High Plains Panhandler

The Wildcat Gala

This past Friday was the annual Wildcat Bluff Nature Center Patron party. Non-profit organizations, such as Wildcat Bluff, have these kinds of things every so often (usually every year) to say thanks to their nicest patrons and raise money from everybody else.

I was supposed to be on the patron party committee. Rather, I volunteered to be on the committee, since I was sitting next to the chair of the committee during a board meeting and she looked like she needed help. Unfortunately, I am a terrible slacker and made only half of one committee meeting; the rest of the time I had all sorts of conflicts with the meeting schedule. After a couple of months of this, the chair of the committee justifiably started giving me the skunk eye (although, in my pitiful defense, I did help with the website - wildcatbluff.org - and got a little e-commerce system going so we could take orders for tickets over the web. This was a little difficult, since I really had no idea what I was doing, but everyone assumed I knew “computer stuff,” and who am I to ruin that notion? I’m willing to embrace all illusions of expertise people have of me, as long as it doesn’t involve doing brain surgery or watching Nascar).

The patron party was super-fantastic, with great food, a great band, and a great silent auction. This is all due to the hard work of the Cori, the committee chair, who did a fabulous job (obviously, even now I’m trying to ease my guilt). The night, although peppered with storms, kept clear where we were (over the bluff, though, lightning magnificently lit up the far sky); it was the perfect time, this beginning of fall, to have a party outside.

Suzanne and I were suckers at the silent auction, bidding on all sorts of weird and exotic things. Silent auctions work like this: the auctioneer places rows and rows of object around a room. These could be gift certificates for vacations, actual hand built birdhouses, rare books, anything really. Next to each object is a piece of paper, and this is where you write your name and the amount you’d like to pay. At the end of the night, the person who has the highest bid on the paper wins.

We traveled from table to table, writing our names down and gleefully outbidding the previous people by a dollar here and five dollars there. At the end of the night the silent auction soaked us for close to eight billion dollars. A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon you’re talking real money.

One of the silent auction items was a beautiful cabinet, handmade and expertly crafted. The current bid on it was $600 when Cori caught me admiring it. I opened the door and saw a fireman’s hat logo branded on the inside. Cori explained that the guy next to her built the cabinet, and not only was he a carpenter, he was a fireman too.

He was also ten feet tall and very fireman-looking, which concerned me greatly because: 1. I didn’t want to bid on something that was going cost me $600 and 2. Cori was still giving me the skunk eye for being a slacker, which made me think that if I didn’t bid on the cabinet, I just might end up with a fireman induced wedgie right there in the middle of the silent auction.

But by then my pockets were bare, and I had writer’s cramp from signing up on all the other silent auction forms, so I ducked behind a convenient couple who were studying a certificate for a hog hunting trip, and cowered for the rest of the night.

In the end the patron party was a great success, and I think everyone was very happy with it. I was particularly keen on the event because I was off the hook to do a magic show. It’s nice when these things come together, raise money, and let people know what the nature of nature in the Texas Panhandle is all about. If, one day, you’re driving through town on the way to someplace else, stop by and go for a hike.

I promise no one will give you the skunk eye while you're there.

Faith

The minister of our church, James Cobb, died last night in a motorcycle accident. This is terrible news, and all of us, including the kids, are very upset. He was a great guy, a fantastic orator, and someone who wasn't afraid of thinking through some of the most complex theological issues that disturb and confound the intensely evangelical, uncompromisingly right-wing groups that make up most of the church-going population around here.

James had been a Marine, a lawyer, a father, and all around good guy. He had left a successful law practice in Atlanta awhile ago to go to seminary and become a minister. I've often heard of people who feel compelling to answer a "calling," but James was the first one I had actually met. He gave up everything he had to do what he thought he had to. You must admire that.

Apparently he was on his motorcycle last night when he got hit by an out-of-control car. His wife, in a car behind him, jumped out to help him, and then they were both struck by another car, which killed James and shattered his wife's ankles and her pelvis. The car that hit them drove away and disappeared. No one knows who did it.

