The Stars at Night are Big & Bright
if you clapped, you know where I was all week
Well, Howdy there, folks!
I spent all week home with my Lithuanian family in Texas.
My hometown of College Station looks like a spawning field for upscale strip malls. Everyone in any car had to listen, over and over, to me exclaiming: “it was nothing like this when I was growing up here.”
The place is all brown cement. Miles and miles of it. The town apparently keeps all the charm and character indoors in the air conditioning. (I’m looking at you, Luigi’s!)
I have to say, it is hard to feel connected to a place that is striving so hard to shake off its roots. We had to search to find cool places like bottlecap alley & the Dixie Chicken & Fargo’s BBQ (apparently one of the top 50 BBQ pits in the world!) — but is my town any better off for having a huge cinema on Northgate? I dunno. I kinda loved the old Skaggs. (I know, Skaggs was further down—this newest shopping center is where the married student housing was….that creepy military-barracks like place that was always littered with lipstick-stained cigarette butts and broken Big Wheels and plastic green caterpillars.)
This trip, while I hit some fun spots like Trader’s Village & the Texas Renaissance Festival, I spent most of my time out in the country where nothing has changed at all…except, instead of a dirt road with a four-way stop sign, there’s a fat four-lane asphalt permanent construction zone—with gigantic gas pumps and convenience stores where there used to be just mesquite thicket.
Lucky for my long walks, the back roads are still full of this:
And indoors, my family is absolutely just as weird and interesting as ever:
I don’t have any new publishing news. I didn’t do anything but gaze around in some strange combination of horror, awe, and dismay at the cement storefronts that pretty much leveled any semblance of nature that had been encroaching on the highways in my town. I think the thing I said most often is “I have no idea where I am.”
Oh: and the masking situation is pretty terrible. Houston was okay (though the waitress was baffled when I asked what the current laws were as regards masking in restaurants…. “I don’t think there are any, ma’am,” she says. “Do what you like, I guess?” — but by the time you got to the wide-open spaces, people seemed to mostly wear masks in their pockets. “Well, yeah, I’ve got a mask, you want me to put it on for ya?” It was definitely comforting to get on a flight were everyone was masked and behaving and then arrive back home where a state of emergency was preemptively declared.
Better safe than sick.
Your rootless friend,
—M.
PS: you might take this opportunity to check out my lovely author website if you have not yet done so. Also don’t forget to buy my book for the creative parents you know that just had kids — especially those that keep telling you that they would go back to their creative pursuits if only their kids were older/calmer/easier/quieter. Send them my book for the holidays — it will do them good. Here’s the link—with free shipping through CyberMonday!!