My dad's best friend died this week. He's important to me as an incomparable character from my childhood, a huge personality full of kindness, quirkiness and charm.
He looked a lot like Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies. 6'7, 400 lbs, unique personality all day. He had a long black ZZ Top beard and a heavily balding head, and dressed in the James Dean inspired 90s biker dude uniform: black shirt, hard-living Levi's and big biker boots. Rode bikes, collected classic vehicles, along with a lot of other stuff, anthropological specimens, antiques, guns, anything historic, you name it.
I always loved that he looked scary as hell to normies, despite being one of the nicest people anyone could ever hope to meet. I used to laugh at how shocked neighbor kids and friends were when they met my dad for the first time - they really would have lost it seeing Don.
My dad would take me to the house Don shared with his wife and kids on Saturday nights. I was the oldest child at the house on those nights, so I'd sit at the big picnic style table in their dining room with the guys even though I was still only single-digit age and probably very not wanted there. No one told me to get, though. They'd talk and drink and share bawdy jokes I didn't understand while I stacked rifle bullets on the table and tried to make them stand together like houses of cards. Eventually I would be sent off.
Don would always shake my hand every time I was leaving and say, "Miss B---, it was nice knowin' ya." The first time I remember him doing it, I looked at my dad, like, why are we never going to see him again? They both just laughed.
They would take me dove hunting with them, from a super young age. Don's favorite story was the time I thought I had gone...dumb? because I couldn't hear myself talk. After a minute, I started screaming, "I can't talk!!!" My dad walked over and pulled the huge ear protection off my head and it was fixed. The first time I heard that story, it was Don who told it and my dad seemed to be triggered like, "Oh yeah, that did happen!" Now he tells the story every few times I see him, but only when other people are around. I also have a vague memory of finding a broken glass bottle, shattered into tiny pieces. The glass was clear and had been washed clean by many rains, and glittered dazzlingly in the sunlight. I crouched to run my hands over the glitter, and was slapped away just in time by someone.
All the guys had nicknames. Big Don, Slow (Slowie), The Doctor, Chaz, Mr. Danger. When Don's young daughter would look out the tall window by the door when we knocked early on a Saturday night, we'd hear her scream, "It's The Doctor!! And Britt." And Don would be there behind her when the door opened, "Hello Doctor B---! Hello Miss B!" His daughter is now a grown woman I barely recognize, other than she's tall as hell too.
They would give me one Dr. Pepper (in a frosty mug always) and my night was set. When he came to our house, which was significantly less gracious under the administration of my stepmom, he always bore gifts. Around Easter, he'd show up with a tiny basket of chocolate eggs that also contained a plastic egg full of quarters - big treasure for a small kid then.
He was a big guy, often overweight due to his appetites which required lots of Guinness and big 4" porterhouse steaks. His wife had a lot of family in Britain and he went back to visit them with her, which resulted in lots of pics of him stooping into tiny old British pubs where the doorway came to his chest. He was like the myth of ancient European giants come to life.
He was from the south, very religious and very superstitious, was terrified of ghosts, which he called "haints" without irony. One time, I started exploring a big intact turtle shell he had brought home from some day out shooting in the desert. Once I picked it up, I realized it still stank terribly from the bits of flesh that he had missed deep inside the shell. Weird core memory.
This is the Don that I knew. I love the grease on his fingers in this photo. He looks so happy here. I think he genuinely was. I used to sit in that garage and plink on a hundred year old piano he rescued from St. Francis in the 90s, playing Dixie because it was easy by ear and I had heard it in movies, and was personally obsessed with the 19th century. I played it one night when he was in earshot and he said, "Yer playin' my favorite song!" I can hear his voice in my mind still. And no, he wasn't a confederate at all. Just a fan of pop music from the 19th century. I think I could still play that now given some historic set of keys.
