Two and a Half Texas Towns

El Paso, the U.S. side of an international, continuous city, is elevated, so that Ciudad Juarez spreads out  below, to the south. At night the Mexican half of the bitty is an even matrix of white and yellow lights. In the morning it is even more regular, an uninterrupted texture of single-story block structures, gray and undistinguished by any architectural feature.

These Mexican border towns are well-documented sites of drug gang violence unchecked by the Mexican authorities. From most reports, the violence is – like the view of Ciudad Juarez – an even pattern of criminal brutality that doesn't distinguish between commercial cartel mayhem and official police mayhem. The profits made by these two antagonists as motive and product of the violence is evenly divided, as well. Perhaps it was my prejudice but the low, gray, crowded grid of Ciudad Juarez had a sinister look.

Leaving El Paso (with Marty Robbins' song clearly in mind) the Subaru and Dovekie and I traversed more striking desert. Toward the end of the afternoon we moved into hill country and dense, dark-green scrub trees.

I wondered how anyone could navigate among those trees and hills, and what a pain in the saddle it must have been to winkle longhorns out of that brush. The hill country seemed impenetrably complex.

Until I reached San Antonio. I-10 ported me into a web of interlocking, wandering highways headed in every direction and confused even more by massive signs hoisted a hundred feet up, above the second and third tiers of crossing superhighways. I have never been so assaulted by commercial come-ons – every possible service and product and blandishment, every business logo and catch-phrase. A defensive panic developed in my throat as a coppery taste and a headache accompanied it. I had been sweeping across landscape for too long, I suppose, to confront sudden advertising overload.

Overload. Like TV ads, one after the other but not from a screen. Every direction, every scrap of sky lit by hype and hyperbole. I had the skin-crawling feeling that a thousand hungry commercial claws were reaching for my bank account, blatantly, loudly, squalling at a volume like a dog pound when a fire engine passes.

The hardware store was once my friend. They wanted me to get along well, suggested tools and fittings, how-to suggestions. Maybe it still is, though it's all in Chinese, now.

The elevated signs above San Antonio's warren of oversized highways are not concerned for my well-being or health or consumer approval. Ask yourself: do we still believe businesses care about consumer approval? More likely, they go for the percentages and forget the dissatisfied. The masses will eat/buy/use/consume anything. Tell 'em what they want.

But it was late. I'd once again gone to the wrong Red Roof Inn and was using my iPhone GPS direction lady to guide me to the room I'd already booked from the iPhone while I was at the edge of the desert. I was disheartened, disoriented, unbelieving.  Too much greed, too much advertising, too much of everything.

The GPS iPhone lady – an infuriatingly smug bitch I'll never meet, thank God – directed me through the briar patch levels and concrete thruways of San Antonio. She employed a doubtless logical but abstruse embroidery of turns and route numbers, once vectoring my car-and-trailer rig through a tiny neighborhood street where multiple pickup trucks sat before each bungalow. I was grateful she showed me the way, and I hated her all the same.

Tomorrow I will scoot out of San Antonio ASAP. Perhaps there are six or seven blocks of distinguished downtown beauty in this burg. I'm not encouraged to find them. The GPS iPhone lady will get me out of the briar patch and on the road. I'm too tired to eat, too discouraged to rejoice at geographic progress. El Paso and San Antonio are ugly blots on wonderful land.

How did we get this way?

Braxinoso Speaks

Himself is plentifully naive. And thin-skinned. He's seen the commercial grip tightening around life for, lo, these many years and he's contributed to it. We can't return to Walden Pond or the Little House On the Prairie, dammit. This is the time and society we've got. Cowboy up and do what you can with it. He needs to stop feeling "special" and admit that he's as much a part of this mess as the rest of us.