We take a long,
long walk through the “suburbs”; an organic architectural change is
creeping along, gathering in momentum, and I wonder how the original locals are
taking to it. After a lovely nap, we make our way, as
directed, toward the meeting place for the birthday party, the
Thunderbird bar. By now,
the DC Revelers have swollen to about 25 (two or three of the
intended are, sadly, missing--stuck at various airports), and we glide
effortlessly into the low babble
of like-minded people of various ages from late twenties to late
sixties.
The patio of the bar is ringed with a tall,
rough twig fence, thus delineating it from the dirt parking lot
sprawled in front of the
minimalist, dark bar that is serving some of the best margaritas ever
known to picky-ish us. Our special friends among the group,
besides Elizabeth and her husband the birthday boy, Dan, have become
the couple Andrew and David, the
other half of the original foursome we fell in with last night,
but now we are talking to everyone. A youngish guy says to me
“Yeah, you’re my sister Beth’s friend the cook, who’s driving across
the country.” I am at a loss at
first, since I’d thought I didn’t really know anyone here: “If
you mean Elizabeth, I actually just met her last night,” I reply.
He breaks up: this is not the first time she’s adopted someone, I
gather. I’m enjoying being the focus of the process. Soon,
we set out to walk down to the Blue
Javelina restaurant, where Elizabeth has arranged for a long
metal (read: hip) table with—and now I am sensing that she is a true kindred spirit—place cards.
To say that the menu consisted of a choice between chicken and steak
would be to imply something less
than the delightful reality of this dinner--by twelve orders of
magnitude or so. First, platterfuls of quesadilla wedges and—the
house specialty—garbanzo fries are stacked like a San Francisco bridge after an
earthquake. The fries are revelatory: chunky-creamy inside
and crunchy-peppery outside. My steak—a great big dry-aged strip
crusted with faintly North African spices—is the best piece of beef I’ve been honored to
put myself outside of since the aged balsamic-glazed
carnivore-nirvana at Luques, in L.A. I am chat-chat-chatting with David
to my right and Paul to my left; C. is getting to know Marcie and
Walter (with whom,
coincidentally, I shared a Thanksgiving dinner in Washington
Depot, Connecticut, sometime mid-way through the last century).
This warm and funny and smart group has opened their arms to us; we are
honored to share their personal celebration. C. even makes a
toast, quoting the Bard,
of course, on aging
Since every truly successful event has both a pre-party and an after-party,
the now raucously loud and exceedingly friendly group decants back to
the Thunderbird bar, at this late hour populated by multiple bearded, Creedence-esque denizens of Marfa and,
presumably, elsewhere. At first, our swollen numbers fit in like pulling on a brand-new Tony Lama,
but soon we are enveloped and cherished like a favorite slipper.
The vibe reminds me of Venice, where the culturally, racially, and economically
diverse coexist like a lick of salt, a wedge lime, and a shot of
old tequila. I suspect we'll all
be going back to Marfa.
Pictures: Marfa's water tower; Spurred boots at the Thunderbird bar.
(Blurry? So were we.)
Day Four: Terminally
Hip, One
Marfa, 0 miles
Last night, after
hosting our brand new friends to
Prosecco on the Paisano's patio, we dined solo at the bar at
Jett’s Grill--conveniently located just off the patio—while they went
back to Maiya for dinner. Tuscan Flank Steak sounds promising,
but is it nitpicky to wonder why teriyaki sauce was used to marinate? Marfa may be the hippest place in the
universe, but this restaurant has yet to get in the groove.
In the morning, we join the now-growing band of DC Revelers
for an exclusive viewing of an installation at the Marfa Ballroom (the official
gala opening is at 6:30, but at that hour we’ll all be commencing the
birthday party—yes, we are now a part of the band—but Elizabeth, our perky blue-eyed Pied Piper,
has wangled a private showing).
Through a tiny door, we file into what turns
out to be the first of four environments—created by three
artists—accompanied by the curator, a young, blond Australian
girl. We’re guinea pigs:
the first large group to walk through the installation and the
girl is at first flustered but soon moves smoothly into her spiel, her
expressive hands illustrating the words. The hangar-like space
has been pared down into deceptively
small and evocative post-millennial domestic-Americana spaces.
The first represents a meth lab somewhere in the mid-west: a bombed-out
apartment sporting a burned out kitchen with all the visible signs of a working meth lab. Sudafed and
kitty litter, both crucial ingredients of the process, are in mad
abundance, and a window lets us glimpse a bright white room full of heads—made of kitty litter—sporting
neon wigs (a brief non-representational moment), and then we
walk through a ragged hole in the wall--that looks like the Governator
just blasted through before us--into
an upper-East-side apartment. Elegant white moldings and a
luxe red carpet define this drawing room, around which are hung about
twenty black-and-white photographs of Warhol-esque party-goers in various states of privileged,
self-conscious revelry. All were staged, in New York, for
this installation, we learn, and all the characters are models.
Walking through another blasted hole, we are suddenly in a rustic and craggy post-Hippy kitchen,
shelves crammed with glass jars filled with dubious once-edibles, wine
bottle candles, and mid-meal leavings that, upon closer inspection, are
revealed not as food or representation of food, but rather rocks and
minerals. Through the back
of a refrigerator, we pass into a room containing a pair of
large speakers; here, the comments of groups as they walk through will
be played back to them.
Eventually, we are decanted out onto the hot,
bright streets of Marfa. This
meticulous comment on America’s schizophrenic existence would be
considered cutting edge in Soho, or Venice.
Wandering from the Marfa Ballroom back toward the center of town, our straggling, gesticulating, and
laughing band comes upon a huge, sleek bookstore, so large that
every resident of Marfa could fit inside--with their dogs. Can a
community this size support such a generously-stocked, well-thought-out
selection of books? Perhaps it is subsidized; we spend happy
minutes there, still getting to know one another, and where better than in a bookstore,
where any book can spark the dawning realization of shared
values, humor, experience? The town is beginning to feel like a
wonderful implausibility, and now, just across a bare dirt parking lot
is another timely and incongruous surprise: the Food Shark, a lunch van that has
been written up in Bon Appetit magazine. Huh? Looking
small underneath a fifty-foot flying galvanized roof the old aluminum
van squats, surrounded by the town’s young, booted inhabitants and various
passers-through, all engaged in either considering, ordering, or consuming
the expertly-crafted Middle-Eastern fare; or chatting, or
introducing their dogs. The specials are tuna salad on pita, or
an apricot-glazed meatloaf sandwich; we order one of each, passing
up—for now—the eponymous Marfalafel.
A long train thunders past not twenty feet
from where some of us are perched on stacked railroad ties (note to self: creosote is not good for
jeans). I am momentarily transformed into a young
Elizabeth Taylor, de-training at a dusty, unpromising depot for what
will be the rest of her life—just as her character did in Giant, a movie that did more than it should
have to shape my feelings about Texas.
Pictures: Hotel Paisano's
patio; the Food Shark; trains across Texas.
Day Three: Miles
and Miles of Texas
Las Cruces to Marfa, 260 miles
On this trip, savvy
as we have become, we’re instituting a radical new practice at lunchtime:
yogurt. Festive as it may be to eat both lunch and dinner
(usually less than pristine and healthful items) and then sit immobile
in a small compartment all day long, we have come to understand that,
although art for art’s sake can
be a great motivator, we tend to feel like huge unwieldy
inflated melons embraced by too-tight elastic after a few days.
So in general and in the absence
of some exciting lunch-ortunity, a drinkable yogurt will do the
trick. It’s always so nice to feel actual hunger before dinner, don’t
you agree?
However, one
of the new best
friends we made at Pizzeria Bianco during the millennial wait,
John, has given us a small but carefully thought out list of great
places to try in El Paso, and one of them sounds too promising to pass by simply because
we are not hungry: H & H Café and Car
Wash. El Paso is a funny city: it doesn’t quite know if
it’s America or Mexico—it even boasts the best Mexican food in the
world (makes one wonder if Mexico
itself, a few miles away, might have some decent Mexican grub, too).
We call for directions, since this is a decision made on the fly
without benefit of an internet connection, and a grizzled voice glides
us right in. Today’s specal is Flautas, and though I’ve never had
them, I go with the flow. It’s not really my cup of tea, however: more tortilla than meat and not much
flavor, so I pillage C’s nice Mexican Plate. We elect not to
wash the car (underneath the hand-lettered sign listing the various
prices, a smaller placard proclaims “Blame Congress for these Prices.”
The minute we crossed over into Texas (where we’ll be for 3+ days), C.
starts looking for ways to blame and ridicule the lame-duck lame-o in the White House,
but I have an appreciation for Texas that goes far beyond its
least-favorite son (who isn’t really
a true Texan—just as he didn’t really win in 2000). Soon after we
pull out of El Paso (delayed by
the need to get C. a new bathing suit; he’d inadvertently driven out of
Phoenix with it on the roof of the car, where he’d temporarily placed
it to dry) we are on Route 90 heading down into the sparse, dry
wilds of West Texas on our way to
the hippest town in the Universe. I am talking on the phone at
one point when an actual
tumbleweed cinematically rolls across the road and crunches
under my wheels.
When we hit Marfa, the
historically-registered Hotel Paisano (home to the film crew of
Giant in 1958, when it
was filmed hereabouts) offers a cool patio with a tinkling fountain,
warm and dry air whispering through the few trees, and a dog-friendly
policy that extends to every part of the rambling old tile-and-adobe
building. We install at a
table by the fountain and order a margarita (no wrangling
necessary for fresh lime juice), and drop quickly into peaceful reading mode.
Stella chews on a piece of the firewood that's provided for all the little iron kivas—one stands
guard at most of the tables. After the cares of the road
are nicely banished, we take Stella out for a stroll around the
few-block town, which seems to be undergoing a slow and careful architectural
transformation: every third house boasts that smooth stucco,
galvanized roof, no window-moulding, low-water landscaping look with
which I am familiar from Venice, CA. The streets are generously wide and empty, save for the
occasionally passing pickup-with-dusty-dog, and I revel in the
caress of the parched air.
