The morning we left for El Paso, it was cold, cloudy and windy, one of the only days of winter in Texas that actually resembled winter. I’d been dreading that morning, but I managed to wake without grump or excessive sleepiness. Those moments of peace that come when you least expect them are golden.
I’d dreaded all of it. I dreaded the arrival of my parents the night before. Dreaded the impending family interaction, dreaded the one reality that had ever existed that now I was finally forced to face, dreaded inevitable conversations, dreaded the nine hour drive ahead of us. I dreaded explaining to my neighbors, who were coming to feed the cats while I was gone, that I’d run out of wet food, and they would need to feed the kittens dry food and that would have to do.
Luckily, time moves past everything; dread, grief, happiness, death, life, anxiety and sadness. Time moves past every emotion you can think of like a pair of high heels stepping over a pathetic mess the morning after a ridiculous party. Time forces you to make a decision without making one. At the very least there was that.
I just felt broken. And now there were these things that we had to take care of, interactions and gatherings that couldn’t be ignored or brushed away, the way I’d brushed away family get togethers at thanksgiving and Christmas, so many years before. Everything has changed.
Photo by Jackson Simmer, Unsplash
The road to El Paso isn’t straight, but it’s a straight (long) shot from Fort Worth. Despite what people say, there’s a lot to see in west Texas, things that explain so much about this state and about America. The dread began to dissipate the further we drove and I became more and more curious.
We made the first bathroom stop at a Love’s near Abilene. We were barely a third of the way through the journey and I couldn’t believe it had only been a few hours, though I did have an understanding of basic principles of time and space. I open the door slowly, everything cracking, unfolding, stretching out of the car like vampires rising from a coffin and the wind is heavy, cold and unforgiving. Inside the Gift Shop, (amazing branding, honestly). We take an easy moment locating the restrooms, and when we return, we pick out a Bic lighter and a 5-hour Energy, a road provision of which Neal has requested, and we begin to collect fuel for the next leg of the harrowing journey. I always opt for second largest or largest cup of the penultimate darkest or darkest roast, no cream, no sugar (insert picture of stone cold Steve Austin here). Mom and Neal take their coffee with fluff.
It takes a buffering moment to learn the set up of each gas station you stop at — where are the cups, where are the lids, is this just hot water or does this do cappuccino? What kind of creamer, is it extra, is it fake? Why are there pickles in this section?
The line hasn't moved since we entered the shop and we have time to discuss possible snacks, the lip-cutting January wind outside and a probable gift for the woman in Kentucky taking care of my parents tiny sweet pup, Marley. He apparently pissed in the nice lady’s house at least twice since they left.
When we do finally get up to the register, I open my mouth to joke to Kirstie at the register, whose name I know people fuck up colossally on a regular basis but she beats me to the punch, asking me for my ID because of the lighter I put on the counter and maybe also because of the lack of adulting apparent on my person (SHE KNOWS!). I don’t own a valid ID, I don’t have a car, no day job, no money or self-worth and up until this moment I’d not needed my “wallet” on this trip. I jog out to the car and pray that Kirstie doesn’t ask to see the last 2 expiration date digits hiding behind the leather window in my wallet when I show her my very old identification. But Kirstie moves slower than we had in the coffee section. She doesn’t ask about the digits. She may not even have noticed the similarities in our names. She is completing the bare minimum requirements of her job at her own pace. She sees no reason to rush. She too understands her rights as an American citizen, her right to move and learn and grow at her own pace. And no one seems to mind. This is beautiful to me. Thank you, America.
Perhaps being on the road all of the time, during a pandemic and a race war and a class war and a space war, offers you a sense of patience that a regular city person doesn’t enjoy. Had this been a gas station close to downtown in a big city, you might have been able to feel the impatience rising in everybody around you, an uncomfortable tenseness in the air that'll make you impatient too if you weren’t already.
Big Tex Energy
On the road to El Paso, you’ll count approximately 41,543 gas stations, 1762 hotels, motels and extended stay complexes, 504,427 wind turbines and 1,097,546 oil derricks. Keep your eyes open through Midland and Odessa, where the gas prices are actually higher there than on any other part of the journey, even though it’s the hub of Permian Basin oil drilling. If you fill up in Fort Worth, you should be able to make it to Big Spring, where you’ll find the cheapest gas, as of Jan 12th, 2022, on the road to El Paso.
Looking at a digital map (digital maps are one of the greatest inventions ever, better than money and litter boxes) you can see where the desert starts to cut in through the middle of Abilene, the end of the prairie lands of Texas. From above, what’ll look like tiny wisps of white stitching through the patchwork of crop fields around Abilene are wind turbines. In and around the small city of Sweetwater, Texas, a little further west of Abilene, are a number wind farms. What you can see from the highway is just the tip of the iceberg.