When things like this happen, I don't understand them. During the past three years James had begun building up our church again, making it into something exciting rather than the mundane place that it had become. People in the community talked very highly of him, and he believed strongly in making Amarillo a better place to live for everybody, not just members of the church.

I know people will say that things like this happen for a reason, and God works in mysterious ways, but I'm tired of that. I'm tired of the mysteries that we can't, or we're not supposed to, understand. What's so mysteriously divine about hurricanes, war, poverty, and disease? What's so mysteriously divine about a hit-and-run on a Saturday night? What's so mysteriously divine about suffering?

Maybe it's a little egotistical to try to know the mind of God. Maybe. But we're living in a world of idiocy right now, and a lot of people are dying for a lot of stupid reasons, and I don't think anyone with a thought in their head can simply shrug their shoulders and say, "God works in mysterious ways" without really questioning what that means. Anything else is dishonest.

I have faith that good will always prevail over evil. I have faith that meaning will always prevail over chaos, and that beauty will always prevail over ugliness, and that truth will always expose itself in the end.

But keeping faith in a world full of darkness is hard. Keeping hope in the face of despair is nearly impossible.

I try, but every day it gets harder to do.

The Great Pumpkin

Last year Suzanne planted a vegetable garden next to the driveway, and it gave us a bounty of cucumbers, watermelon, and stubby carrots. This year she went with more watermelon, some tomatoes, gigantic zucchini, and pumpkins.

From three seeds, the pumpkins have taken over most of the little garden, their vines like mutant pumpkin octopus arms. It looks like we'll be having pumpkin pie, pumpkin sandwiches, pumpkin soup, pumpkin salad, and plenty of pumpkin leftovers for the rest of the year.

Bike Riding Wisdom

I was heading out for a little bike ride tonight and the kids decided to give me some advice:

Colleen: "Don't get hit by a bottle."
Megan: "Don't get killed."
Alex: "Don't eat a fish."

I'm still trying to figure out that last one. Regardless, it's good bike riding advice. Friends don't let friends ride and eat fish at the same time.

Monster Trucks

Today is the last day we'll drive Elmo. Let me correct that. Today is the last day Suzanne will drive Elmo. I want nothing to do with it. It frightens me.

Elmo is Suzanne's name for the monstrosity currently inhabiting our garage. It's a Chevy Suburban, an enormous, fat white whale beached next to the lawnmower and a couple of bicycles.

This saga started a couple of weeks ago. Suzanne was on her way to drop off Alex at pre-kindergarten when, out of the oblivious blue, came Mr. Stump, a driver from the Mad Max school of bash 'em, crash 'em. Instead of waiting for Suzanne to pass, he drove out right in front of her, desperate, I suppose, to disprove the exclusion principle by showing that, yes indeed, matter can occupy the same place at the same time. The collision was inevitable, and Mr. Stump's Dodge pickup chewed into the van's bumper like a guy named Bubba at Ribfest.

The crummy thing about this is that Alex was in the van, and so you know that he would later spread the tale of mommy and her car crash so much so that his teachers might start thinking of Suzanne as a Wacko Driver, ready to mow down pedestrians and squirrels without a second thought. And then they'd see the van, with its bumper jutting out like a bad underbite, bent plastic and sharp metal protruding in all sorts of weird and post-modern ways, and they'd be afraid of letting her on any field trips.

Mr. Stump was to blame for the whole thing, and his insurance was going to pick up the tab, so Suzanne called the recommended body shop who guaranteed her that they'd have a loaner mini-van while they fixed up ours. Her plan was to drop off our mini-van at the body shop, pick up the loaner, and then meet me at home a little before noon so we could go together to Megan's first grade picnic.