Rounding the corner on the way back to what we
now think of as “our
table,” we spot tables, chairs,
and people on the sidewalk a block away. It must be the
restaurant Maiya, we surmise (since that seems to be the only other
watering hole in town), so we amble down to investigate. Within half a block, I can sense a dog
lover at one of the tables (and
which one of those, I ask you, could resist Stella?), and
by his intense force of will we
are drawn in like a retracting dog leash directly to this
glittering, laughing group--one woman and three men--who have just arrived from D.C. to celebrate the
woman’s husband’s 40th birthday. Within only a few
minutes, we have discovered friends in common and a common joie de
vivre that will in turn draw us,
over the next 36 hours, to feel as if we were all old, old friends.
We are, in effect, willingly
Shanghaied by the woman with the alarming, stunningly blue eyes full of
wild excitement, infectious laughter, and the hilarious
potential of future fun to be had.
Pictures: H&H
interior and repast; A blimp on the road to Marfa…
Day Two: Gilty
Serendipity Phoenix to Las Cruces, 390
miles
Once again, last
night, we made the pilgrimage to Pizzeria
Bianco in Phoenix, billed as the “best pizza in the U.S.” by
multiple self-styled experts. It offers, indeed, a damned good
pizza, but you must pay--and more
than just money. If time is of value, the circles of bread
dough topped with this n’ that at Bianco are the most expensive in the universe.
Three years after our first visit, at the start of Drive Number One (this is Drive Number Seven), the
wait is still two hours when we arrive at 6:30. No reservations,
you know: terribly terribly trendy. If it weren’t for the
adorable and friendly bar, housed
in a stylishly down-at-the-heels authentic Craftsman bungalow,
the pizza alone wouldn’t be enough motivation. Once again we become
bosom buddies with several fellow waiters (not the waiters, altho
they’re nice too). A friendly young
couple from Tucson invite us to dine at their home on our next
drive through. It may be a year before we call, I say.
After a bracing morning swim in the hotel
pool, during which Stella runs around the circumference of it at high
speed, yipping, we set off toward Las Cruces in the Podmobile (83k
miles and counting).
390 miles and a short nap later in Las Cruces,
we are taking a stroll around the lovely
and little-known old square in La Mesilla before our scheduled
dinner at La Posta, when what should occur but one of those
serendipitous “Aha!” moments that
make this trip endlessly enticing, and yes, worth doing over and over
again. Here at the corner of the sleepy square is a portentous double gate, a
huge, wrought-iron construction opening into a small stone-and-tile
courtyard that boasts a tinkling old wall-fountain and hark – a
menu! The ornate golden sign proclaims “Double Eagle.” None of my searching has told me of
this place, so I’m skeptical as we approach the heavy carved
wooden doors that seem to lead within. Suddenly, we are in a long, tall bar of truly mythical
grandiosity, a room with 30-foot gold-and-turquoise-decorated
tin ceiling, a Palladian four-pillar, twenty foot-high by forty
foot-long mahogany bar, literally hundreds of Lalique sconces, and two glittering three by seven-foot
Baccarat chandeliers. Not to mention several massive,
museum-quality oil portraits and landscapes from turn-of-the-last-century
Europe, and, upon inquiry, fresh-squeezed
lime juice for the soon-to-arrive margaritas (long-time readers
of Roadfoodie will recognize this as a deal-breaker). Settling in
with our bartender Candace (her husband is an engineer at the nearby White Sands missile base), we
read about the provenance of this unlikely
temple of food and drink hidden away in a tiny town in the far
southwest corner of New Mexico. The private home it once
was has a long and dramatic story – the Gadsden purchase was signed in one
of the private dining rooms – and even includes a pair of
star-crossed ghosts, characters from a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque story of
forbidden love between the upstairs son and the (upstart) downstairs
maid. The boy’s mother, having banned the two from any further
contact, discovered them in flagranteafter doubling back for some
forgotten item and, in hysterically stabbing the lovely maid with her
sewing shears, kills her and
mortally wounds her own son who dies three days later.
It’s not mentioned what the charming mother does after this, but the ghosts still appear in Polaroid
pictures taken in the room where they were stabbed. No shit.
Even though the menu is a little schizo for my snobbish tastes (Barbecue
Chicken Quesadilla? Puh-leeze—pick
one cuisine and stick with it!), we decide to dine in the
adjacent and theretofore unsuspected massive-huge-gaudy dining room,
with its 24-carat gold ceiling
and life-sized stag-shaped corbels--because they do a tableside Caesar for two. Quel
retro delight! I adore watching our waiter mash the
anchovies with great care, whisk in all the requisite ingredients (hmm,
I see they’ve coddled the egg;
how p.c!), and toss the whole delicious mess with crisp leaves of
romaine and homemade croutons. Even the plates are chilled; even
I am impressed. This is a
tradition I’d like to bring back, but if so I’ll use a decent
salad bowl; the one here at the Double Eagle is beyond flimsy, made of
faux wood in a laminated patchwork pattern last seen on serving-ware at my High
Sierra summer camp in the nineteen-sixties. Ah well, I must
celebrate the charming juxtapositions of life on the open road, crossing through the soft underbelly of
our pimply adolescent of a country. Thirty-foot, real-gold
ceiling, laminated faux-wood salad bowl, and (big) glasses of
Sonoma-Cutrer chardonnay for $6.50. Search, and ye shall find.
Pictures: Bar at
Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix; Table-side Caesar at Double Eagle in Las
Cruces.
Day One: Farewell to The ‘Bu
Malibu to Phoenix, 398 miles
My home state has
shown her truest and most beloved colors this winter: From the smooth, Irish-green hills of San Simeon
and her driftwood-scattered beaches, to the crystal-clear, snow-capped
peaks of San Gorgonio above Palm Springs, I have reveled in the
beauty that still remains, proud in the face of overcrowding and
pollution. There are days and places here that make you forget the
times we live in. I shall try to find them with all my might. But now,
it is time for the East, and work, and reality. And so we must go.
I have eaten well this winter. In San
Luis Obispo at Christmas, Niman
Ranch short-ribs long-braised in Zuma Vista syrah helped us
greet the New Year. In Malibu, a friend’s sublime buttery sautéed salmon
made me weep for the very little salmon we’ll be eating this
season (due to the almost complete absence of a Chinook harvest).
And another friend, who comes late to cooking but has excelled at
making wine, braised an ethereal lamb shoulder, then finished it with a sauce of more Zuma Vista (his own
creation), capers, mint, and a judicious addition (by me) of
several cubes of ice-cold butter at the penultimate moment (just to
tame the acidity of the wine, you know). In Palm Springs, even though the kitchen of our rental
was sparsely equipped, we cobbled together an estimable Coq
au Vin (again, Zuma Vista--though it is first and foremost a wine for
quaffing). In Hollywood at
an English-themed Sunday lunch, we relished more of Niman
Ranch’s bounty: a seven-hour leg of lamb preceded by our host Richard’s
to-die-for take on Welsh rarebit (puff pastry pillows!) and, after a nice long three-dog walk around the
lovely neighborhood, finished off (as were we) with a true
trifle.
Yes, all these excellent culinary adventures
come with a cost. In my gym in Malibu, windows were thrown open
toward the beach and I could see the glittering Pacific from my treadmill.
There, my fellow strivers were buff sixty-something soap-stars; in Palm
Springs, the gym was populated by incredibly
fit gay men of a "certain age" (you’ll
never know). By the time I eat my way back to New York, I’ll be in dire need of my
normal-person fitness center, located in a big old house and
without some of the technological marvels I’ve become used to, but with
all the opportunities for exercise one might need.
Awaiting me back in the Hudson Valley is the half-Ossabaw pig I’ve ordered from my friends at Turkana Farms in
Germantown. Last week, the slaughterhouse manager and I spoke as men about the butchering.He seemed surprised when I
told him I wanted all the leaf lard, and all the cuts with the skin on.
I guess he didn’t know with whom he was dealing. My friend
Michael Flamini asked “How long
will it take to convert
that into wearable fat?” When we roll up to the little
house in nine days, I shall begin to cook in the fireplace, make exquisite pizzas on my new
soapstone pizza pan, a gift from Wildwood Ovens’ Michael Girard
(also known as Pizza Boy), and eat
teensy fava beans from Turkana Farms with sheeps’ milk manouri from
Murrays. Bring on the spring!!
Pictures: My lovely California,
Rubbing the slow ribs in SLO (San Luis Obispo), Two Girls on the Beach
at San Simeon.
East to West, December 2007:
December 23, 2007: The
Road Through Hell
Kingman to San Luis Obispo, CA, 470 miles
After an early
breakfast of sausage plus biscuits n’ cream gravy kindly brought to me
by C. while I hurriedly pen this epistle (thoughtfully laid on in the
lobby of the Best Western), we make an early start. It’s another long
day, but different in that it’s
our last driving day of nine: by sunset we’ll be tucked up at cousin
Robert’s house in San Luis Obispo, on the central Coast of
California among mature oak trees and scrubby grasses just a spit away
from the Pacific ocean.
We stay with I-40/Route 66 as far as Barstow, and then it
winds its way down towards San Bernadino and LA while we head
off due west on little state route 58, across the Mojave desert.
The desert consists of several great depressions instantly identifiable
as ex oceans, with gently curving
shorelines and vasty deeps, but now lacking, after countless millennia,
any water. The colors are monochromatic and yet breathtaking: a
selection of dun browns suspended under that massive, sea-blue
sky.
Then the road starts to dip precipitously down, as we descend from the high desert into
the breadbasket of the west, California’s reputedly lush Central
Valley. It appears as a bowl of black bean soup, with a disturbingly precise line between the
healthy sky above and the air of the valley, which is a deep, dark, and
dirty grey-brown. Is there a fire somewhere? I can’t
believe this is normal. Immediately, our eyes start to sting and our
throats feel raw. This is where the vegetables that feed millions
grow. Ca-58 is dragging us down into the seventh circle of Hell, otherwise
known as Bakersfield.
