July 10th-12th, 2017 - New Mexico and Texas pt. 1

G&C Summer 2017

Blogpost 014

July 10^th-12^th

“New Mexico and Texas pt.1”

Before I begin on this one, I’d just like to point out that it’s been more than forty-eight hours since we crossed over the Texas state line and though I would hate to completely disparage the second largest American state, and home to twenty-seven million people, I would be outright lying if I didn’t say that I don’t exactly think things between us are working out. Granted, my fiancé and I have yet to visit, let alone see, any of the greater Texan ramparts such as Austin, Dallas, Houston, and wherever the face-wearing cannibal people live (the films never specify other than somewhere in Texas). We’ve only managed to cross through the belly of this earthen-behemoth to get to our destination, College Station, so maybe we’ve just not had the most appropriate experience or maybe we’re just a little tired from all the travel and not to mention the utter disappointment that beset us in New Mexico. Oh, New Mexico. Let’s talk about New Mexico.

            Before three years ago, my knowledge of the territory had been taken solely from Breaking Bad and Looney Tunes (where someone always managed to have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque) until my move across the country brought me to the very local of Bugs Bunny’s bane. As far as memory serves me, it was a charming city with a proud and colorful cultural appreciation. I quite enjoyed my time in Albuquerque and would have been excited to revisit it but we weren’t going Albuquerque, we were going to Portales.

            Portales New Mexico is exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find the face-wearing cannibal people if you venture too far from the city limits at night. Apart from the droves of dilapidated business and long abandoned storefronts something sour could be smelt off the air, possibly from one of the various dairy farms or mills nearby. The only positive I can say, is that among the Portales grocer vending machines, one was selling horror movie icon tattoos called TERROR TATS for fifty cents each. Charlotte and I ended up acquiring all eleven because I could name each character and outline their entire filmography complete with release dates and plot summaries. I know I’m being harsh but that’s mostly due to the bump in our plans that came with the territory.

Earlier in the year, a fellow fly-expert had issued a statement to their cohort that after years of collecting predatory-prey records on various Asilidae his collection would be open to the community. My fiancé saw what a fantastic opportunity this would be for her research and promptly arranged correspondence with the collector. The two had come to an agreement for her to visit the collection and use said records for her own research. This sort of thing happens often in academia I’m told, which results in collaborative publications. Unfortunately it would seem that this would be the part in our journey where Charlotte’s leprechaun luck would finally start to run out for as we checked into our hotel my fiancé received an email from the collector calling off their arrangement due to “personal” reasons. This sort of thing also happens often in academia, apparently. Charlotte quickly tried to make up for lost time and revised her plans to meet with an entomologist in Texas who had a collection of robber flies and was more than willing to share them with her.

            So our new stop was now in eastern Texas, which from Portales NM would require a two days journey for we were like a pair of ants traversing over the belly of The Simpsons’ Rich Texan. My mother had told me often of the three years she spent living in the state as a child and would use many long and descriptive words to illustrate her displeasure with it including a word of warning for my fiancé and I, “everyone and everything has a gun.” So far we’ve not witnessed any firearm of any kind but we still have at least three more days to go so anything can happen.

            Our first stop was in Spur Texas for collecting asilids. My fiancé has been using museum collections data to locate areas and times we can collect particular genera and prey. Now prior to this my fiancé had never been within the parameters of this chunk of land that had once been apart of Mexico and I had only crossed through the thinner upper crust of it during my transcontinental relocation so neither of us really knew what to expect; the environment was similar to New Mexico’s and small towns were just as prevalent as they were small and rusty. There was one thing that stood out to us on our way to Spur, and that was the town names, which were all of a singular noun such as Temple, Mound, etc. As our vehicle drove past a thirty-foot high metal spur marking our entrance into the town we began to make a little more sense of Texas.

            We stopped for lunch just a few yards away from the giant boot-accessory in a little dive called The Dixie Dog, which must have been the only restaurant in town, for despite it’s cramped sitting arrangements it somehow managed to fill up shortly after we ordered for the lunch rush. Both Charlotte and myself were feeling adventurous and thereby wanted a taste of some glorified, and bonafide Texan cuisine. As we entered the restaurant I couldn’t help but feel as if we’d just walked onstage for an under budget play about a struggling farm town in Texas in the late sixties. A single-story house that’d been converted into a 50’s style dinner with a third of the floor space dedicated to tables and booths and the rest transformed to an open-kitchen with a chest-high counter fixed with three lowly barstools. The walls had been freshly painted with robin’s egg blue with 45s lining the crown of the sidewalls but only the sidewalls. The wall behind us was covered in planks of old wood marked with names and symbols from markers and knives like the walls of a gas station bathroom except there was also printed letters and pages from past customers I suppose held together with scotch tape. Three women were working behind the counter; one of them sported a pink-cast and sling on her left arm and another wore a shirt that read: Ask me about Jesus. I ordered myself a jalapeño-burger with ghost pepper cheese and my fiancé ordered herself a Dixie Dog (the restaurants namesake), which ended up just being a skewered hotdog dipped in batter and fried, like a corndog but without corn, or flavor. My decision wasn’t any better as after one bite that included a 3rd of a raw jalapeño, I was harshly reminded that my mouth’s tolerance for powerful spice is much like my mouths singing abilities, in that they don’t exist. We left the Dixie Dog with mutual digestive imbalances as we realized we would continue to be out of our comfort zone for at least four more days and we were just halfway through the first. 

Somewhere in Texas

            

         After more driving through several hundred miles of a seemingly nontransformative landscape, we arrived in Abilene, the halfway point of our journey to College Station which seemed to be a city comprised entirely out of fast food restaurants and a Wal-Mart. Our hotel had fallen into disrepair with a scent of mold none could escape. Inside our room the moldy smell was amplified and our skin immediately grew wet from trapped humidity of some unknown origin, perhaps a swamp monster under the bed. Flies danced over the mattress as cockroaches crawled up the walls. We went to bed early in our twin-sleeping bag (not wanting to touch the blood stained sheets) so we could wake up early and check out ASAP. And though we did indeed eject ourselves from our horrible room at the crack of dawn, our hotel seemed hell-bent on giving us yet more reasons to never return, for at the continental breakfast (free of charge for overnight guests) I discovered a hair in the kitchenette’s Texas-shaped waffle iron. A minor complaint I’m aware, but after a full night of skin-crawling grossness an additional discussing feature can really push one over the edge. I’d lost my appetite for the morning, for food and Texas as a whole. Here’s hoping our experience will turn for the better in College Station.

                                                             George giving back