Day 34: Chupacabras or wild dog?

New Mexico/Arizona Desert:

I made a pact with BaddicusFinch that I would be back in less than six weeks. Well, today is the sixth week, and I'm home.

Now to step back a couple days...I drove twenty miles straight from San Antonio to El Paso then from El Paso to Phoenix. I would've braved the last seven hours to L.A. but for the crazy lightning storm that disrupted traffic flow. I watched over three hours of panoramic laser light show from sunset until dark when the rain came. Heavy, obnoxious, and threatening. I'd no choice but to get off an exit and get lodging somewhere. What a great dramatic end to terrific, life-changing trip.

Did I mention I nearly hit a dog/creature that crossed the highway lighting fast? I released my foot from the gas and screamed like a MF. That was one of my biggest fears, you see, hitting an animal. I don't want to leave roadkill for the buzzards.

Day 33 - I could scale the Alamo

Austin - San Antonio:

I loooove the Lydon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin. Very simple, informative...and free! Any guy who brings electricity to Texas is alright by me. The library was sparse in its design and approach. I like that. Since Bush had his grapes yesterday, LBJ had Walter Cronkite today. There was a special exhibit about the newsman who saw an entire century and lived to report about it. Very like.

From Austin I sped to San Antonio before the Alamo closed. I was extremely put out that the famous fort was so tiny. I could scale the walls with a couple of phone books under my feet. Ah, well, I'm sure the folks were puny back then.

I had dinner with an old friend, Alyson, a few hours ago. It's been seven years, and it was great catching up. Time goes by so fast. She's known me since I was fresh out of high school. Now I'm old and tired. Yes, I'm tired. The strain of having to make it home before a certain date is getting to me. Sometimes I feel like I could continue north and drive forever, but a pact is a pact. Six weeks of fun then go home to poor you-know-who and the animals.

I'll be home soon, everyone. I promise not to crash.

Day 32 - Bush's grapes

Houston:

Just had dinner with Jeremy at Nippon Restaurant. He flew there for a two-week assignment that will end this Friday. Good company. Good fun. He even paid for dinner…hopefully not on the company card. Thanks bro.

Today was a bit stressful as I was trying to spread myself too thin. From New Orleans I drove to College Station, TX to see the George Bush Presidential Library. And from there I skedaddled to Houston to visit the Rothko Chapel and make it in time for dinner with Jeremy.

I feel like I need to cram since I’m trying to get home by Monday. My body feels wobbly from stress sometimes. Tomorrow is going to be ambitious as well...Austin for the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and San Antonio for the Alamo and dinner with Alyson.

Anyway, Bush’s library was pretty nice and simple. Lots of pictures of 41 as a pilot and as a young politician. Not much about the Iraq War though. I think the most interesting part about the Library are the grapes. Yes, my friends, nearly half the exhibit was about winemaking. You even see mannequins in red check shirts manicuring the grape vines. Why is this you ask? Well, I looked over the list of library donors and saw a bunch of winosaurous rex. Weird, that’s all. Barbara Bush looked like Gillian Anderson when she was younger. Must be a nice family...but terrible politicians.

Day 31 - What is a crux?

New Orleans:

I called Sunrise Hotel in Houston for tomorrow night's lodgings, and the man who answered said I shouldn't stay at his hotel because it's in a bad neighborhood. Cripes! The next-cheapest motel I called was America's Best Inn. I asked the owner if his neighborhood was safe, and he answered in an Indian accent, "If bad things are going to happen they're going to happen anywhere." He answered my question without really answering...so I booked the room. What the hell. I've stayed in the pits on this trip.

Why am I not talking about New Orleans? Simple...I met a very strange and kind woman who walked me to the nearby liquor store and shared a bottle of white wine with me at her place - the Tennessee Williams home - at ten o'clock in the morning. Yes, this is a very odd story.

I parked the car so that I could pinpoint the historic house. The streets were empty so I kinda got frustrated. Then a woman unlocked a side gate and I semi-yelled, "Excuse me, where's the Tennessee Williams house?" She pointed at the house she had stepped from. "This is it."

The landmark was a two-story yellow house with all the curled wrought iron railings of New Orleans. The woman with blond hair and deep blue eyes smiled and said, "Would you like to see it?" Of course I nodded like a sugar addict. I took a look at the swimming pool and the grounds. I thought that would be it, but she pointed up the stairs and I followed her. She let me in the living quarters decorated eclectically. Instrumental music played in the background. The woman's name was Emily and she was 61 years old. She asked my name and nodded as she entered her room furnished with a massive bed and red tapestry.

"I just finished this painting this morning. Her lips I did with nail polish," she said, handing me the picture. "It's St. Therese of the Roses. She's also known as St. Therese of the child Jesus."