It is flat, ugly, dirty, crowded, personality-free,
and not the most welcoming port through
which to arrive in the land of my birth. This is the place my
heart still yearns for, even though every year anything resembling my
cherished old California gets harder and harder to find. After
interminable mall-related traffic, we are driving through the outskirts
of Bakersfield, where it’s easy to see why this city was born: acres
and acres of orchards, punctuated
by a factory the size of a steel mill: Frito-Lay. Inside,
corn by the railcar-full is transformed into crispy proto-food that is
probably being munched in 80% of the homes in America today, two days
before Christmas. And then suddenly, a line of demarcation shows
us what this land would be like without water stolen from other states long ago
in aggressive political deals, many of the most important
presided over by my godfather, Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.
It’s a desert. Without irrigation, it is miles and miles of flat,
featureless nothing.
After what feels like millennia, the road begins to
climb again, and we yearn for the
moment the switchbacks will take us up above the stew of dirty
air. Ca-58 appeared, on the map, to be a more direct path
to the coast than the route google-maps wanted us to take, but of
course there is the coastal
mountain range to be surmounted, and as we wind and double back
and dip, never exceeding 20 miles an hour for two of them, I wonder if
google’s way over the mountains might just have been more direct. We
have never come this way before.
Several hours later, and finally here is the Pacific, wet
and blue and salty and rough just as it was when I was a kid. The big
piece of old California that no progress can destroy, no mall invade,
no model home conquer, no traffic
slow to a halt. It’s why we do what we do.
After an exhilarating run and some splashing about
with Californian dogs, it's time to stop moving for awhile.
Five days in one place! Unheard of! And what a place to
stop: cousin Robert's home is the
comfiest and cosiest these weary travellers could dream of.
Two states: Arizona and California.
Pictures: Journey's
end; The Travellers Reward, with chilled adult beverages.
December 22: Heaven
is Deep-Fried
Albuquerque to Kingman, AZ, 470 miles
If not immediately post 9/11 then gradually, we have had to reassess our
expectations for air travel. One: that it will be comfortable or
convenient and, among others, Two: that it will get you where you want
to go at the predicted time. Thus, it is some kind of Christmas miracle
that C. was able to fly from OKC to NYC on Wednesday, get there in time
to teach his two scheduled classes, and then fly back to Albuquerque on
the Friday before Christmas and arrive only 30 minutes late.
Last night while awaiting his arrival, I had dinner at the St Clair
Vineyard Bistro and sampled some
of New Mexico’s attempts to make wine. The syrah, although
lacking in complexity, sure had great body and grape. I got a
bottle for our friend Dutch, who
now makes wine in Malibu with his buddies, and used to make wine in
Vaison-la-Romanee—always, wherever it is, largely from the syrah
grape. Not one to mince words when it comes to his chosen beverage, I
feel sure Dutch will share his honest impressions of the New Mexican
syrah. There is live music at the bistro, a reasonably wonderful
steak salad, and then I get the
call from C. in Dallas telling me he is, basically, going to make it
tonight. Yippee! While eating at the bar, I strike up a
conversation with a supporter of the band, who turns out to know five
people from my very tiny high school in Sedona. Though students
came from all over the country and the world to the dusty,
bleeding-heart liberal little school, many of them either settled immediately
in the southwest or are now returning to it in very early retirement.
And here at the bar is the proof.
Stella and I hit the airport and make friends in the arrivals lounge,
then there comes C., wearing his
smooth OKC fedora and a big smile. He’s back on the hegira with
us, and now it’s really time to slow down and get into the holiday
spirit.
C. has a jones for
some good Mexican and New Mexican cuisine, and would like to
stay here for a few days and eat lots of it, but Christmas in
California calls and we’re on a tight schedule. But there’s almost always time for one more
meal, and first thing this morning before heading towards
Kingman, we fill the very small
void in our stomachs by breakfasting at Mary and Tito’s
Café. The building is so small and unassuming that we miss
it at first, sailing past along 4th street amid car repair and tattoo
joints, but we circle back and indeed this low-slung, flat-roofed beige adobe is
our destination. On the by now familiar theme of vinyl and
formica, Mary and Tito’s strikes a more somber note, in shades of blue
and gray, and a supremely
comforting sound wafts past our ears as soon as we walk in: the
distinctive burbling that could be mistaken for nothing else but the
seething of very hot oil. When I see my carne adovada
sopaipilla approaching the table, all puffed and blistered with golden
bubbles and embraced by a neon-red chile sauce, I know that I have finally hit the Mother Lode on the
Mother Road.
The pastry cracks under my fork with reassuring crispness; there is gooey yellow cheese inside and the
carne adovada is deeply complex and stringy. The red chile
sauce is like nothing else I’ve ever tasted and puts the lie to any
suspicion I may have had that New Mexican cuisine is one-note. If the chile sauce is made with care,
skill, and love, then the plate will offer the complexity and
depth of any cuisine you might name. And I am not, really, a hot
cuisine person. But this is hot
and deep as well: the work of a master. Although I have still
not fully digested last night’s steak salad, I am well on the way to
finishing off my whole plate before C. gently puts his hand on my arm
and gives me a knowing look. I
sigh, place the fork and knife on the plate, and vow to return with
more time and appetite.
Eleven hours of easy driving later, we’re at the Dambar Saloon in
Kingman and my almost non-existent void is amply filled by a small
caesar salad. Back at our pad at the Best Western, we sip a little smooth and melifluous
bourbon from Tennessee (Woodford Reserve) and watch the Wizard of
Oz. I am so ridiculously easy to please.
Two states: New Mexico and Arizona.
Pictures: My heavenly
sopaipilla; C's carne adovada, eggs, and hash browns.
December 20: On the
Mother Road
Amarillo to Albuquerque, 280 miles
For some time now, I-40 has been following the old Route 66, the main street of America
and the mother road for generations of dreamers, misfits, and travelers
like Steinbeck, Kerouac, and of course, Binns. As always when I
travel alone, it’s a light day, mile-wise, and I have plenty of time to
reflect on the landscape, such as it is, that’s rolling past my
window. Above me, con-trails criss-cross the sky, which is as
blue as C.’s eyes and as wide as an ocean. Are there more planes
flying over this middle part of the country, or is just easier to see them in the crystal-clear
air?
I’m out of Texas so soon it hardly feels like I’ve been there. On one
of my drives, I was in Texas for four solid days. In Santa Rosa,
New Mexico, I watch a small plane towing a glider, and see the exact moment when the glider is
set free; it banks on the invisible wind, turning elegantly in a
way no powered aircraft ever could; it looks peaceful and hopeful up
there. I think gliding must be a hobby for optimists.
Lunch clearly must
be at the little Route 66 diner
which, it transpires, has been open
since 1960 and in the Velasquez family for 27 years. At
the helm today is the owner’s brother, who is clearly pinch-hitting
and, it seems, would be more comfortable in a nightclub than a
formica-forward restaurant wall-papered
with 8 x 10’s of muscle cars. His front teeth are capped
with gold and his hair is swept upwards and backwards in a Frankie
Avalon-esque bouffant, all the salt and pepper of it. He’s tall and muscular but as wrinkled
as a saddlebag that’s been left out in the rain.
Approvingly, I note that the kitchen fries its own chips—although in
oil, not lard. The only place I’ve come across that fries their
chips in lard is the exceedingly
out-of-the-way Cub Drive-In, in Brownsfield, Texas, where Vera
proudly makes her beans with bacon grease, too. Seeking to right
the wrong of last night’s enchilada disappointment, I order the same
thing. Not that there’s very much else on the menu. I briefly
entertain the blasphemous thought
that New Mexican cuisine is somewhat limited in scope, but file
it away for later, very secret meditation.
But this is the dinner I should have had last night--tortillas tender,
rice broken and dirty-looking (in a good way), and beans comfortingly
mis-shapen, the whole mess
blanketed with a spicy red chile sauce that makes my nose run.
My plan is to go to ground in a
quiet B & B in Albuquerque for two nights while I wait for
C. to finish his classes in New York and catch up with me. And
then to explore the town I’m gradually forging a real affection for,
and do a little non-commercial writing. For some reason, rather
than stay at the excellent
Hacienda de Antigua, supremely simpatico two years ago when I
made the whole drive alone, I’ve selected another B & B, Hacienda
de Colores. Trying to cover all the bases, the grass is greener, whatever. It's a mistake.
For one thing, it turns out to be just
50 yards from the I-40, where I’ve been spending virtually all
my time, day and night, for five days, since Knoxville. And there
are the two yapping dogs, never seen but always heard, and the owner’s
mother and the “cleaning lady”--who cleans nothing the whole time I’m
there—doing their own never-ending yapping just outside the door of my
room in what is not really a B&B per se, but rather someone’s
private home. And not in a
good way.
Since napping will not be a possibility, I crank up the iTunes on the
lap-top and do some reading. Doors slam every 30 seconds. There
are no other paying guests, so the
owners are having their Christmas party just outside my room--the
room where an entire family of papier-mache and felt Santas the size of
human children and a plethora of
Santa-pillows on the bed, which is decked out in
Christmas-themed linens that look as though they were new in 1970 had
to be put away in the closet because Stella thought they’d all been provided
for her chewing pleasure. And this was the dog-friendly room.
I’m out the door as soon as it’s politically correct to start thinking
about dinner, and head for High
Noon, a block or so off the square in old town. I settle
in at the bar and pretend to take
notes while I eavesdrop on the table of office-partiers and the
two good ‘ol gals next to me at the bar. They’re not yet out of
their thirties but are already yokking it up like any of the best
girl-gangs I’ve hung with. My Caesar salad dressing is made with
anchovies, and I don’t have to
plead with the bartender to get a margarita made with real lime
juice because there’s one right there on the menu: the Tradicional.
What with the state of the dollar, it’s clearly going to be awhile
before we can go back to Italy. I hear this from virtually every
other person I talk to: no more
Europe for awhile. Heartbreaking. And then I wonder,
perhaps a place where the Caesar
dressing’s made with anchovies and the drinks are made with fresh lime
juice is a good, if temporary, substitute. (Don’t even mention
those salads that come only with after-market anchovies, those poor,
embarrassed, too-salty little wimps that would prefer to be respectably
concealed in, and tempered by, the dressing.)
