I'll Show You My Texas..... (1)

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The year I was twenty, turning twenty-one, Bonnie (my mom) and I took off on a year long journey through Texas. I was born in Texas but had almost never lived there - we left San Antonio when I was two, spent not quite a year in the tiny, panhandle, farming community of Morton until I was three (my dad loved the TV show "Green Acres" and had a fantasy idea of farming that didn't quite live up to his expectations, then leaving off on a gypsy trail not to return again until I was eleven - when we lived from May to November in the panhandle city of Lubbock - long enough for my dad to marry our next door neighbor (after her divorce of course). It's a friendly "love thy neighbor" state - that's for sure! On occasional summer visits "home", my Texas and New Mexico grandparents accused me as a child of having been "Yankee-fied" - it was an ugly word. And in whatever mid-western city we might be living in at the time my parents were having teachers conferences explaining that I wasn't "remedial" or retarded, I had a Southern accent which was obvious to my mid-western teachers after they met my parents, but severely debatable to my Southern family members - I was a damn Yankee to them!

So that year, 1990, Bonnie and I had fifteen minutes of fame with a line of clay sculpture I had done on a fluke. Old World Santa's were popular collectables then and my mom had spent the year prior cross-stitching them from a series of patterns printed by Leisure Arts. She had dozens of intricately detailed, cross stitched pictures of various historic European Santa Clauses meticulously matted and framed to decorate her bedroom for the holidays. To decorate the tree in that room, she wanted to find collectable santas that fit with the theme. The ones that she fixated on were produced by a company called Duncan Royale and they would have been insanely expensive tree ornaments - retailing at upwards of $300 a piece. So she contemplated making some herself and she dredged me through craft stores in several cities across two states - Texas and New Mexico, looking for the perfect santa heads to work with. I got fed up with escapade after being drug through a hundred or so stores, and bought myself a box of polymer clay. That weekend, she came in from work one night and I had sculpted eight, tiny, wrinkled faces with inset eyes and clay beards. "Will this work?".......she was finally appeased and I was finally off the hook - or so I hoped. Together we researched the history of Santa Clauses evolution throughout Europe over several centuries and Bonnie designed the costumes.

Later that spring we were taking a friend back to the airport in Albuquerque and Bonnie loaded up the eight pieces that we had made for her Christmas tree into my yellow duffel bag with checquered taxi trim, and we drove north from the airport in Albuquerque to historic downtown plaza in Santa Fe, where the streets were lined with art galleries, decadent restaurants, jewelry stores, and local indians selling silver and turquoise jewelry on the plaza square. Her intention was to take them into one of the art galleries to get their professional opinion of my work. "Oh good lord!" I wanted to melt into the pavement. She parked on the street in front of one of the most prominent galleries in the city and waltzed in with the goods while I sat hunched in the car in total embarrassment, fulling expecting her to come flying bottom first out of the establishment and landing with a thud onto the sidewalk. Hell and be damned if she didn't! Not at all! She emerged 30 or 45 minutes later, tapped on my window, and said "if you were going to sell some more like these, how much would you want for them?" I responded, "I dunno. Do you think they'd give me 25-bucks a piece?".....It was then that she presented me with a check from the gallery for a thousand dollars and an order for eight pieces identical to the ones she had just shown them. The story continues but ultimately the "Catirina Bonet Santas" (Catirina for my middle name - I was named after a ghost town in Texas. Bonet for Bonnie - because it sounded expensive and French vs. Dufus and Dufus Jones).......wound up featured in "The Collector's Art Guide" and several museums and galleries throughout the country. Hence, our fifteen minutes of fame.

It was with the santa sculpture that we left New Mexico. My mom was raised in New Mexico but didn't find out until she was 50 (1992) that she had been kidnapped as a child and illegally adopted by the woman who kidnapped her. She was severely abused - sold into sex slavery from the ages of 3 to 7 in the home of a bootlegger, and repeated sexually assaulted by her "adopted" brother, "adopted" step-father, and numerous uncles in the family from 7 to 12. From 1993 to 1997 she had horriffic, daily, vomiting, crying, purging, flashbacks that unfortunately enabled both of us to re-live this trauma in detail for just about every assault during those years of her life. (**an unrelated to this post side-note: but in the 1940's children were still considered property, there were no child advocacy laws, no Megan's Law, no Amber Alert's, etc...). We had moved to New Mexico during my parents divorce, and wound up staying there because after nearly a year of the court settling it, I couldn't move to any other state without being held back a year in school. The next seven years were all about biding our time, counting off days on the calendar and minutes on the clock. They were not days to be enjoyed so much as days to be endured - and had we be consciously aware of what we would eventually know in great detail we would have certainly left years sooner.

By 1990 though it was long past time to escape but we hadn't really equipped ourselves with a plan to get out or have any idea of where to go. When the only home you've ever known proves a threat to you, and the only people you've ever trusted prove the same, the answers aren't so logical or so easily come by. Finally, I had been driven to the edge, and we had this huge fight at our storage building one day. I was throwing necessities (clothes, sewing machine, clay tools, etc...) into the camper of a borrowed pick up truck and Bonnie was simultaneously throwing it all out. Me in, her out, over and over and over again while screaming at each other to the top of our lungs. An argument that had started early that morning finally ended late afternoon - I got the stuff in the truck and together we drove away on one-sixteenth of a tank of gas, and with 38-cents between us. We drove as far as it got us and stopped at a store (tossing a coin, more or less) to try to sell santas we had in the truck. They buy - we go as far as it get's us. They don't - we go back. Fifteen minutes before closing and they bought everything we had in the truck. I won! We left New Mexico for good.