As it turns out, wind energy is hefty piece of the energy pie. It’s a clean, renewable energy source that thrives mostly throughout the North America, China, Western Europe and Australia, and many countries dotted around the earth have a wind farm or two. In the last 60 years the average wind turbine has grown significantly in size as we’ve discovered that the bigger the ‘bine the more energy we can pull out of it. The newest turbines are built with bases and blade spans taller than the statue of liberty. This bad little map (2015) shows us where the wind farms of the Permian Basin are (the basin has nothing to do with wind energy, it just happens to all be RIGHT THERE).
Photo by Jason Dent, Unsplash
After you drive through windy country, you’ll roll right up on derrick land without skipping even the smallest beat. Wind energy could apparently support the majority of energy needs in America, but there’s already so much money in the oil business. We already know this, of course and it is so interesting to see such polar ends of the heavy power spectrum live so close together. In west Texas, they’re joined at the hip.
Leaving Sweetwater, the city of Lorraine seems to be the last stronghold of the wind farms before the Permian Basin begins to show its ass. The oil drills and derricks sprinkle the entire countryside in all directions, for miles and miles and miles and miles. Each drill or group of drills sit on their own little plot of concrete, called a drill pad, which is also a necessary protector from contamination to the aquifers below and the ecosystem above. There are thousands upon thousands of these little pumps all throughout the southwest and they’re also up toward the Northeast, in east Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, though they’re much harder to spot up there.
The Permian Basin is what makes it possible for a places like Midland and Odessa to exist in the weird half-real way that they do. It’s interesting. You’ll pass Valeros (dirtiest), Allsups (best burritos), QTs (best service), Circle Ks (legendary), Texacos (most likely to go out of business quickest), Conocos (how do you pronounce that), Love’s (best gifts and attitudes), Shells (most associated with corruption, bad politics and oil spills), Chevrons (classic) and Exxons (why so many x’s), some with McDonalds, Subways, Arby’s or chicken joints attached to them. We passed so many 18-wheelers and so many truck stops and it’s starting to make more sense. This country’s capitalistic nature desperately needs its logistical road network to be efficient and fully functional. How else could Amazon reach every corner of the universe the way it does without a roadway system as deliberate as this?
Seemingly tiny pipes stand off in the distance carrying little red flame torches. As we ride through the drying, brittle edge of the desert west on I-20, it smells like oil.
The Art of Chapped Lips
Neal has control of the radio. Every other song is a Janet Jackson banger from the 90’s and I couldn’t complain even if the devil made me try. Midland is the midpoint between DFW and ELP, and as we roll through, a little after noon, maybe 1ish, the sun comes out, high in the sky, reflecting off of the four sky scraping buildings that make up downtown Odessa, just a few minutes further southwest of Midland. My phones been cut off and I switch between trying to load an offline game of solitaire or sudoku and staring out the window. Wondering about my life back in Fort Worth, the one Kirstie could see right through me. The face of the earth is changing all around me and all I can think of is how chapped my lips are, how strong the coffee is on my breath, how real of a disaster is practically baiting my return. And I think about why we’re going where we’re going.
I refresh with a stick of gum, a layer of peach lip balm and a swig or two or water and instead of offline phone games, tune into what Neal has on the radio.
He asks me if I like Neil Peart. Foolishly, I reply:
“I don’t hate him,”
and my mother chuckles. I know who he is but I’ve barely given Rush a second glance, I just know I like the one song quite a bit. We listen to a 10-minute drum solo, recorded live from Budapest, probably before I was born. Peart’s play style during his solo is soothing to me because he keeps dead steady time with the kick drum, which I feel is uncommon during drum solos and it’s like a little gift to the crowd. I can’t get too lost into the cacophony of cymbals of his brilliance while grounded by that kick. I feel grateful for all of these distractions, the ability to disappear into something else that is real and better than the reality I’ve created for myself, prior to jumping into this backseat. When the solo’s over, I know I like Neil Peart and we jam Tom Sawyer, obviously. You could say I was inspired.
The next stop is a bathroom break but not a fill-up because we’re too close to Midland-Odessa to appreciate the gas prices. And the full blown desert waiting at the edge of I-10 is barely miles away. So we ride. The sun begins to set and the mountains rise out of the horizon, impeccable, silent, unmatched. Now it’s ZZ Top and I begin to feel some true peace, with all of the anxiety I packed in my purse, melting away a bit. Music is one of many things I didn’t know I would appreciate about my family, one of the many things we have in common even after being apart for so many years. Something I will appreciate even though we’ll carry on being apart once we come back home.
Photo by Zbynek Burvival, Unsplash
Finally we run down the last of I-20, chasing the final hours to El Paso on I-10. There’s just a low quiet chorus of every body in the car singing the words to the songs, as we follow another red Nissan through the arid bad land. The fellow Nissan is also hauling ass.