When I return to my room inside
the two ladies’ cluttered and kitschy house, Stella has been
given a pig’s ear. I suspect she must have whimpered vociferously
at the thin door, terribly confused as to why anyone, anywhere, friend
or not, would want to have a party without her.
Two states: Texas and New Mexico. Picture: Route 66
restaurant, Santa Rosa NM.
December 19: In
the Panhandle Zone
OKC to Amarillo, 260 miles
C. is gone by 6am, heading off
for his “day at the office” back in NYC while I carry on solo
for a few days. And it’s changeover day for me, transferring a
few fresh items of clothing into the overnight bag. Not that the drive is a sartorial event,
by any means. All the better that our room at the Best Western is
down a corridor and up in an elevator, as I shuffle all of both of our
bags back to the car in several trips. But it was far quieter than the
last several “Sleep on the Interstate!” accommodations.
I
breakfast with Pam and John—we know we’re
in the southwest now, because a “hot breakfast” is included: eggs, bacon, sausages, biscuits n’
cream gravy, and loads of reasonably pulpy oj. They are heading into
marathon drive mode now, while I am slowing down into a solo-driver
routine, only 260 miles today and then 280 tomorrow. It is a bittersweet parting; they are
off to begin a brave new life, and by the time I return East in
April they’ll have their feet firmly planted on the streets of
Manhattan. All the endless late-night, wine-fueled conversations
Pam and I have had about the
relative merits of life on each coast have, for each of us in a
very different way, translated into an actual altered reality. I’ll
continue to try to have my cake
and eat it too for as long as my karma allows. She’ll miss
California, but knows that their immediate future is in the East.
OKC is covered with downed branches and split trees,
remnants of the ruinous ice
storm that tore through here ten days ago. In fact the hotel is
full of people who still don’t have electricity. But the devastation to
vegetation is heartbreaking: years
of growth wiped out and now lying dead and lifeless-brown on the
sides of the roads.
Out on the road, I see that I am now in a land of gold.
Where Virginia was all bright and silver, Oklahoma—and soon enough the
Texas panhandle—are all done out in dun brown, which if you look at it
with an open mind under the endless blue sky, is a sort of gold.
Looking for a dog park in east Amarillo, instead I find a huge,
close-cut field of smooth beige grass for Stella to run wild circles
on. There’s a little breeze and the temperature’s about 65F, the sun is bright and the few wispy
clouds serve only to draw attention to the hugeness of the sky.
I feel, once again, alive in the West. Breathing suddenly becomes a
great joy.
On the way to my Best Western, I
spy a little bungalow of a Mexican
joint, way out in the middle of nowhere, Amber’s II.
Though I’ve researched a place called BL Bistro, the urge to go with
the flow overcomes me. A quick google after checking in tells me
the place is "more Mexican than New Mexican,” so I resolve to throw
caution to the wind.
Cut to 7pm. I am sitting in a large, fluorescent-lit
room with 65 seniors and a plethora of plastic plants. I am eating a
cheese enchilada draped with a colorless, flavorless “sauce” (which I need a steak knife to cut
into, but don't have), and sipping a glass of ice-cold,
Welch's-like, carbonated red wine. The beans are from a can, the salad
is not dressed. Note to self:
There is a reason I do all the dining research. We do not
necessarily find success by “going with the flow.”
I talk with C. in New York, where he’s off to teach
the first of two final classes. It is raining and chilly
there. I trust, perhaps
naively, in the nation’s air transportation system, to get him
safely back to me. Hardly a covered-wagon journey. We get
angry when things don’t work smoothly, but think of the heights our
expectations have progressively scaled.
Two states: Oklahoma and texas.
Pictures: Three
girls ready to hit the road, Stella at the winow in Amarillo.
December 18:Rendezvous in OKC
Memphis to Oklahoma City, 470 miles
This is a long driving day, but with apologies to Arkansas I just don’t
see the point in stopping in between these two cities, and with two
drivers we can do it. This
is the first day I really start to get Zen on the drive; I do
230 miles straight out of the gate, and we’re listening to the Peter
Mayle book all the way. The fact that it’s rather simple and
obvious writing doesn’t take away from the mystery element, and I go on
autopilot while all my road senses remain safely heightened. Listening to the book, watching the
mirrors, calculating the miles remaining to Feltner’s Whataburger in
Russleville, Ark, enjoying the re-appearance of beloved signs
from the last time I came this way (Frog Suck Pond, Lotawatah Rd., Home
of Carrie Underwood, American Idol), I lay down the miles, and by the
time we pull into Feltner’s, I feel so good it’s hard to believe I’ve
been watching a two-lane road stretch off into the distance for almost
four hours.
C. is justly taken with his Whataburger: he declares it
to be “Much better than a regular
burger.” I
myself having never actually eaten what he is referring to, just know
it’s simple, meaty and chewy burger goodness, with just the right ratio
of pickles to lettuce to mustard to mayo. It feels good to share
this with him, and I try to blot out the fact that tomorrow I’ll be
continuing my Zen road experience while
he flies back to New York to teach his last two classes of the
semester. I think it’s simply impossible for him to really let
go into the great wide open until after he rejoins the little traveling
family on Friday night in Albuquerque.
Besides being the
official halfway mark, tonight is
weighted with even more importance: Our great friends Pam
and John, who are moving from California to New York and departed in the opposite direction the
same day we did, will be meeting us for dinner in OKC at my
favorite Okie joint, the Cattleman’s Cafe. Due to a little
bizarre rush-hour traffic, we roll into the Best Western an hour or so
after they’ve already installed
themselves—with real wine glasses, streaming NPR music, candles, and
fluffy slippers—in the room next door. As we trundle down
the corridor with our usual nine small bags, I see a camera flash in
their window and immediately intuit they are in there taking photos of
their traveling companions, the (stuffed) bunnies. I get all warm
and fuzzy knowing that I’m not the only nutcase on the country’s roads.
The bunnies come to dinner
at the Cattleman’s, but Stella has to stay behind. Pam is
impressed with the wine selection, and John is man enough to join me in
the lamb fries, which taste marginally interesting but really just like
anything that’s really heavily breaded and deep-fried (not my favorite
cooking method on the planet). The small ribeye is just as
remembered: Perhaps the best steak
I’ve ever had. I swallow my activism for a moment, and
just let myself revel in the salty-fatty beefiness of grain-fed beef.
I
ramble, ruminate, and eat
ruminants. It’s who I am.
C. is fried from his half of the drive and a little
worried about the
next morning’s early departure and two flights, so I tuck him up nice
and early.
Three states: Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
Picture
(from Pam's camera):
Posing with bunnies at the Cattleman's after The Perfect Steak.
December 17: Among the Villes
Knoxville to Memphis 370 miles
Alert the media! There is large black SUV traveling the roads of
Tennessee sporting a pair of
fuzzy brown antlers. At first, I thought these might be
something to do with moose-es. But then I realize Dorothy’s not in
Maine anymore, so they are probably only seasonal and channeling a
reindeer sensibility. I like Tennessee and I think it has a sense of
humor, perhaps because every time
I drive through here I like Al Gore better. But the early
settlers—who clearly must have numbered quite a few French—were not
terribly imaginative. Between Knoxville and Nashville there are at least three hundred other –villes.
McMinnville, Smithville, Christmasville,…….
I
am on the verge on consigning Best Westerns to
history, if last
night’s sample is a good indication. But it’s in the rear-view mirror
now and we need never return there again. For this morning’s
listening, since I’m driving first, I choose my very first road mix, which leads off
with Steppenwolf’s “Get your motor running…” and meanders among
Bonnie Rait’s “The Road’s My Middle Name,” and Joan Baez’ “He’s a
Drugstore Truck-Driving Man,” among the 29 titles.
The last time I drove this exact route, I was alone,
and though I don’t
want to repeat Roadfoodie’s experience, I also want to share the highlights with my
beloved. So once again we leave I-40 and head south towards
Belle Mead in Nashville to find the Sylvan Park lunchroom, where two years ago I spied a man eating the
most luscious fried chicken—and enjoying it beyond all
reason—while I stuck to the three sides that Sylvan Park is famous for.
When we find this tiny restaurant, it’s filled with happy eating people and vinyl
tablecloths topped with little yellow bottles of Tabasco peppers in
brine. And, as is becoming the theme for this drive, there is no fried chicken on Mondays.
C. has the crabcakes, which are suspiciously uniform in shape and
coating, but prove impossibly crispy and briny, especially after he
drowns them in half a bottle of tartar sauce (Roadfoodie alumnae may remember how C.
has to mix his own tartar sauce with ingredients requested from the
kitchen when he consumes his beloved fried lake perch in Lake Maggiore.
Here, there is a river of it.) His black-eyed peas are to-die-for; my
mac and cheese is lusciously custardy, which makes up for the lack of a
crispy-cheesy crust, and the braised turnip greens are tannic and bitter, actually the perfect
foil for the mac and tiny bites of my hot country ham. We are
sustained for the moment, and easily cover the last 200 miles to
Memphis, where Rendezvous’ dry-rubbed ribs await (or at least, so I think). There is so much excellence
to share.
In West Memphis (ie, across the big Mississippi), the
Best Western is
more simpatico inside than the previous Best Western, but it is closely
embraced by two huge interstates, and as the clouds turn pink on the
horizon, I am treated to a
spectacular evening seen through a parade of speeding, rumbling
semi-trucks and tractor-trailers.
Back in downtown Memphis, it is quickly revealed
that the Rendezvous is not open
on
Mondays. Because of C.’s schedule and the position of
Christmas on the calendar, there was no other day we could stop in
Memphis, yet I am desolate. So we troll Beale Street looking for
inspiration among the neon and music souvenirs. The concierge at
the Peabody Hotel tells us the Blues
City Café is the next-best thing. But even after
slathering with the sauce-on-the side, the ribs are bland, wimpy, not
as good as the dry-rubbed ribs I created for my last cookbook (after
the revelation resulting from my first visit to the Rendezvous, and
extensive research). The best thing about the dinner is a pile of smoky sausage slices, which appear to
have been grilled and then braised in sticky-sweet barbecue sauce.