He was full of grace and mercy and loved my dad's mom, visiting her on his own steam in the few hospital stays that happened before her death. He would bring her McDonald's filets o' fish on Fridays, in honor of her Catholicness. He never told us he was visiting her, we always learned it from her after the fact. Brought his wife and daughter to sit with her for hours and talk about tv, and her memories. Now that I have another old grandmother that no one visits but my mom and I, I appreciate it even more. People are forgetful about the still living elder generations. Not me, but lesser people.
My parents and aunt and uncle went to his funeral the other day, a big family showing. I'm sorry I couldn't be there, even though it would only have been to hear them testify and quibble about their dad, dead since the 60s. They can never keep their shit together in company or public, always have to grind their axes in the wrong places.
I know that's my fate when I meet them this Thanksgiving weekend. Listening to that shit. I still eat it up because I need first person accounts of everything. I'll try to redirect them to stories of Don, which is all I want to hear right now.
Thinking about regionalisms and local beliefs. For me, it's the way Arizonans live compared to everyone else. But when I say that, what are the markers, and who am I talking about? Not the hundreds of thousands of new people who live there, in denial of where they are. Am I still qualified to say that? Outsiders, grrr.
I realized recently that my childhood memories don't include the heat. It was too commonplace to remember. My first real memory that includes the heat is from the day Phoenix hit 122 degrees in 1990. But the memory is just not being allowed to play outside on a really hot day like many others.
There's surprisingly little place-based identity in Arizona, despite its history and how hard it is to live there, how unique the circumstances. The transitory nature of Phoenix, the fact that it's experienced constant immigration from other places for decades seems to have washed it out, made a distinctive local culture impossible. I'd love to know what it felt like to live there in the 50s, 60s, 70s. A unique small city culture long since lost, with nothing but old timers and photos to remember it. Even my parents are a little young for it, and don't exhibit the level of identity you'd think, because it was never really cultivated by locals, and I guess because they just don't realize life is different anywhere else. And their parents didn't act that way either, even though they saw it during the last of the time that created the mythos that draws people there still.
Phoenix in the 40s and 50s, the orchards and dirt roads, the old windbreaking eucalyptus trees lining the farms and the ancient Hohokam water ditches that became the SRP canals because the indigenous designs translated well to modern needs. Just like the 19th century wide street planning downtown translated well to contemporary times. Nobody talks about that even though it uniquely defines the place and the daily experience of locals, at least those who participate in the central city. Now some of our old family homes have become unimaginable multi-million dollar properties in the most desirable parts of central Phoenix. Anyone with a little ambition could get there back then. A Central Ave bridle path palace was still on the menu for a small business owner with a bit of luck and some hard work in the 50s. Now we can only drive by and look.
Despite the lack of articulated identity, I had something like it for Arizona and loved it there as a kid; I felt like we were next gen romantic pioneers and adventurers, because we were forever driving up to Prescott, Flagstaff, Jerome and Clarkdale to see our family and friends, people all over that we knew. Back in the 60s and 70s, my dad's family and friends were always on road trips, going shooting, dove hunting, drinking in small towns that still felt wild. They were driving before that, too; my dad was almost born in Bagdad, Arizona on a road trip but my grandma somehow held it off til they got back to a Phoenix hospital. I have candid round cornered snaps of my dad driving his truck on lonely country roads in the 70s, elbow on the door and fingers lazily grasping the top of the open window frame. Looking at the mountains and dreaming of the old west. It's not hard to do when you're on those roads.
Those distant Arizona places were still a bit crusty and authentic when I was taken there as a kid, thank god. Unselfconscious places with kooks everywhere in the rural areas. The experience of picking through decaying abandoned 19th century buildings and graveyards is a major cornerstone to my childhood and identity. Roadside antique shops that felt more like museums. Back then, the Citizens Cemetery in Prescott was overgrown, weedy and ignored, and we had to climb a short fence to get in from a neighboring lot. It's since been cleaned up. Among my dad's bros, all old west fanatics, I heard stories of murder and vigilante justice like they were aspirational, and we visited cowboy graves and iconic locations hours off the main road, on private property that one of our party had received permission to visit. I sometimes despaired of ever getting home on those trips, ever getting to a bathroom with plumbing or finding a glass of cold water, or any water. Different time. I was surrounded by middle aged guys obsessed with gunfighting pioneer days, and thought that was usual for summer vacation and weekends. Other kids were at Disneyland.