"I was named after her," I said. She gave me the painting. Serendipity. We brought the wine back, and I nervously patted my stomach. I'm not a wine drinker...or a drinker period. My favorite drinks are root beer and water. Nevertheless I drank the white wine with a giant ice cube in the glass. She said, "Where you have drugs in L.A., we have alcohol in New Orleans. It's legal."

This is what I learned about her...her family was part-owner of the NY Mets, and they were responsible for hiring Jackie Robinson; George Bush fell off their horse; she has expensive art in the house; she's a crux (???) and a psychic; she speaks Aramaic and she spoke in tongues in front of me; she can crush her enemies and blood will flow; she called the police on her boyfriend for trying to stab her with a knife last night that's why she needed her wine; she said that she was there when Jesus was crucified and was brought to life again in 1949; she has good skin and raised her leg to demonstrate how fit it was.

Then she said that it was fate that we met. She smoked copiously while I shook my head to decline a cig. This went on for two hours. She summoned T. Williams (whom I didn't see) for me and told me to stop taking drugs...my prescription meds, I guess. Then she sat on a stool in front of me and told me to stare into her eyes. I did...for like ten minutes. She said I needed to breathe harder and louder and that I needed to smile more. She was probably right. After such intense eye-staring, she said she cured me of my bipolar disorder. Just wean the drugs slowly, and all will be well. Then she hugged me.

Now, all kinds of thoughts and emotions were passing through me. I didn't know what to believe - but she was very nice although her mood varied. When she took my glass for another serving I told her I had to go.

Well, if sitting in Tennessee Williams' living room with a very nice woman who spoke in tongues wasn't a New Orleans experience, then I don't know what is. Funny if you notice, though, the pictures I took of the house are pretty blurry.

Salooning

Nice new metal signs have just replaced the oversized panel signs that hung over the King Eddy Saloon doors. Did the owners get a cue from the Bringing Back Broadway signage requirements taking root a few blocks away?

I'm not much of a drinker so I haven't been inside yet, but the folks who walk out don't look hardly as wacky as the stories I hear...

Day 30 - Help is help

New Orleans:

It's raining outside, fogging up my 10th floor view. The best room I've had so far and it's on Charles Street. Sadly, I'm so desensitized to less-than-accommodating sleeping arrangements these days. The next day could prove musty with palmetto bugs.

I have long considered New Orleans to be the meat of my trip. I've been salivating for it since reading Anne Rice, Tennessee Williams, Faulkner and all that jazz, and the Big Easy has been at the top of my list for almost six weeks now. I decided to ground myself and visit the Lower 9th Ward where the displaced residents are still waiting for a miracle after Katrina.

I'm not being dramatic or bleeding-heart. Two reasons why I took a look...one is to know what the other side of the bridge from the French Quarter holds. Secondly, I wanted to see the houses built by the Make It Right foundation, started up by Brad Pitt. I like architecture and I'd heard a lot about the different architects that contributed their designs - even Frank Gehry, William McDonough, and other superstars. There's even the house designed by Thom Mayne that floats when there's a flood. Cool stuff.

I've read some blog comments about the project. One said something like, "It's some liberal wet dream with fancy shmanzy houses."

Now that I've seen the homes, interspersed with condemned and dilapidated houses, such nastiness boils my goiter. Help is help. Over a hundred fifty homes are either built or under construction - that's something at least. I understand the other complaint about changing the style of the neighborhood too much that it's becoming a bit foreign. Perhaps architects should have dug in and consulted more with the community...but lessons were learned and the designers and engineers are listening now.

I liked the houses. They have solar capacity, good ventilation, and great composition. I'd love to live in one of those if they were plopped in Los Angeles. Katrina changed everything. I wish people could have their old homes back, but they're too expensive to replicate. Once customizable mass-production techniques are hammered out, the new homes will be cheaper to build and easier on the electric bill.

In my travels so far, I make sure to walk to the not-so-nice areas part of time. I might sound like a hoity toity d-bag, but I just want to be grounded. I want to make sure I don't enjoy myself too much because life isn't always about being a tourist.

Day 29 - Laundry day

Tallahassee, Florida:

Today was driving-laundry day so I don't have much to say...except that...

I realized at the Keys yesterday that most privately owned historic sites are horrible. For instance, the Ernest Hemingway house...the guides herded us in and spent three minutes per room feigning that it was too hot to stay longer, and then another group came in. The furniture is groped, the banisters are unprotected from oil from the hands of sweaty tourists. The guides told us we could roam around unassisted after the tour, thank you very much. Now give me a tip. Mark my word, that house ain't gonna last fifty years with the neglect it's getting from everyone that seemed to be connected to the house - especially the curious, like me.

On another note...remember the Richard Nixon Presidential Library? It used to be run by a private foundation so if you'd visited three years ago or earlier, you would've noticed historical revisionism. Watergate was made into something to be proud of. Something heroic for Tricky Dick. It was a good thing the National Archives took over worked to tell a more balanced story of President I-am-not-a-crook's shameful administration.