Afterwards, the bar of the Blues City Café
offers the music and
singing of a guy who sounds more
like Johnny Cash than Johnny Cash. His basso profundo is so low you
can’t imagine how he can sing standing upright. When he
sings “Ah fell in to a burnin’ ring of fi-ah,” I close my eyes and soar
on the feeling that the Memphis stop is a success.
But I’ll be back for the real
ribs. One state:
Tennessee.
Pictures:
Crab cakes at Sylvan Park, Nashville; Beale Street.
December 16, Hills Dipped in Silver Harrisonburg
to Knoxville, TN 360 miles
This morning, the
branches of all the trees are encased in a thick
coating of ice. Crystal clear and sparkling in the sun, the treetops are like big brittle
pom-poms, but they are not waving. I’m hesitant about the
road conditions, so we hang in the cozy inn for a few hours, hit
PetSmart for some liver-snap treats, and then the road. It
is dry and safe and like home.
We’re driving through Virginia, right down the
middle towards
Tennessee, and the road is on one side of a valley that is studded with
trees, farms, silos, and undulating hills that stretch from one end of
my horizon to the other like gentle dunes on a wide beach. Today,
as we drive along listening to
Peter Mayle expound about the golden hills of Provençe,
these Virginian hills are all done out in silver. The sun is low on the
east side of the valley, and between it and our little car there is a
gossamer-thin layer of clouds. Some strange and alchemical effect
of this particular light on the ice-limned trees, grass, and occasional
power lines transforms it into an
eerily beautiful moonscape, a silver-tinted old black & white
photograph, a landscape of white and brightest silver, so bright
that I have to shade my eyes from its soft brilliance.
Earlier, C. has brought me an egg, hard-boiled by
the inn, and I have
dipped it in a little salt. He has had some granola, and as we trundle
along, we gently explore the
almost revolutionary idea of not stopping for
lunch. There
is a limit to artistic responsibility, and the road is more comfortable
on a very lightly filled stomach. And now it has begun to snow.
After rocketing up to 36F, we are suddenly traveling through white-out
conditions at 28F. It seems best to keep going and get out of it,
and on the far horizon I sense
the presence of the Lodge Cast Iron outlet, still all unaware
that my annual visit is imminent. So we press on, listening to the
silly adventures of Mayle’s characters in a small winemaking town in
the South of France. Very Far From Here.
At the Lodge outlet, I am like a
hungry dog in a liver-snap factory. Last year I limited myself
to a 10-inch footed Dutch oven for cooking beans in the fireplace.
Silly. I am here now
to correct that by acquiring 12-inch version, in which I
can make mountains of chile,
barrelfuls of beans, soups to sustain many. And for good
measure, a few hefty Christmas gifts for out hosts in California, plus
a wide and shallow blue ceramic braiser for my stellar short-ribs (the
shallow pan means there is less air-space between ribs and lid than in
my trusty Le Creuset, which is better for condensation and the
resultant basting). I must own every pot, pan, tool, and
kitchen accessory ever made, but recently a lust for this particular
pan, fed by my flirtation with
Molly Stevens’ book “Braising,” has smoldered and quietly burst
into flame. No matter what my financial state, I’ve never been one to
deny myself in the kitchen department.
In Knoxville,
our “inn” is
less salubrious, less clean, just less. My brief search
for a non-chain restaurant turns up Black Horse Grill, and though I
have an address and have mapped it on google, we are led rapidly up the
garden path and must settle for a mall restaurant (!) called The Chop
House. Thankfully, it is not a chain, but there the benefits trickle
out. The good news: we’re in
Tennessee and they have Basil Hayden, so I have one on the rocks
with a little branch (tap). The bad news: there are pictures on the menu
and dark grey acoustical tiles on the ceiling. Two passable steaks
later, we’re back at the ratty room for the next installment of Lord of
the Rings and spooning with Stella.
Two states: Virginia and Tennessee.
Pictures:
Ice trees and silver hills in Virginia.
December
15, 2007, Comfy and cosy is where you make it... Athens to Harrisonburg, Virginia: 450
miles
It’s a bittersweet
moment at the mushroom farm, as C.
loads the car at
6:30am. It’s 17F and pitch
dark, there is almost a foot of snow on the ground, and Stella
refuses to--how to put it?—use the facilities. You can’t entirely blame
her: her fur is only about ½-inch long and the snow is touching
the underside of her spotted little belly. Surely it’s hard to get
anything moving under those circumstances, well, except in the 6 inches
right up next to the house. If we were staying the whole winter, the
area could get a little stinky.
But we’re not.
After a month in which I hardly looked up from a
cookbook deadline and
C. was in the city directing 26 days out of 30, we haven’t enjoyed the full comfy-cosy
features of our cabin in the woods, but it’s time to go—otherwise we
won’t get to California by Christmas.
The roads are plowed and the going is easy.
Our destination for
tonight, Harrisonburg, Virginia is 450 miles away and has freezing rain
forecast for tonight. As we roll along the New York State Thruway
heading south, I ponder if C. is
as married to this lifestyle as I am. I take the first driving
position, and a little over halfway we have left the no-there-there
that is New Jersey and are in eastern Pennsylvania, enjoying the myriad display of barns and silos,
most of which sport a hex sign or three. Hex: a six-pointed star, and
full of color and history (of what, I don’t know).
Lunch is at Esther’s,
a low slung
blue building that stars in a large parking lot, where seniors
and young people congregate at the grey-flecked formica tables and
lounge on the burgundy banquets munching iceberg salads and pattie
melts. The windows have faux diamond panes picked out in white,
to add to the slightly Dutch atmosphere of the bungalow-like building,
but the sun plays through the
diamonds and blinds and makes the dirty ice outside sparkle along with
the plastic santas and Costco crystal vases. C.’s French
dressing, that comes in a little plastic cup alongside his healthy lump
of tuna salad, is a color that evokes nuclear waste and an extended
half-life. He is the only person I’ve ever know who likes the old-style
orange dressing that is what everyone
in middle America means when they say “French dressing?” not the
judicious mixture of fine olive oil, Dijon mustard, salt, and a hint of
fresh lemon juice which is what I mean. I have another dressing beloved
of out nation’s diners: ranch. But it’s hidden inside my grilled
chicken melt, covered by the uniformly
golden slices of un-naturally uniform white bread that hug their
filling between them. Two ruffle-cut pickles act as garnish on
the small white plate, and are most welcome to me in that role.
For the afternoon’s drive, we listen to NPR’s This American Life and Studio 360
on the satellite radio. There is a piece about a young girl who
receives a heart transplant: the heart of a young Mexican boy who was
murdered by drug dealers. She reaches out to his family, the
responsibility of two lives worth living on her shoulders, instead of
one. The family embraces her with tears and love. The mother
leans her head against the young girl’s chest, and hears her dead son’s heartbeat.
The story makes us both cry.
By 3:30 we have reached Harrisonburg and our Comfort
Inn. Marathon naps
and weather monitoring fill the next few hours, interspersed with
throwing the toy for Stella. It is,
incidentally, very hard to nap
and throw the toy at
the same time.
Back at the mushroom farm when I was planning this hegira, I entered
“fine dining” and Harrisonburg, VA” in Google, as I always do, but this
time with little hope. To my great surprise, then, the sudden exuberant appearance of
“Downtown 56,” with “live music and a martini bar,” housed in a
restored mercantile warehouse in the center of town.
When we find it, the building indeed appears to have
been beautifully
and sensitively restored—three stories of condominiums append the
restaurant, and as we walk through the icy parking lot we can see that
the upper floors are lofts, with
exposed beams and creative lighting. The brick building still
sports its banner announcing “Butter, Eggs,…” Inside the restaurant, we
immediately see that in their restoration, the architects have made one grave and ruinous decision:
to install a dropped acoustic tile ceiling. It is like a port wine
stain on the cheek of a beautiful woman: we can not appreciate the
exposed brick walls and massive beams because our eyes keep rolling up
to the pulsating blemish of the
mis-cast ceiling. But the wine is cool and fine, the food a
mixture of southern, seafood, and standard Americana that is uneven but
contains a few gems: the “Wedge” being one. Lathered with creamy,
not-too-crumbly blue cheese and studded
with bits of bacon whose uneven dimensions announce them as real,
the iceberg completely hidden underneath its cheese blanket is
pristine, fork-resistant and, when it does yield to the edge of my
fork, does so with a resounding crunch. We grill the wo young
bartenders about life, school, and Harrisonburg. They are smooth, sweet, funny, but
unfinished people, and their stories help us to put our
own too-full, self-important existences into perspective.
Life is good. Day one has
passed without a
visit to a chain restaurant. A challenge, certainly, as we head
off west across America’s heartland, but one which seems just a tad
easier than on the first trip.
Back at the Inn, Lord of the Rings is on, and I give
Stella a
bath. When you will be closeted in a small enclosure with a dog
for nine days, it’s good to have it be a clean one.
There is freezing rain outside, but here in the brown room that is our home
for tonight, my little family is safe and cosy.
Six states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West
Virginia, and Virginia.
Pictures: Leaving snowy
Athens; at Esther's.
In the East, 2007:
October 26, 2007: The Dress
My college graduation took place without me. I
was at the tail end of a six month
academic stay in Hong Kong—with side trips to mainland China and
Taiwan—and the thought of returning home just to wear a silly hat and
grab a rolled-up piece of paper held all the appeal of reading the
yellow pages from cover to cover. At the far end of the entire
Indo-European continent, I had a long-arranged rendezvous with my
college boyfriend, who had graduated a year ahead of me.
Rather than wait at home—or start graduate school—he’d chosen to travel
alone in Africa while I finished up my degree in Asia. We hadn’t spoken on the phone in six
months—except for the two-minute conversation when he’d called
from Gabon to tell me he’d been accepted for the Masters program at
Yale; even then it had sounded like 50 other people were on the line
with us (they may well have been). There was no such thing as
e-mail.
Hundreds of letters with exotic stamps and postmarks from all over
Africa had flown thousands of miles before landing in my mailbox in
Hong Kong, and the latest of these (about a month old) confirmed that the meeting was set, for June 30th at a
café in the southeast corner of Constitution Square, in
Athens. I was delighted, but for now I was free, single,
and twenty-one, and there were a few places I wanted to go first: the
world was my very plump oyster.