I don't know what I would do if I saw it all again now, all those places. I know so much of it is changed, over. I don't want to know. Are the random secret places still there? I have to guess so. We spent so many hours driving and I remember staring out at mountains and tall plateaus and canyons during all seasons and times of day and thinking, there can't be anything like this anywhere else. I didn't really know the difference then, but it's true.
And now, it's getting crazy hot like Phoenix in unexpected places, cities all over the country, and definitely Austin. When I moved here, locals loved to tell me, "You picked wrong if you were trying to get away from heat!" and I was like, oh ok, I see that you think that. When it tipped to about 102, the same locals would panic, talking about droughts and low lake levels. It was on the news. I wanted to laugh, not realizing how unusual it was here. Not to say 102 wasn't hot, because that's also at 70% humidity some days. It's miserable and that kind of heat and humidity makes you want to crawl on your knees if you have to walk down the street when you're not used to it. But it was fleeting before. A couple of weeks each summer, if that.
Now we've got 110 in less than 10 years, and similar temps for months instead of weeks. The heat last summer was an all time record. My home temperature readings hit 111 the day they said 109 would break records, and I didn't check every day. An old Arizona friend lives here now too and she said, "Didn't I move away from this?" It's been hot before, hot every year, but this is not usual. Then a random spate of unseasonably low humidity and weeks of high winds drove wildfire risks up to emergency levels so that we were afraid all the time, and told to be ready to evacuate with no notice. The city is a tinderbox and unadapted for fire with all the dry grasses and cedars.
But I feel unmotivated to consider leaving, even though it's clear that the climate will become more dangerous and unenjoyable with each passing year, at a pace that is detectable to humans in short durations of time, which it is not supposed to be.
Because I like it here, and I'm already here. Shrug emoji. It's my place now, a place I feel protective of, sometimes or often. I underwent a rapid familiarization with the region because of my job. As soon as I got here, I was embedded within a group of native Texans and longtime residents who were biologists, environmentalists, scientists, historians and just old timers. There is a very strong love and sense of place, a feeling of history and belonging among long time people, and while I found it confusing at first, it rubs off. I didn't see the romance of the place myself, but I had to admit that lots of smart people clearly did. To me it looked like scrub desert in some places, scraggly southern green in others, and the western vibe was nothing new to me. A lot of it is just family tradition, or indoctrination, but it was also a different place not that long ago, and you can still get pieces of that in certain places and people. I regret not moving here sooner.
A song that means something different in the place.
I hate that plane ride between Dallas and Austin, as Waylon describes. "Auw-stin" he says. I've taken it more than you'd think. Bumpy as hell every damn time, something about the air between here and there, and I get scared no matter how many times I make the trip. I'm not a good flyer anymore. If it gets real bad, I have to stop talking, just flatten my hand on the seat ahead of me and put my head down.
But the generation between meeting, mocking and becoming Texas is short because it's so enveloping if you want to know about the place where you live. Y'all sounds like an affectation from far away, but when you're here, especially among those people I mentioned, it catches fast. It's just normal. Once I cringed, and then it just was. And now I don't hear it or care how it sounds when I say it. I only think about it when we have someone in town from away, and then I self-consciously wonder if it all sounds so typical, and wonder if I should run interference as a fellow outsider. I never do it, just think about it. But I love the regionalisms. I love the way people from West Texas say "Texz" and the way native Houstonians say "You-ston" and learning that Houston is its own country. You start to learn the accents, though they are so numerous. The original central Texas/Austin accent is rare, but very cute to me. Kind of country/kind of drawly. Dudn't and wudn't would sound like lowbrow country talk anywhere else, but here, it's a bit iconic and kind of a fancy badge. Can't fake that, yall.