I was, as is my custom, running late. I decided to run by the house quickly to see if Suzanne and Alex had left for the picnic. If they had, I'd just meet them there. As I came up on the house, I saw this Cadillac creep to a stop on the street, very close to our driveway. I didn't know where this car was going (it looked like it had been in reverse, then forward, then reverse again), but I had the sneaking suspicion that it was some big-haired realtor cruising around the neighborhood, obviously on a cell phone, in general being quite dangerous. I pulled up into the driveway and opened the garage door with the remote, and then I noticed that the van wasn't in there. Nuts! Suzanne and Alex had already left, and now I had this crazy Cadillac driver haunting the street right behind me. I couldn't exactly just change my mind and leave the driveway because I feared that would completely confused the Cadillac person, probably to the point of neighborhood road rage, and we'd end up with a shiny white Cadillac in our front yard, airbag blown out, horn blaring.

So I did what any rational, Cadillac-fearing person would do. I drove into the garage and sat there, waiting for the Cadillac to drive away. A second later the Cadillac drove backward and blocked the driveway. Oh, man! Now they want directions!

But it was Suzanne and Alex in the Cadillac, her new loaner mini-van, which wasn't a mini-van at all. The shop ran out so they gave her the swank mobile instead. I hopped in and we drove the two blocks to the school in Honey Bear style. I'm no where close to retirement, but if I stayed in that car any longer, I'd be ready to buy a condo at Boca Vista and spend my days playing canasta.

After I left from work that evening, I pulled up to the garage, opened the door, and was startled to see that the sweet lux caddy was gone and in its spot was the highest rear bumper that I had ever seen. It dwarfed me in my Toyota Camry, and it completely goofed up all sense of geometric perspective that I might have had. I parked my car after passing what seemed to be an endless wall of white plastic and metal, sort of like the opening to Star Wars when the Imperial Cruiser takes over the entire screen and keeps going and going and going.

This thing was huge, longer than, say, 23 regular cars put end to end. It said Suburban on the back, but I really think it should be called the Chevy Continent or better yet the Chevy Gas Giant, like Jupiter except without the moons. The tires were monstrous. If Tom Hanks had one of them in Castaway as his raft, he wouldn't have need rescuing. He could have just lived on it. Forever.

As I passed in front of it, a warm blast of engine air hit my face. Even though the thing had been off for a few hours, it was still snorting out heat as if it were a sleeping dragon. You could dry your hair standing there.

Suzanne gave me the skinny when I got inside. The repair place still had no mini vans so they offered her The Thing to replace the pimpmobile, er, Cadillac. And although it got 15 miles a gallon and came with its own hole in the ozone, it beat a car to lug kids around, so she took it until they fixed our van, which now was going to take several long, gas guzzling, days. Suzanne called it The Bus, but she later changed it to Elmo to make it a little friendlier.

It is obscene, this Elmo. Its exhaust fumes remind me of bus fumes from high school marching band trips. It growls when it drives and gives no quarter to anything smaller than an Abrams tank. On our way out of the garage yesterday, while I was taking the girls to school, Megan started chanting "You're so puny. You're so puny. You're like a little ant. Itty bitty," to which I had no answer because, indeed, I was puny and ant-like next to the leviathan named Elmo.

Tomorrow it all goes away and we're back with our mini-van (I never thought I'd be happy to say that), and my attempt at driving like a true Amarilloan (which, for the record, I have not tried because I think you should have an oil tanker license to drive one of these hulks, and sitting behind the wheel scares me) will have faded into the ether.

So goodbye Elmo. Here's to you and the highway lanes that weren't made to hold you, the three parking spaces needed to contain you, and the Olympic-sized swimming pool you call a gas tank. May you make a person more macho than I happy and content. I hear Mr. Stump is looking.

Kid Talk

I was writing today and heard this exact exchange between Alex (3) and Megan (6). I'm glad they can talk about the important things in life.

Alex: Do you like candy?
Megan: Yeah.
Alex: Do you like puppet shows?
Megan: Yeah.
Alex: Do you like M&Ms?
Megan: Yeah
Alex: Do you like toys?
Mega: Yeah.
Alex: Do you like Tooty Face? [Tooty Face is The Hulk.]
Megan: No. He wrecks everything.
Alex: But Tooty Face is my favorite superhero.
Megan: I don't like him.
Alex: Do you like Colleen?
Megan: Yeah.
Alex: Do you like Christmas?
Megan: Yeah. Now I want to ask you some questions. Do you like spinach?
Alex: No!
Megan: Do you like Bionic Bunny?
Alex: Yeah!
Megan: Do you like . . .
Alex: Superman?
Megan: No, do you like Batman?
Alex: Yeah.
Megan: Do you want to go to Chuckie Cheese?
Alex now starts roaring, making muscles, and rolling on the floor.