Eventually, I knew, I’d have to start acting like a grown-up,
but before then there were two and a half months and two continents to
explore. Traveling light would be crucial. Into a box and
back to Portland went my jeans and corduroys, wallabies (remember those
sensibly rubber-soled, uni-sex, fawn-colored Aussie shoes?), and
cuff-and-collar shirts. I
pondered my fresh new image: My academic wardrobe was,
officially, history—it was time to let out the feminine, authentic
me. Yet I’d need to feel confident traveling alone, so I passed on anything too risqué.
After two weeks of solo travel, I’d be meeting with the man in my life;
he would certainly have become more worldly after his solo
hegira. How would I measure up? Although my budget was
virtually non-existent, it was
clear that a new garment was called for.
At a street market just a few yards from the old
Hong Kong airport, I bought The
Dress from a woman long deaf from the roar of jet engines.
She completely ignored the sudden, shocking sound as I looked up,
cowering, suddenly able to identify each and every rusted bolt on the
underbelly of a China Airlines jet.
There it was: The Dress. It was cheap, a
throw-away for many, but for me,
it was something far more. The neckline was
collar-and-placket, the short sleeves slightly puffed, the rich
reddish, floral-patterned fabric cut straight down from armpit to just
below the knee; a thin, matching belt cinched the featherweight garment
at the waist. It cost me less than five Hong Kong dollars.
It was practical and appropriately conservative for solo travel, but just by undoing a few extra buttons at
the neckline I could transform it into something that approached
alluring. Later on, I would find that it was truly
wash-and-wear: the cotton seemed slightly polished, and after
hand-washing dried in ten minutes, when it would miraculously appear to
have just been ironed. But it was not, at first glance, a
significant dress.
Before going on to my reunion in Athens, I’d planned
a little detour down the
Malay peninsula to Penang, on the rickety post-Colonial train
that plied its way from Bangkok to Singapore and back, ferrying locals
and overland travelers. (In those days, you could travel “over
land” from London to Southeast Asia, because Iran and Afghanistan were,
well, more friendly.) When we debarked at the Thai-Malay border
to show our passports, grim
rifle-toting guards wanted to refuse me entry, since I didn’t
have an airplane ticket, credit card, bank letter, or much in the way
of cash. But in The Dress—and my new, coolly capable mode--I had
no trouble explaining my brief stay in Malaysia and onward-to-Europe
plans.
By the time dusk fell on the rice paddies outside, the last-century
paneled-wood dining car was filled with travelers of every nationality,
all sharing tall tales and Singha beers while gleefully bemoaning the
incendiary heat of the little chilies that garnished every roti and
bowl of rice. In The Dress,
I felt like an Old Asia Hand, trading stories with the other dusty,
twenty-something nomads deep into the clattering night.
Traveling second-class meant the sleepers were “Some
Like it Hot” style: short, swinging curtains were all that separated
your little bunk from the aisle. For security, my backpack was my
bunkmate. Outside in the
passing night, there were no electric lights, but once in awhile
a little cooking fire would zip past the window. When the dawn
peeked gently under my eyelashes, I could see that we were approaching
the Penang station. The usual cluster of tri-shaws waited
outside, and I splurged on one to take me to the hostel. The
bike-assisted ride was not long, but in a newly effortless, solitary
assurance I imagined myself
straight out of the pages of Somerset Maugham. I sat back
with crossed legs and let the warm wind play through my long hair; The
Dress was so perfect for the tropical tableaux that a Hollywood
costumer would have chosen nothing else.
In Penang, the beach out at Batu Ferringhi was
just as pristine and the street markets still rich with colors and
smells as they had been three years earlier, when I’d studied there for
a month. Penang, the “Pearl of the Orient,” felt just a little
like home, and I lingered for
awhile to taste the sights, smells, flavors, and gossip before training
back to Bangkok for the onward flight to Athens and the
much-anticipated meeting with the boyfriend. I prayed his plans
hadn’t changed, because after going down to Penang and then buying the
plane ticket, I only had about $2 left.
After the all-night flight to Athens—we touched down
briefly in Dubai, where the runway appeared to be scattered with
hundreds of small fires—we landed
in Athens in the middle of a rosy sunrise. I changed my
handful of coins into drachmas, brushed my teeth and hair, smoothed The
Dress, and took a bus to Constitution Square. I was able to
convince a small hotel to hold my backpack for (I hoped) a few hours,
then set out to find the cafe. No boyfriend. So I went to
the message center at American Express, right around the corner. There was a message, yes, but
sadly, “If you are not a card-holder, there will be a fee to pick it
up” (drachmas in the amount of about $1.50). I was out of
options.
So I anted up. The boyfriend, the costly note
informed me, had gone down to Nafplio, on the Peloponnese peninsula,
for a few days. This was not good news. I walked back to the hotel on automatic
pilot, money- and boyfriend-less, scrolling through the very few
options available. But wait--the note was written a few days
ago--he’d arrived early from Africa.
The meeting was on, then, for noon.
It was still only 10am. Back at the little
hotel, I hand-washed The Dress in the public bathroom. In ten
minutes, as always, it was dry. As I waited there under the bare
light bulb, I wondered how six
months alone in Africa would have changed him. Certainly I
was a different girl--in fact, almost, a woman. Would we still
feel that same alchemical pull toward one another? The answer lay
just down the street and across the ancient sun-baked stones, and it
was time to find out. I didn’t spend even a moment worrying about
how I looked, because by now The Dress had become my passport to an
honest and easy self-confidence. OK, I undid a few buttons.
He seemed taller than I remembered. His hair
was shorter, blonder, his reddish beard trimmed close. His blue
eyes--that had seen so many places since they had last seen me—sparkled as they now looked at me,
slowly, up and down, and then up again. There were a few
awkward initial moments—in all, perhaps, thirty seconds. It soon
became clear that in our times apart, the easy confidence I’d gained
made me more comfortable sharing what I truly felt, while the quiet
self-esteem he’d embraced allowed him to listen. We both had wild
tales of our own, and suddenly I
knew we’d spend the next two months—at the very least--sharing them.
After that meeting in Constitution Square on June
30, 1979, I wore The Dress virtually every day for two months—unless I
was wearing a bathing suit or nothing at all. In Crete, I chose to take a road that appeared
smaller on the map than any others, purely for that reason, and
it led to a beach town that became my very first spiritual home.
There, the crossword puzzle in the Herald Tribune was enough
intellectual challenge for the day, and I learned that Greek wine is sweet and
soft, a subtle social lubricant. When the stooped old
landlady of our open-air cottage offered us peaches in return for the
labor of picking them, we climbed the tree in her garden and split the
pickings. On the island of Skyros, I laughed with the
husband-and-wife proprietors in the tiny kitchen of a sidewalk
restaurant, where they explained the
elemental pairing of ingredients in the true Greek salad—although we
had no language in common. And even in the staid English
countryside at the tail end of the summer, The Dress somehow allowed me
to fit right in. Sitting among a riot of flowers outside a
thatched pub that looked out over the Sussex Downs, I traded jokes and
stories with a whole new set of friends. Somehow, I knew, there
would be many more.
My tan had deepened and my hair burnished
blond. The Dress became
symbolic of the rich promise of the rest of my life, lying in
wait there, just out of sight at the end of six months in Southeast
Asia, two months wandering the Greek islands and Europe, and, of
course, that college degree. Sometimes I stop to consider which
item was more significant in giving me the cool confidence to go forth
and grasp the future…Was it the
degree? Or was it The Dress?
Picture: The Dress.
October
4, 2007: Simultaneous Porkasm
When thirty people at a long table experience something approaching a
synchronous climax, you’ve got to sit up and take notice.
“I haven’t felt this way since I was a kid!”
“They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”
“Kosher? Who ever said I was kosher?” (and more along these lines),
gushed the assembled twenty-to-sixty-something crowd. I just
smiled.
What had moved this group of diners to express such superlatives?
It was pork.
Not just any pork, mind you. Sadly, you will not be able to move
your next dinner party guests so close to heaven with anything you buy
from the supermarket. That’s because, about twenty-five years
ago, as part of the “Fat is the Root of All Evil in America” movement,
our erstwhile hog farmers set out to breed all the precious and tasty
fat right out of the nation’s pig population. They succeeded, but it
took time; effecting a reversal to reflect today’s growing acceptance
of the fact that (some) very, very tasty fat is good for you—and that
today’s supermarket pork resembles sawdust more than dinner—will not
happen overnight.
But there is hope. To understand how, and why, we have to go back
quite a ways.
Whenever the Spanish monarchy planned a colony in some far-flung region
of the world, they would first arrange to drop off a small group of
hogs, then come back a few years later with the actual human
colonists. By that time, those ancestors of today’s superlative
“Black Iberico” hogs would have interbred with the local hog
population, if any, thereby substantially elevating the quality of all
the little dinners running around on the hoof. And thus, before
starting one colony in the New World they dropped off a little herd of
pigs on Ossabaw Island, just off the coast of Georgia. (When I
first told this story, C. volunteered that he’d done the same thing
before spending ten years as leading man at the Arena Stage in D.C,
except that in his case, he’d “pre-seeded” the area with a gaggle of
delicious young girls.)
Now, four hundred years later, the tasty descendants of those erstwhile
early porcine settlers are known as Ossabaw. Because of their
relative isolation over the centuries on the island, the breed has
retained far more of the characteristics of their ancestors than other
Spanish pigs who blended into the mainland hog population. Hogs
on the island are endangered, but a few breeders on the mainland are
helping bring back this unique breed. At Mt. Vernon, a nonprofit
educational group called the Mt Vernon Ladies Society breeds Ossabaws,
not for meat production, but in order to perpetuate this breed—and
others—that were common during George Washington’s time.
Occasionally, the laws of space and nature dictate that they let a few
hogs and sows go, and some breeding pairs have been snapped up for meat
production by farmers and diners, egged on by the glowing praise of
author Peter Kaminsky in his seminal book “Pig Perfect.” Saving
and perpetuating an heirloom breed depends on a successful economic
model, not just good intentions, and diners who appreciate the
superlative flavor, marbling, and fat content of this marvelous
pig—plus feel strongly about the vastly more humane conditions in which
these pigs are raised and slaughtered—are voting with their wallets.