We drove to Amarillo and booked a week in what had been a swanky motel in the sixties but was still quite nice if slightly dated. We ordered room service, swam in the indoor pool, and made more santas to sell. We kept coin tossing for the next year and one of what would become a series, of trip's of a lifetime! We're back in Texas again this year, and I want to share with you MY TEXAS!..............I think you'll like it! I do!

"My Texas"...that summer in 1990 the Texas Board of Tourism was running a series of commercials called "My Texas"...in which a native Texan would tell what they would show a visitor who came to see them in THEIR Texas. I remember the commercials for one hispanic woman, with a robust voice who said, "if you come to My Texas, I will show you the REAL cowboys"....she rolled her r's and sang her words with an enthusiastic slur that was utterly infectious as a herd of wild stallions ran across the screen. I wanted to jump on the back of a wild mustang along side her with a pitcher of margaritas and ride. Join me....

Entering from New Mexico take I-40 towards Amarillo and you'll pass Stanley Marsh's Cadillac Ranch - ten old Cadillac's buried nose down in a field West of Amarillo. As a kid I grew up with the story that an old rancher had bought a new Cadillac each year and subsequently buried the previous one nose down in his field. Looking this history of this installation up on line will get you more stories than buried Cadillac's or the number of year's they've been buried. That story isn't so far fetched to me. My parents were raised in this region and I've come to know many generations of their friends and family, many of whom (during the robust 1950's and 1960's in particular) bought expensive new cars every year with the payoffs from a particularly profitable crop, oil well, or otherwise - even diamonds, and furs. Some of them were indeed a spoiled and wasteful generation of people at times. My mother's adopted grand-father had a new combine (extremely expensive piece of farming equipment) parked in his field for each of many profitable years - trophies, of sorts.

But, as history is often a subjective matter, whatever story you choose to believe, Stanley Marsh's Cadillac Ranch is quite a site to behold against the backdrop of the West Texas Panhandle sky and landscape. You can pull off the interstate and park in the grassy area along the access road, you'll walk through a real cattle gate to the cars where many tourists bring cans of spray paint to leave their mark, I feel like it's a bit disrespectful........but that's just me.

Spend the night in Amarillo and drive 16 miles south to the small town of Canyon for an UNFORGETTABLE theatre experience. The Texas panhandle, in general, is honkey tonkin', boot scootin', farming, rural Texas but a real cultural gem in this remote part of the state is the "Texas Outdoor Musical Drama" - a professionally staged musical theatre production, rivaling any Broadway play I've ever seen (and I've seen hundreds!) that has been playing in the floor of the Palo Duro Canyon every summer since 1962. Even if you don't have theatre lovers in your family, it is an experience that has something for everyone and it's NOT TO BE MISSED! The musical drama, which has variations from season to season, tells the history of Texas and is similar in style to the musical, "Oklahoma". The canyon itself provides an amazing backdrop for both sight and sounds, and the special effects are unrivaled - they actually make the entire canyon lightening and thunder during the show. Prior to the show guests can enjoy chuck wagon BBQ, and you can book a variety of packages based on your travel needs and individual interests.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park itself has quite a history, the land originally owned by the Charles Goodnight Ranch - the Goodnight Family donated the canyon land to the State of Texas for use of a state park. This is a beautiful place for horse back riding, camping, hiking, or any of many other activities offered by the park.

You'll also want to spend a day exploring the local shops of Canyon Downtown, and touring the Panhandle Plains Historic Museum - okay, I'm plugging because they were the FIRST museum to purchase our original line of hand sculpted santa clauses, but it's also a fabulous museum worthy of a long weekend, or even a week. They have full dinosaur skeletons, fossils, fabulous artwork, indian artifacts, etc...etc...etc... It's not to miss!

Now, if you're NOT VEGAN......you HAVE to visit the Big Texan in Amarillo and challenge your intestines to a FREE 72 oz steak "IF" you can eat the entire thing in an hour or less.

Acutally, it's a fun place to visit, vegan or not. But if you are vegan, you'll get better food in the unlikeliest of places (but remember, the Texas Panhandle is lacking the variety of gastronomic fare some of us prefer..........they do fry cow's private parts there) United Market Street Deli.

Yep! It's a grocery store deli where you can build your own salad complete with a wide variety of lettuces, vegetable options, prepared deli salads served buffet style, even marinated tofu!.....by all means, indulge in their fabulous bakery items! You're on vacation afterall. Just be sure and pack a pair granny panties if you have a sweet tooth like I do. Their deli's are located throughout the Texas panhandle and West Texas, and if you are vegan you'll want to make a note of that because vegan food in this region of Texas is extremely difficult to find. That first year Bonnie and I spent a year traveling Texas, I remember ordering a salad in a restaurant that even salad wasn't on the menu but they were kind in accomodating me. The waitress proudly set the most beautiful salad I had ever seen in front of me and said, "I put a little bacon grease on it for ya - for the flavor!" She was being genuinely sincere but.... YIKES!

Another not-to-miss stop on your visit through Amarillo is The American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame Museum.

While the Texas Panhandle is not my favorite part of Texas, it does have a lot to offer. This area is hours from an airport of any decent size, and the drive from Amarillo to Dallas will take you through hundreds of miles of raw, untouched, ranch land - not even a cell phone signal. Be sure and fill up your tank before you leave. North, South, and West of Amarillo you will drive through lush farm fields of cotton and grain. While the summer months are best for seeing Texas the Musical, driving through in the fall you will have the opportunity to see cotton fields in full bloom - harvested between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

This is ONLY THE BEGINNING of "My Texas"....my blog posts are generally novels but I'm offering this one up in chapters. Click here to follow me for the next posts and I'll take you to where my heart truly lives!