Tucumcari New Mexico
Late Sprint 2023
7am. Tucumcari NM. To say this place is a pale image of its former glory would be a gross over description. It is now a faded image of a faded image of its former glory. The pandemic seems to have ravaged an already dying town. I can’t imagine it has any industry but the millions who stop on their way east or west to better destinations. The murals are plentiful and attractive. I think when I was a younger human, I saw those public paintings with more promise and hope than I do now. In this age, they seem little more than whitewashing a grave.
The Blue Swallow inn is an exception. Freshly painted and neatly appointed, it books to capacity every night. Somehow they manage to maintain that glory that made Route 66 world famous. The only drawback is its greatest charm: it is tiny. So staying there is a privilege for sure that requires more planning than we are capable.
The other ‘bright’ spot in this desolation: marijuana stores. Churched up, they are called dispensaries but at the end of the day, just a drug store. We have seen half- a-dozen... more plentiful and nicer than local convenience stores.
The people are kind though, as they live and love. I wonder what kind of person makes this place a home. Is it choice or desperation? I think of an old friend back home who grew up here. She is a maladjusted woman who is frustrated that she made so many poor choices in life. Not the least of which is the questionable products her children turned out to be. She puts me in the mind of my grandmother. My father's mother. I never knew her as a kind woman. Even her kindnesses were punctuated with frustration. I also never knew her as a married woman, my grandmother. Though she did have a string of men that I lost count of in the years from my childhood until her death in the early 2000's. How odd that as a child I could not conceive that these men were her lovers. Children, I think, all imagine their grandmothers as dotting old women devoid of lust and attraction. These are the people I imagine here. Hard and stern.
But I met a woman who was neither. We had dinner at La Cita and our waitress was a gem. She noticed my bee sticker and asked if we were beekeepers. I demurred and explained that we were ready for a swarm but only have the hive so far.
I glanced at her décolletage thinking she had a sweater on under her shirt and noticed it was a very dense tattoo of an owl with gems for eyes. The gem-eyes were a surprise, not the kind of glue-on one would do for work, so I asked if they were piercings.
‘Yes!’ She said with a gleam. ‘They are dermals! Aren’t they great? I love them!!’
It was striking, though I have yet to find tattoos beautiful. In moderation, enticing and even alluring, but not beautiful. Piercings I have long associate with demon worship. The Creator asks us not to mutilate our bodies but to cherish them, while the wicked one continually asks us to do every foul thing imaginable to these incredible vessels we are given.
This beautiful woman for instance. Her flower will only fade, as all of ours do, but now she has fixed upon herself an idea of her own making and as her tastes and opinions change, this indelible choice will not. No book for the shelf, it is a permanent part of her physical person in this life. I wonder if she will abandon this sweet persons and become bitter, like my friend.
A storm charged us last night as we walked around downtown Tucumcari. The cool wind was welcome and even thrilling as Jellybean and I chatted about the crumbling ruins of this place. Try as they might, there is no money to be made and so businesses one after another fail and the structures they inhabit rot without constant attention.
This always amazes me. Human construction requires massive ongoing investment to keep it from suffering the effects of entropy (oregeny leads to subduction), but God's creation without external forces, will change and adapt, but always grow.