Cut to Hudson Valley’s Germantown, and Turkana Farms, a pastoral and
prolific sustainable farm run by Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer.
Although the couple came to farming relatively late in life, this is no
hobby farm. Many happy locals benefit from the farm’s small-scale
production, which includes British White cattle (the oldest breed in
Great Britain), Karakul sheep (a desert breed from Turkmenistan), the
precious pigs, ducks, geese, Bourbon Red and other heirloom turkey
breeds, guinea hens, plus berries and vegetables in the actual seasons
they were always meant to be enjoyed. Peter and Mark ordered an
Ossabaw boar from Mt Vernon (being nonprofit, the organization charged
a staggeringly low $35). An Ossabaw sow from a breeder in N. Carolina
was crossed with a Tamworth boar (a breed that has been vociferously
championed by Prince Charles). Acknowledging the superior fat
content of the Ossabaw, they nevertheless felt that a cross with the
far leaner Tamworth would offer a blissfully happy medium. I am
here to tell you they were right, and so say all of my dinner guests.
And there is even a health bonus: Scientific analysis of the Ossabaw
meat indicated that the pigs that were fed acorns (their traditional
diet) averaged 14.7 percent more monounsaturated fats than
conventionally fed hogs.
In today’s difficult world, a labor of love such as Turkana Farms often
requires that its principles maintain some kind of “day jobs,” and this
case is no different. Peter is a recognized expert in kilim rugs, who
has published several books on the subject (see www.tribal-kilims.com),
while Mark is a health lawyer, assisting individuals with serious or
chronic illness or disability in securing their rights to
benefits. They’ve helped me—and many of my friends—step back to a
simpler time when flavors spoke for themselves and the land that gave
them birth. Happily, I’ve just secured a “sample-pack” from the
farm, including smoked bacon, fresh ham steak, sausage, center-cut
chops, and a shoulder or two, so I can look forward to a rich and
historically rewarding table for months to come. Just knowing
Turkana Farms is there, across the bridge and down a lane, makes me
feel more connected to the Hudson Valley I live in. I believe
that, if we take the life of an animal for our table, we owe that
animal the best life available, and—when the time comes--the most
painless departure from it. Although such an exercise may not
appeal to everyone (it most certainly does not, to C.), my ability to
personally visit the Ossabaw pigs and enjoy their obvious enjoyment of
the green fields and soft, generous bedding pens, makes me feel good in
so many, many ways.
Picture: Ossabaw-Tamworth
shoulders
September
25, 2007: The Barbecue
I was twelve years old, and the pristine stretch of California
coastline known as the Hollister
Ranch had seen as many birthdays as
there were sweet white grains of sand on Bulito Beach. The 15,000
acre ranch was one of four that, as family legend had it,
great-grandfather Hollister had made his own when he came over the
mountain from the East in 1863, but it had originally been part of the
famous Spanish land grant known
as Nuestra Señora del
Refugio. Like all of them, it was a working cattle ranch,
and I
spent the happiest days of my childhood there simply because long
before I was born, my
grandmother, Barbara Légère, had a
Very Important Job and no husband. You will quickly
intuit, then,
that my own mother had no dad and a mom who didn’t have much time to be
one; on most of the holidays and vacations during her many years at a
rural California boarding school, she
tagged along home with her best
girlfriend, Lizzie Hollister. Eventually, she became a
permanent
part of that sprawling, dysfunctional and dusty family that was part
early-California ranching royalty and part tortured east-coast
academic-intellectuals.
To get to the ranch, we headed north from Los Angeles through the San
Fernando Valley to Oxnard (“Ox-turd,” in my cattle-ranch-centric
lexicon), and then through Ventura (“Manure-a,” of course), Montecito,
and Santa Barbara. The trip took about three hours, and my lonely
only-child brain created markers to break up its interminable length,
from the Wagon Wheel Restaurant (still there as I write) to Santa Claus
Lane (Santa was carted away several years ago, but the lane with his
name on it, incongruously, remains).
Then, to reach the sparsely inhabited area of the ranch where we stayed
on our frequent visits, you had to drive ten miles of tortuous unpaved
switchbacks starting just north of the tiny town of Gaviota (one
ancient clapboard gas station/general store, with milk and eggs, if you
were lucky). The shoreline off those steep canyons would one day
be revered as the best surfing on the California coast, but when I was
little it was just a too-long, stomach-churning drive, especially for a
kid who was so excited just to get there that I couldn’t stay sitting
down for more than a minute (“How many more curves, dad?”).
Often, we’d drive up in tandem with another family, most usually the
Gordon’s, who had two girls my age, Shannon and Tina. If I was
lucky I’d get to go in their car, or sometimes my two, much older
half-sisters from Minneapolis would be with us for the summer. We
took other friends over the years, because the ranch experience was
always best in a mob, and besides was something so wonderful, even at
that time so unique, that we wanted to share it with others. Once
on the actual ranch, the drive was much slower, and at every fence
there was a cattle guard to rumble over in the old Rambler,
necessitating that the entire population of the car lift their feet up
off the floor and sing out “Cattle guard!” (This was, thus, the
first English word I ever uttered.) Later on, when I was six,
during a drive on the ranch I asked my parents “What are all those
raisins on the hillside?” They were steers, and it was decided
that I needed glasses.
As the various Hollisters gradually took their cattle money—and a
little oil money—off the ranch to more glamorous digs in Montecito and
elsewhere, the year-round population was reduced to ranch-hands,
cowpokes, managers, and their families. A little school-house
took care of the ranch kids until they were ready for boarding
school—the drive was far too rigorous to make every day. Across
the canyon-sliced landscape of golden scrub and dark oak that softly
sloped down toward the Pacific, there was a scattering of buildings of
vastly different architectural style. There was the huge and
peeling Victorian pile—now abandoned--that had been grandmother and
grandfather Hollister’s mansion (it had an opaque green pool that—I
swore--harbored monsters in its murky depths), and the clapboard
cottage at Saunder’s Knoll. There were seasonal workers barracks
and many, many rickety barns, ranch offices, and storage sheds.
It was an out-of-time microcosm of the crudely practical old-ish West,
caught between the time of cattle-rearing, hardscrabble
self-sufficiency and the fast-approaching era when surfers, then
millionaires, and finally wealthy preservationists, would claim the
rattlesnake-friendly terrain as their own. I was a fortunate
witness at the tail end of a precious era, but all I knew then was that
the oak-dotted dusty canyons and mesas of the ranch were where I always
wanted to be. The most modern, functional, and substantial
residence on the ranch was known as “The Hotel,” and was by this late
time in the ranch’s history used as a sort of vacation home, equally
shared by ten families. I think mine was the only one among them
without some sort of a blood connection to the Hollisters. The
Hotel was a two-story Spanish ranch house built in a “U” shape, with
the arms of the U reaching out along a promontory toward the blue
Pacific, a mile or so below.
A big, functional farmhouse kitchen occupied one corner of the base of
the U; the huge sunken living room with a massive fireplace and several
scratchy horsehair sofas occupied the far end of one of the legs.
Mounted steer antlers topped every interior doorway in the house, and
barefoot-unfriendly sea grass runners centered every hallway.
Artwork was, vaguely, of the Remington school. Embraced by the
legs of the U, downstairs, was a rough garden with scrappy roses, a
threadbare lawn, and a little stone fire pit over which the trout
caught by the adults on their pre-dawn fishing trips would be fried
(kids, being “too loud” they’d scare the fish away, were never
invited). Upstairs, a deep, covered porch wrapped the entire
interior of the large U. Wooden screen doors led from the porch
into each of the many bedrooms that strung out around the U like
diamonds on a rattler’s back. Inside, there was no hallway, so
all the bedrooms interconnected with one another. Every three or
four bedrooms, there’d be a bathroom, always with a sign over the
toilet encouraging men to “Take ‘yer aim careful, now.”
For me, an only
child, the times spent with friends, various
Hollisters, and extended family at the Hotel were as close to heaven as
I’d ever known. I reveled in being a part of a kid-gang, as we
explored the thinly treed oak and piñon forests and built sandy
forts in the scrub-covered gullies behind the Hotel, while softly
lowing brown and white cattle eyed us with bovine indifference. I
became adept—a virtual prodigy, I thought--at imitating their low-bass,
long-drawn-out moos. Blissfully, I’d toss off a wave toward my
parents and the other adults as we sped past their various positions
(making sandwiches, washing beach towels, or having cocktails at
sunset), hopefully too fast for us to hear any chore-related
exhortations that they might have shouted out. We rose together
and tumbled into beds at the same early hour, while the grown-ups did
their unknown late-night things. Mid-way through every morning
huge blue jays would caw and wheel around the roof of the Hotel,
sounding like prehistoric creatures out for blood. This did not
sit at all well with my mother, who was famous for sleeping every day
until noon. One morning as we fried trout with Uncle Clinty
(Hollister) down below, she appeared on the upstairs porch--wearing a
filmy negligée and toting a 22 rifle--and shot one of the
blue-jays stone dead, then went back to bed. Although she never
did it again, and the blue-jay population seemed unfazed, this was
excellent fodder for family legend. Down at the empty, empty
beach where we spent so much of our time, the high tide trapped big
pockets of seawater far up on the sand, creating, at low tide, a
bath-warm lagoon that we called “The Slu.” In the slu, small people
could wade and paddle to our hearts delight, happily making popping
seaweed necklaces and building dribble-castles far away from the
chilly, rough-and-tumble Pacific. A bonus: since it was so
shallow, it was believed that we couldn’t possibly harm ourselves and
thus were spared constant parental supervision. When I got older,
after a day at the beach all the kids would scramble for seats on the
edge of the tailgate, where we dipped our toes in the dust as the
Rambler bounced over the ruts back up to the Hotel. Once, a
Hollister cousin named Charlie shot a huge rattlesnake in the middle of
the road just after we’d tucked in our dangling feet, and after the
requisite amount of screaming we grilled it up on the fire pit for an
hors d’oeuvre.