As I mentioned, the intro to the context of this place would have taken many years to make, if I ever would have otherwise. As soon as I got here, I was taken on travels to special places, most private and secret, with all their little historic backstories. Big flat grazing lands mere miles from hidden cliffside pools serviced by pristine creeks and underground springs where certain aquatic life live that aren't found anywhere else in the world. The last of the unplowed, intact prairies are here to the north and south, and coastal prairies out east that don't look like anything I've ever seen, like a franken-landscape by the ocean, with cacti, succulents, lichens and other species all living together in the most unlikely way. Galveston is unlike any place anywhere, so strange and southern coastal gothic. Or stories about an 1870s West Texas housewife unknowingly saving the last wild bison in the American Southwest following the widespread slaughter of that animal, because she couldn't stand to hear orphaned calves crying in the distance when she went out on her porch one morning. She took it upon herself to find and lead those surviving calves to safety on her property, away from the slaughter, tall tales that are real. Legacy ranches you first heard about on old tv shows that actually exist and are still working. And bad stories too, naturally, too many to stand in one lifetime, the reasons why bison had to be saved at all when they had been so numerous before the vulgar endless slaughter committed by all those intrepid manifest destiny scumbag mother fuckers, etc. Don't start me.
Modern places, unchanged places, encroachment, mountain lions and black bears, critically endangered ocelot kittens who will break your heart on sight. Fortunately or unfortunately, you'll never see the ocelots personally. No one does, because they can only survive by living in the loneliest far quadrants of rarely traversed private property, their fates guided by the fortunes of south Texas rancheros and conservation landowners like the org I work for. I wonder what people think when they move here blind and all they see is the surface stuff and learn the problems, and wonder what the hell they have done. They think everything outside of Austin is Texas Chainsaw Massacre klan country. I would too, if I were them. It's not true. Except for the times when it is. Cringe emoji!
Something I also think about is the inevitable fact that I have changed since moving, if not the world (but definitely the world too). Not just because of the place but because of the experience and age. I'm tired of hearing casual, ignorant shit talk about Texas, a place the size of 4 states with almost 30 million people and innumerable cultures, many still intact for some reason. You think you know what that is? I barely do, and I study it in good faith. It's impossible to understand or take on as a whole; it's too big in multiple ways. People think they can cheaply dismiss a gigantic swath of people based on its present politics, never knowing what it was like before, how different and unspoiled it once was ecologically, and how many people still care about that. My feeling is that a place is never marked permanently by the views of the people on it, until they damage it, which unfortunately happens all the time, is happening here and everywhere. The state as it is politically organized now means little to me and pisses me off in ways that are indescribable, requiring a different post, but you can only dismiss it if you have no idea and like to be dumb.
But I'm sure there is a little fish that only lives in Arizona creeks too. I have imagined going back and caring about it on this same level, with the attention and knowledge of the person I am now. A much more manageable set of cares, geographically. It would be so easy, and I would love to know as much about the wild lands of my home state as I know about Texas. It would be more gratifying to work on that smaller scale, I think, but is there a bit of passivity in a state comparably full of public land? Arizona isn't taking ANY care to steward its fragile resources. Is there an element of endless ambition in Texas conservation, where the land is all private and threatened constantly? Where the wins matter so much more, earn so much more toward ecological goals? Just wondering out loud, all states have too many assholes in charge.
You can only pay attention to so much at one time. And one of the biggest takeaways of my adulthood is realizing that wild lands look pretty similar across the world. Parts of Texas look like Arizona. Parts of Montana look like Texas. Parts of Africa, South America, Europe look like here. Does it matter where you are? It's all the same.
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