Rodeo Drive

Our good friend, Davide (who had her credit status approved to official "Aunt" a long time ago) visited us last weekend for a quick escape from New York. This time we decided to take her on an adventure to a rodeo.

We hadn't been to a rodeo before. Even though we're in Texas the closest thing to a rodeo that I've ever attended has been the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo held in the Astrodome in which, because we had seats in the mesosphere, all the animals had the distinct look of subatomic particles. This was Way Back, when we had first moved to Houston and had to do the all obligatory cowboy things including driving by Gilley's, the place where John Travolta rode the mechanical bull in Urban Cowboy, and upgrading from Toughskins to Wrangler jeans.

It's funny how the power of suburbia and cable TV have transformed places like Houston from a place of cowboys to a place of cowboy wannabes who still wear gigantic cowboy hats and drive hemi-powered pickup trucks, but their hats don't shield them from sun on the trail, and their pickups pick up nothing more than the occasional empty beer can. Even Gilley's, magical landmark, has disappeared, remanufactured in Branson, Missouri.

This time we were going to make sure we had a good, old fashioned, dust in your face rodeo experience. Suzanne had read that the 60th Annual Cal Farley's Boys Ranch Rodeo was going on that weekend, so we packed up the kids and made the 30 mile drive to get there in time for lunch. Boys Ranch is a place outside of town that helps at-risk kids from dooming themselves to a life of danger, jail, and misery. It's a good place that does good work, and it is completely different from Boys Town in Mexico. I know this from first hand experience. One time, in college, my friend, Steve, and I had decided to take a trip to Laredo and then cross the border into Mexico to visit Nuevo Laredo. For reasons I cannot explain, we called this our Transcendental Bodacious Roadtrip and carried with us a full-sized dummy of Richard Nixon in the backseat.

As we walked through Nuevo Laredo, a odd little man came up to us and asked if we wanted to go to Boys Town.

"Boy's Town?" I asked. "You mean the movie starring Andy Rooney?"
"I think that's Mickey Rooney," said Steve.
"Well, I didn't know they filmed that down here."
"I'll take you," said the odd little man, pointing at a very suspicious, windowless, kidnap van down the street. "You will loooooove booooooys town. Many pretty girls there for you."
That's when we wised up and decided survival was the better part of valor. We hightailed it back across the bridge to the safety of our Holiday Inn in Laredo.

Boys Ranch, of course, is nothing like Boys Town in Mexico. We took a tour of some old west teepees filled with candle-makers, knife-sharpeners, beaver-skinners, mandolin-players, weavers, trappers, and hunters. Then, after a tasty barbecue lunch, we snagged some choice seats for the rodeo. The action started quickly with the mutton busters, three-year-olds who rode some bronco busting on sheep. For the next two hours we saw action, adventure, and more than a few animals determined to get those kids riding them off their backs.

It was great fun, so if the next time you're thinking "Golly, we should go to a rodeo!" check out Boys Ranch. Cowboy regalia, as always, is optional.

Mosquito Spice

Recently we've had a nasty problem with mosquitos around here, which is very odd since bugs, particularly vampiric in nature, tend to dislike our windy and spastic climate. The current infestation is intense, and most of these West Nile-laden bugs have decided to bed down in our backyard, just waiting there for me to take out the garbage or start mowing.

The other day Alex was heading out to play in the backyard. Suzanne stopped him and asked if he had put on bug spray. He looked at her, full of three-year-old seriousness, and said quite simply, "They won't bite me. I'm too spicy!"

I think he should start up his very own British pop band.