I wasn’t to know then that my time at the Ranch took place at the tail
end of its existence as my mother had grown up knowing it. In the
early 1970’s, 15,000 acres of coastal California was worth far more as
real estate than it was for raising cattle. Although there were
many dissenting voices, a majority of the many fractious factions of
the Hollister family eventually prevailed, and it was voted that the
ranch would be sold off for development.
I was about to lose my precious key to the world of old Southern
California and be relegated to the budding malls, concrete jungles, and
traffic that the rest of the population had no choice but to endure as
they fruitlessly sought the fast-disappearing “Good Life.” And
then, on one of our last visits, something happened. It would
become engraved in our family’s history even more indelibly than the
run-together memories of dusty-cowboy camaraderie, impossibly fresh and
crisp trout, mussels prized from the rocks and quickly drowned in
butter, and nut-browned kid-gangs tumbling into rumpled beds at the end
of a salt-crusted, sun-drenched day.
The group on this particular visit was, as usual, heavily weighted with
actors, my father’s profession. All I cared about was the
kid-quotient: there were plenty, and they were all safely of my age
group (eleven-ish) and independent temperament. One night when
the younger generation were snugly tucked up, upstairs, the inside door
of my room slammed open with a rude bang, and a large, loud man
stumbled in shouting “Where’s your good father, my dear?” Having
been asleep for several hours at that point, I had no idea, and
sleepily said so. The brouhaha, which I now realized was
permeating the whole of the big house, moved off downstairs.
After this unexpected awakening, we youngsters were forcefully
encouraged to “Stay out of this and go back to bed!” Fat
chance. We snuck downstairs to spy on the proceedings, and
although the adults were too busy to notice us, an hour or so of clever
eavesdropping brought us no closer to understanding what was going on,
and eventually we left them to their folly and dragged back up to bed.
Although it took me years to piece together what had happened that
night, and, later as an adult, to understand how it might have
innocently started off, I’ll cut straight to the story of what my
father in later years referred to as “The Barbecue.”
After the kids had gone to bed, one of the assembled adults had the
bright idea of bombing on down to the beach and building a great big
bonfire. From the retrospect of maturity, I think it can be
assumed that this was a well-lubricated joint decision. This was
duly done, and a wonderful time was, evidently, had by all until the
moment when one of the invited but non-family actors, who shall go
nameless here, was dancing naked around the fire, and fell into
it. The poor actor’s skin—we’ll call him Ron—had actually caught
fire, and quick-moving men had then rolled him in the sand to put out
the flames. A helpful voice suggested immediately putting him in
the ocean, and they’d all later learn that this action is what saved
his life. What happened next, though, is what endangered
it. Uncle Clint Hollister had been a pediatrician but, now
retired, had failed to get the memo in which the procedure of bathing a
severe burn in butter and wrapping it in clean cloth was
discredited. It was decided to haul ass back up to the Hotel so
that Clint’s erstwhile prescription could be executed. My father
had not been one of the quick-moving men who put out the dreadful fire,
because at that point he was moving rather slowly, being somewhat the
worse for drink. Although there were plenty of still crisp-minded
individuals to handle the emergency action of getting Ron back to the
Hotel and administering the ill-advised butter-wrap, my dad, the story
goes, really, really wanted to help them out. My mother, although
certainly no shrinking violet, was unable to dissuade him verbally, and
when his fumbling but well-meant assistance threatened to slow the
process of unloading Ron from the back of the Rambler, she threw a
bucket of water at him.
Then, he punched her. And I mean, out (if briefly). And ran
off into the woods.
Which was why the large, loud man was looking for him in my room at the
same time as the adults downstairs were trying to decide whether to
risk the long drive over dangerous roads to Rt 1 and then north to the
closest hospital, forty miles away in Solvang, or to implement the
butter-wrap and wait until first light. They decided to wait, and
all that horrible night the heat from the burn was driven further and
deeper inside Ron’s right arm and leg, meaning that when he did finally
get to the hospital, he had third-degree burns over 50% of his body and
would have to endure three months of painful skin grafts before he
could resume his life and career (his face and other delicate parts,
thank goodness, hadn’t been affected). I remember visiting him in
Solvang with my mother several times, still largely in the dark about
what had put him there.
My father? Well, he didn’t come back to the Hotel until the next
morning, and although I don’t know what he did for those hours, or what
then transpired between my parents, I do know that he never, ever took
another alcoholic drink in his remaining twenty-two years. He
told me later that he had been a true alcoholic for a long time, hiding
a bottle of vodka in the garage when I was little because it didn’t
make his breath smell of booze, while quaffing liters of Soave in
polite company. The only questionable thing I could recall during
this time was coming downstairs one morning to find handprints all over
the butter. “What happened to the butter, mommy?” I asked.
“Your father threw it at the ceiling last night,” she responded,
sweetly. I literally had no idea, but I did know that my mother
was routinely and vocally very, very angry with my father, and that he
often seemed rather hang-dog, and was never equally vocal in defending
himself.
Joining AA, in the end, was the best thing that ever happened to dad in
all his 75 years. Wherever his life and career took him, he never
stopped attending two meetings a week—and sometimes sponsoring
others--until the day he died. But his marriage to my mother, as
does sometimes happen, was unable to survive his sobriety, and by the
time I was just sixteen my parents had permanently, if amicably,
separated. When I married for the first time at the age of
twenty-six, things between them were less amicable. At the tail
end of a catastrophically destructive and ludicrously expensive
five-year divorce battle, each endured the other’s presence at my
wedding with barely restrained malevolence. I suppose it was
selfish of me to expect them to be there and be civil, but brides are
not a species renowned for their sensitivity to the feelings of
others. And at the time, I’d truly thought it would be my
only--ever--wedding. (By the time of my second marriage, my
father had died and I took the opportunity not to invite my mother at
all.)
Since the days when I lost the ranch and had to abandon my dewy-eyed,
do-no-wrong assumptions about my parents, I have searched in vain for
my old California. In Santa Barbara, where by rights it should
be, it has disappeared under an onslaught of money. So I go
further afield, and wherever I can sit among dust and scrub, or oak and
piñon, and watch the setting sun turn the hills golden, then
lavender, then gray, I tentatively begin to feel at home. It
might be Sedona, west Texas, the high desert of southern California, or
the hills outside Sienna. And yet--the horizon is always too
close, the hills too populated, the house too small, the nut-brown kid
gangs but a hazy memory.
For the last several years, my mother’s health has been
declining. Recently, she asked my husband and me to come to her
house for a meeting. (My third husband, aka Third & Final, is
an actor--I have finally returned to my roots.)
She’d been putting her affairs in order, she said, and had come to the
moment when she must decide where her ashes would someday be
scattered. Assuming, I suppose fairly, that I would be the one
doing the scattering, she wanted to share her decision with me. I
was silent. There’s not much you can say at such a time, no
matter how troubled the family relationship may have been.
“In the ocean,” she said. “Off Bulito Beach. At the ranch.”
I burst into tears.
Pictures: Cattle at Bulito
Beach; Birds' eye view of the Hollister Ranch
We take a long,
long walk through the “suburbs”; an organic architectural change is
creeping along, gathering in momentum, and I wonder how the original locals are
taking to it. After a lovely nap, we make our way, as
directed, toward the meeting place for the birthday party, the
Thunderbird bar. By now,
the DC Revelers have swollen to about 25 (two or three of the
intended are, sadly, missing--stuck at various airports), and we glide
effortlessly into the low babble
of like-minded people of various ages from late twenties to late
sixties. 
To say that the menu consisted of a choice between chicken and steak
would be to imply something less
than the delightful reality of this dinner--by twelve orders of
magnitude or so. First, platterfuls of quesadilla wedges and—the
house specialty—garbanzo fries are stacked like a San Francisco bridge after an
earthquake. The fries are revelatory: chunky-creamy inside
and crunchy-peppery outside. My steak—a great big dry-aged strip
crusted with faintly North African spices—is the best piece of beef I’ve been honored to
put myself outside of since the aged balsamic-glazed
carnivore-nirvana at Luques, in L.A. I am chat-chat-chatting with David
to my right and Paul to my left; C. is getting to know Marcie and
Walter (with whom,
coincidentally, I shared a Thanksgiving dinner in Washington
Depot, Connecticut, sometime mid-way through the last century).
This warm and funny and smart group has opened their arms to us; we are
honored to share their personal celebration. C. even makes a
toast, quoting the Bard,
of course, on aging
Last night, after
hosting our brand new friends to
Wandering from the Marfa Ballroom back toward the center of town, 
On this trip, savvy
as we have become, we’re instituting 
lunch and dinner
(usually less than pristine and healthful items) and then sit immobile
in a small compartment all day long, we have come to understand that,
although 
Once again, last
night, we made the pilgrimage to 
portraits and landscapes from turn-of-the-last-century
Europe, and, upon inquiry, 
My home state has
shown her truest and most beloved colors this winter: From the 
could see the glittering Pacific from my treadmill.
After an early
breakfast of sausage plus biscuits n’ cream gravy kindly brought to me
by C. while I hurriedly pen this epistle (thoughtfully laid on in the
lobby of the Best Western), we make an early start. It’s another long
day, but different in that 
C. has a jones for
some good Mexican and New Mexican cuisine
Lunch clearly must
be at the little 
I
breakfast with Pam and John—
Texas panhandle—are all done out in dun brown, which if you look at it
with an open mind under the endless blue sky, is a sort of gold.
Looking for a dog park in east Amarillo, instead I find a huge,
close-cut field of smooth beige grass for Stella to run wild circles
on. There’s a little breeze and the temperature’s about 65F, 
On the way to my Best Western, 
Besides being the
official halfway mark,
I
am on the verge on consigning Best Westerns to
history, if last
night’s sample is a good indication. But it’s in the rear-view mirror
now and we need never return there again. For this morning’s
listening, since I’m driving first, I choose 
This morning, the
branches of all the trees are encased in a thick
coating of ice. Crystal clear and sparkling in the sun, 
It’s a bittersweet
moment at the mushroom farm, as C.
loads the car at
6:30am. 
It is,
incidentally, 
