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Little Girl at the Carnival

This is a picture of Mary Alice Muncy (at the time), later to be Mary Alice Greenwood, my mother. From what I understand, it was taken at a carnival. The shy, pensive look doesn't appear to be of someone having fun at a county festival. Possibly, she had already developed an inkling of the tough life that was in store for her. I've played with the print a little. It was a cheap black and white they probably purchased for pennies. I can see the family resemblance, because, haughtily,  it looks a lot like pictures from my own youth.

She and her family were "Okies" who came to Socorro country from Lawton, Oklahoma. She had trouble collecting social security, because her birth certificate was destroyed in a courthouse fire. When she tried to obtain a copy, she discovered that it simply said "Baby Girl Muncy" because she was a preemie, and her parents didn't name her right away, because they weren't sure if she'd live. Many premature births didn't in the early 1900's to poor families. They swaddled her and placed her in their wood stove (no incubators for their likes) to keep her warm enough, and she pulled through to become the oldest sister in her family and later our loving mother.

As a person ready to retire, she had to find several older Socorro matriarchs who could sign a document of identification and testifying to her age and such.

She was a simple farmer's daughter who saw that we were always loved---and that is stated on her tombstone in the Tatum cemetary. She was a humble person and a Bible verse that stuck in her mind and she spoke of was Mathew 24:40---“Then there shall be two men in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left.

Being a humble person, she always felt she would be the one left behind in the field. But I know, if such a time came to pass, she would not be abandoned thus. She lived her life to earn the place as the one who would be taken.

Just sayin'.

 

 

A Tree Grows in (Hobbs) Brooklyn

A tree apparently marked for removal outside our classroom at the high school.

Most of us have taken biology and realize trees add a growth ring every year, so when sawed down one may count the rings to see how old the tree is. Some trees grow quickly and have soft wood. Some grow slowly and are sturdier. Rainy seasons are revealed through thicker rings. Sparse seasons of drought by thin rings of struggle. Soon one may peer down at this stump and estimate how long this magnificent one has poured a shady sanctuary over this campus spot.

One can only imagine the teens and teachers, parents and visitors that strolled, walked, paused below its welcoming shade in summer or stared at its stark branches in winter. The happiness, sorrow, pride, anger, fear, joy it witnessed in its anthropomorphic stead. The squirrels and birds that scampered or nested in its branches. The leaves released each fall for maintenance workers to rake and janitors to sweep from the nearby sidewalks.

Little fanfare will mark its demise. It sprouted from a tiny seed not much larger than the biblical mustard seed compared to man's faith. It grew, weathered the ages, and eventually revealed the infirmities of age and disease that left it marked with its red X.

Just another reminder of the temporality of life. Its lived a long time in our imagination. Scant time in the llano's scheme of things.

One might pause and note its presence before it is only seen in former campus pictures or a brief remembrances to those who leaned against its bark to study or chanced to kiss beneath its leafy arbor. Pause and note the trials, tribulations and moments of splendor that, like this tree, will soon be only past whisperings.

Alonzo's Bosque

Alonzo’s Bosque

            Alonzo surveyed his cabin, worried about the impending impression it would make on his returning family. He cursed, because he hated “putting on a dog and pony show” or bribing his kids and ex-wife to visit the farm. At the same time, he wouldn’t stoop to accepting pity just because he was dying. People should take him for what he was, even his long missing children.

            Yet—maybe he could sacrifice this once… He intended to convince someone to stay here in New Mexico on his bosque homestead. He didn’t have long to convince them either, because doctor Mills had only given him a couple of months. Oh, they’d put him on the heart donor list, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d never get one in time. 

            Inside his cabin, he had washed the hills of dishes, the mountain of clothes and carefully swept the faded linoleum floor of the accumulated dust.

            He nodded. Best foot forward. That was simple enough. 

               

Excerpt from a short story included in a book of short stories about the oil field and the southwest that I hope to publish in the coming year.

Upcoming Lea Co. Writer's Coffee House Readings

Bottomless lake temporary sanctuary...

A scene from Bottomless Lakes west of Roswell on a summer day a couple of years back. Salt domes caved in below and then filled with groundwater. There are several lakes averaging about 100 ft. deep, but that would seem bottomless to all but a decent scuba diver. The largest lake, further south is said to have a Model T resting on the bottom. Supposedly, driven over the edge long ago.

When the Goodnight Loving Trail went through here, cowboys had to keep the cattle away from these because the water is beautiful but brackish.

I stopped here and took this one day riding my Honda back from the motorcycle repair shop and enjoyed meditating beneath a salt cedar. The stillness. The summer sun. My refuge on the shore gazing out at this body of water nestled here on the edge of the Caprock.

An excerpt from Mordake

“He’s captured it, sí. But mythical it is not.” He pulled up his sleeve to reveal marks that looked as if a tiger had mauled him. Old marks, healed now, like a hideous brand, claimed by a hideous master. “No, I can say no more. Just leave me. I wouldn’t return there for all the gold in your Fort Knox, or all the putas in Ciudad Juarez.”

“Harold would take me. If he could.”

“Harold is crazy.” Joaquin twirled his index finger around near his temple. His bottom lip was a fat worm and trembled when he spoke. “What has he told you?” He seemed genuinely curious. He pulled his black silk shirtsleeve down. The walls of the Joaquin’s dressing room oozed a dull yellow color that one could have listed in a descriptive catalog as oppressive. Two mating flies crawled clumsily down a nearby wall. Joaquin brushed a larger one away from his drink-glazed brown eyes.

“Not enough. Look, I can make it worthwhile, money wise. Name your price. My father’s a rich American son-of-a-bitch.” Joaquin’s eyes narrowed. He scratched the side of his cheek with a dirty fingernail.

An excerpt from Mordake a novel in progress.

Retirement...

Everyone asks me what I'll do when I retire from teaching.
Read.
Write.
Contemplate.
Meditate.
Sleep late?

In Indian culture, it is the time to enter Vanaprastha.

Fort Davis

                                                                    Chapter One

                                                 West Texas Plains Near Fort Davis, May 1870

     Captain Easton mounts a brief rise and squints at the burning stagecoach. “Apaches,” barks Sergeant Kennedy, as both survey the vast stretch of gramma, cactus, and yuccas. Overhead a May sun flattens the smoke into a splay of drifting, feathering gray. Mary’s stage? Kennedy loosens his Springfield from its scabbard and leather creaked and the carbine flashed and galloping they soon overtook the smoke. A bullet sings by Easton’s shoulder and he mutters a good luck oath. His horse whinnies—jerks its bit—and its teeth scrape under flared nostrils.

Opening paragraph of my western novel, Fort Davis.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who has checked out my blog. I've had an amazing number of views and I appreciate all who have taken the time to peruse my meanderings.... PEACE