Discover 2004

Every year on Labor Day comes Discover, a fireworks extravaganza fundraiser for the Discovery Center, out children's museum here in Amarillo. I'm a board member of the Discovery Center, and for the past couple of years I've been lucky (or hideously lazy) and didn't do much with Discover. After all, we've got a volunteer group of about 100 people running around that day, setting up crafts for kids, driving carts around, and in general making sure that about 10,000 people are having a good time. Usually we show up for some of the fun stuff during the day and then return for the evening show in the Patron Area, a special area for people who have plunked down about $1500 to reserve a table for eight. For your money you get a swank dinner, perfect fireworks seats, and special activities for the kids while you eat. (My company gets a Patron Table in exchange for a donation of the gigantic stage where the Amarillo Symphony performs - otherwise I doubt we'd be keeping such high-falutin' company.)

A couple of months ago at one of our regular board meetings, word came around the table that we were looking for people to sponsor the songs played by the symphony. For $700 or so you get your name on the program as a song sponsor, as if you had made a special request of the symphony. Well, the first group of cash cows for this donation was, you guessed it, the board of directors. So when the chair of the committee started talking, I started paying an awful lot of attention to my agenda, circling things on it with a pencil and writing illegible scrawls in the margins, trying to look like I was in deep thought.

That's when I heard this: "Hey, Mark, why don't you do a magic show for Discover? If you do that, you won't have to buy a table!"

Doh.

I was hosed on this one. If I refused, I'd be on the hook for $700. If I accepted, I'd have to face the wrath of jaded children, sugared up and ready to attack. Yet, it was a magic show, and that's always hard to turn down.

So this past Monday there I was, dressed in black and standing on a sun-drenched stage, trying hard to be witty and sly while at the same time trying to stop the sweat from my face from ruining my setup. I guess I had a few good jokes because later Colleen told me some kid in the audience said, "Hey, this isn't a magic show. It's a comedy show!"

I did the good ole stand-by tricks for big audiences, but I also tried the Torn and Restored paper variant (this one begins with the paper already torn up. All the pieces are all over the place. My job is to magically make them become one whole paper in the end). Too bad I goofed this one up and actually ended up ripping the whole paper, so the trick really looked like this: here's a bunch of ripped paper. Now here's a unripped paper. Oh, wait. This one's ripped too. Um . . . ta da!

Since my watch's battery died, Suzanne and I came up with a secret code to tell me the time (Suzanne was out in the audience with the kids). Our plan was this: I was supposed to perform for 30 minutes. When I got down to 10, Suzanne would hold up 10 fingers. When I got down to five, she'd hold up five fingers. Well, I had run through most of my stuff and had the Vanishing Bandana trick left to go. I looked over at Suzanne and gave her my panic-stricken "Time?" look. She then held up ten fingers. Then she added three more. This is when I forgot I had a microphone on my collar and said a little too loudly, "What? 13 minutes! That can't be right."

My disbelief, powered by four heavy duty, macho speakers, boomed across the Discover festivities. That's show-biz for you.

In the end everything worked out great. We had some snowcones afterward (there was a booth that sold Deep Fried Oreo Cakes, which frightened us), goofed around a little bit, and then went home to change for the night's fireworks. My clothes were sweat drenched with enough salt water to start up my own lake in Utah.

When we returned to Discover for the evening's fun, we were sucked into the Creativity Parade (a lot of kids dressed up in crazy outfits, people banging drums, Suzanne and I holding up a PVC pipe with Mylar balloons taped to it), and then we dropped off the kids in the Discovery Center for their evening of Sonic hamburgers, candy, and frantic playtime. We had a nice catered meal in the swank Patron Area and then at symphony intermission time, right before fireworks time, we picked up the kids, got them some glow-in-the-dark twirly things and a lightsaber for Alex, and watched the best fireworks show I've ever seen.

So here's to Labor Day, the day when we kick back and watch both fireworks and Jerry Lewis blossom and explode before our very eyes. It's the end of summer, and now we only have a few more weeks of withering heat before the blasts of arctic air come come rushing across the high plains, killing off the bugs and making bike rides utterly unbearable. I can't wait.