac Kiosk.
Machines make great employees. They aren’t late, don’t do drugs, don’t have fights with their spouse, don’t steal, don’t need a health care plan.
How does a society survive when its people are replaced by computers?
The Big Mac Kiosk shows the State of the Union better than a President’s speech.
Los Altos Golf Course was built in the 1960’s, near Eubank and Copper in Albuquerue.
Owned and operated by the City of Albuquerque, this public links course is open to all. In an age of dwindling play, escalating water costs, cries of environmental ruination., golfers still suit up in shorts, golf caps, spikes, and golf shirts with “Just Do It ” stitched above their shirt pockets.
The driving range,south of the clubhouse, is wide open this morning.
A rainbow makes a gentle arc across the sky, the same arc as a well struck five iron from an uphill lie into a well trapped green.
Rainbows and golf are always welcome on Scotttreks.
Both are about physics and spirits.
Old men plot wars in back rooms and give speeches.Young men hold rifles and die on the battlefield.
Football is an American preoccupation and between the goalposts this evening plays out a game that has referees and it’s own set of rules.
Halftime is minutes away and tuba players come down out of the stands, join fellow cadets on the sidelines, march out to entertain spectators that have sons and daughters enrolled at the school.
On the sidelines, uniformed men watch the game from an end zone and visit with a hunched patriarch during a time out to move the chains.
Coaches squeeze programs rolled up in their hands and look like they want to swat flies.
In this game there are no players taking a knee.
If they did they would be cleaning latrines for months.
On the football field, dying is only symbolic, but the war is real.
Old photos, especially black and white, have a nostalgic quality.
They often have no names or dates on the back, have edges that are dogeared or brown, wrinkles, mustaches drawn in with ball point pens by pranksters. They are sometimes in albums but often are tossed into shoe boxes like shells found on the beach. Sometimes pictures are artistic. Oftentimes they bring back memories, brain chemistry recreating images you can see if you close your eyes and focus, seeing people places and events that have been long gone.
These photos bring back heady dates of the 1950’s when Baby Boomers went to grammar school, Elvis brought his hips out in public, Eisenhower played golf, and Kerouac penned long winded novels, his words rolling across the page like a hot tenor sax solo by Dexter Gordon.
In Albuquerque, Blake’s Lotaburger was a place to go after we kids worked on one of our Dad’s rentals, mowing lawns, raking trash, washing windows, painting, fixing screen doors and broken windows. We would finish, load tools into a roomy Plymouth station wagon, and go to Blakes for a Lotaburger, fries, and a Coke.
With these 50’s folks there was no self indulgence, no sense of entitlement. They were working and glad to be flipping burgers for three dollars an hour and most families were supported by one income.
Blake’s in still around.
We’ve been through oodles of wars since this hamburger stand was built and we are still not at peace.
These days the proverbial tail wags the dog.
Back in yesteryear, a school assignment, in English, was to compare and contrast apples and oranges.
The assignment was dropped on us to develop critical thinking, stimulate observation, and bring order to our primitive minds. The assignment proved that apples are not oranges and oranges are not apples but they do have things in common, and liking to eat either is not a bad thing.
This snail and tortoise have things in common.
Both, on this day, are sticking heads out, coming out of their shells, testing waters, seeing if the coast is clear, checking weather, on the prowl for morsels.
The snail is on Alex’s front porch and moves slimy, leaving residue on the tile as he moves. He peers over the edge of the porch,seemingly oblivious as I bend down to take his photo.
The tortoise is on the backyard path I follow to feed Charlie and Sharon’s adopted deer, who come to their back yard in the Albuquerque foothills for snacks, water, and rest .Their tortoise sticks his head out for a moment, but he pulls it quickly into his shell as I step over him on my way to fill the deer’s tub with cracked corn and chicken scratch.
Sticking one’s head out is dangerous.
When you are comfortable and safe in your shell, why would any living being ever want to stick their head out?
In the downtown historical district of Truth or Consequences, hot springs bubble to the surface.
In old days dusty cowboys would hang their chaps on mesquite branches and swap stories with Indians who hung their moccasins on adjacent branches to look like rabbit ears. In newer days, hotels have been built above the springs and guests soak in claw foot tubs to their heart’s content.
The only admonishments to guests at River bend are not to indulge in drugs and/or alcohol, limit the time of your soak, keep hydrated, call for help if needed. River Bend Hot Springs is well maintained and now you hang your chaps on hooks inside private soaking enclosures. For social folks, there is a public soaking pool just outside the office.
Looking out from my Tierra private soak, the Rio Grande meanders, not in any hurry to get to Juarez.
Each time here, there are more amenities.
Jake, as one of his worker’s admits, ” does a damn good job of fixing things and making the place better. ”
When I lived here I visited two times a week. Now, two times a year has to do.
Hot water soaks seems to often straighten out my bumpy thinking.
A good placebo usually beats bitter medicine every day of the week.
We return our golf cart.
The cart jockey is a tiny man wearing shorts, tennis shoes with big socks, a blue faded ball cap. There are four carts ahead of ours that he has to clean, toss trash, wipe down seats, check gas, and inspect. We use golf carts because they speed up our play and that, in theory, helps us score better.
At my feet is a small key with a number 3 on it. Barely visible, I pick it up, bend it, watch it spring back to its original position. It isn’t a real golf cart key because they are metal and a different shape.
I ask the little Irishman with blond hair pushing out from under the sides of his ball cap what my found key goes to?
He looks a moment while he wipes down a cart seat.
” That’s the key to the box of Forgotten Dreams. ”
There are many keys in this world. Keys to lock boxes, keys to offices and homes, keys to cars, keys to your heart.
All the dreams in the world aren’t much good if you forget where you put them.
As we head back to the car, I hear him whistling ” Danny Boy. ”
I believe he has a box full of dreams under his bed that he opens frequently.
I-40 runs through Albuquerque’s midsection like a Mexican leather belt with a big rodeo buckle.
At I-40 and Carlisle in Albuquerque is a new ” Green Jeans” shopping center built using shipping containers, Albuquerque’s new building material craze. While the old woman who lives in a shoe is a theme of yesteryear, the Santa Fe Brewing Company, along with a local builder, Roy Solomon,have created a new urban retail center combining shipping containers and more traditional materials.
People are on the move in our 21st century and you can easily be asleep in Albuquerque tonight and wake up tomorrow in Singapore. Shipping containers are generic, sexless, and have no personality. They are big Lego’s; easy to move, stack, transform. They fit our generic drug, unisex bathrooms,one size fits all world.
Doing investigative research on shipping container building with Alex, the architect, we visit, see, and leave the new shopping and dining complex feeling the place is well done but not that exciting or cost effective.
Where I want is to live is in my own container mounted on the deck of a huge oil tanker sailing to the world’s ports, having scrambled eggs and bacon with green chili for breakfast, as we round the Cape of Good Hope.
Till that happens, Green Jeans, with its craft beer, home made tacos and stacked containers, will have to do.
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