Lubbock, Texas

Everything is silent till the rusty train’s whistle screams into the cold, dark night. A dog barks. Now, several dogs are barking. Along the dusty horizon a tumbleweed cartwheels across the highway, escaping the imprisoned smell of a stockyard, looking for its lost audience in a dusty field.

Is this really the Hub City of West Texas or just some crafty wormhole of sand and oil, combining to form the perfect glue? Why do I continue to live here in Lubbock, Texas? I’ve already graduated from college, I’m still young, I prefer regions with mountains and water, I have my health, and on a good night, I’m somewhat sane. But really, why do I remain in a town that smells like cow manure every night?

Some of my friends and I label this corner of the universe The Brown Hole, holding us all here against our better judgment, but that’s really not the case. This isn’t Hotel California. I can leave whenever I feel like it. Right now, I just don’t feel like it.

Lately, I’ve been looking on the bright side of things. What’s the worst that can happen to us here? Droughts? Sandstorms? Hail? Tornadoes? Bring it on, I say. We can take it. It would even make living here a little more entertaining. A little natural disaster is good for the spirit, keeps you on your toes, and persuades you to enjoy every last breath, despite the smell.

This is a town comprised mostly of refugees from Dallas and surrounding farming communities. We know exactly where we are and why. This is a tough town breeding a tough breed. We love this smell. No matter what odor fills your nose, your eyes never run out of sky. Here, we are able to watch sunrises and the sunsets while baring witness to every cloud's path. It’s like a rainbow-kabob sizzling on the horizon’s grill with pinks, blues, yellows, reds, and oranges bursting across the heavens. Yeah, we have more sky and though it is, at times, more brown than blue, I like to think of it as a rosy tan. Okay, sometimes I go so far as to put on my blue-tinted shades, imagining it is a perfect blue all this barren land rolling toward Kansas is really the ocean. A man can dream, can’t he? My dad’s the farmer, not me. I’m just a son of a farmer with a surfer’s tan.

Geographically, this is a gateway to more - a crossroad where west meets south, field meets city, and bone meets rock. Yes, there seems to be a fair share of conspiracies here that make the awful smell fester, but we can take it. Road construction creates constant detours, the traffic lights are rigged, we can’t buy booze down on the corner so we convoy in that twenty-minute marathon out to the Strip every Friday just to bask in the Vegas-like nostalgia, and okay, the town floods after a five-minute drizzle, but we’re still alive. We know how to swim.

Boredom setting in? No problem. I have just the solution. I’ll take you on a grand tour of Lubbock. All your inadequacies and worries will be wiped away with a night’s stay in the Mac Davis Suite of the Lubbock Inn. You’ll be awakened for an all-you-can-eat buffet at any one of a thousand steak restaurants. Full? Nonsense, let’s catch a game at Texas Tech. Our quarterbacks break national records like ceramic plates at a Greek wedding, and we have the best coaches in the country with Marsha Sharp and Bobby Knight directing the troops on the hardwood. If that doesn’t cheer you up, how about a guided tour through The Buddy Holly Center or one of the local wineries? That’s what I thought. Throw in a little rock-n-roll, some booze, and people begin to perk up a tad. Last but not least we’ll take a tour of wealthy Ransom Canyon, picnic at all the drainage holes/city parks, and if you’re really good, I’ll even show you exactly where that night aroma comes from for no extra charge. (I don’t work weekends, holidays, or mornings. Tips are appreciated.)

Lubbock is great place to live because of its unique citizens. Oh sure, most restaurants and bars are packed with a fair share of annoying frat-daddies practicing bad pick-up lines and there’s even more ex-prom queens applying a third layer of make-up. And sure there seems to be almost as many radar-enforcing cops with moustaches and a lifelong grudge as there are parking spots at the South Plains Mall, and that’s almost okay too. After all, it’s all the unusual characters running around that make Lubbock beautiful to me. It’s the mix of my dear friends and close loved ones, the stories told from barstools, on street corners, in barber shops and diners, over cups of coffee and wrinkled newspapers.

On any given night, you can carry on a conversation with a cowboy poet driving a Cadillac, a metal-sculpting junky who loves Kerouac, a farmer who runs a limousine service, a college professor who toured with the Grateful Dead, and an electrical engineer who plays accordion in a rock-n-roll band. It’s this transcendental attitude that keeps me in a place where Greyhound and the Pacific Railroad make frequent and regular runs, leaving behind panhandling pioneers and coin-tossers down on their luck.

I love the fact that I once knew a man named Wild Bill here who looked just like Wild Bill Hickok and has a beer named after him to this day. I love the fact that there’s a man who carries around life-size cardboard cut-outs of Elvis Presley. I love the fact that there’s an Elvis impersonator at the local used-car dealership. I love the fact there’s a man who pushes a shopping cart draped with the American flag. And I love the fact there’s a man named Shoeshine Joe from Chicago who will “put a glow on my toe” and “will cut me a deal if I don’t squeal.”

It’s really not that bad here. After all, Lubbock is as close to an oasis as the Texas panhandle can get, and even if you leave its ghosts will call you back. I’m tempted to use that metaphor about grass being greener on the other side, but this being West Texas, I’ll just settle for an acrobatic tumbleweed or two.

Eric H

Submitted: Saturday 14th February 2004, 1:43 PM

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