To Live Without Urgency
There are no more oil derricks or wind mills. Just mountains, random barns in the distance, open space, dust, cactus and desert brush cut by incredible mountain edges and plateaus. The layers of time and geology are worn on the faces of their slopes, like long strip badges of honor. The sun inches lower and lower, dodging a few leftover clouds and we make our final stop at another Love’s in Van Horn, a tiny, tiny little municipality about 30 minutes away from the Sierra Blanca customs checkpoint. It’s another truck stop and it’s busy as fuck and they aren’t accepting cash at this time.
I’ve never spent this much time in the candy aisle since I was a teenager. I almost give in to another cup of coffee instead when my parents decide we’re getting sandwiches. Mom and I stand in line at the Subway while Neal pumps gas and we begin to witness the liberty of another gas station employee who does not feel the need to rush in lieu of a line of people.
Something else tiny and insignificant happens.
The blonde woman a few places ahead of us informs us that the kind gentlemen in front of her have offered to pay for her food, as she was not expecting to need cash during this stop. In front of her are 3 gentlemen, all wearing track/jogging suit themed outfits, sunglasses, one with a headset, one with a side shoulder back pack, sneakers. Their vibe says they’re on the road too, and they’ve business to take care of, they’re patient and they’re nice and they’re polite to each other and kind to the blonde woman and polite to the sandwich artist who appears to give at least one fuck but just doesn’t have any urgency for that one fuck. When they speak, it’s not Italian or Spanish, French, German or any kind of Oriental language. It sounds like a slavic language, which is probably uncommon for Van Horn, population 2000.
About ten minutes go by as we wait for the sandwich artist to finish the four sandwiches of the three gentlemen and the blonde woman.
The first guy leaves and the next guys come up with intention to pay for their sandwiches, and for the blonde lady, who has by now looked at me and smiled three separate times, thanking the lord for sweet people in the world, to which I smiled back in honest agreement but was grumpily bothered for the constant need to rouse conversation simply to pass the time. The sandwich artist realizes that these gentlemen are not paying together, nor do they even know each other. The un-checked mix up passes more time for the onlookers.
“I’m sorry,” mutters the sandwich artist, who visibly no longer gives any of the genuine fucks she had earlier, allowing the gentlemen to sort it out themselves. Eventually the rest of the small party leave and the sandwich artist begins working on new meals for the other two people ahead of mom and I.
I look around the room, and lock eyes for a moment with a seemingly basic woman staring at me, with a look of concern. The only way to make a look of concern like that more intense is to put something in your mouth, and between her lips was the straw of her drink, fingers clutching something empty, lips pursed, sucking down the last bubbles of what I can only assume had been a delicious soda. I couldn’t tell if her expression was of pity or pure concern for my health. The thought of either made me laugh out loud. Now, I was visibly laughing out loud at someones face that I’d just seen for the first time. I turned quickly, shaking my head and picked a sandwich for the artist to master. Another ten minutes went by before we finally made it out of the Van Horn Love’s Subway.
My sandwich was good.
I kept thinking about what a coincidence those three men walked into at the Subway. The occurrence stuck out to me but I couldn’t put my finger on why. And it was insane to imagine a city whose entire population could fit in a venue only twice the size of Lola’s Trailer Park. The DFW airport alone would crush this city alive. What even happens in Van Horn, Texas?
A little over 20 years ago, Jeff Bezos purchased a butt-load of land north of Van Horn for his spacey science project, Blue Origin. A few years later, Elon Musk did the same thing with SpaceX but not in Van Horn. Now people are taking rocket launches into the sky for romantic dates. Van Horn isn’t gonna stay a quiet tiny town forever. I have to go back, but now is not the time.
Back on the road, it was the home stretch. There was nothing left to wonder about but the dry, dry beauty of the desert. The sun was hiding again and we noted the mountains with painted initials, the illustrated rocks at rest stops with graffiti and the checkpoint with at least 45 minutes of traffic backed up on it. Now Neal was playing Ten Summoners Tale, an album by Sting, Led Zeppelin and Maggot Brain. I’ve completely fallen in love with this desert, imagining what it would be like move out there. One big house in the middle of nowhere for this idiot woman and her two insane cats, escaping everything, washing away past sins in the monsoon summer rains.
Photo by Sam Battaglieri, Unsplash
Commercialism creeps up the highway and we begin to see more motels and gas stations again, an Amazon packing center, a Weinerschnitzel, a Uhaul facility, storage complexes. The road to El Paso has finally come to its end. I didn’t know it at the time but somewhere in that city my grandmother and grandfather were buried and my cousin was waiting for us, so we could go bury another family member.
We were on our way to another funeral.
As a professional idiot, I have abandoned my day job to become a full-time writer in foolish hopes of changing my idiotic ways. If you like what you’re reading please leave a tip. All the help is greatly appreciated
Leave a comment and tell me how you feel. All feedback is welcome. Even if you’re a dick. Thanks so much!